Humans can be noble. The question is: Will we put forth what is necessary?
I believe we are most likely to succeed when ambition is focused on noble and worthy purposes and outcomes rather than on goals set out of selfishness.
Would you exalt your profession, exalt those who labor with you. . . increase the salaries of the women engaged in the noble work of educating our future presidents, senators and congressmen.
One of the most noble things you can do is kill the enemy.
For the chemists, who wanted to manufacture new medicines and elixirs and transform base substances into noble ones, the notion that there was no metaphysical barrier to doing so - it was just a matter of getting the particles into new arrangements - was encouraging. That was the Baconian programme.
Wherever men are noble, they love bright colour; and wherever they can live healthily, bright colour is given them—in sky, sea, flowers, and living creatures.
Friendship involves many things but, above all the power of going outside oneself and appreciating what is noble and loving in another.
Music, the greatest good that mortals know, And all of heaven we have below. Music can noble hints impart, Engender fury, kindle love; 40 With unsuspected eloquence can move, And manage all the man with secret art. When Orpheus strikes the trembling lyre The streams stand still, the stones admire; The listening savages advance, The world and lamb around him trip The bears in aukward measures leap, And tigers mingle in the dance The moving woods attended as he played And Rhodope was left without a shade.
The pure and noble, the graceful and dignified, simplicity of language is nowhere in such perfection as in the Scriptures and Homer. The whole book of Job, with regard both to sublimity of thought and morality, exceeds, beyond all comparison, the most noble parts of Homer.
It is noble to teach oneself; it is still nobler to teach others.
Be noble in every thought And in every deed!
The surest proof of being endowed with noble qualities is to be free from envy.
Just as a man would not cherish living in a body other than his own, so do nations not like to live under other nations, however noble and great the latter may be.
Politics? Boring? Politics is history on the wing! What other sphere of human activity calls forth all that is most noble in men's souls, and all that is most base? Or has such excitement? Or more vividly exposes our strengths and weaknesses? Boring? You might as well say that life itself is boring!
As for a limit to one’s labors, I, for one, do not recognize any for a high-minded man, except that the labors themselves should lead to noble accomplishments.
Noble spirits are heterodox.
What a glorious legacy of faith, courage, and ingenuity those noble early Mormon pioneers have left for us to build upon. My admiration for them deepens the longer I live.
The crusades of Vietnam and Watergate seemed like a good idea at the time, even a noble one, not only to the press but perhaps to a majority of Americans.
There is no limit to the noble aspirations which the words "my country" may evoke.
Patience is a noble virtue, and, when rightly exercised, does not fail of its reward.