Ivy Compton-Burnett Quotes

Without duty, life is soft and boneless.

Duty does not consist in suffering everything, but in suffering everything for duty. Sometimes, indeed, it is our duty not to suffer.

For duty, duty must be done; The rule applies to everyone.

I did only what my duty demanded. I could have taken no other course without dishonor.

A sense of duty imprisons you.

Men must be either the slaves of duty, or the slaves of force.

Duty is but a pot. It holds whatever is put in it, from the greatest evil to the greatest good.

If a sense of duty tortures a man, it also enables him to achieve prodigies.

Duty is what goes most against the grain, because in doing that we do only what we are strictly obliged to, and are seldom much praised for it.

Obligation may be stretched till it is no better than a brand of slavery stamped on us when we were too young to know its meaning.

Responsibility is the possibility of opportunity culminating in inevitable fulfillment.

Neither pleasure nor pain should enter as motives when one must do what must be done.

Fear guides more to their duty than gratitude; for one man who is virtuous from the love of virtue, from the obligation he thinks he lies under to the Giver of all, there are ten thousand who are good only from their apprehension of punishment.

Commonplace though it may appear, this doing of one's duty embodies the highest ideal of life and character. There may be nothing heroic about it; but the common lot of men is not heroic.

There is no such thing as duty. If you know that a thing is right, you want to do it. If you don't want to do it - it isn't right. If it's right and you don't want to do it - you don't know what right is and you're not a man.

Duty is heavier than a mountain, Dai Shan.' That time, Lan did flinch. How long had it been since someone had been able to do that to him with mere words? He remembered teaching that same concept to a youth out of the Two Rivers. A sheepherder, innocent of the world, fearful of the fate laid out before him by the Pattern.

Duty is one and invariable; it requires no impossibilities, nor can it ever be disregarded with impunity.

But I felt all the more bound to make this proposal, because it at once turns to a reproach.

I didn't volunteer; they asked me. I felt a duty to testify.

I feel it is an intensely disagreeable and unfortunate task which we cannot in honor shirk.

To a reluctant admission of the necessity for State action, we join a burning belief in duty.

Duty is what no-one else will do at the moment.

Duty is the essence of manhood.

One of the most destructive anti-concepts in the history of moral philosophy is the term 'duty.

It is not a matter of desire, but of coercion and duty.