Ignoble Quotes - Page 4

• If there is no point in the universe that we discover by the methods of science, there is a point that we can give the universe by the way we live, by loving each other, by discovering things about nature, by creating works of art. And that — in a way, although we are not the stars in a cosmic drama, if the only drama we're starring in is one that we are making up as we go along, it is not entirely ignoble that faced with this unloving, impersonal universe we make a little island of warmth and love and science and art for ourselves. That's not an entirely despicable role for us to play.

  Steven Weinberg

  Art, Stars, Drama

  "The Faith of Scientists: In Their Own Words". Book edited by Nancy K. Frankenberry, 2008.

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• Lastly no woman should marry a teetotaller, or a man who does not smoke. It is not for nothing that this "ignoble tobagie" as Michelet calls it, spreads all over the world.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Men, Doe, World

  "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations" by Jehiel Keeler Hoyt, p. 495-500, Virginibus Puerisque, Part I, 1922.

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• You pass by a little child, you pass by, spiteful, with ugly words, with wrathful heart; you may not have noticed the child, but he has seen you, and your image, unseemly and ignoble, may remain in his defenseless heart. You don't know it, but you may have sown an evil seed in him and it may grow, and all because you were not careful before the child, because you did not foster in yourself a careful, actively benevolent love.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Love, Children, Heart

  "The Brothers Karamazov".

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• My anger thought you too ignoble for my love, and close examination finds you too magnificent, and only equals are joined together smoothly.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Anger, Together, Examination

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• We have many times led Europe in the fight for freedom. It would be an ignoble end to our long history if we tamely accepted to perish by degrees.

  Anthony Eden

  Fighting, Europe, Long

  Anthony Eden (Earl of Avon) (2005). “The Eden-Eisenhower Correspondence, 1955-1957”, p.167, Univ of North Carolina Press

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• The principle tragedy of my life is, like all tragedies, an irony of Destiny. I reject real life as if it were a condemnation; I reject dreams as if they were an ignoble liberation. [...]After the end of the stars uselessly whitened in the morning sky and the breeze became less cold in the barely orange tinged in the yellow of the light on the scattered low clouds, I, who hadn't slept, could finally, slowly raise my body, exhausted from nothing from the bed from which I had thought the universe.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Dream, Morning, Stars

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• It is better to go down on the great seas which human hearts were made to sail than to rot at the wharves in ignoble anchorage.

  Hamilton Wright Mabie

  Heart, Sea, Made

  Hamilton Wright Mabie (1893). “My Study Fire”

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• I consider that a most ignoble endeavor. The only way I would like to 'help' the great majority of people is the same way Carl Panzram 'reformed' people who tried to reform him. It would be most merciful to help them by relieving them of the life they seem to hate so much. People should be happy I'm not a humanitarian-or I'd probably be the most diabolical mass murderer the world has ever known.

  Anton Szandor LaVey

  Hate, People, Majority

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• There is nothing truly beautiful but that which can never be of any use whatsoever; everything useful is ugly, for it is the expression of some need, and man's needs are ignoble and disgusting like his own poor and infirm nature. The most useful place in a house is the water-closet.

  Theophile Gautier

  Beauty, Beautiful, Men

  "Mademoiselle de Maupin". Book by Théophile Gautier), Préface (p. 21), 1835.

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• The laws of Pluto's kingdom know small difference between king and cobbler, manager and call-boy; and, if haply your dates of life were conterminant, you are quietly taking your passage, cheek by cheek (O ignoble levelling of Death) with the shade of some recently departed candle-snuffer.

  Charles Lamb

  Kings, Boys, Law

  Charles Lamb, Mary Lamb (2017). “Delphi Complete Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Illustrated)”, p.885, Delphi Classics

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• Not the children of the rich or of the powerful only, but of all
  alike,
  boys and girls, both noble and ignoble, rich and poor, in all cities
  and
  towns, villages and hamlets, should be sent to school.
  Education is indeed necessary for all, and this is evident if we
  consider
  the different degrees of ability. No one doubts that those who are
  stupid
  need instruction, that they may shake off their natural dullness. But
  in
  reality those who are clever need it far more, since an active mind, if
  not occupied with useful things, will busy itself with what is useless,
  curious, and pernicious.

  John Amos Comenius

  Girl, Powerful, Children

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• The world now seems a stunningly ignoble place. It has not really grown all that much worse but appears to have done so because we know so much more about it than we did.

