Nobility Quotes

“In the end you should always do the right thing even if it's hard.”
― Nicholas Sparks, The Last Song

“Keep in mind that many people have died for their beliefs; it's actually quite common. The real courage is in living and suffering for what you believe.”
― Christopher Paolini, Eragon

“You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives,
Who thinks most, feels noblest, acts the best.”
― Philip James Bailey, Festus: A Poem

“It's easy to run to others. It's so hard to stand on one's own record. You can fake virtue for an audience. You can't fake it in your own eyes. Your ego is your strictest judge. They run from it. They spend their lives running. It's easier to donate a few thousand to charity and think oneself noble than to base self-respect on personal standards of personal achievement. It's simple to seek substitutes for competence--such easy substitutes: love, charm, kindness, charity. But there is no substitute for competence.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“Before I go," he said, and paused -- "I may kiss her?"

It was remembered afterwards that when he bent down and touched her face with his lips, he murmured some words. The child, who was nearest to him, told them afterwards, and told her grandchildren when she was a handsome old lady, that she heard him say, "A life you love.”
― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

“One finds nobility in the oddest places.”
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Prince

“You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.”
― Malcolm Forbes

“Kelsier exhaled in exasperation. “Elend Venture? You risked your life—risked the plan, and our lives—for that fool of a boy?”

Vin looked up, glaring at him. “Yes.”

“What is wrong with you, girl?” Kelsier asked. “Elend Venture isn’t worth this.”

She stood angrily, Sazed backing away, the cloak falling the floor. “He’s a good man!”

“He’s a nobleman!”

“So are you!” Vin snapped. She waved a frustrated arm toward the kitchen and the crew. “What do you think this is, Kelsier? The life of a skaa? What do any of you know about skaa? Aristocratic suits, stalking your enemies in the night, full meals and nightcaps around the table with your friends? That’s not the life of a skaa!”

She took a step forward, glaring at Kelsier. He blinked in surprise at the outburst.

“What do you know about them, Kelsier?” she asked. “When’s the last time you slept in an alley, shivering in the cold rain, listening to the beggar next to you cough with a sickness you knew would kill him? When’s the last time you had to lay awake at night, terrified that one of the men in your crew would try to rape you? Have you ever knelt, starving, wishing you had the courage to knife the crewmember beside you just so you could take his crust of bread? Have you ever cowered before your brother as he beat you, all the time feeling thankful because at least you had someone who paid attention to you?”

She fell silent, puffing slightly, the crewmembers staring at her.

“Don’t talk to me about noblemen,” Vin said. “And don’t say things about people you don’t know. You’re no skaa— you’re just noblemen without titles.”

She turned, stalking from the room. Kelsier watched her go, shocked, hearing her footsteps on the stairs. He stood, dumbfounded, feeling a surprising flush of ashamed guilt.

And, for once, found himself without anything to say.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Mistborn: The Final Empire

“One should never do wrong in return, nor mistreat any man, no matter how one has been mistreated by him.”
― Socrates

“A successful villain should have all these things at his or her villainous fingertips, or else give up villainy altogether and try to lead a life of decency, integrity, and kindness, which is much more challenging and noble, if not always quite as exciting.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Grim Grotto

“To do good is noble. To tell others to do good is even nobler and much less trouble.”
― Mark Twain

“If ever you feel like an animal among men, be a lion.”
― Criss Jami, Diotima, Battery, Electric Personality

“There’s more to being a warrior than killing. A true warrior — the best warrior — isn’t cruel or mean. He doesn’t claw an enemy who can’t fight back. Where’s the honor in that?”
― Erin Hunter, Forest of Secrets

“Rascals are always sociable, and the chief sign that a man has any nobility in his character is the little pleasure he takes in others company.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“I am a Count, Not a Saint.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“And do you know another thing, Arthur? Life is too bitter already, without territories and wars and noble feuds.”
― T.H. White, The Once and Future King

