Top 100 Nobler Quotes
#1. It's easier to take than to give. It's nobler to give than to take. The thrill of taking lasts a day. The thrill of giving lasts a lifetime.
Joan Marques
#2. Deeds not Words: I say so too! And yet I find it somehow true, A word may help a man in need, To nobler act and braver deed.
Henry Van Dyke
#3. A thunderous boo is one thousand times stronger, nobler, and more powerful than a standing ovation. Admiration corrupts.
Nelson Rodrigues
#4. There is more real pleasure to be gotten out of a malicious act, where your heart is in it, than out of thirty acts of a nobler sort.
Mark Twain
#5. Faith is about what you do. It's about aspiring to be better and nobler and kinder than you are. It's about making sacrifices for the good of others
even when there's not going to be anyone telling you what a hero you are. page 202
Jim Butcher
#6. There are certain pursuits which, if not wholly poetic and true, do at least suggest a nobler and finer relation to nature than we know. The keeping of bees, for instance.
Henry David Thoreau
#7. There is nothing nobler or more admirable than when two people who see eye to eye keep house as man and wife ...
Homer
#8. It is nobler to declare oneself wrong than to insist on being right
especially when one is right.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#9. Although the poet has as wide a choice of subjects as the painter, his creations fail to afford as much satisfaction to mankind as do paintings ... if the poet serves the understanding by way of the ear, the painter does so by the eye, which is the nobler sense.
Leonardo Da Vinci
#10. There is no more strategic issue for a company, or any organization, than its ultimate purpose. For those who think business exists to make a profit, I suggest they think again. Business makes a profit to exist. Surely it must exist for some higher, nobler purpose than that.
Ray Anderson
#11. It is noble to teach oneself; it is still nobler to teach others.
Mark Twain
#12. Many fairy tales and ballads present us with animals who are nobler, truer, and kinder than the greedy human beings who desire to possess them. I guess I tend to read these stories as very early (and possibly unconscious) feminist texts.
Delia Sherman
#13. We are richer in material wealth than those villagers; but their spirit is a nobler spirit than ours. We
Kahlil Gibran
#14. For truly, what computer has not asked whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous instructions?
Stanislaw Lem
#15. Men are born for games. Nothing else. Every child knows that play is nobler than work. He
Cormac McCarthy
#16. America has never forgotten - and never will forget - the nobler things that brought her into being and that light her path.
Bernard Baruch
#17. The most vital issue of the age is whether the future progress of humanity is to be governed by the modern economic and materialistic mind of the West or by a nobler pragmatism guided, uplifted and enlightened by spiritual culture and knowledge ...
Sri Aurobindo
#18. What can be nobler than the idea it gives us of the Supreme Being?
Joseph Addison
#19. We do wrong to seek peace in Nature; we should rather seek the nobler sort of war; and see all the trees as green banners.
G.K. Chesterton
#20. To do good is noble. To tell others to do good is even nobler and much less trouble.
Mark Twain
#21. I am influenced at the present time by far higher considerations and by a nobler idea of duty than I ever was when I held the Evangelical belief.
George Eliot
#22. There is nothing finer in the world than the telling of tales. Split atoms if you wish, but splitting an infinitive-and getting away with it-is far nobler. Lance boils if you wish, but pricking pretensions is often cleaner and always more fun.
Greg Bear
#23. No public interest is anything other or nobler than a massed accumulation of private interests.
Mark Twain
#24. At present we can only reason of the divine justice from what we know of justice in man. When we are in other scenes, we may have truer and nobler ideas of it; but while we are in this life, we can only speak from the volume that is laid open before us.
Alexander Pope
#25. We rejoice in God since he has taught us that every thing which is true in us, is but a faint expression of what is in him. And thus all our joys become to us the echo of higher joys, and our very life is as a dream of that nobler life, to which we shall awaken when we die.
Henry Ward Beecher
#26. Our character ... is an omen of our destiny, and the more integrity we have and keep, the simpler and nobler that destiny is likely to be.
George Santayana
#27. Am I getting nobler, better, more helpful, more humble, as I get older? Am I exhibiting the life that men take knowledge of as having been with Jesus, or am I getting more self-assertive, more deliberately determined to have my own way? It is a great thing to tell yourself the truth.
Oswald Chambers
#28. We like to admit to only that which already glows, although it is nobler to support brightness before it glows, not afterwards.
Dejan Stojanovic
#29. To eat or not to eat, that is the question: whether 'tis Nobler in the stomach to suffer the Slings and Arrows of outrageous Hunger (while keeping mouthparts in pristine kissing condition) or to take Spoon against Slice of cake, and
"Yes, please," my stomach pipes up.
Laini Taylor
#30. As individuals, we must think nobler thoughts. We must not encourage vile thoughts or low aspirations. We shall radiate them if we do. If we think noble thoughts, if we encourage and cherish noble aspirations, there will be that radiation when we meet people, especially when we associate with them.
David O. McKay
#31. Nor deem the irrevocable Past
As wholly wasted, wholly vain,
If, rising on its wrecks, at last
To something nobler we attain.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#32. There are some races more cultured and advanced and ennobled by education than others; but there are no races nobler than others. All are equally destined for freedom.
Alexander Von Humboldt
#33. How may paintings have preserved the image of a divine beauty which in its natural manifestation has been rapidly overtaken by time or death. Thus, the work of the painter is nobler than that of nature, its mistress.
Leonardo Da Vinci
#34. There is no nobler profession, nor no greater calling, than to be among those unheralded many who gave and give their lives to the preservation of human knowledge, passed with commitment and care from one generation to the next.
Laurence Overmire
#35. At Learning's fountain it is sweet to drink,
But 'tis a nobler privilege to think.
John Godfrey Saxe
#36. Are they dead that yet speak louder than we can speak, and a more universal language? Are they dead that yet act? Are they dead that yet move upon society and inspire the people with nobler motives and more heroic patriotism?
Henry Ward Beecher
#37. [,,,]he saw it as his Christian duty. Jesus had given his life for others, and a knight must do the same, and nothing was nobler than saving a young woman.
Melanie Dickerson
#38. A shy failure is nobler than an immodest success.
Khalil Gibran
#40. Rapunzel. She was one hundred times nobler than he had been, and he loved her.
Melanie Dickerson
#42. In a nobler age one could have answered such impertinence by jostling his lordship as he stood holding open the door, so that he would have been obliged to demand a meeting. Or did one, even in that age, refrain from jostling people in doorways when a lady was present? Before
Georgette Heyer
#43. What is the goal? A house that is like the life that goes with it, a house that gives us beauty as we understand it- and beauty of a nobler kind that we may grow to understand.
Elsie De Wolfe
#44. Green sods are all their monument; and yet it tells A nobler history than pillared piles, Or the eternal pyramids.
James Gates Percival
#45. There is nothing nobler than risking your life for your country.
Nick Lampson
#46. Devotion to the truth is the hallmark of morality; there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.
Ayn Rand
#47. Sweeter than any sungMy songs that found no tongue;Nobler than any factMy wish that failed of act.Others shall sing the song,Others shall right the wrong,-Finish what I begin,And all I fail of win.
John Greenleaf Whittier
#48. All daring and courage, I said, All iron endurance of misfortune, make for a finer, nobler type of manhood.
Tom Spanbauer
#49. Others import yet nobler arts from France, Teach kings to fiddle, and make senates dance.
Alexander Pope
#50. God has not made this world to be a nest for us, and if we try to make it such for ourselves, he plants thorns in it, so that we may be compelled to mount and find our soul's true home somewhere else, in a higher and nobler sphere than this poor world can give.
Charles Spurgeon
#51. The whole world loves a maverick and the whole world wants the maverick to achieve something nobler than simple rebellion.
Kevin Patterson
#52. The nobler the truth or sentiment, the less imports the question of authorship.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#53. Believe not the existence of an emotion nobler than the compassion!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#54. Faith is the choice of the nobler hypothesis.' Not the noblest, one never knows what that is. But the nobler, the best one can see when the choice is made.
Robert K. Greenleaf
#55. When a scene is shrouded in mist, it seems greater, nobler, and heightens the viewers' imaginative powers, increasing expectation -
like a veiled girl. Generally the eye and the imagination are more readily drawn by nebulous distance than by what is perfectly plain for all to see
Caspar David Friedrich
#56. There is no man that lives who does not need to be drilled, disciplined, and developed into something higher and nobler and better than he is by nature. Life is one prolonged birth.
Henry Ward Beecher
#57. If a book is worth reading at all, it is worth reading more than once. Suspense is the lowest of excitants, designed to take your breath away when the brain and heart crave to linger in nobler enjoyment. Suspense drags you on; appreciation causes you to linger.
William Gerhardie
#58. There is not a heart but has its moments of longing, yearning for something better; nobler; holier than it knows now.
Henry Ward Beecher
#59. Man is the nobler growth our realms supply, And souls are ripened in our northern sky.
Anna Letitia Barbauld
#60. Diana and I are thinking seriously of promising each other that we will never marry but be nice old maids and live together forever. Diana hasn't quite made up her mind though, because she thinks perhaps it would be nobler to marry some wild, dashing, wicked young man and reform him.
L.M. Montgomery
#61. He who, having lost one ideal, refuses to give his heart and soul to another and nobler, is like a man who declines to build a house on the rock because the wind and rain have ruined his house on the sand.
Constance Naden
#62. At a certain age, you have to live near good medical care - if, that is, you're going to continue. You always have the option of not continuing, which, I fear, is sometimes nobler.
Gore Vidal
#63. And this homage to women's attractions has distorted their understanding to
such an extent that almost all the civilized women of the present century are anxious only to inspire love, when they ought to have the nobler aim of getting respect for their abilities and virtues.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#64. Thought and theory must precede all salutary action; yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory.
Virginia Woolf
#65. And nobler is a limited command, Given by the love of all your native land, Than a successive title, long and dark, Drawn from the mouldy rolls of Noah's Ark.
