676 Quotes About Duty

The duty of pursuit is the grace of prayer.

if adversity and hopeless grief have quite taken away the taste for life; if an unfortunate man, strong of soul and more indignant about his fate than despondent or dejected, wishes for death and yet preserves his life without loving it, not from inclination or fear but from duty, then his maxim has moral content.

We are humanity, Kant says. Humanity needs us because we are it. Kant believes in duty and considers remaining alive a primary human duty. For him one is not permitted to “renounce his personality,” and while he states living as a duty, it also conveys a kind of freedom: we are not burdened with the obligation of judging whether our personality is worth maintaining, whether our life is worth living. Because living it is a duty, we are performing a good moral act just by persevering.

. . . if we do not continue to choose kindness together, can you imagine how much worse the world will become? The least we can do in response to and in gratitude for all those kindness giants who have paved the way is to do the same for the generations to come.

As a gentleman- assuming you still have some pretensions in that direction- of honor- again, perhaps presumptuous, but still supposing your passing acquaintance with the concept- it is your duty- I won't even trouble to speculate here, but remain naively hopeful- to protect those under your care.

A woman holy duty is to respect a man.

A writer's duty is to draw a picture that expresses more inner beauty, deeper anxiety, and more complex tragedy than a real character ever can.

Likewise, however little man, in living, demands as just to himself, his duty toward justice remains infinite. The right to live cannot be paid by finite labour, only by infinite activity. Because you participate in the violence of all things, all of this violence is part of your debt to justice. All of your activity must go toward eradicating this: to give everything and demand nothing; this is the duty—where duties and rights may be, I do not know.

Rise above the deceptions and temptations of the mind. This is your duty. You are born for this only; all other duties are self-created and self-imposed owing to ignorance.