80 Ignoble Quotes
Following is our list of ignoble quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about .
Famous Ignoble Quotes
Ingratitude is monstrous. — William Shakespeare
It is impossible for men engaged in low and groveling pursuits to have noble and generous sentiments. A man's thought must always follow his employment. — Demosthenes
Ingratitude is the essence of vileness. — Immanuel Kant
It's impossible to speak what it is not noble to do. — Sophocles
Often a noble face hides filthy ways. — Euripides
To be wealthy and honored in an unjust society is a disgrace. — Confucius
Cruelty to animals is one of the most significant vices of a low and ignoble people. — Alexander von Humboldt
What is life without honor? Degradation is worse than death. — Stonewall Jackson
Ambition -- it is the last infirmity of noble minds. — James Barrie
A noble heart cannot suspect in others the pettiness and malice that it has never felt. — Jean Racine
Ambition is the way in which a vulgar man aspires. — Henry Ward Beecher
Envy, the meanest of vices, creeps on the ground like a serpent. — Ovid
There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow men. True nobility lies in being superior to your former self. — Elijah Wood
Ingratitude is monstrous; and for the multitude to be ingrateful were to make a monster of the multitude; of which we being members, should bring ourselves to be monstrous members. — William Shakespeare
No speech can stain what is noble by nature. — Sophocles
Short Ignoble Quotes
- I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life. — Theodore Roosevelt
- Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife. — Thomas Gray
- Confusion is not an ignoble condition — Brian Friel
- Tis but a base, ignoble mind That mounts no higher than a bird can soar. — William Shakespeare
- Any action is better than no action at all. — Norman Vincent Peale
- Envy, to which th' ignoble mind's a slave, Is emulation in the learn'd or brave. — Alexander Pope
- No villainous bounty yet hath passed my heart; Unwisely, not ignobly, have I given. — William Shakespeare
- No one can expect a majority to be stirred by motives other than ignoble. — Norman Douglas
- Expect neither reward nor beatitude. Return noble waves for ignoble. — Jean Cocteau
- Poverty is relative, and, therefor not ignoble. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Ignominious Quotes
The basis of shame is not some personal mistake of ours, but the ignominy, the humiliation we feel that we must be what we are without any choice in the matter, and that this humiliation is seen by everyone. — Milan Kundera
The label of liberalism is hardly a sentence to public ignominy: otherwise Bruce Springsteen would still be rehabilitating used Cadillacs in Asbury Park and Jane Fonda, for all we know, would be just another overweight housewife. — Barbara Ehrenreich
That toil of growing up; The ignominy of boyhood; the distress Of boyhood changing into man; The unfinished man and his pain. — William Butler Yeats
Though you be sprung in direct line from Hercules, if you show a lowborn meanness, that long succession of ancestors whom you disgrace are so many witnesses against you; and this grand display of their tarnished glory but serves to make your ignominy more evident. — Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux
We are neurotically haunted today by the imminence, and by the ignominy, of failure. We know at how frightening a cost one succeeds: to fail is something too awful to think about. — Louis Kronenberger
Bourgeois existence is the regime of private affairs . . . and the family is the rotten, dismal edifice in whose closets and crannies the most ignominious instincts are deposited. Mundane life proclaims the total subjugation of eroticism to privacy. — Walter Benjamin
One's duty is to feel what is great, cherish the beautiful, and to not accept the conventions of society with the ignominy that it imposes upon us. — Gustave Flaubert
Whatever ignominy or disgrace we have incurred, it is almost always in our power to reestablish our reputation. — Francois de la Rochefoucauld
Marriage is to me apostasy, profanation of the sanctuary of my soul, violation of my manhood, sale of my birthright, shameful surrender, ignominious capitulation, acceptance of defeat. — George Bernard Shaw
At least we should learn to understand our fellow beings, for we are powerless to stop their misery, their ignominy, their suffering, their weakness, and their death. — Robert Walser
People Writing About Ignoble
| Name | Quotes | Likes |
|---|---|---|
 William Shakespeare |
4052 | 36000 |
 Sophocles |
439 | 2549 |
 Demosthenes |
48 | 597 |
 Immanuel Kant |
314 | 8208 |
 Euripides |
430 | 4140 |
 Confucius |
911 | 18025 |
More Ignoble Quotes
Not the children of the rich or of the powerful only, but of all alike, boys and girls, both noble and ignoble, rich and poor, in all cities and towns, villages and hamlets, should be sent to school — John Amos Comenius
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. — Sergei Rachmaninoff
