Top 96 Quotes About Ignoble
#1. I rationalize this by telling myself that while the work might be ignoble, it's not necessarily evil. We're not Hitler - we're just annoying people.
Dan Lyons
#2. Noble life demands a noble architecture for noble uses of noble men.
Lack of culture means what it has always meant: ignoble civilization and therefore imminent downfall.
Frank Lloyd Wright
#3. To conquer oneself is the best and noblest victory; to be vanquished by one's own nature is the worst and most ignoble defeat.
Plato
#4. Pity is one of the noblest emotions available to human beings; self-pity is possibly the most ignoble ... [It] is an incapacity, a crippling emotional disease that severely distorts our perception of reality ... a narcotic that leaves its addicts wasted and derelict.
Eugene H. Peterson
#5. There is a vast gap between the promise of the job and its reality. When we enter the ignoble world of work, we are soon shocked at the humiliations we encounter there.
Tom Hodgkinson
#6. He [Gen. Douglas MacArthur] was a great thundering paradox of a man, noble and ignoble, inspiring and outrageous, arrogant and shy, the best of men and the worst of men, the most protean, most ridiculous, and most sublime.
William Manchester
#7. All flesh is grass. and all its glory fades
Like the fair flower dishevell'd in the wind;
Riches have wings, and grandeur is a dream;
The man we celebrate must find a tomb,
And we that worship him, ignoble graves.
William Cowper
#8. Chav-bashing draws on a long, ignoble tradition of class hatred. But it cannot be understood without looking at more recent events. Above all, it is the bastard child of a very British class war.
Owen Jones
#9. The malignity that never forgets or forgives is found only in base and ignoble natures, whose aims are selfish, and whose means are indirect, cowardly, and treacherous.
George Stillman Hillard
#10. The early ascendancy of leisure as a means of reputability is traceable to the archaic distinction between noble and ignoble employments. Leisure is honourable and becomes imperative partly because it shows exemption from ignoble labour.
Thorstein Veblen
#11. Yet, every now and then, there would pass a young girl, slender, fair and desirable, arousing in young men a not ignoble desire to possess her, and stirring in old men regrets for ecstasy not seized and now forever past.
Anatole France
#12. Mr. Pickwick gazed through his spectacles for an instant on the advancing mass, and then fairly turned his back and
we will not say fled; firstly because it is an ignoble term, and, secondly, because Mr. Pickwick's figure was by no means adapted for that mode of retreat ...
Charles Dickens
#14. There are people who think that wrestling is an ignoble sport. Wrestling is not sport, it is a spectacle, and it is no more ignoble to attend a wrestled performance of suffering than a performance of the sorrows of Arnolphe or Andromaque.
Roland Barthes
#15. Most men - it is my experience - are neither virtuous nor scoundrels, good-hearted nor bad-hearted. They are a little of one thing and a little of the other and nothing for any length of time: ignoble mediocrities.
Robert Graves
#16. Not the children of the rich or of the powerful only, but of all alike, boys and girls, both noble and ignoble, rich and poor, in all cities and towns, villages and hamlets, should be sent to school
John Amos Comenius
#17. Something ignoble, loathsome, undignified attends all associations between people and has been transferred to all objects, dwelling, tools, even the landscape itself.
Bertolt Brecht
#18. We have to choose, and for my part I think it a less evil that some criminals should escape than that the government should play an ignoble part.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
#19. The virtuosos look to the students of the world to do their share in the education of the great musical public. Do not waste your time with music that is trite or ignoble. Life is too short to spend it wandering in the barren Saharas of musical trash.
Sergei Rachmaninoff
#20. If we seek merely swollen, slothful ease and ignoble peace, if we shrink from the hard contests where men must win at the hazard of their lives and at the risk of all they hold dear, then bolder and stronger peoples will pass us by, and will win for themselves the domination of the world.
Theodore Roosevelt
#21. There is not in the world a more ignoble character than the mere money-getting American, insensitive to every duty, regardless of every principle, bent only on amassing a fortune, Roosevelt said just before he became president.
Timothy Egan
#22. Lastly no woman should marry a teetotaller, or a man who does not smoke. It is not for nothing that this "ignoble tobagie" as Michelet calls it, spreads all over the world.
