Ignoble quotes:

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Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife. -- Thomas Gray
Tis but a base, ignoble mind That mounts no higher than a bird can soar. -- William Shakespeare
Cruelty to animals is one of the most significant vices of a low and ignoble people. -- Alexander von Humboldt
I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life. -- Theodore Roosevelt
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
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
For my part I think it is a less evil that some criminals should escape, than that the government should play an ignoble part. -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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
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
Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray; Along the cool sequester'd vale of life They kept the noiseless tenor of their way. -- Thomas Gray
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Music directly imitates the passions or states of the soul...when one listens to music that imitates a certain passion, he becomes imbued withthe same passion; and if over a long time he habitually listens to music that rouses ignoble passions, his whole character will be shaped to an ignoble form. -- Aristotle
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
It is the mark of a mean, vulgar and ignoble spirit to dwell on the thought of food before meal times or worse to dwell on it afterwards, to discuss it and wallow in the remembered pleasures of every mouthful. Those whose minds dwell before dinner on the spit, and after on the dishes, are fit only to be scullions. -- Saint Francis de Sales
We Americans have many grave problems to solve, many threatening evils to fight, and many deeds to do, if, as we hope and believe, we have the wisdom, the strength, and the courage and the virtue to do them. But we must face facts as they are. We must neither surrender ourselves to a foolish optimism, nor succumb to a timid and ignoble pessimism. -- Theodore Roosevelt
Confusion is not an ignoble condition -- Brian Friel
Poverty is relative, and, therefor not ignoble. -- Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Feeling lonely and ignoble indicates that you haven't been patient. -- Rumi
Expect neither reward nor beatitude. Return noble waves for ignoble. -- Jean Cocteau
No one can expect a majority to be stirred by motives other than ignoble. -- Norman Douglas
Envy, to which th' ignoble mind's a slave, Is emulation in the learn'd or brave. -- Alexander Pope
Thus Belial, with words clothed in reason's garb, counseled ignoble ease, and peaceful sloth, not peace. -- John Milton
My philosophy of life is that the meek shall inherit nothing but debasement, frustration, and ignoble deaths. -- Harlan Ellison
No duty is ignoble. What can be ignoble is the sight of people trying not to be ignoble. -- Idries Shah
Since all motives at bottom are selfish and ignoble, we may judge acts and qualities only be their effects. -- H. P. Lovecraft
Many minds that have withstood the most severe trials have been broken down by a succession of ignoble cares. -- Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington
The more unharmonious and inconsistent your objects of desire, the more inconsequent, inconstant, unquiet, the more ignoble, idiotical, and criminal yourself. -- Johann Kaspar Lavater
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
Something ignoble, loathsome, undignified attends all associations between people and has been transferred to all objects, dwelling, tools, even the landscape itself. -- Bertolt Brecht
A good man may fall, but he falls like a ball [and rebounds]; the ignoble man falls like a lump of clay. -- Bhartrhari
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
It is not races but individuals that are noble and courageous or ignoble and craven or considerate or persistent or philosophical or reasonable. The race gets credit when the percentage of noble individuals is high. -- Edwin Way Teale
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
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

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