  Quentin Crisp

  Done, World, Knows

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• We can see that the complexity we witness inside the African-American community today has always been there. Black people were just as noble and just as ignoble as anybody else.

  Henry Louis Gates

  People, Community, African American

  Source: pittsburghurbanmedia.com

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• I spent an awful lot of time with Hemingway. And Hemingway had a remarkable ability to reach very noble goals through sometimes ignoble means.

  Lesley M. M. Blume

  Mean, Goal, Noble

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• As the tragic writer rids us of what is petty and ignoble in our nature, so also the humorist rids us of what is cautious, calculating, and priggish--about half of our social conscience, indeed. Both of them permit us, in blessed moments of revelation, to soar above the common level of our lives.

  Robertson Davies

  Blessed, Tragedy, Half

  Robertson Davies (1961). “The Personal Art: Reading to Good Purpose”, London : Secker & Warburg

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• Yet, every now and then, there would pass a young girl, slender, fair and desirable, arousing in young men a not ignoble desire to possess her, and stirring in old men regrets for ecstasy not seized and now forever past.

  Anatole France

  Girl, Regret, Past

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• Confusion is not an ignoble condition

  Brian Friel

  Confusion, Conditions

  Brian Friel (2013). “Brian Friel Plays 1: Philadelphia, Here I Come!; The Freedom of the City; Living Quarters; Aristocrats; Faith Healer; Translations”, p.393, Faber & Faber

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• One of the possible reasons why we might be good is that we're frightened, frightened of God. We want the reward in Heaven, we don't want to go to Hell. That would be an ignoble, ignominious reason for being good, and I think that if anybody was good to you just because they hoped for a heavenly reward, you wouldn't respect them, you'd probably give them a wide berth.

  Richard Dawkins

  Thinking, Giving, Heaven

  "Richard Dawkins at the Sydney Writers' Festival". "The Science Show" with Robyn Williams, www.abc.net.au. September 8, 2007.

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• Man is but mortal: and there is a point beyond which human courage cannot extend. Mr. Pickwick gazed through his spectacles for an instant on the advancing mass, and then fairly turned his back and-we will not say fled; firstly, because it is an ignoble term, and, secondly, because Mr. Pickwick's figure was by no means adapted for that mode of retreat-he trotted away, at as quick a rate as his legs would convey him;.

  Charles Dickens

  Funny, Humorous, Mean

  Charles Dickens (1870). “The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club”, p.31

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• To higher or lower ends, they [the majority of mankind] move too often with something of a sad countenance, with hurried and ignoble gait, becoming, unconsciously, something like thorns, in their anxiety to bear grapes; it being possible for people, in the pursuit of even great ends, to become themselves thin and impoverished in spirit and temper, thus diminishing the sum of perfection in the world, at its very sources.

  Walter Pater

  Moving, Ambition, People

  Walter Pater (2011). “The Works of Walter Pater”, p.60, Cambridge University Press

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• No one can expect a majority to be stirred by motives other than ignoble.

  Norman Douglas

  Majority, Motive

  Norman Douglas (1982). “South Wind”, p.83, Courier Corporation

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• Pity is one of the noblest emotions available to human beings; self-pity is possibly the most ignoble . . . . [It] is an incapacity, a crippling emotional disease that severely distorts our perception of reality . . . a narcotic that leaves its addicts wasted and derelict.

  Eugene H. Peterson

  Attitude, Reality, Emotional

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• My philosophy of life is that the meek shall inherit nothing but debasement, frustration and ignoble deaths; that there is security in personal strength; that you can fight City Hall and win; that any action is better than no action, even if it's the wrong action; that you never reach glory or self-fulfillment unless you're willing to risk everything, dare anything, put yourself dead on the line every time; and that once one becomes strong or rich or potent or powerful it is the responsibility of the strong to help the weak become strong.

  Harlan Ellison

  Strong, Powerful, Philosophy

  Harlan Ellison (2014). “The Harlan Ellison Hornbook: Essays”, p.170, Open Road Media

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• Meaning lies in the confrontation of contradiction - the coincidencia apositorum. That’s what we really feel, not these rational schemes that are constantly beating us over the head with the “thou shalts” and “thou should”, but rather a recovery of the real ambiguity of being and an ability to see ourselves as at once powerful and weak, noble and ignoble, future-oriented, past-facing.

  Terence McKenna

  Powerful, Real, Lying

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• Cooking is a form of flattery....a mischievous, deceitful, mean and ignoble activity, which cheats us by shapes and colors, by smoothing and draping.

  Plato

  Mean, Color, Cooking

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