Robert Louis Stevenson
#23. The technique of winning is so shoddy, the terms of winning are so ignoble, the tenure of winning is so brief; and the specter of the has-been-a shameful rather than a pitiable sight today-brings a sudden chill even to our sunlit moments.
Louis Kronenberger
#24. There is nothing truly beautiful but that which can never be of any use whatsoever; everything useful is ugly, for it is the expression of some need, and man's needs are ignoble and disgusting like his own poor and infirm nature. The most useful place in a house is the water-closet.
Theophile Gautier
#25. It is better to go down on the great seas which human hearts were made to sail than to rot at the wharves in ignoble anchorage.
Hamilton Wright Mabie
#26. We have many times led Europe in the fight for freedom. It would be an ignoble end to our long history if we tamely accepted to perish by degrees.
Anthony Eden
#27. Certainly man is of kin to the beasts by his body; and if he be not kin to God by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature.
Francis Bacon
#28. Nothing is really beautiful unless it is useless; everything useful is ugly, for it expresses a need, and the needs of man are ignoble and disgusting, like his poor weak nature. The most useful place in a house is the lavatory.
Theophile Gautier
#29. Javert, though hideous, was not ignoble.
Victor Hugo
#30. Beneath beautiful appearances I search out ugly depths, and beneath ignoble surfaces I probe for the hidden mines of devotion and virtue. It's a relatively benign mania, which enables you to see something new in a place where you would not have expected to find it.
Gustave Flaubert
#31. boor (which originally just meant "farmer," as in the German Bauer and Dutch boer); villain (from the French vilein, a serf or villager); churlish (from English churl, a commoner); vulgar (common, as in the term vulgate); and ignoble, not an aristocrat.
Steven Pinker
#32. Hitchhiking is not a sport. It is not an art. It certainly isn't work, for it requires no particular ability not does it produce anything of value. It's an adventure, I suppose, but a shallow ignoble adventure.
Tom Robbins
#33. Feeling lonely and ignoble indicates that you haven't been patient.
Rumi
#34. Critiques of rape, pornography, and prostitution are "sex-negative" without qualification or examination, perhaps because so many men use these ignoble routes of access and domination to get laid, and without them the number of fucks would so significantly decrease that men might nearly be chaste.
Andrea Dworkin
#35. Life is indeed either a rich possession or a poor, according as it is made subservient to noble aims or ignoble pleasures.
Christian Nestell Bovee
#36. Since all motives at bottom are selfish and ignoble, we may judge acts and qualities only be their effects.
H.P. Lovecraft
#37. My anger thought you too ignoble for my love, and close examination finds you too magnificent, and only equals are joined together smoothly.
Franz Grillparzer
#38. Hornblower worked as hard to conceal his human weaknesses as some men worked to conceal ignoble birth.
C.S. Forester
#39. She felt that in everything, sublime or ignoble, there was hidden a turbulent, a vital force, a significance and beauty which art, however glorious, was but a pale refection. "I want to live!" she muttered wildly. "I want to live!
Henry Miller
#40. The pillory and stocks, the gibbet, and even the whipping-post, have seen many a noble victim, many a martyr. But I cannot think any save the most ignoble criminals ever sat in a ducking-stool.
Alice Morse Earle
#41. Not ignoble. Don't torture yourself over it. I can't change the past but I can, hopefully, ease your fears from the future.
Stephen Lloyd Jones
#42. It's a great myth that the British public want our soldiers to be sent into harm's way on a bogus prospectus for ignoble reasons. There is nothing patriotic about that. It is the opposite of patriotism.
George Galloway
#43. A good man may fall, but he falls like a ball [and rebounds]; the ignoble man falls like a lump of clay.
Bhartrhari
#44. All work has dignity. No job, when done freely, is ignoble.
James Martin
#45. Submission to what people call their 'lot' is simply ignoble. If your lot makes you cry and be wretched, get rid of it and take another.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#46. Envy, to which th' ignoble mind's a slave, Is emulation in the learn'd or brave.
Alexander Pope
#47. As noble (and often ignoble) creatures of the universe, the people of the world must acknowledge the nakedness of long held beliefs and be open to constructive criticism. Even if the criticism comes from within or without the structures held sacrosanct.
Leviak B. Kelly
#48. Oprah's aspiration to inspire her audience with hope - elaborated on her TV show, in her magazine, and on her website - is hardly ignoble.
Lee Siegel
#49. How quickly pettiness returns, and that most ignoble form of real estate, the possessive occupation and tyranny over two square inches of human flesh, the wife's cunt.
Leonard Cohen
#50. Nothing is truly beautiful unless it cannot be used for anything; everything that is useful is ugly because it is the expression of some need, and those of man are ignoble and disgusting, like his poor and infirm nature.
Theophile Gautier
#51. was some foul parody, some infamous ignoble satire. He had never done that. Still,
Oscar Wilde
#52. Expect neither reward nor beatitude. Return noble waves for ignoble.
Jean Cocteau
#53. [T]he superstitions to be feared in the present day are much less religious than political; and of all the forms of idolatry I know none more irrational and ignoble than this blind worship of mere numbers. - William Lecky, Democracy and Liberty
Bryan Caplan
#54. Vigilantes who executed some of the most vicious and ignoble acts of lawless brutality in U.S. history nevertheless considered those very acts to be the work of citizenship and in many cases elicited wide popular approval.
Linda Gordon
#55. No one can expect a majority to be stirred by motives other than ignoble.
Norman Douglas
#56. The heart, said to be man's noblest organ, has the same shape as the penis, commonly supposed the most ignoble; the symbolism is not inappropriate, because the love which comes from the heart soon extends to the organ which it resembles.
Joris-Karl Huysmans
#57. Man indeed is the most noble, by creation, of all the creatures in the visible World; but by sin he has made himself the most ignoble.
John Bunyan
#58. And human love needs human meriting:
How has thou merited-
Of all man's clotted clay the dingiest clot?
Alack, thou knowest not
How little worthy of any love thou art!
Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee
Save Me, save only Me?
Francis G. Thompson
#59. A rake is a composition of all the lowest, most ignoble, degrading, and shameful vices; they all conspire to disgrace his character, and to ruin his fortune; while wine and the pox content which shall soonest and most effectually destroy his constitution.
Lord Chesterfield
#60. Man, do not pride yourself on your superiority to the animals, for they are without sin, while you, with all your greatness, you defile the earth wherever you appear and leave an ignoble trail behind you
and that is true, alas, for almost every one of us!
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#61. Why, you boggle-eyed, flap-tongued, drag-bellied offspring of unmentionable algae! You seething little leprous blotch of bat-nibbled fungus! You cringing parasite on the underside of a dwarfish and ignoble worm!
Lewis Padgett
#62. Self-pity is an ignoble emotion, but we all feel it, and the orthodox critical line that it represents some kind of artistic flaw is dubious, a form of emotional correctness.
Nick Hornby
#63. The laws of Pluto's kingdom know small difference between king and cobbler, manager and call-boy; and, if haply your dates of life were conterminant, you are quietly taking your passage, cheek by cheek (O ignoble levelling of Death) with the shade of some recently departed candle-snuffer.
Charles Lamb
#64. The world now seems a stunningly ignoble place. It has not really grown all that much worse but appears to have done so because we know so much more about it than we did.
Quentin Crisp
#66. Men were created for something better than merely to make money. A close application to business, until a competence is gained, is one of the chief virtues; but to continue in trade long after this result is obtained, is one of the signs, not to be mistaken, of a sordid and ignoble nature.
Christian Nestell Bovee
#67. All work is noble; the only ignoble thing is to live without working. There is need to realize the value of work in all its forms whether manual or intellectual, to be called 'mate,' to have sympathetic understanding of all forms of activity.
Maria Montessori
#68. I found out that I was a Christian for revenue only and I could not bear the thought of that, it was so ignoble.
Mark Twain
#69. No duty is ignoble. What can be ignoble is the sight of people trying not to be ignoble.
Idries Shah
#70. Cooking is a form of flattery ... a mischievous, deceitful, mean and ignoble activity, which cheats us by shapes and colors, by smoothing and draping ...
Plato
#71. If corporate leaders and their acolytes are not slaves to some meritorious social purpose, they run the risk of being enslaved by their own ignoble appetites.
Gary Hamel
#72. Better a long ignoble life of shallow pleasures than a short stab at heroism, ending with a short stab. And just because one man plays another doesn't always mean that it's not the right direction for both of them.
Mark Lawrence
#73. The more unharmonious and inconsistent your objects of desire, the more inconsequent, inconstant, unquiet, the more ignoble, idiotical, and criminal yourself.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#74. She suppresses the ignoble thought that it's hard to see what two complex, intelligent men can see in Michelle. She must have hidden depths, that's all. Ruth sometimes suspects that she, herself, has hidden shallows.
Elly Griffiths
#75. It is my conviction that in general women are more snobbish and class conscious than men and that these ignoble traits are a product of men's attitude toward women and women's passive acceptance of this attitude.
Mary Barnett Gilson
#76. Thus Belial, with words clothed in reason's garb, counseled ignoble ease, and peaceful sloth, not peace.
John Milton
#77. I can't stand lies. Probably no one can. Probably everyone is, to varying degrees, allergic to them, both spiritually and physically. Lies make me feel low and ignoble, and also itchy, like there's sand under my skin. The only thing that feels worse than hearing a lie is telling one.
Marisa De Los Santos
#79. The sole fact of having a school to train creative people is absolute lunacy ... The idea of 'pedagogical vision' is ignoble, it has nothing to do with art, it's contrary to art. I really believe in teaching, despite what I say.
Christian Boltanski
#80. The student who secures his coveted leisure and retirement by systematically shirking any labor necessary to man obtains but an ignoble and unprofitable leisure, defrauding himself of the experience which alone can make leisure fruitful.
Henry David Thoreau
#81. All men are almost led to believe not of proof, but by attraction. This way is base, ignoble, and irrelevant; every one therefore disavows it. Each one professes to believe and even to love
nothing but what he knows to be worthy of belief and love.
Blaise Pascal
#82. Ignoble contentment takes the place of burning zeal.
A.W. Tozer
#83. In my world, reserved Italians, heterosexual hairdressers, clouds without silver linings, ignoble savages, hard-hearted whores, advantageous ill-winds, sober Irishmen, and so on, are not permitted to exist.
Martin Amis
#84. Hell is wherever Love is not, and Heaven
Is Love's location. No dogmatic creed,
No austere faith based on ignoble fear
Can lead thee into realms of joy and peace.
Unless the humblest creatures on the earth
Are bettered by thy loving sympathy
Think not to find a Paradise beyond.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
#85. Coercion may prevent many transgressions; but it robs even actions which are legal of a part of their beauty. Freedom may lead to many transgressions, but it lends even to vices a less ignoble form.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#86. It is perhaps common in the world for individuals and nations to suffer for their noble qualities more than for their ignoble ones. For nobility is an occasion for pride, the most treacherous of sentiments.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
#87. Cruelty to animals is one of the most significant vices of a low and ignoble people. Wherever one notices them, they constitute a sign of ignorance and brutality which cannot be painted over even by all the evidence of wealth and luxury.
Alexander Von Humboldt
#88. Chickenshit is so called - instead of horse- or bull- or elephant shit - because it is small-minded and ignoble and takes the trivial seriously.
Stephen E. Ambrose
#89. Many of us, whether in the jungles of Asia or on the streets of Chicago, had discovered that noble causes can lead to ignoble actions and that we were capable of sacrificing honor to a sense of efficacy.
Linda Grant
#90. What is the use of physicians like myself trying to help parents to bring up children healthy and happy, to have them killed in such numbers for a cause that is ignoble?
Benjamin Spock
#91. As the tragic writer rids us of what is petty and ignoble in our nature, so also the humorist rids us of what is cautious, calculating, and priggish
about half of our social conscience, indeed. Both of them permit us, in blessed moments of revelation, to soar above the common level of our lives.
Robertson Davies
#92. As unity demanded for its expression what at first might have seemed its opposite
variety; so repose demands for its expression the implied capability of its opposite
energy. It is the most unfailing test of beauty; nothing can be ignoble that possesses it, nothing right that has it not.
John Ruskin
#93. The more ignoble I find life, the more strongly I react by contradiction, in humour and in an outburst of liberty and expansion.
Joan Miro
#94. Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife.
Thomas Gray
#95. I spent an awful lot of time with Hemingway. And Hemingway had a remarkable ability to reach very noble goals through sometimes ignoble means.
Lesley M.M. Blume
#96. To believe something in the face of evidence and against reason - to believe something by faith - is ignoble, irresponsible and ignorant, and merits the opposite of respect,
A.C. Grayling
