Ignoble Quotes

The virtuosos look to the students of the world to do their share in the education of the great musical public. Do not waste your time with music that is trite or ignoble. Life is too short to spend it wandering in the barren Saharas of musical trash.

Cruelty to animals is one of the most significant vices of a low and ignoble people. Wherever one notices them, they constitute a sign of ignorance and brutality which cannot be painted over even by all the evidence of wealth and luxury.

To believe something in the face of evidence and against reason - to believe something by faith - is ignoble, irresponsible and ignorant, and merits the opposite of respect.

Cruelty to animals is one of the most significant vices of a low and ignoble people.

For my part I think it is a less evil that some criminals should escape, than that the government should play an ignoble part.

The more ignoble I find life, the more strongly I react by contradiction, in humour and in an outburst of liberty and expansion.

It is the mark of a mean, vulgar and ignoble spirit to dwell on the thought of food before meal times or worse to dwell on it afterwards, to discuss it and wallow in the remembered pleasures of every mouthful. Those whose minds dwell before dinner on the spit, and after on the dishes, are fit only to be scullions.

It is the mark of a mean, vulgar and ignoble spirit to dwell on the thought of food before meal times or worse to dwell on it afterwards, to discuss it and wallow in the remembered pleasures of every mouthful. Those whose minds dwell before dinner on the spit, and after on the dishes, are fit only to be scullions.

To conquer oneself is the best and noblest victory;

to be vanquished by one's own nature is the worst and most ignoble defeat.

Music directly imitates the passions or states of the soul.

..when one listens to music that imitates a certain passion, he becomes imbued withthe same passion; and if over a long time he habitually listens to music that rouses ignoble passions, his whole character will be shaped to an ignoble form.

If we seek merely swollen, slothful ease and ignoble peace, if we shrink from the hard contests where men must win at the hazard of their lives and at the risk of all they hold dear, then bolder and stronger peoples will pass us by, and will win for themselves the domination of the world.

A good man may fall, but he falls like a ball [and rebounds];

the ignoble man falls like a lump of clay.

He [Gen. Douglas MacArthur] was a great thundering paradox of a man, noble and ignoble, inspiring and outrageous, arrogant and shy, the best of men and the worst of men, the most protean, most ridiculous, and most sublime.

Noble life demands a noble architecture for noble uses of noble men.

Lack of culture means what it has always meant: ignoble civilization and therefore imminent downfall.

I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life.

The religious leader is the most untrustworthy of leaders;

in no other station do we have so many opportunities for pride, covetousness and lust, and with so many excellent disguises to keep such ignobility from being found out and called to account.

As unity demanded for its expression what at first might have seemed its opposite--variety; so repose demands for its expression the implied capability of its opposite--energy. It is the most unfailing test of beauty; nothing can be ignoble that possesses it, nothing right that has it not.

We Americans have many grave problems to solve, many threatening evils to fight, and many deeds to do, if, as we hope and believe, we have the wisdom, the strength, and the courage and the virtue to do them. But we must face facts as they are. We must neither surrender ourselves to a foolish optimism, nor succumb to a timid and ignoble pessimism.

Coercion may prevent many transgressions;

but it robs even actions which are legal of a part of their beauty. Freedom may lead to many transgressions, but it lends even to vices a less ignoble form.

The laws of Pluto's kingdom know small difference between king and cobbler, manager and call-boy; and, if haply your dates of life were conterminant, you are quietly taking your passage, cheek by cheek (O ignoble levelling of Death) with the shade of some recently departed candle-snuffer.

Coercion may prevent many transgressions;

but it robs even actions which are legal of a part of their beauty. Freedom may lead to many transgressions, but it lends even to vices a less ignoble form.

The student who secures his coveted leisure and retirement by systematically shirking any labor necessary to man obtains but an ignoble and unprofitable leisure, defrauding himself of the experience which alone can make leisure fruitful.

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife.

Pity is one of the noblest emotions available to human beings;

self-pity is possibly the most ignoble . . . . [It] is an incapacity, a crippling emotional disease that severely distorts our perception of reality . . . a narcotic that leaves its addicts wasted and derelict.

Confusion is not an ignoble condition

The highest form of success comes to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship or from bitter toil, and who, out of these, wins the splendid ultimate triumph.

Cooking is a form of flattery....a mischievous, deceitful, mean and ignoble activity, which cheats us by shapes and colors, by smoothing and draping.

I found out that I was a Christian for revenue only and I could not bear the thought of that, it was so ignoble.

Certainly man is of kin to the beasts by his body;

and if he be not kin to God by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature.

The early ascendancy of leisure as a means of reputability is traceable to the archaic distinction between noble and ignoble employments. Leisure is honourable and becomes imperative partly because it shows exemption from ignoble labour.

Since all motives at bottom are selfish and ignoble, we may judge acts and qualities only be their effects.

The sole fact of having a school to train creative people is absolute lunacy.

.. The idea of 'pedagogical vision' is ignoble, it has nothing to do with art, it's contrary to art. I really believe in teaching, despite what I say.

Any action is better than no action at all.

My philosophy of life is that the meek shall inherit nothing but debasement, frustration, and ignoble deaths.