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. — Alexander von Humboldt
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. — A.C. Grayling
For my part I think it is a less evil that some criminals should escape, than that the government should play an ignoble part. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
The more ignoble I find life, the more strongly I react by contradiction, in humour and in an outburst of liberty and expansion. — Joan Miro
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. — St. Francis De Sales
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. — Saint Francis de Sales
To conquer oneself is the best and noblest victory; to be vanquished by one's own nature is the worst and most ignoble defeat. — Plato
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. — Aristotle
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. — Theodore Roosevelt
A good man may fall, but he falls like a ball [and rebounds]; the ignoble man falls like a lump of clay. — Bhartrhari
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. — William Manchester
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. — Frank Lloyd Wright
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. — Eugene H. Peterson
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. — Charles Lamb
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. — John Ruskin
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. — Theodore Roosevelt
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. — Karl Wilhelm Von Humboldt
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. — Wilhelm von Humboldt
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. — Henry David Thoreau
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. — Eugene H. Peterson
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. — Theodore Roosevelt
Cooking is a form of flattery....a mischievous, deceitful, mean and ignoble activity, which cheats us by shapes and colors, by smoothing and draping. — Plato
I found out that I was a Christian for revenue only and I could not bear the thought of that, it was so ignoble. — Mark Twain
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. — Francis Bacon
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. — Thorstein Veblen
Since all motives at bottom are selfish and ignoble, we may judge acts and qualities only be their effects. — H. P. Lovecraft
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. — Christian Boltanski
Lastly no woman should marry a teetotaller, or a man who does not smoke. It is not for nothing that this "ignoble tobagie" as Michelet calls it, spreads all over the world. — Robert Louis Stevenson
My philosophy of life is that the meek shall inherit nothing but debasement, frustration, and ignoble deaths. — Harlan Ellison
Hell is wherever Love is not, and Heaven Is Love's location. No dogmatic creed, No austere faith based on ignoble fear Can lead thee into realms of joy and peace. Unless the humblest creatures on the earth Are bettered by thy loving sympathy Think not to find a Paradise beyond. — Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Man, do not pride yourself on your superiority to the animals, for they are without sin, while you, with all your greatness, you defile the earth wherever you appear and leave an ignoble trail behind you -- and that is true, alas, for almost every one of us! — Fyodor Dostoevsky
Thus Belial, with words clothed in reason's garb, counseled ignoble ease, and peaceful sloth, not peace. — John Milton
There are people who think that wrestling is an ignoble sport. Wrestling is not sport, it is a spectacle, and it is no more ignoble to attend a wrestled performance of suffering than a performance of the sorrows of Arnolphe or Andromaque. — Roland Barthes
What is the use of physicians like myself trying to help parents to bring up children healthy and happy, to have them killed in such numbers for a cause that is ignoble? — Benjamin Spock
I am in love with this world. It has been my home. It has been my point of outlook into the universe. I have never bruised myself against it nor tried to use it ignobly. — John Burroughs
Yet, every now and then, there would pass a young girl, slender, fair and desirable, arousing in young men a not ignoble desire to possess her, and stirring in old men regrets for ecstasy not seized and now forever past. — Anatole France
Self-pity is an ignoble emotion, but we all feel it, and the orthodox critical line that it represents some kind of artistic flaw is dubious, a form of emotional correctness. — Nick Hornby
In Conclusion
Which quotation resonated with you best? Did you enjoy our collection of ignoble quotes? Or may be you have a slogan about ignoble to suggest. Let us know using our contact form.
Citation
Feel free to cite and use any of the quotes in this collection of ignoble quotations. For popular citation styles(APA, Chicago, MLA), please use this citation page.
Embed HTML Link
Copy and paste this HTML code in your webpage