Selected honor quotes

1. Now you fear punishment and beg for your lives, so I will let you free, if not for any other reason so that you can see the difference between a Greek king and a barbarian tyrant, so do not expect to suffer any harm from me. A king does not kill messengers.

2. Every good citizen makes his country's honor his own, and cherishes it not only as precious but as sacred. He is willing to risk his life in its defense and its conscious that he gains protection while he gives it.

3. Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in deserving them.

4. I believe in this tragic hour you can make the right choice. The honor and glory of Russian men of arms shall not be stained with the blood of the people.

5. I have the consolation of leaving your kingdom in the highest degree of glory and of reputation.

6. The office of the Vice-President is a greater honor than I ever dreamed of attaining.

7. Honors to me now are not what they once were.

8. The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone!

9. He mourns the dead who lives as they desire.

10. A beaten general is disgraced forever.

11. As to pay, Sir, I beg leave to assure the Congress that as no pecuniary consideration could have tempted me to accept this arduous employment at the expense of my domestic ease and happiness, I do not wish to make any profit from it.

12. Our country's honor calls upon us for a vigorous and manly exertion; and if we now shamefully fail, we shall become infamous to the whole world.

13. I was no chief and never had been, but because I had been more deeply wronged than others, this honor was conferred upon me, and I resolved to prove worthy of the trust.

14. Honor is not the exclusive property of any political party.

15. No greater nor more affectionate honor can be conferred on an American than to have a public school named after him.

16. My character and good name are in my own keeping. Life with disgrace is dreadful. A glorious death is to be envied.

17. In honour I gained them, and in honour I will die with them.

18. Whether you be man or woman you will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.

19. We thought being offered the M.B.E. [Member of the Order of the British Empire] was as funny as everybody else thought it was. Why? What for? We didn't believe it. It was a part we didn't want. We all met and agreed it was daft.

20. I may sink, but I'll be damned if I strike!

21. An honorable Peace is and always was my first wish! I can take no delight in the effusion of human Blood; but, if this War should continue, I wish to have the most active part in it.

22. Man only honors what he conquers or defends.

23. Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself.

24. Guard your honor. Let your reputation fall where it will. And outlive the bastards.

25. At fifteen life had taught me undeniably that surrender, in its place, was as honorable as resistance, especially if one had no choice.

26. An OBE is what you get if you clean the toilets well at King's Cross station.

27. The high-spirited man may indeed die, but he will not stoop to meanness. Fire, though it may be quenched, will not become cool.

28. Being on President Nixon's enemies list was the highest single honor I've ever received. Who knows who's listening to me now and what government list I'm on?

29. A favor well bestowed is almost as great an honor to him who confers it as to him who receives it.

30. The Islamic Revolution of Iran is honourable for it is the cry which has its origin in Ayatollah Khomeini's conscience.

31. 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 gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.

32. The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.

33. The one thing I want to leave my children is an honorable name.

34. Honor sinks where commerce long prevails.

35. What we really need the poet's and orator's I help to keep alive in us is not, then, the common and gregarious courage which Robert Shaw showed when he marched with you, men of the Seventh Regiment. It is that more lonely courage which he showed when he dropped his warm commission in the glorious Second to head your dubious fortunes, negroes of the Fifty-fourth. That lonely kind of courage (civic courage as we call it in times of peace) is the kind of valor to which the monuments of nations should most of all be reared.

36. Best they honor thee Who honor in thee only what is best.

37. To take those fools in clerical garb seriously is to show them too much honor.

38. On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes -- and I see many of them in the audience here today -- our sense of patriotism is particularly strong.

39. There is no vice that doth so cover a man with shame as to be found false and perfidious.

40. The Sixth Army, true to their oath and conscious of the lofty importance of their mission, have held their position to the last man and the last round for Fuhrer and Fatherland unto the end.

41. It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.

42. Kill all the Germans you can, but do not kill them when they are up against a wall ready to surrender. Do your killing in the fields. We are to honor the Rules of Land Warfare at all times. If a German surrenders, he is to be treated with respect as a prisoner of war, the same treatment you would hope to get as a prisoner if you are unlucky enough to be captured by the enemy. Americans are not savages. Americans do not kick people in the face if they have been knocked down.

