Honor Quotes

“We value virtue but do not discuss it. The honest bookkeeper, the faithful wife, the earnest scholar get little of our attention compared to the embezzler, the tramp, the cheat.”
― John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America

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

“I will remember this, thought Ender, when I am defeated. To keep dignity, and give honor where it's due, so that defeat is not disgrace. And I hope I don't have to do it often.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game

“Simple, genuine goodness is the best capital to found the business of this life upon. It lasts when fame and money fail, and is the only riches we can take out of this world with us.”
― Louisa May Alcott, Little Men

“The greatest thing a father can do for his children is to respect the woman that gave birth to his children. It is because of her that you have the greatest treasures in your life. You may have moved on, but your children have not. If you can’t be her soulmate, then at least be thoughtful. Whom your children love should always be someone that you acknowledge with kindness. Your children notice everything and will follow your example.”
― Shannon L. Alder, 300 Questions LDS Couples Should Ask for a More Vibrant Marriage

“Some things you must always be unable to bear. Some things you must never stop refusing to bear. Injustice and outrage and dishonor and shame. No matter how young you are or how old you have got. Not for kudos and not for cash: your picture in the paper nor money in the bank either. Just refuse to bear them.”
― William Faulkner, Intruder in the Dust

“The best work that anybody ever writes is the work that is on the verge of embarrassing him, always.”
― Arthur Miller

“Regard your good name as the richest jewel you can possibly be possessed of -- for credit is like fire; when once you have kindled it you may easily preserve it, but if you once extinguish it, you will find it an arduous task to rekindle it again. The way to a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.”
― Socrates

“Anyone who teaches me deserves my respect, honoring and attention.”
― Sonia Rumzi

“Helmer: I would gladly work night and day for you. Nora- bear sorrow and want for your sake. But no man would sacrifice his honor for the one he loves.
Nora: It is a thing hundreds of thousands of women have done.”
― Henrik Ibsen, A Doll's House

“You crushed us to build your monarchy on the backs of our blood and bone. Your mistake wasn't keeping us alive. it was thinking we'd never fight back”
― Tomi Adeyemi, Children of Blood and Bone

“When honor and the Law no longer stand on the same side of the line, how do we choose[?]”
― Anne Bishop, Heir to the Shadows

“‎It isn't enough to stand up and fight darkness. You've got to stand apart from it, too. You've got to be different from it.”
― Jim Butcher, Fool Moon

“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

“Guard your honor. Let your reputation fall where it will. And outlive the bastards.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign

“I was Ashallayn’darkmyr Tallyn, son of Mab, former prince of the Unseelie Court, and I was not afraid of a witch on a broom.”
― Julie Kagawa, The Iron Knight

“Our own heart, and not other men's opinions, forms our true honor.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“When they go low, we go high.”
― Michelle Obama

“War." Gorgon spits the word. "That is what they call it to give the illusion of honor and law. It is chaos. Madness and blood and the hunger to win. It has always been thus and shall always be so.”
― Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing

“There will be times in your life that you will be challenged to choose between honor and something else. I am asking that you not sacrifice your honor for the sake of acquiring easy things.”
― Idowu Koyenikan, Wealth for All: Living a Life of Success at the Edge of Your Ability

“My fear was not of death itself, but a death without meaning.”
― Huey P. Newton

“The night before brain surgery, I thought about death. I searched out my larger values, and I asked myself, if I was going to die, did I want to do it fighting and clawing or in peaceful surrender? What sort of character did I hope to show? Was I content with myself and what I had done with my life so far? I decided that I was essentially a good person, although I could have been better--but at the same time I understood that the cancer didn't care.

I asked myself what I believed. I had never prayed a lot. I hoped hard, I wished hard, but I didn't pray. I had developed a certain distrust of organized religion growing up, but I felt I had the capacity to be a spiritual person, and to hold some fervent beliefs. Quite simply, I believed I had a responsibility to be a good person, and that meant fair, honest, hardworking, and honorable. If I did that, if I was good to my family, true to my friends, if I gave back to my community or to some cause, if I wasn't a liar, a cheat, or a thief, then I believed that should be enough. At the end of the day, if there was indeed some Body or presence standing there to judge me, I hoped I would be judged on whether I had lived a true life, not on whether I believed in a certain book, or whether I'd been baptized. If there was indeed a God at the end of my days, I hoped he didn't say, 'But you were never a Christian, so you're going the other way from heaven.' If so, I was going to reply, 'You know what? You're right. Fine.'

I believed, too, in the doctors and the medicine and the surgeries--I believed in that. I believed in them. A person like Dr. Einhorn [his oncologist], that's someone to believe in, I thought, a person with the mind to develop an experimental treatment 20 years ago that now could save my life. I believed in the hard currency of his intelligence and his research.

Beyond that, I had no idea where to draw the line between spiritual belief and science. But I knew this much: I believed in belief, for its own shining sake. To believe in the face of utter hopelessness, every article of evidence to the contrary, to ignore apparent catastrophe--what other choice was there? We do it every day, I realized. We are so much stronger than we imagine, and belief is one of the most valiant and long-lived human characteristics. To believe, when all along we humans know that nothing can cure the briefness of this life, that there is no remedy for our basic mortality, that is a form of bravery.

To continue believing in yourself, believing in the doctors, believing in the treatment, believing in whatever I chose to believe in, that was the most important thing, I decided. It had to be.

Without belief, we would be left with nothing but an overwhelming doom, every single day. And it will beat you. I didn't fully see, until the cancer, how we fight every day against the creeping negatives of the world, how we struggle daily against the slow lapping of cynicism. Dispiritedness and disappointment, these were the real perils of life, not some sudden illness or cataclysmic millennium doomsday. I knew now why people fear cancer: because it is a slow and inevitable death, it is the very definition of cynicism and loss of spirit.

So, I believed.”
― Lance Armstrong, It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life

“I love the name of honor more than I fear death.”
― Julius Cesar

“There’s more to being a warrior than killing. A true warrior — the best warrior — isn’t cruel or mean. He doesn’t claw an enemy who can’t fight back. Where’s the honor in that?”
― Erin Hunter, Forest of Secrets

“Honor is a fool's prize. Glory is of no use to the dead.”
― Drew Karpyshyn, Path of Destruction

“Write it on your heart you are the most beautiful soul of the Universe. Realize it, honor it and celebrate the life.”
― Amit Ray, Nonviolence: The Transforming Power

“Bushido is realized in the presence of death. This means choosing death whenever there is a choice between life and death. There is no other reasoning.”
― Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai

“What do you think dignity's all about?'

The directness of the inquiry did, I admit, take me rather by surprise. 'It's rather a hard thing to explain in a few words, sir,' I said. 'But I suspect it comes down to not removing one's clothing in public.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day

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

“He was a man, take him for all in all,
I shall not look upon his like again.”
― Wm. Shakespeare , Hamlet