John Dryden
#66. The soul of man createth its own destiny of power; and as the trial is intenser here, his being hath a nobler strength in heaven.
Nathaniel Parker Willis
#67. It is in our faults and failings, not in our virtues, that we touch one another and find sympathy. We differ widely enough in our nobler qualities. It is in our follies that we are at one.
Jerome K. Jerome
#68. Scientific criticism has no nobler task than to shatter false beliefs.
Ludwig Von Mises
#69. To be selfish is to sacrifice the nobler for the meaner ends, and to be sordidly content.
Hugh Reginald Haweis
#70. What is nobler than a man wresting and wringing his bread from the stubborn soil by the sweat of his brow and the break of his back for his wife and children!
William Morris Hunt
#71. It is a harder and a nobler task to preserve detachment in a crowd than in a cell; the little daily sacrifices of family life are often a greater trial than self-imposed mortifications.
William Ralph Inge
#72. Every man wants a woman to appeal to his better side and his nobler instincts - and another woman to help him forget them.
Helen Rowland
#73. Man, made after God's image, was a nobler creation than twinkling sparks in the sky, or than the larger and more useful lamp of the moon.
David Brewster
#75. Every conquering temptation represents a new fund of moral energy. Every trial endured and weathered in the right spirit makes a soul nobler and stronger than it was before.
William Butler Yeats
#76. There is no nobler deed than the performance of one's duty.
Len Smith
#77. My son, Achilles is of nobler birth than you and he is also by far the stronger man. But you are older than he is. It is for you to give him sound advice, make suggestions and give him a lead which he will follow to his own advantage.' Nestor
Homer
#78. At home in bed that first night I had patchy, mundane dreams about normal things. It would be nobler and less uncomfortable to write that I tossed sleeplessly.
Darin Strauss
#79. Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest? ... And just tell me where in the world you find these angels who are going to organize society for us.
Milton Friedman
#80. To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!
H.L. Mencken
#81. What is nobler," she mused, turning over the photographs, "than to be a woman to whom every one turns, in sorrow or difficulty?
Virginia Woolf
#82. There are people in need of help. Charity is one of the nobler human motivations. The act of reaching into one's own pockets to help a fellow man in need is praiseworthy and laudable. Reaching into someone else's pocket is despicable and worthy of condemnation.
Walter E. Williams
#84. I cannot imagine anything nobler or more national than that for, say, one hour in the day we should all do the labor the poor must do, and thus identify ourselves with them and through them, with all mankind.
Mahatma Gandhi
#85. Sometimes God wills for one of his children to experience human wickedness so that he will emerge stronger and nobler than ever.
Henri Charriere
#86. Liberty is a need felt by a small class of people whom nature has endowed with nobler minds than the mass of men; ... Consequently, it may be repressed with impunity. Equality, on the other hand, pleases the masses.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#87. It is higher and nobler to be kind.
Mark Twain
#89. The active part of man consists of powerful instincts, some of which are gentle and continuous; others violent and short; some baser, some nobler, and all necessary.
Francis W. Newman
#90. In our daily intercourse with men, our nobler faculties are dormant and suffered to rust. None will pay us the compliment to expect nobleness from us. Though we have gold to give, they demand only copper.
Henry David Thoreau
#91. The public must learn how to cherish the nobler and rarer plants, and to plant the aloe, able to wait a hundred years for it's bloom, or it's garden will contain, presently, nothing but potatoes and pot-herbs.
Margaret Fuller
#92. Life becomes religious whenever we make it so: when some new light is seen, when some deeper appreciation is felt, when some larger outlook is gained, when some nobler purpose is formed, when some task is well done.
Sophia Lyon Fahs
#93. Life is an opportunity afforded to each not to eat and drink, but to achieve something nobler and higher to merge in the Reality.
Sathya Sai Baba
#94. What position is nobler than that of a spiritual father who claims no authority and yet is universally esteemed, whose word is given only as tender advice, but is allowed to operate with the force of law?
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
#95. Everybody Moral courage is a virtue of higher cast and nobler origin than physical. It springs from a consciousness of virtue and renders a man, in the pursuit or defense of right, superior to the fear of reproach, opposition, or contempt.
Samuel Griswold Goodrich
#96. There is an education of the mind
Which all require and parents only start.
But there is training of a nobler kind
And that's the education of the heart.
Lessons that are most difficult to give
Are Faith and Courage and the way to live.
Edgar Guest
#97. To be envied is a nobler fate than to be pitied.
Pindar
#98. A book? O, rare one,
Be not, as is our fangled world, a garment
Nobler than that it covers.
William Shakespeare
#99. Every noble action is selfish. Some selfish actions are nobler than others. But they are all selfish. And as such there can be no action purely noble anyway. Even the nobility in God's great philosophical intentions is bounded by his vanity.
Kedar Joshi
#100. Each man has to seek out his own special aptitude for a higher life in the midst of the humble and inevitable reality of daily existence. Than this there can be no nobler aim in life. It is only by the communications we have with the infinite that we are to be distinguished from each other.
Maurice Maeterlinck