43. The Pashtun, are rain sown wheat-they all came up on the same day they are all the same!.... But the chief reason why I love him is because he will wash his face and oil his beard and perfume his locks and put on his best pair of clothes when he goes out to fight and die.

44. I have considered the pension list of the republic a roll of honor.

45. It is better to be defeated standing for a high principle than to run by committing subterfuge.

46. Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison... the only house in a slave State in which a free man can abide with honor.

47. When I'm not thanked at all, I'm thanked enough; I've done my duty, and I've done no more.

48. His designs were strictly honorable, as the phrase is; that is, to rob a lady of her fortune by way of marriage.

49. It is not necessary that whilst I live I live happily; but it is necessary that so long as I live I should live honourably.

50. A military man can scarcely pride himself on having 'smitten a sleeping enemy'; it is more a matter of shame, simply, for the one smitten. I would rather you made your appraisal after seeing what the enemy does, since it is certain that, angered and outraged, he will soon launch a determined counterattack.

51. National honor is the national property of the highest value.

52. The surrender of life is nothing to sinking down into acknowledgment of inferiority.

53. As well a well-wrought urn becomes The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs.

54. Lt. Kerry's devotion to duty, courage under fire, outstanding leadership, and exemplary professionalism directly contributed to the success of this operation and were in keeping with the highest traditions of the Unites States Naval Service.

55. These are rotten, so you're the Queen Of all are living, or have been.

56. He who could have been a torch and stoops to being a pair of jaws is a deserter.

57. When issues of events like these my father is waiting for, are hanging in the scales of fate, the mind has the advantage of changing the principle of expectation three times, without which it would not have power to see it out. Curiosity governs the first moment; and the second moment is all economy to justify the expense of the first - and for the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth moments, and so on to the day of judgment - 'tis a point of HONOUR. I need not be told, that the ethic writers have assigned this all to Patience; but that VIRTUE, methinks, has extent of domination sufficient of her own, and enough to do in it, without invading the few dismantled castles which HONOUR has left him upon the earth.

58. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That (a) the President of the United States is authorized to present, on behalf of the Congress, a gold medal of appropriate design to the family of the late Honorable Leo J. Ryan in recognition of his distinguished service as a Member of Congress and the fact of his untimely death by assassination while performing his responsibilities as a Member of the United States House of Representatives.

59. As his colleagues have noted in their tribute to him, it was typical of Leo Ryan's concern for his constituents that he would investigate personally the rumors of mistreatment in Jonestown that reportedly affected so many from his district. Leo Ryan is the 88th recipient of a Congressional Gold Medal and only the 4th Member of Congress to receive this high honor from his colleagues.

60. We bow our heads in respect for those Soviet women who displayed exceptional courage in the severe time of war. Never before but during the days of the war the grandeur of spirit and the invincible will of our Soviet women, their selfless dedication, loyalty and affection to their Homeland, their boundless persistence in work and their heroism on the front manifested themselves with such strength.

61. '..I felt angry when I learnt that a great artist like Mani Madhava Chakyar was awarded a mere Padma Shri. A man of his artistic genius and erudition deserved to be decorated with the highest state honour' - RKG (Editor, The Illustrated Weekly, Columnist for Times of India)[20]

62. [This] adoration, too, was not the same as the worship of God. In my opinion they did not yet recognize him as God, but they acted in keeping with the custom mentioned in Scripture, according to which Kings and important people were worshiped; this did not mean more than falling down before them at their feet and honoring them.

63. The strangest, most generous, and proudest of all virtues is true courage.

64. There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.

65. More glorious to merit a sceptre than to possess one.

66. Better not to have been born than to live without glory.

67. Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily.

68. A man does not become a freedom fighter in the hope of winning awards, but when I was notified that I had won the 1993 Nobel peace prize jointly with Mr. F.W. de Klerk, I was deeply moved. The Nobel Peace Prize had a special meaning for me because of its involvement with South Africa... The award was a tribute to all South Africans, and especially to those who fought in the struggle; I would accept it on their behalf.

69. Gandhi himself never ruled out violence absolutely and unreservedly. He conceded the necessity of arms in certain situations. He said, 'Where choice is set between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence... I prefer to use arms in defense of honor rather than remain the vile witness of dishonor ...'

