Robert E. Lee Quotes

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.

To an honest man, it is an honor to have remembered his duty.

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

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.

With this honor devolves upon you also a corresponding responsibility. As the country herein trusts you, so under God it will sustain you.

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.

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

Duty is seldom liked either by the doer or the object ... And why should it be? It is not often of advantage to either.

Without duty, life is soft and boneless.

Duty cannot exist without faith.

I have done what I felt to be my duty.

Not observation of a duty but liberty itself is the pledge that assures fidelity.

I own frankly now that I am to engage, that what I may do may be reckoned and will be reckoned desperate. All appearances seem to be against me. Interest, prudence, and the obligations to you which I lie under, will prevent most people in my situation from taking a resolution that may probably end in my utter ruin. My life, my fortune, my expectations, the happiness of my wife and children are all at stake …, and yet a principle (what seems to me) honour, and my duty to King and Country, outweighs everything.

... a man's first duty is to his own conscience and honor; the party and country come second to that, and never first.

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

Duty is the essence of manhood.

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

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

An action, to have moral worth, must be done from duty.

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.

Nothing, that is say no one, can be such an inexorable tour-conductor as one's own conscience or sense of duty, if one allows either the upper hand: the self-bullying that goes on in the name of sight-seeing is grievous.

In duty the individual acquires his substantive freedom

Duty is a better guide than stars or statutes.

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.