James Madison Quotes

The .essence of religion is belief in a relation to God involving duties superior to those arising from any human relation

Here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.

It is not lawful for you to make a compromise with God: to try to fulfill part of your duties and to omit others at your own pleasure.

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

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.

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

The mind must have for ballast the clear conception of duty, if it is not to fluctuate between levity and despair.

Responsibility is the possibility of opportunity culminating in inevitable fulfillment.

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

Stern daughter of the voice of God! O Duty! if that name thou love Who art a light to guide, a rod To check the erring and reprove.

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 be good, and do good, is the whole duty of man comprised in a few words.

The burning conviction that we have a holy duty toward others is often a way of attaching our drowning selves to a passing raft.

Not only virtue, but also insight, not only sanctity but also wisdom, are the duties and tasks of mankind.

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.

Holiness is not the luxury of a few people, but a simple duty for you and me.

Duty is that mode of action on the part of the individual which constitutes the best possible application of his capacity to the general benefit.

A nation, as an individual, has duties to fulfill appointed by God and His moral law.

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

The doing of things from duty is but a stage on the road to the kingdom of truth and love.

There is one thing diviner than duty, namely, the bond of obligation transmuted into liberty.

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