The line of life is a ragged diagonal between duty and desire.
No eulogy is due to him who simply does his duty and nothing more.
He who is false to present duty breaks a thread in the loom, and will find the flaw when he may have forgotten its cause.
Duty. That which sternly impels us in the direction of profit, along the line of desire.
Do the duty which lies nearest to you, the second duty will then become clearer.
Our duty, as men and women, is to proceed as if limits to our ability did not exist. We are collaborators in creation.
When one has come to accept a certain course as duty he has a pleasant sense of relief and of lifted responsibility, even if the course involves pain and renunciation. It is like obedience to some external authority; any clear way, though it lead to death, is mentally preferable to the tangle of uncertainty.
Do your duty and leave the rest to heaven.
Sufficient to each day are the duties to be done and the trials to be endured. God never built a Christian strong enough to carry today's duties and tomorrow's anxieties piled on the top of them.
Duty cannot exist without faith.
The reward of one's duty is the power to fulfill another.
Do that which is assigned to you and you cannot hope too much or dare too much.
Oh! Duty is an icy shadow. It will freeze you. It cannot fill the heart's sanctuary.
Duty largely consists of pretending that the trivial is critical.
I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son.
How can we know ourselves? Never by reflection, but only through action. Begin at once to do your duty and immediately you will know what is inside you.
Love can do much, but duty more.
But in his duty prompt at every call, he watched and wept, he prayed and felt for all.
The rule of joy and the law of duty seem to me all one.
I slept, and dreamed that life was beauty; I woke, and found that life was Duty.
It is not enough for us to prostrate ourselves under the tree which is Creation, and to contemplate its tremendous branches filled with stars. We have a duty to perform, to work upon the human soul, to defend the mystery against the miracle, to worship the incomprehensible while rejecting the absurd; to accept, in the inexplicable, only what is necessary; to dispel the superstitions that surround religion --to rid God of His Maggots.
Without duty, life is sort of boneless; it cannot hold itself together.
Activate yourself to duty by remembering your position, who you are, and what you have obliged yourself to be.
Consult duty not events.
Duty is the sublimest word in the language. You can never do more than your duty. You should never wish to do less.
The sense of obligation to continue is present in all of us. A duty to strive is the duty of us all. I felt a call to that duty.
What is possible is our highest duty.
Possession without obligation to the object possessed approaches felicity.
Rank imposes obligation.
— Motto
A duty dodged is like a debt unpaid; it is only deferred, and we must come back and settle the account at last.
Let others laugh when you sacrifice desire to duty, if they will. You have time and eternity to rejoice in.
Let us do our duty, in our shop in our kitchen, in the market, the street, the office, the school, the home, just as faithfully as if we stood in the front rank of some great battle, and knew that victory for mankind depends on our bravery, strength, and skill. When we do that, the humblest of us will be serving in that great army which achieves the welfare of the world.
Never step over one duty to perform another.
The most beautiful things in the universe are the starry heavens above us and the feeling of duty within us.
Where there are no rights, there are no duties.
Every right implies a responsibility; Every opportunity, an obligation, Every possession, a duty.
The first requisite of a good citizen in this republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his weight.
A sense of duty is useful in work but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked, not to be endured with patient resignation.
When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.
There is no duty we so much underrated as the duty of being happy.
When we can say no not only to things that are wrong and sinful, but also to things pleasant, profitable, and good which would hinder and clog our grand duties and our chief work, we shall understand more fully what life is worth, and how to make the most of it.
It is easier to do one's duty to others than to one's self. If you do your duty to others, you are considered reliable. If you do your duty to yourself, you are considered selfish.
For many years I was a self-appointed inspector of snowstorms and rainstorms and did my duty faithfully, though I never received payment for it.
Duties are not performed for duty's sake, but because their neglect would make the man uncomfortable. A man performs but one duty --the duty of contenting his spirit, the duty of making himself agreeable to himself.
Do something every day that you don't want to do. This is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.
Oh, duty is what one expects from others, it is not what one does oneself.
The first duty of life is to be as artificial as possible. What the second duty is no one as yet discovered.