70. It is not titles that honor men, but men that honor titles.

71. Where wealth and freedom reign contentment fails, And honor sinks where commerce long prevails.

72. I leave it to your discretion to strike or not, but the American colors must not be pulled down over my head today.

73. To refuse awards is another way of accepting them with more noise than is normal.

74. In the sweetly constituted mind of Sir Philip Sidney, it seems as if no ugly thought or unhandsome meditation could find a harbour. He turned all that he touched into images of honour and virtue.

75. What is left when honor is lost?

76. 'I feel there is honour and dignity in being sent to prison because the law says, even though I know I did what I had to do then.'

77. Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor. He talks as the man of his age talks, that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness.

78. There comes a time in the life of every human when he or she must decide to risk 'his life, his fortune, and his sacred honor' on an outcome dubious. Those who fail the challenge are merely overgrown children, can never be anything else.

79. Like an armed warrior, like a plumed knight, James G. Blaine marched down the halls of the American Congress and threw his shining lance full and fair against the brazen forehead of every traitor to his country and every maligner of his fair reputation.

80. The family feuds or the village feuds often had to do with an idea of honor. Perhaps it was a peasant idea; perhaps this idea of honor is especially important to a society without recourse to law or without confidence in law.

81. I had no taste for defeat - much less victory - without a fight.

82. 'My own plans are made. While I can, I sail east in the Dawn Treader. When she fails me, I paddle east in my coracle. When she sinks, I shall swim east with my four paws. And when I can swim no longer, if I have not reached Aslan's country, or shot over the edge of the world in some vast cataract, I shall sink with my nose to the sunrise and Peepiceek shall be head of the talking mice in Narnia' (Ch. 14) said by Reepicheep

83. You have committed one of the greatest stupidities - for yourself and for me! Your association with an anti-Semitic chief expresses a foreignness to my whole way of life which fills me again and again with ire or melancholy. ... It is a matter of honor with me to be absolutely clean and unequivocal in relation to anti-Semitism, namely, opposed to it, as I am in my writings. I have recently been persecuted with letters and Anti-Semitic Correspondence Sheets. My disgust with this party (which would like the benefit of my name only too well!) is as pronounced as possible, but the relation to Forster, as well as the aftereffects of my former publisher, the anti-Semitic Schmeitzner, always brings the adherents of this disagreeable party back to the idea that I must belong to them after all. ... It arouses mistrust against my character, as if publicly I condemned something which I have favored secretly - and that I am unable to do anything against it, that the name of Zarathustra is used in every Anti-Semitic Correspondence Sheet, has almost made me sick several times.

84. Jung Ritter lere / got lip haben frawen io ere / So wechst dein ere Uebe ritterschaft und lere / kunst dy dich zyret und in krigen sere hofiret Ringens gut fesser / glefney sper swert unde messer menlich bederben / unde in andern henden vorterben Haw dreyn und hort dar / rawsche ym trif ader la farn das in dy weisen hassen dy man siet preisen Dorauf dich zosse alle ding haben lenge unde mosse Und was du wilt treiben by guter vornunft saltu bleiben czu crust ader czu schimpf / habe froelichen mut mit limpf So magstu achten und mit gutem mute betrachten Was du solt fueren und keyn im dich rueren Wen guter mut mit kraft macht eyns wedersache czagehaft dornoch dich richte gib keynem forteil mit ichte Tumkunheit meide vier ader sechs nicht vortreibe mit deynem oebermut biss sitik das ist dir gut / der ist eyn kuener man der synem gleichen tar bestan Is ist nicht schande vier ader sechs flien von hande [fol. 18r]

85. 'the funniest woman in Hollywood' ~ Lucille Ball 1977

86. The 'great things' are nothing less than that she became the Mother of God, in which work so many and such great good things are bestowed upon her as pass man's understanding. For on this there follows all honor, all blessedness, and her unique place in the whole of mankind, among whom she has no equal, namely, that she had a child by the Father in Heaven, and such a child. She herself is unable to find a name for this work, it is too exceedingly great; all she can do is break out in the fervent cry: 'They are great things,' impossible to describe or define. Hence men have crowded all her glory into a single word, calling her the Mother of God. No one can say anything greater of her or to her, though he had as many tongues as there are leaves on the trees, or grass in the fields, or stars in the sky, or sand by the sea. It needs to be pondered in the heart, what it means to be the Mother of God.