Honour Quotes

“If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.”
― E.M. Forster, What I Believe and Other Essays

“Nothing of real worth can ever be bought. Love, friendship, honour, valour, respect. All these things have to be earned.”
― David Gemmell, Shield of Thunder

“The greatest way to live with honour in this world is to be what we pretend to be.”
― Socrates, Essential Thinkers - Socrates

“I have a different idea of elegance. I don't dress like a fop, it's true, but my moral grooming is impeccable. I never appear in public with a soiled conscience, a tarnished honor, threadbare scruples, or an insult that I haven't washed away. I'm always immaculately clean, adorned with independence and frankness. I may not cut a stylish figure, but I hold my soul erect. I wear my deeds as ribbons, my wit is sharper then the finest mustache, and when I walk among men I make truths ring like spurs.”
― Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac

“What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones,
The labor of an age in pilèd stones,
Or that his hallowed relics should be hid
Under a star-y-pointing pyramid?
Dear son of memory, great heir of fame,
What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name?”
― John Milton, The Complete Poetry

“The really unforgivable acts are committed by calm men in beautiful green silk rooms, who deal death wholesale, by the shipload, without lust, or anger, or desire, or any redeeming emotion to excuse them but cold fear of some pretended future. But the crimes they hope to prevent in that future are imaginary. The ones they commit in the present — they are real.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Shards of Honour

“I may be stupid, as you say, to believe in honour and friendship and loyalty without price. But these are virtues to be cherished, for without them we are no more than beasts roaming the land.”
― David Gemmell, Shield of Thunder

“Defeat is for the valiant. Only they will know the honour of losing and the joy of winning
I am not here to tell you that defeat is a part of life: we all know that. Only the defeated know Love. Because it is in the realm of love that we fight our first battles – and generally lose.
I am here to tell you that there are people who have never been defeated.
They are the ones who never fought.
They managed to avoid scars, humiliations, feelings of helplessness, as well as those moments when even warriors doubt the existence of God.’’
Manuscript Found In Accra – Paulo Coelho”
― Paulo Coelho, Manuscript Found in Accra

“If it ever occurs to people to value the honour of the mind equally with the honour of the body, we shall get a social revolution of a quite unparalleled sort.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night

“If I kill you, you'll be awake, you'll be facing me, and you'll be armed.”
― Joss Whedon

“As I love the name of honour more than I fear death.”
― William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

“It really is something ... that men disapprove even of our doing things that are patently good. Wouldn't it be possible for us just to banish these men from our lives, and escape their carping and jeering once and for all? Couldn't we live without them? Couldn't we earn our living and manage our affairs without help from them? Come on, let's wake up, and claim back our freedom, and the honour and dignity that they have usurped from us for so long. Do you think that if we really put our minds to it, we would be lacking the courage to defend ourselves, the strength to fend for ourselves, or the talents to earn our own living? Let's take our courage into our hands and do it, and then we can leave it up to them to mend their ways as much as they can: we shan't really care what the outcome is, just as long as we are no longer subjugated to them.”
― Moderata Fonte, The Worth of Women: Wherein Is Clearly Revealed Their Nobility and Their Superiority to Men

“If you lose your integrity, you will also lose your identity, your sensitivity and your dignity. Integrity is honesty, modesty and security in all kinds of weather. It should be our priority!”
― Israelmore Ayivor

“Do I understand, sir, that you mean the Cause for which our heroes have died is not sacred?'
If you were run over by a railroad train your death wouldn’t sanctify the railroad company, would it?' asked Rhett and his voice sounded as if he were humbly seeking information.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“To make a deliberate falsification for personal gain is the last, worst depth to which either scholar or artist can descend in work or life.

(Letter to Muriel St. Clare Byrne, 8 September 1935)”
― Dorothy L Sayers, The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers 1899-1936: The Making of a Detective Novelist

“Mine honor is my life; both grow in one.
Take honor from me, and my life is done.”
― William Shakespeare, Richard II

“But often life asks much of you, and you either honor life by answering with all your heart, or you cower your way into your grave.”
― James Clemens, Hinterland

“You have less honour than a piece of shit.”
― Alison Goodman

“Colour outside the lines, live outside the box. Don’t let anyone tell you what to do, or not. Don’t be afraid, listen to your heart.
Heaven is a state of being – of one-ness, and Hell is a state of being – lost. We simply need to live as we best define ourselves, find our own ways of being who we are in our world.
There is no requirement - only freedom of choice. We should not be judged if we are doing what we think best according to our perceptions at any given time.
Guilt should be discarded, moved beyond - what matters is who we choose to be in the next moment, given what we might have learned. We continually create ourselves anew.
Forgiving someone is a great way to show love, and forgive yourself too for the hurt you held onto far too long.
Take back the energy you have wasted on these things and reclaim your power to be your next best self.
Honour the past but refresh, expand, renew, fulfill. Heaven is within us, always reachable.”
― Jay Woodman

“When you’re older, you will realise the only thing that matters, the only thing, is that you had courage and honour. Lose those things and you won’t die any quicker, but you’ll be less than the dirt on our boots. You’ll still be dust, but you’ll have wasted your short time in the light.”
― Conn Iggulden, Conqueror

“Wounds sustained for the sake of conscience carry their own balsam with the blow.”
― Walter Scott, Rob Roy

“Women shouldn't be in combat," said Vorkosigan, grimly glum.
"Neither should men, in my opinion.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Shards of Honour

“If you really want to be different, you'd better keep quiet and be a good person on the inside.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, The Book of Maxims, Poems and Anecdotes

“He begged to know to which of his fair cousins the excellency of its cookery was owing.
Briefly forgetting her manners, Mary grabbed her fork and leapt from her chair onto the table. Lydia, who was seated nearest her, grabbed her ankle before she could dive at Mr. Collins and, presumably, stab him about the head and neck for such an insult.”
― Seth Grahame-Smith, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

“Chater: You dare to call me that. I demand satisfaction!

Septimus: Mrs Chater demanded satisfaction and now you are demanding satisfaction. I cannot spend my time day and night satisfying the demands of the Chater family.”
― Tom Stoppard, Arcadia

“And that was all the part of it - the way you were obliged to live. You stifled a groan, you lied about your love, you deceived your legal wife, and all in the name of honour. That was the damned paradox of it - in order to behave well, you have to behave badly.”
― Julian Barnes, Arthur & George

“It’s time for us to wake up, smell the brownies, smell the coffee, and open our spiritual eyes to see in the spirit how many monitoring systems and equipment that the kingdom of darkness is monitoring you with, day in and day out.”
― John Ramirez, Fire Prayers: Building Arsenals That Destroy Satanic Kingdoms

“When we consider the magnitude and extent of his discoveries and their influence on the progress of science and of industry, there is no honour too great to pay to the memory of Faraday, one of the greatest scientific discoverers of all time.”
― Ernest Rutherford

“There's a certain amount of ambiguity in my background, what with intermarriages and conversions, but under various readings of three codes which I don’t much respect (Mosaic Law, the Nuremberg Laws, and the Israeli Law of Return) I do qualify as a member of the tribe, and any denial of that in my family has ceased with me. But I would not remove myself to Israel if it meant the continuing expropriation of another people, and if anti-Jewish fascism comes again to the Christian world—or more probably comes at us via the Muslim world—I already consider it an obligation to resist it wherever I live. I would detest myself if I fled from it in any direction. Leo Strauss was right. The Jews will not be 'saved' or 'redeemed.' (Cheer up: neither will anyone else.) They/we will always be in exile whether they are in the greater Jerusalem area or not, and this in some ways is as it should be. They are, or we are, as a friend of Victor Klemperer's once put it to him in a very dark time, condemned and privileged to be 'a seismic people.' A critical register of the general health of civilization is the status of 'the Jewish question.' No insurance policy has ever been devised that can or will cover this risk.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“It seems to me, that you people spend a great deal of time talking about honour, but strip away the high sounding words and you are no different from any other race. Family? Has Priam not killed wayward sons? When a king dies do his sons not go to war with one another to succeed him? Men speak of how you reacted to your father's death. They say it was amazing, for you did not order your little brother's execution. Your race thrives on blood and death, Helikaon. Your ships raid the coasts of other nations, stealing slaves, burning and plundering. Warriors brag of how many men they have killed, and women they have raped. Almost all of your kings either seized their thrones with swords and murder, or are children of men who seized power with swords and murder. So put all this talk of honour to one side.”
― David Gemmell, Shield of Thunder