Quotes, aphorisms and sentences on duty, or on the behavior to be imposed by a specific norm, which can be of a philosophical, moral, religious or juridical type.
Quotes about duty
- Duties are not performed for the sake of duty, but because avoiding them would make man uncomfortable. A man does only one duty: the duty to please his soul, the duty to make himself pleasant. (Mark Twain)
- An action, to have moral value, must be done by duty. (Immanuel Kant)
- Duty is the most arid of all ties between men. (Oscar Wilde)
- When a man has done what he believes is his duty for his people and his country, he can rest in peace. I think I made that effort and that's why I will rest for eternity.
(Nelson Mandela)
- I have a master: it is duty; I have a judge: it's me. (Victor Hugo)
- Duties are not performed for the sake of duty, but because avoiding them would make man uncomfortable. A man does only one duty: the duty to please his soul, the duty to make himself pleasant. (Mark Twain)
- The duty is mainly to pretend that the trivial is crucial. (John Fowles)
- Who has no genius, has a duty to have talent. Who has no talent, has a duty to have an inclination. Who has no inclination, can have the innocent prowess of the raw material, which seems to have no obligation. (Gheorghe Grigurcu)
- The strongest is never strong enough to always be the master, unless he transforms his strength into law and obedience into duty. (Jean Jacques Rousseau)
- The modern state no longer has anything but rights: it no longer recognizes its duties. (Georges Bernanos)
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- The first duty of charity does not consist in tolerating erroneous beliefs, however sincere they are, nor in theoretical or practical indifference to the error or vice in which we see our brothers immersed, but in zeal for their intellectual improvement and moral, no less than for their material well-being. (Pope Pius X)
- When a fool does something he is ashamed of, he always says it is his duty. (George Bernard Shaw)
- The concept of duty was a means devised by men in power to induce other men to live for the interest of their masters rather than their own. (Bertrand Russell)
- The must is one of the curses with which man was baptized. (Georg Büchner)
- The duty is to feel what is great, to privilege what is beautiful and not to bow to all the conventions of society with the ignominies that it imposes on us. (Gustave Flaubert)
- When people demand duties and do not want to recognize rights, they have to be paid well. (Johann Wolfgang Goethe)
- There is no duty that we underestimate more than the duty to be happy. (Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson)
- Whoever argues with his duty is about to violate him. (Joseph de Maistre)
- What made you a good citizen then was fear, which is never a lasting teacher of duty. (Guide)
- God is inconceivable, incredible immortality but duty is peremptory and absolute. (George Eliot)
- My world is the object and sphere of my duties and absolutely nothing else. (Johann Gottlieb Fichte)
- Enduring life: this is still the first duty of every living thing. (Sigmund Freud)
- Don't stare into individual destiny. To exist is a duty, to last a second. (Emile Durkheim)
- If you want to be sure you are always doing your homework, do what you find unpleasant. (Jules Renard)
- The first of our duties is to make clear what our idea of duty is. (Maurice Maeterlinck)
- What is man's first duty? The answer is short: to be yourself. (Henrik Ibsen)
- Law and duty are like palm trees: they do not bear fruit unless they grow side by side. (Félicité De Lamennais)
- We always have our duties back. Words like that come out of my ears. It is a hodgepodge of old jerks with a flannel waistcoat and bigot with a warmer and rosary in hand, all eager to take a nap: "Duty, duty!" Eh, wow! The duty is to feel what is great, to privilege what is beautiful and not to bow to all the conventions of society with the ignomies that it imposes on us. (Gustave Flaubert)
- Nobody is forced to love anyone, we all have a duty to respect each other. (José Saramago)
- A good mood is a duty that we have towards our neighbor.(Wallace Stevens)
Aphorisms on duty
- The reward for those who fulfill one duty is the ability to fulfill another. (George Eliot)
- Getting married means halving your rights and doubling your duties. (Arthur Schopenhauer)
- Duty makes us do things well, but love makes us beautiful. (Zig Ziglar)
- There is no more indispensable duty than that which imposes the return of kindness. (Guide)
- I am dying to do something great and noble but it is my precise duty to carry out the small tasks that have been assigned to me as if they were large and noble. (Helen Adams Keller)
- Love can only flourish as long as it is free and spontaneous; tends to be killed by the thought of duty. To say that it is your duty to love is the safest way to make you hate yourself. (Bertrand Russell)
- If man could find a way, remaining idle, to feel useful and do his duty, he would find part of his bliss. (Lev Tolstoj)
- I know only one duty, and that is to love. (Albert Camus)
- The duty, the earthly duty, the duty to help, the duty to awaken; there is no other duty, and the same commitment of man towards divinity and divinity towards man is the duty of help. (Herman Broch)
- Under religion and politics, man finds himself looking at everything from the point of view of duty: he must be this or that, he must become this or that. (Max Stirner)
- Our duty is to be useful, not according to our desires, but according to our strengths. (Henri-Frédéric Amiel)
- The wedding knot will teach you things that today will seem mysterious to you; soon you will know from your experience what Eve also had to learn in order to give life to Cain. But such duties are so slight that they will appear to you as pleasures. (Wolfang Amadeus Mozart)
- The first duty in life is to be as artificial as possible. What the second duty is has not yet been discovered by anyone. (Oscar Wilde)
- For men there is no duty, except one: to seek oneself, to consolidate oneself, to make attempts on one's own way wherever it leads. (Hermann Hesse)
- Some obligations are fun when you contract them, but none are fun when you are going to discharge them. (Ogden Nash)
- The father who does not teach his son his homework is equally responsible to the son who neglects them. (Confucius)
- Duty is the most arid of all ties between men. (Oscar Wilde)
- If it is a duty to respect the rights of others, it is also a duty to keep one's own. (Herbert Spencer)
- Instinct dictates duty and intelligence provides pretexts to evade it. (Marcel Proust)
- A warrior of light, after having done his duty and having transformed his intention into a gesture, must not fear anything anymore: he has done what he should. (Paulo Coelho)
- He slept and dreamed that life was beautiful; he woke up and realized that life was a duty. (Immanuel Kant)
- I know only one duty, and that is to love. (Albert Camus)
- We do our duty out of laziness and shyness and often all the credit goes to our virtue. (François de La Rochefoucauld)
- There is no doubt that every human condition has its duties. Those of a sick person are patience, courage and all efforts not to be inamable to those close to him. (Silvio Pellico)
- A man does what he must, despite personal consequences, despite obstacles and dangers and pressures, and this is the basis of all human morality. (Winston Churchill)
- You have to be strong to grow up: that's our duty. (Father Pio)
- The first of our duties is to make clear what our idea of duty is. (Maurice Maeterlinck)
- In human coexistence, every natural right in a person entails a respective duty in all other people: the duty to recognize and respect that right. (Pope John XXIII)
- It is sweet to rest after having done one's duty. (Father Pio)
- Your only duty, in every existence, is to be true to yourself. Being faithful to anyone else, or anything else, is not only impossible, but the sign of a false Messiah. (Richard Bach)
Sentences about duty
- We need to do what we need to do what we want. (Forest Whitaker)
- The sense of duty is similar to a horrible disease. It destroys the tissues of thought as certain diseases destroy the tissues of the body. The catechism has serious responsibilities to answer for. (Oscar Wilde)
- Love is a better teacher of duty. (Albert Einstein)
- Do something you don't like every day: this is the golden rule to get used to doing your homework effortlessly. (Mark Twain)
- Don't settle for just doing your homework. Do more than your duty. It is the horse that ends up in the head for a gluing that wins the race. (Andrew Carnegie)
- When you do what you can, you do what you should. (Madeleine de Scudéry)
- There is no more indispensable duty than that which imposes the return of kindness.(Guide)
- Be wary when a man's job becomes more important than his goals, when the man disappears behind his duties. (John Harington)
- I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every property, a task. (John D. Rockefeller)
- The first duty of a man is to be himself. (Henrik Johan Ibsen)
- Reward is not part of the definition of duty. (Robert Brault)
- Helping those in need is not only part of the duty, but also of happiness. (José Martì)
- I am dying to do something great and noble but it is my precise duty to carry out the small tasks that have been assigned to me as if they were large and noble. (Helen Adams Keller)
- We must be ready to make heroic sacrifices for peace more than we willingly do for war. There is no duty that I consider more important or to which I care more. (Albert Einstein)
- No man can always be right. So the struggle is to do your best, to keep your head and conscience clean, to never be misled by unworthy or illogical reasons, but to fight to find out the basic elements inherent, and then do your duty. (Dwight Eisenhower)
- The reward for those who fulfill one duty is the ability to fulfill another. (George Eliot)
- The law imposes the duty, the state what is convenient. The law weighs and decides, the state dominates and commands. The right refers to the individual, the state to all citizens. (Goethe)
- The rights automatically increase for those who duly perform their duties. (Mahatma Gandhi)
- Living for others is not only the law of duty, but also the law of happiness. (Auguste Comte)
- Our rights are nothing other than the duties of others towards us. (Norberto Bobbio)
- Devotion to duty is the highest form of worship of God. (Swami Vivekananda)
- Happiness is not an end to be pursued avidly, but a flower to be seized on the path of duty. (John Stuart Mill)
- It is not worth having rights that do not derive from a well performed duty. (Mahatma Gandhi)
- Duty is the action that can produce more good in the world than any other action. (Tommaso Moro)
- The teaching must be such as to make perceived what is offered as a precious gift, and not as an imposed duty. (Albert Einstein)
- To command does not mean to dominate, but to perform a duty. (Lucio Anneo Seneca)
- Duty is the most sublime word in our language. Do your duty in everything. You can't do more. And you should never do less. (Robert Edward Lee)
- Freedom does not consist in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we must. (Pope John Paul II)
- The law of joy and the law of duty seem to me the same thing. (Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr)
- Duty does not consist in undergoing everything, but in undergoing everything out of duty. Sometimes, in fact, it is our duty not to suffer. (Alexandre Rodolphe Vinet)
