Honor Quotes

Unaffected modesty is the sweetest charm of female excellence, the richest gem in the diadem of her honor.

~ Noah Webster

I have been asked what I mean by “word of honor.” I will tell you. Place me behind prison walls—walls of stone ever so high, ever so thick, reaching ever so far into the ground—there is a possibility that in some way or another I might be able to escape; but stand me on the floor and draw a chalk line around me and have me give my word of honor never to cross it. Can I get out of that circle? No, never! I’d die first.

~ Karl G. Maeser

They've named the well after you.How did they know my name?They don't. They invented one.

~ Gerald Morris

I honor the father in his son, not the son in his father. Each one receives a reward or punishment for his deeds, but not for the acts of others.

~ José Rizal

Harper to your word be trueHolder, crafter you also hewTo honesty, integrity, and respectAll others without regard to intellect

~ Anne Mccaffrey

Your father died for me, and dying with you would be an honor, though not as great as dying to save you.

~ N.d. Wilson

You will honor my mother or I will break this bottle over your head

~ Rosamund Hodge

We believe that a man does not have to be devoted to the winning side for his loyalty to be celebrated with reverence.

~ Hock G. Tjoa

There are things we don't do. From this moment forth, let us all ensure our every action reflects well on us and our ancestors. Let us live to the highest standards, lest we win this war only to find ourselves staring in the mirror at the face of our late enemy.

~ Jack Campbell

He was a man, take him for all in all,I shall not look upon his like again.

~ William Shakespeare

But if it be a sin to covet honour,I am the most offending soul alive.

~ William Shakespeare

A great many grown-up and intelligent people believe, or pretend to believe, that by behaving in a friendly and accommodating way to our attackers, we will show them that they have nothing to fear from us and so defuse their wrath. The idea that such behavior would be taken by a ruthless and implacable enemy only as a sign of weakness is as foreign to them as the idea of honor itself.

~ James Bowman

Honor must start in the heart, but if it ends there, it isn’t honor. Honor must be expressed through words, symbols, actions, or gestures. Honor is among the most incarnational of the virtues. It must have feet and hands.

~ Douglas Wilson

Perhaps we are both doing what we think right. But what we think right is so damned different that there can be nothing between us in the way of concession. There is nothing possible between us but honor and death.

~ G.k. Chesterton

A man of honor does swiftly that which must be done.

~ Susan Kearney

A true love is not shouting and yelling for your beloved, but silently struggling for her honor

~ M.f. Moonzajer

One owes loyalty, only, to those who demonstrate in kind.

~ T.f. Hodge

The confrontation lasted about five minutes; then the display died out as quickly as it had begun, and everyone drank his fill of the muddy water. Honor had been satisfied; each group had staked its claim to its own territory.

~ Arthur C. Clarke

His soul swayed in a vertigo of moral indecision. He had only to snap the thread of a rash vow made to a villainous society, and all his life could be as open and sunny as the square beneath him. He had, on the other other hand, only to keep his antiquated honour, and be delivered inch by inch into the power of this great enemy of mankind, whose very intellect was a torture-chamber. Whenever he looked down into the square he saw the comfortable policeman, a pillar of common sense and common order. Whenever he looked back at the breakfast-table he saw the President still quietly studying him with big, unbearable eyes.

~ G.k. Chesterton

It strikes me you might place your gifts better. Why should you send powder to a ruffian who will use it to commit crimes? But for the deplorable weakness every one here seems to have for the bandits, they would have disappeared out of Corsica long ago.The worst men in our country are not those who are 'in the country.'Give them bread, if it so please you. But I will not have you supply them with ammuni

~ Prosper Mérimée

Am I then more of an American than those who drew their first breath on American Ground?

~ Alexander Hamilton

The Mayor spoke proudly. 'Yes, they will light it. I have no choice of living or dying, you see, sir, but—I do have a choice of how I do it. If I tell them not to fight, they will be sorry, but they will fight. If I tell them to fight, they will be glad, and I who am not a very brae man will have made them a little braver.' He smiled apologetically. 'You see, it is an easy thing to do, since the end for me is the same.'Lanser said, If you say yes, we can tell them you said no. We can tell them you begged for your life.'And Winter broke in angrily, 'They would know. You do not keep secrets. One of your men got out of hand one night and he said the flies had conquered the flypaper, and now the whole nation knows his words. They have made a song of it. The flies have conquered the flypaper. You do not keep secrets, Colonel.

~ John Steinbeck

In the violent scorn of her revolted pride, of her indignant honor, had she forgotten a lowlier yet harder duty left undone?In her contempt and dread of yielding to mere amorous weakness had she stifled and denied the cry of pity, the cry of conscience?To suffer woes which hope thinks infinite. To forgive wrongs darker than death or night. To defy power which seems omnipotent. To love and live to hope till hope creates from it's own wreck the thing it contemplates. Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent.This had been the higher, diviner way which she had missed, this obligation from the passion of the past which she had left unfulfilled, unaccepted.Now the misgiving arose in her whether she had mistaken arrogance for duty; whether, cleaving so closely to honor she had forgotten the obligation of mercy.

~ Ouida

I know at least what I am,' he simply went on; 'the other side of the medal's clear enough. I've not been edifying--I believe I'm thought in a hundred quarters to have been barely decent. I've followed strange paths and worshipped strange gods; it must have come to you again and again--in fact you've admitted to me as much--that I was leading, at any time these thirty years, a selfish frivolous scandalous life. And you see what it has made of me.

~ Henry James

When you want to talk about honor, they want to talk about money. When you want to talk about money, they want to talk about gentility. They either get the notion of honor or they don't. And if they don't, you probably shouldn't be fucking with them.

~ Liam Rector

What is honour? In Athens it is one thing, in Sparta another; and among the Medes it is something else again. But go where you will, there is no land where the dead return across the river.

~ Mary Renault

Men will always create new arenas for honor if traditional rituals fade.

~ Joel Dinerstein

You will never see me publicly putting a comic down or trying to get them unbooked. If I have a problem with someone they will know. I try to do what is right and not what is easy. You will never see me make jokes about peoples addictions or cries for help. OR other peoples pain for that matter. I believe in lifting up. Not tearing down. Uplift you fellow man. We were born to love one another and to that end I promise what I do in my life is in the name of love.

~ Johnny Corn

For those who die with honor, the touch of death is simply the unlocking of a door between this life and the next.

~ Graeme Rodaughan

Wake up! You’re a sacred soul and glory is yours for the taking.

~ Stefan Emunds

If keeping your word costs you the one thing you love the most, then what was it even worth keeping in the first place?

~ Heather Mckenzie

[A man] finds himself forced by necessity to borrow money. He knows that he will not be able to repay it, but sees also that nothing will be lent to him unless he promises stoutly to repay it in definite time. He desires to make this promise, but he has still so much conscience as to ask himself: Is it not unlawful and inconsistent with duty to get out of a difficulty in this way? Suppose, however, that he resolves to do so, then the maxim of his action would be expressed thus: When I think myself in want of money, I will borrow money and promise to repay it, although I know that I never can do so. Now this principle of self-love or of one's own advantage may perhaps be consistent with my whole future welfare; but the question now is, Is it right? I change then the suggestion of self-love into a universal law, and state the question thus: How would it be if my maxim were a universal law? Then I see at once that it could never hold as a universal law of nature, but would necessarily contradict itself. For supposing it to be a universal law that everyone when he thinks himself in a difficulty should be able to promise whatever he pleases, with the purpose of not keeping his promise, the promise itself would become impossible, as well as the end that one might have in view in it, since no one would consider that anything was promised to him, but would ridicule all such statements as vain pretenses.

~ Immanuel Kant

Never offer an oath lightly. For you pledge not only your life and sacred honor, but your people’s honor as well. To break an oath is to be without honor, to be without a spirit, and to be apart from the people.

~ Raymond E. Feist

Honour, like insult, comes from others. It is their recognition of our worth. It is the intrusion of the social into the psychological, the public into the private. After all, others honour us for what they find of worth in us. ‘To pursue [honour],’ wrote Baruch Spinoza in Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (1677), ‘we must direct our lives according to other men’s powers of understanding, fleeing what they commonly flee and seeking what they commonly seek.’ So what we come to think of as worthwhile in ourselves is bound to have as a large component what others think to be worthwhile in us.

~ C. D. C. Reeve

At least I’m the one leaving. It’s so much easier to leave than to be left.

~ Stefan Emunds

He’d often ignored his uncle’s teachings about gentlemanly behavior, but one stricture he’d always abided by: no man worth his salt took advantage of a woman.

~ Sabrina Jeffries

Every time you give your word, you’re putting your honor on the line.

~ Frank Sonnenberg

Love is the bane of honor, the death of duty.

~ George R.r. Martin

Given the option, would you rather choose the right path, even though it’s difficult, or the easy route, knowing that you’ll be compromising your standards?

~ Frank Sonnenberg

The best way to honor the dead was by making their passing useful to the living.

~ Sabrina Jeffries