Top 111 Ignoble Quotes & Sayings

The more ignoble I find life, the more strongly I react by contradiction, in humour and in an outburst of liberty and expansion.

Life is indeed either a rich possession or a poor, according as it is made subservient to noble aims or ignoble pleasures.

Tis but a base, ignoble mind That mounts no higher than a bird can soar.

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.

Thus Belial, with words clothed in reason's garb, counseled ignoble ease, and peaceful sloth, not peace.

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.

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?

Cruelty to animals is one of the most significant vices of a low and ignoble people.

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

We can see that the complexity we witness inside the African-American community today has always been there. Black people were just as noble and just as ignoble as anybody else.

If any artist abuses his audience as a means to any end, noble or ignoble, he better have a damn good reason for it.

Envy, to which th' ignoble mind's a slave, Is emulation in the learn'd or brave.

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.

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.

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.

To conquer oneself is the best and noblest victory; to be vanquished by one's own nature is the worst and most ignoble defeat.

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.

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.

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.

I found out that I was a Christian for revenue only and I could not bear the thought of that, it was so ignoble.

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.

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.

No one can expect a majority to be stirred by motives other than ignoble.

Poverty is relative, and, therefor not ignoble.

Feeling lonely and ignoble indicates that you haven't been patient.

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.

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.

Britain First has deeply ignoble form on trying to 'hijack' the poppy to increase their popularity and donations.

Since all motives at bottom are selfish and ignoble, we may judge acts and qualities only be their effects.

War and love - they have much in common. You can theorize about them, but until you have experienced them, you cannot know them, for the emotions that they engender are as complicated and as conflicting, as noble and as ignoble, as any that life has to offer.

Many minds that have withstood the most severe trials have been broken down by a succession of ignoble cares.

Cooking is a form of flattery....a mischievous, deceitful, mean and ignoble activity, which cheats us by shapes and colors, by smoothing and draping.

I spent an awful lot of time with Hemingway. And Hemingway had a remarkable ability to reach very noble goals through sometimes ignoble means.

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.

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.

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.

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.

My anger thought you too ignoble for my love, and close examination finds you too magnificent, and only equals are joined together smoothly.

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.

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.

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.

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!

Were there hour-by-hour countdowns to the end of the Bush presidency? The end of the Obama years? No, definitely not to this extent. Trump's time in office is ending in ignoble fashion.

I wish to preach not the doctrine of ignoble ease but the doctrine of the strenuous life; the life of toil and effort; of labour and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes not to the man who desires mere easy peace but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph. A life of ignoble ease, a life of that peace which springs merely from lack either of desire or of power to strive after great things, is as little worthy of a nation as of an individual.

Confusion is not an ignoble condition

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife.

Something ignoble, loathsome, undignified attends all associations between people and has been transferred to all objects, dwelling, tools, even the landscape itself.

The more unharmonious and inconsistent your objects of desire, the more inconsequent, inconstant, unquiet, the more ignoble, idiotical, and criminal yourself.

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.

My philosophy of life is that the meek shall inherit nothing but debasement, frustration, and ignoble deaths.

For my part I think it is a less evil that some criminals should escape, than that the government should play an ignoble part.

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.

I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life.

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.

Oprah's aspiration to inspire her audience with hope - elaborated on her TV show, in her magazine, and on her website - is hardly ignoble.

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.

Expect neither reward nor beatitude. Return noble waves for ignoble.

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.

The 'freedom agenda' of George W. Bush's second inaugural was a noble concept - but in practice, it offered ignoble results.

When I went back to finish my undergrad, after a long and ignoble absence, my very first class was Intro to C for Cognitive Modeling. Unlike any educational experience before, I aced the class.