“Nobleness was one word for making a fuss about the trivial inevitabilities of life, but there were others.”
― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

“Fransisco, you're some kind of very high nobility, aren't you?" He answered, "Not yet. The reason my family has lasted for such a long time is that none of us has ever been permitted to think he is born a d'Anconia. We are expected to become one.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“Selflessness. Humility. Truthfulness. These are the three marks of an honorable man.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“A noble deed is a dream before it is reality. The oak sleeps in the acorn; the bird waits in the egg; and in the highest vision of the soul, a beautiful world waits to be realized.”
― James Allen, As a Man Thinketh

“After joyfully working each morning, I would leave off around midday to challenge myself to a footrace. Speeding along the sunny paths of the Jardin du Luxembourg, ideas would breed like aphids in my head—for creative invention is easy and sublime when air cycles quickly through the lungs and the body is busy at noble tasks.”
― Roman Payne, Rooftop Soliloquy

“Since art is considered a noble field, art should be used to promote all that is good and noble, and in a noble fashion.”
― E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly

“Mapleshade: "Your punishment is complete now, Crookedstar. You have lost everything."
Crookedstar: "No, Mapleshade. You're wrong. I still have a clan that I love and am proud to lead. And now... ...now everything precious to me is here, in StarClan. My family is waiting here for me, when my ninth life has passed. It's you who have lost. You have no power over me anymore."
Mapleshade: "I have destroyed you!"
Crookedstar: "No, Mapleshade. I still have the cats that I loved. You have nothing and no one.”
― Erin Hunter, Crookedstar's Promise

“All boys wish to be manly; but they often try to become so by copying the vices of men rather than their virtues. They see men drinking, smoking, swearing; so these poor little fellows sedulously imitate such bad habits, thinking they are making themselves more like men. They mistake rudeness for strength, disrespect to parents for independence. They read wretched stories about boy brigands and boy detectives, and fancy themselves heroes when they break the laws, and become troublesome and mischievous. Out of such false influences the criminal classes are recruited. Many a little boy who only wishes to be manly, becomes corrupted and debased by the bad examples around him and the bad literature which he reads. The cure for this is to give him good books, show him truly noble examples from life and history, and make him understand how infinitely above this mock-manliness is the true courage which ennobles human nature.”
― James Freeman Clarke, Every-Day Religion

“Dav­el­lon may be a vil­lage, but the Dav­el­lon House can be any­thing you make it. No­bil­ity has to start some­where. It might as well start with you. Let no­body look down on you, for what­ever rea­son, My Lord. Ti­tles are granted or in­her­ited, no­bil­ity isn't.

~Tenaxos I to Landar Parmingh, Baron Davellon”
― Andrew Ashling, The Invisible Hands - Part 1: Gambit

“The truth is that there is nothing noble in being superior to somebody else. The only real nobility is in being superior to your former self.”
― Whitney M. Young Jr.

“Wallace Worthington would have reminded Wilbur Larch of someone he might have met at the Channing-Peabodys’, where Dr. Larch went to perform his second abortion – the rich people’s abortion, as Larch thought of it. Wallace Worthington would strike Homer Wells as what a real King of New England should look like.”
― John Irving, The Cider House Rules

“Nobility is not only in forgiveness.”
― Dejan Stojanovic, The Sun Watches the Sun

“For writers who knowingly lie, for those who substitute unbelievable human behavior for the way people really act, I have nothing but contempt. Bad writing is more than a matter of shit syntax and faulty observation; bad writing usually arises from a stubborn refusal to tell stories about what people actually do—to face the fact, let us say, that murderers sometimes help old ladies cross the street.
…The people in these stories are not without hope, but they acknowledge that even our fondest hopes (and our fondest wishes for our fellowmen and the society in which we live) may sometimes be vain. Often, even. But I think they also say that nobility most fully resides not in success but in trying to do the right thing… and that when we fail to do that, or willfully turn away from the challenge, hell follows.”
― Stephen King, Full Dark, No Stars