quotations about honor
Honor -- it was transitory and subjective, and often directly opposed to practicality.
AMANDA DOWNUM
The Bone Palace
Honor and shame from no condition rise;
Act well your part, there all the honor lies.
ALEXANDER POPE
An Essay on Man
A great and honorable character is a safe provision for every event and every turn of fortune.
MENANDER
attributed, Day's Collacon
Content thyself to be obscurely good. When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, the post of honor is a private station.
JOSEPH ADDISON
Cato
Honour ... remains awake in us like a last lamp in a temple that has been laid to waste.
ALFRED DE VIGNY
Servitude et grandeur militaires
Honor prudently declined, often comes back with increased lustre.
LIVY
attributed, Day's Collacon
The honors of this world, what are they but puff, and emptiness, and peril of falling?
JOSEPH ADDISON
Cato
Honor is only fictitious honesty.
D. B. TOWER
attributed, Day's Collacon
Every post is honorable in which a man can serve his country.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to Benedict Arnold, Sep. 14, 1775
Honour is a luxury for aristocrats, but it is a necessity for hall-porters.
G. K. CHESTERTON
Heretics
Men that are free, well-born, well-bred, and conversant in honest companies, have naturally an instinct and spur that prompteth them unto virtuous actions, and withdraws them from vice, which is called honour. Those same men, when by base subjection and constraint they are brought under and kept down, turn aside from that noble disposition, by which they formerly were inclined to virtue, to shake off and break that bond of servitude, wherein they are so tyrannously enslaved; for it is agreeable with the nature of man to long after things forbidden, and to desire what is denied us.
FRANÇOIS RABELAIS
Gargantua
Give me, kind Heaven, a private station,
A mind serene for contemplation:
Title and profit I resign:
The post of honor shall be mine.
JOHN GAY
Fables
It is an assured sign of a worthy and generous spirit, whom honor amends. For honor is, or should be, the place of virtue; and as in nature, things move violently to their place, and calmly in their place, so virtue in ambition is violent, in authority settled and calm. All rising to great place is by a winding star; and if there be factions, it is good to side a man's self, whilst he is in the rising, and to balance himself when he is placed. Use the memory of thy predecessor, fairly and tenderly; for if thou dost not, it is a debt will sure be paid when thou art gone. If thou have colleagues, respect them, and rather call them, when they look not for it, than exclude them, when they have reason to look to be called. Be not too sensible, or too remembering, of thy place in conversation, and private answers to suitors; but let it rather be said, When he sits in place, he is another man.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Great Place", The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral
Dishonor is like a gash on a tree trunk -- instead of disappearing with age, it enlarges.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Harkonnen
Honor ought to be given to virtue and not to riches.
ANACHARSIS
attributed, Day's Collacon
Honor was never taking the easy way when it was also the wrong one. Never telling a falsehood unless the truth was painful and unnecessary, or a lie was necessary to save others. Never manipulating the truth to serve only yourself. Protecting the weak and helpless; standing fast even when fear made you weak. Keeping your word.
MERCEDES LACKEY
Exile's Honor
You wear your honor like a suit of armor ... You think it keeps you safe, but all it does is weigh you down and make it hard for you to move.
GEORGE R. R. MARTIN
A Game of Thrones
The more honor, the more danger.
AESOP
"The Mice and the Weasels", Aesop's Fables
In whom the love of honor and praise is innate, are those who are elevated most above the brutes, and who are justly named men, and not merely human beings.
XENOPHON
Hiero
The nearest way to Honour is for a man so to live that he may be found to be that in truth he would be thought to be.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine