Quotes about Dignity

The Crown. Place it upon your head and you assume a different post--tranquil yet radiating assurance. Never show doubt, never lose your dignity beneath the crown, or it will not fit. It will seem to be destined for one more worthy. Do not wait for a coronation; the greatest emporers crown themselves.

From the depth of need and despair, people can work together, can organize themselves to solve their own problems and fill their own needs with dignity and strength.

A fire has risen above my tombstone hat.
I don't want learning, or dignity, or respectability.
I want this music and this dawn and the warmth of your cheek against mine.

Wear your best for your execution and stand dignified. Your last recourse against randomness is how you act — if you can’t control outcomes, you can control the elegance of your behaviour. You will always have the last word.

In the first place, any group of folks willing to make asses of themselves in pursuit of a good time should be commended and encouraged: The spirit of human frolic needs all the help it can get.

A WARRIOR WITHOUT TERRITORY

Student: The idea of a warrior is usually associated with territory or responding to a sense of danger. If we give up all territory, what is the motivation for having the spirit of a warrior?

Chogyam Trungpa: A warrior is not like a samurai who is looking for a job. You are not trying to be hired by anybody, not even by yourself. The idea of a warrior is based on a sense of fundamental fearlessness. There is no reason why you should be a coward. It's as simple as that. You are not being a warrior because a state of war exists in your country. We are not trying to win against the egohood people. We are not trying to fight with them. You are being a warrior because you ARE a warrior. If someone asks you, "Are you twenty-one years old?" you say, "Yes, I am." They don't ask you WHY you are twenty-one years old or how you have done this. You would have no answer for that. You are just twenty-one. Warriorship is a basic sense of unshakeability. It's a sense of immovability and self-existing dignity rather than that you are trying to fight with something else.

From "Meditation: The Way of the Buddha," Talk Four, Naropa Institute, Boulder, Colorado, July 1 1974. Edited from an unpublished transcript.

Humility: the ability to give up your pride and still retain your dignity.

There is no labor a person does that is undignified;  if they do it right.

What action could bodies and substances have if they were not named in a further increase of dignity where common nouns become proper nouns?

In peace there is profundity
from which the highest respect arises
from respect comes power and command
therefore observe peace.
                                                           

What the poor need most is not pity but love. They need to feel respect for their human dignity, which is neither less nor different from the dignity of any other human being.

“There is something so beautiful and inspiring about picking ourselves up with humility and dignity after we fall.”

Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success or failure is of less account.

Dignity and Respect has to do with what you are ready, willing, and able to accept within yourself and in accepting to be able to give others. It is your personal power to make a difference by being true to the best within you and letting that truth shine through your words and actions.

Every life form seems to strive to its maximum except human beings. How tall will a tree grow? As tall as it possibly can. Human beings, on the other hand, have been given the dignity of choice. You can choose to be all or you can choose to be less. Why not stretch up to the full measure of the challenge and see what all you can do?

They that have power to hurt and will do none, That do not do the thing they most do show, Who, moving others, are themselves as stone, Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow; They rightly do inherit Heaven's graces, And husband nature's riches from expense; They are the lords and owners of their faces, Others but stewards of their excellence. The summer's flower is to the summer sweet, Though to itself it only live and die; But if that flower with base infection meet, The basest weed outbraves his dignity: For Sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds: Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

Life is simply time given to man to learn how to live. Mistakes are always part of learning. The real dignity of life consists in cultivating a fine attitude towards our own mistakes and those of others. It is the fine tolerance of a fine soul. Man becomes great, not through never making mistakes, but by profiting by those he does make; by being satisfied with a single rendition of a mistake, not encoring it into a continuous performance; by getting from it the honey of new, regenerating inspiration with no irritating sting of morbid regret; by building better to-day because of his poor yesterday; and by rising with renewed strength, finer purpose and freshened courage every time he falls.

Mistakes are the inevitable accompaniment of the greatest gift given to man, - individual freedom of action. Let us be glad of the dignity of our privilege to make mistakes, glad of the wisdom that enables us to recognize them, glad of the power that permits us to turn their light as a glowing illumination along the pathway of our future. Mistakes are the growing pains of wisdom. Without them there would be no individual growth, no progress, no conquest.

The supreme courage of life is the courage of the soul. It is living, day by day, sincerely, steadfastly, serenely,-despite all opinions, all obstacles, all opposition. It means the wine of inspiration from the crushed grapes of our sorrows. This courage makes the simplest life, great; it makes the greatest life-sublime. It means the royal dignity of fine individual living.

There is a healthful hardiness about real dignity that never dreads contact and communion with others, however humble.

Any necessary work that pays an honest wage carries its own honor and dignity.

People are born with intrinsic motivation, self-esteem, dignity, curiosity to learn, joy in learning.

Even though conditions such as lack of sleep, insufficient food and various mental stresses may suggest that the inmates were bound to react in certain ways, in the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone. Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him - mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp. I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost.

There is a dignity in dying that doctors should not dare to deny.

Life is an unanswered question, but let's still believe in the dignity and importance of the question.

Of the infinite variety of fruits which spring from the bosom of the earth, the trees of the wood are the greatest in dignity.

"I don't admit that a fresh illustration is an explanation," said I with some asperity. "Bravo, Watson! A very dignified and logical remonstrance." Dr. Watson, speaking with Sherlock Holmes.

Humor is an affirmation of dignity, a declaration of man's superiority to all that befalls him.

The acorn becomes an oak by means of automatic growth; no commitment is necessary. The kitten similarly becomes a cat on the basis of instinct. Nature and being are identical in creatures like them. But a man or woman becomes fully human only by his or her choices and his or her commitment to them. People attain worth and dignity by the multitude of decisions they make from day by day. These decisions require courage.

Good work is dignified. It develops your faculties and serves your community. It is a central human activity. Work, in this view: makes you honest with yourself, requires that you develop your faculties and skills, empowers you to do what you are really good at and love to do, connects you in a compassionate way with the outside world, supports the philosophy of non-destructiveness and sustainability, and integrates work with personal life and community.