Max Hastings TV - The Stranger 1946 - Lord Nelson - Robert Louis Stevenson - Bertrand Russell - Ecclesiastes 12:13 - Bhagavad Gita - Ellen Sturgis Hooper - William Cobbett - Pierre Corneille - George Bernard Shaw - William Shakespeare - Robert Baden-Powell - George Orwell - Thomas Jefferson - Lord Byron - Oscar Wilde - Hermann Hesse - Jane Austen - Abraham Lincoln -
The Dambusters: Here were all these young men who knew they were likely to die and yet their sense of duty to their mates and the crew, to the squadron, to the RAF, and to their country. Max Hastings, interview Dan Snow, The Dambusters II: Race Against Time, Channel 5 2020
I only did my duty. The Stranger 1946 starring Orson Welles & Loretta Young & Edward G Robinson & Philip Merivale & Richard Long & Konstantine Shayne & Byron Keith & Billy House & Martha Wentworth et al, director Orson Welles, Welles to Robinson
England expects every man to do his duty. Lord Nelson, 1805
There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginibus Puerisque, 1881
A sense of duty is useful in work, but offensive in personal relationships. People wish to be liked, not to be endured with patient resignation. Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness, 1930
Fear God and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. Ecclesiastes 12:13
Sri Krishna said: You have a right to perform your prescribed duty, but you are not entitled to the fruits of action. Never consider yourself the cause of the results of your activities, and never be attached to not doing your duty. Bhagavad Gita
And do thy duty, even if it be humble, rather than another’s even if it be great. To die in one’s duty is life: to live in another’s is death. ibid.
No-one should abandon duties because he sees defects in them. Every action, every activity, is surrounded by defects as a fire is surrounded by smoke. ibid.
I slept, and dreamed that life was beauty;
I woke, and found that life was duty. Ellen Sturgis Hooper, Beauty and Duty, 1840
From an early age, I had imbibed the opinion, that it was every man’s duty to do all that lay in his power to leave his country as good as he had found it. William Cobbett, 1762-1835
Do your duty, and leave the outcome to the gods. Pierre Corneille, Horace, 1640
When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty. George Bernard Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra, 1901
At duty, more than I could frame employment,
That numberless upon me stuck, as leaves
Do on the oak, have with one winter’s brush
Fell from their boughs, and left me open, bare
For every storm that blows. William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens IV iii @263, Timon
I do perceive here a divided duty. William Shakespeare, Othello I iii 181
Have you forgot all place of sense and duty? ibid. II iii 160, Iago
Think’st thou that duty shall have dread to speak
When power to flattery bows? To plainness honour’s bound
When majesty stoops to folly. William Shakespeare, The History of King Lear I i 138-140, Kent
We never fail when we try to do our duty, we always fail when we neglect to do it. Robert Baden-Powell
Happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected. George Washington
Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious. George Orwell
Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail. Thomas Jefferson
I slept and dreamt that life was beauty; I woke and found that life was duty. Lord Byron
Duty is what one expects from others. Oscar Wilde
An enlightened man had but one duty – to seek the way to himself, to reach inner certainty, to grope his way forward, no matter where it led. Hermann Hesse, Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend
There is one thing, Emma, which a man can always do if he chooses, and that is his duty; not by manoeuvring and finessing, but by vigour and resolution. Jane Austen, Emma
Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it. Abraham Lincoln, speech 27th February 1860