Quotes about Duty

Most people believe only in degrees of jeopardy and live in degrees of greater and lesser anxiety, but never in true relaxation. The assurance of safety is a vital and wonderful resources that we need to share with one another.

Such a person has nothing to acquire, nor anything to shun. He is untainted by the defects of life, untouched by its sorrow.

He does not come into being nor go out, though he appears to come and go in the eyes of the beholder.

Even religious duties are found to be unnecessary. …His mind has given up its restlessness, and he rests in the bliss that is his essential nature. Such bliss is possible only by self-knowledge, not by any other means. Hence, one should apply oneself constantly to self-knowledge–this alone is one's duty.

Do your duty in all things. You cannot do more, you should never wish to do less.

Life has always been a small matter with me when duty points the way

"How can you come to know yourself? Never by thinking, always by doing.
Try to do your duty, and you'll now right away what you amount to. And what
is your duty?  Whatever the day calls for."

~~Goethe~~

Sometimes duty walks a road where the heart can't follow.
     --Daemon

There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.  By being happy we sow anonymous benefits upon the world.

"Firemen are going to get killed. When they join the department they face that fact. When a man becomes a fireman his greatest act of bravery has been accomplished. What he does after that is all in the line of duty. They were not thinking of getting killed when they went where death lurked. They went there to put the fire out, and got killed. Firefighters do not regard themselves as heroes because they do what the business requires."

God is bound to act, to pour Himself into thee as soon as He shall find thee ready

Our real duty is always found running in the direction of our worthiest desires.

Keep yourself simple, good, pure, serious, and unassuming; the friend of justice and godliness; kindly, affectionate, and resolute in your devotion to duty.

It’s very simple; it’s not complicated. If you want to go home and complicate it with the mind and say, “Oh I can’t do this,” then you’ll never do it. But if you simply accept the truth and do, then it will come very quickly. Don’t let the mind complicate your life; always be simple. Start off by doing simple acts of love. To people and friends whom you haven’t said, “I love you,” to in a long time, send an email out tomorrow: “How are you? I’m just sending a loving thought to you.” You’ll see what happens. When you leave a shop, turn around and tell the person, “Have a nice day.” Then you’ll see how you change that person’s point of view and how happy they feel. Wear a smile on your face when you walk the street and see how many people will smile back at you. Have a wilful feeling that everybody should feel love today in a small way. It starts by you doing something in a small way to make someone very happy. If you know something is going to make someone happy, then go out of your way and make them happy. That is our duty as human beings. Can you imagine if everyone lived with this principle? Everyone you talk to would be trying to make you happy. How beautiful is this?

Resistance to something was the law of New England nature; the boy looked out on the world with the instinct of resistance; numberless generations his predecessors had viewed the world chiefly as a thing to be reformed, filled with evil forces to be abolished, and they saw no reason to suppose that they had wholly succeeded in the abolition; the duty was unchanged. That duty implied not only resistance to evil, but hatred of it. Boys naturally look on all force as an enemy, and generally find it so, but the New Englander, whether boy or man, in his long struggle with a stingy or hostile universe, had learned also to love the pleasure of hating.
Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, had always been the systematic organization of hatreds.

Love is a better master than duty.

And whatever the form of your own resurrection, you will arise, driven not by the Great Search, but by your own Great Duty, your limitless Dharma, the manifestation of your own highest potentials, and the world will begin to change because of you. And you will never flinch, and you will never fail in that great Duty, and you will never turn away, because simple, ever-present awareness will be with you now and forever, even unto the end of the worlds, because now and forever and endlessly forever, there is only Spirit, only intrinsic awareness of just this, and nothing more.

The duty of love proceeds from logic.  A fundamental truth of love is that it is always for creation. It is also a fundamental truth of lovers that they can never know what is best for their beloved.  Therefore the harsh duty of love is to let go.

Your position never gives you the right to command. It only imposes on you the duty of so living your life that others can receive your orders without being humiliated.

I strongly believe that nothing is more spiritual than living at our highest potential while serving others. I believe that the more closely aligned we are to “spirit” the more fully we will give ourselves in service to the world. As such, my “spiritual path” is the path that leads me to a more complete manifestation of my unique Bodhisattvic duties.

The day is a chase after ghost duties; at evening you are exhausted.  A day is over, and so much of it was wasted on things that meant so little to you, duties and meetings from which your heart was absent.  Months and years pass, and you fumble on, still incapable of finding a foothold on the path of time you walk.  A large proportion of your activity distracts you from remembering that you are a guest of the universe, to whom one life has been given.  You mistake the insistent pressure of daily demands for reality, and your more delicate and intuitive nature wilts...  Your way of life has little to do with what you feel and love in the world but because of the many demands on you and responsibilities you have, you feel helpless to gather your self; you are dragged in so many directions away from true belonging.

So long as I am acting from duty and conviction, I am indifferent to taunts and jeers. I think they will probably do me more good than harm.

If you are discouraged it is a sign of pride, because it shows you trust in your own powers. Never bother about other people's opinions. Be humble and you will never be disturbed. Remember St. Aloysius, who said he would continue to play billiards even if he knew he was going to die. Do you play well? Sleep well? Eat well? These are duties. Nothing is small for God.

Everything--a horse, a vine--is created for some duty...For what task, then, were you yourself created?

A man's true delight is to do the things he was made for.

It is better to perform one's own duties imperfectly than to master the duties of another. By fulfilling the obligations he is born with, a person never comes to grief.

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.

Doing good to others is not a duty. It is a joy, for it increases your own health and happiness.

When you have read the Bible, you will know it is the word of God, because you will have found it the key to your own heart, your own happiness and your own duty.

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, "This was their finest hour."

The Battle of Britain. . . . The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the was. . . . Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth, last for a thousand years, man will say, "This was their finest hour."

The destiny of mankind is not decided by material computation. When great causes are on the move in the world . . . we learn that we are spirits, not animals, and that something is going on in space and time, and beyond space and time, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty.

The primal duties shine aloft, like stars; The charities that soothe and heal and bless Are scattered at the feet of man like flowers.