We must bear in mind the distinction between fame and honor. A virtuous person is an honorable person, a person who ought to be ho...nored by the community in which he or she lives. But the virtuous person does not seek honor, being secure in his or her own self-respect. Lack of honor does not in any way detract from the efficacy of moral virtue as an indispensable operative means in the pursuit of happiness.... Those totally lacking in virtue may achieve fame as readily as, perhaps even more easily than those who are virtuous. Fame belongs to the great, the outstanding, the exceptional, without regard to virtue or vice. Infamy is fame no less than good repute. The great scoundrel can be as famous as the great hero; there can be famous villains as well as famous saints. Existing in the reputation a person has regardless of his or her accomplishments, fame does not tarnish as honor does when it is unmerited.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Listen, my friend, there are two races of beings. The masses teeming and happy--common clay, if you like--eating, breeding, workin...g, counting their pennies; people who just live; ordinary people; people you can't imagine dead. And then there are the others--the noble ones, the heroes. The ones you can quite well imagine lying shot, pale and tragic; one minute triumphant with a guard of honor, and the next being marched away between two gendarmes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.... He is the hero, he is every...thing. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... the highest gifts are not measurable in dollars and cents. Beyond and above the class who run an account with the world and me...rely manage honestly to pay in kind for what they receive, there is a noble army--the Shakespeares and Miltons, the Newtons, Galileos and Darwins,--Watts, Morse, Howe, Lincoln, Garrison, John Brown--a part of the world's roll of honor--whose price of board and keep dwindles into nothingness when compared with what the world owes them; men who have taken of the world's bread and paid for it in immortal thoughts, invaluable inventions, new facilities, heroic deeds of loving self-sacrifice; men who dignify the world for their having lived in it and to whom the world will ever bow in grateful worship as its heroes and benefactors. It may not be ours to stamp our genius in enduring characters--but we can give what we are at its best.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Poverty demoralizes. A man in debt is so far a slave; and Wall-street thinks it easy for a millionaire to be a man of his word, a ...man of honor, but, that, in failing circumstances, no man can be relied on to keep his integrity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If George Washington were alive today, what a shining mark he would be for the whole camorra of uplifters, forward-lookers and pro...fessional patriots! He was the Rockefeller of his time, a promoter of stock companies, a land-grabber, an exploiter of mines and timber.... He was not pious. He drank whiskey whenever he felt chilly, and kept a jug of it handy. He knew far more profanity than Scripture, and used and enjoyed it more. He had no belief in the infallible wisdom of the common people, but regarded them as inflammatory dolts and tried to save the Republic from them.... He took no interest in the private morals of his neighbors. Inhabiting these States today, George would be ineligible for any office of honor or profit.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Carlyle, a man of strong words and attitudes, a rhetorician out of necessity, constantly aroused by the craving for a strong faith... as well as by the feeling of an incapacity for it (Min this respect a typical romantic!).... Fundamentally, Carlyle is an English atheist who makes it a point of honor not to be one.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is a hatred of lies and dissimulation that is rooted in a sensitive principle of honor, and there is another such hatred tha...t is rooted in cowardice, inasmuch as lies are forbidden by a divine commandment. Too cowardly to lie....LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »