The duty of literature is to note what counts, and to light up what is suited to the light. If it ceases to choose and to love, it becomes like a woman who gives herself without preference.
Once I know I'm an alcoholic then it is my obligation, duty to see what I can do about healing myself.
A deliberate rejection of duty prescribed by already recognized truth cannot but destroy, or at least impair most seriously the clearness of our mental vision.
It is the surgeon’s duty to tranquillize the temper, to beget cheerfulness, and to impart confidence of recovery.
I feel no shame at being found still owning a share when the bottom of the market comes…I would go much further than that. I should say that it is from time to time the duty of a serious investor to accept the depreciation of his holdings with equanimity and without reproaching himself. … An investor…should be aiming primarily at long-period results, and should be solely judged by these.
One painful duty fulfilled makes the next plainer and easier.
The right of personal freedom recedes before the duty to preserve the race.
National defense is the sacred duty of the young and all other people.
There is no such thing as duty. If you know that a thing is right, you want to do it. If you don't want to do it - it isn't right. If it's right and you don't want to do it - you don't know what right is and you're not a man.
Thoughts are not subject to duty.
The whole duty of man is summed up in obedience to God's will.
Liberty is a duty, not a right.
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.
It is the duty of every man to uphold the dignity of every woman.
I love the line of Flaubert about observing things very intensely. I think our duty as writers begins not with our own feelings, but with the powers of observing.
Dammit Sir, it's your duty to get married. You can't always be living for pleasure!
When freedom is in jeopardy, non-co-operation may be a duty and prison may be a palace.
I love my own culture. I love my African-American culture very deeply, and I know it deserves to be honored. You have to be aware that people are suffering unjustly, and given our own history we have a duty to stand for the people who are being treated like our parents and grandparents and children were treated.
If I go out of public life with one feeling, with one conviction, it is this : a deep regret for many bitter words I have used in my life, deep sincere repentance for my violence of language. But I hope they will be forgiven me by God and man, because not once in all my life have I attacked anybody unjustly from my point of view, and without believing it was my duty to do so.
Let everyone regulate his conduct. . . by the golden rule of doing to others as in similar circumstances we would have them do to us, and the path of duty will be clear before him.