Quotes on Obligation

He believed that life, true life, was something that was stored in music. True life was kept safe in the lines of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin while you went out in the world and met the obligations required of you. Certainly he knew (though did not completely understand) that opera wasn't for everyone, but for everyone he hoped there was something. The records he cherished, the rare opportunities to see a live performance, those were the marks by which he gauged his ability to love.

The obligation to receive reduces our ability to choose whom we wish to be indebted to and puts that power in the hands of others.

In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society.

The reality is that the media are probably the most powerful of all our institutions today and they, or rather we [journalists], too often are squandering our power and ignoring our obligations. The consequence of our abdication of responsibility is the ugly spectacle of idiot culture!

Our great modern Republic. May those who seek the blessings of its institutions and the protection of its flag remember the obligations they impose.

The living language is like a cowpath: it is the creation of the cows themselves, who, having created it, follow it or depart from it according to their whims or their needs. From daily use, the path undergoes change. A cow is under no obligation to stay

My whole obligation was to West Indies cricket. As I have always said, I have never made a run for me. Records meant nothing. The team was important.

I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.

The Soul of the World is nourished by people's happiness. And also by unhappiness, envy, and jealousy. To realize one's Personal Legend is a person's only real obligation. All things are one.

True guilt is guilt at the obligation one owes to oneself to be oneself. False guilt is guilt felt at not being what other people feel one ought to be or assume that one is.

I'm bothered when people don't understand that they have an obligation to use their best measure of devotion, of resources, to sacrifice for the common good.

A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it.

I lived in a world where social arrangements were taken for granted and assumed to be timeless. A child's obligation was to learn these usages, not to question them. The complexities of racial deportment were of a piece with learning manners and etiquette more generally.

Iran has to live up to its international obligations. . . . The president has said that our patience is not unlimited.

Form is, in a way, death. A novelist's obligation is to break free from the form, even though he knows that this will also be seen as artificial and distanced from life.

Those who have won the ovarian lottery by being born in an advanced society to loving parents have a special obligation to help restore the American Dream.

I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.

I have learned that a man has the right and obligation to look down at another man, only when that man needs help to get up from the ground.

Christian, let God's distinguishing love to you be a motive to you to fear Him greatly. He has put His fear in your heart, and may not have given that blessing to your neighbor, perhaps not to your husband, your wife, your child, or your parent. Oh, what an obligation should this thought lay upon your heart to greatly fear the Lord! Remember also that this fear of the Lord is His treasure, a choice jewel, given only to favorites, and to those who are greatly beloved.

See if you can give yourself gifts that may be true blessings, such as self-acceptance , or some time each day with no purpose. Practice feeling deserving enough to accept these gifts without obligation - to simply receive from yourself, and from the universe.

Instead of seeming to impose new obligations, they should appear as people who wish to share their joy, who point to a horizon of beauty and who invite others to a delicious banquet. It is not by proselytizing that the Church grows, but by attraction.