#dignity

Taught to regard a part of our own Species in the most abject and contemptible Degree below us, we lose that Idea of the dignity of Man which the Hand of Nature had implanted in us, for great and useful purposes. ↗

— George Mason

#below #contemptible #degree #dignity #great

Human dignity is better served by embracing knowledge. ↗

— John Charles Polanyi

#dignity #embracing #human #human dignity #knowledge

All great enterprises have a pearl of faith at their core, and this must be ours: that Americans are still a people born to liberty. That they retain the capacity for self-government. That, addressed as free-born, autonomous men and women of God-given dignity, they will rise yet again to drive back a mortal enemy. ↗

— Mitch Daniels

#again #autonomous #back #born #capacity

I am on the side of the unregenerate who affirm the worth of life as an end in itself, as against the saints who deny it. ↗

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

#saints #spirit #spiritual-life #unregenerate #worth

Nature has made a mistake in the choice of my sexuality and I must do a life-long penance for it, for the moral power to suffer the unavoidable with dignity is lost. ↗

— Richard von Krafft-Ebing

#gender #homosexuality #lesbianism #morality #nature

I am oblivious to the obvious – it is such a vulgar way to characterize things. I have too much subtlety to notice anything beneath my dignity. ↗

— Bauvard

#funny #humor #obliviousness #obviousness #vulgarity

[F]rom my years of understanding ... I happily chose this kind of life in which I yet live [i.e., unmarried], which I assure you for my own part hath hitherto best contented myself and I trust hath been most acceptable to God. From the which if either ambition of high estate offered to me in marriage by the pleasure and appointment of my prince ... or if the eschewing of the danger of my enemies or the avoiding of the peril of death ... could have drawn or dissuaded me from this kind of life, I had not now remained in this estate wherein you see me. But so constant have I always continued in this determination ... yet is it most true that at this day I stand free from any other meaning that either I have had in times past or have at this present. ↗

— Elizabeth I Tudor

#choice #contentment #dignity #empowerment #freedom

Freedom is not an abstaction, nor is a little of it enough. A little more is not enough either. Having less, being less, empoverished in freedom and rights, women then invariably have less self-respect: less self-respect than any human being needs to live a brave and honest life. ↗

— Andrea Dworkin

#feminism #freedom #justice #self-respect #women

[A]s though mindful of the wife of Lot, who looked back from behind him, thou deliveredst me first to the sacred garments and monastic profession before thou gavest thyself to God. And for that in this one thing thou shouldst have had little trust in me I vehemently grieved and was ashamed. For I (God [knows]) would without hesitation precede or follow thee to the Vulcanian fires according to thy word. For not with me was my heart, but with thee. But now, more than ever, if it be not with thee, it is nowhere. For without thee it cannot anywhere exist. ↗

— Héloïse d'Argenteuil

#celibacy #convent #dignity #following #grief

I also remember being struck by de Sade's will, in which he asked that his ashes be scattered to the four corners of the earth in the hope that humankind would forget both his writings and his name. I'd like to be able to make that demand; commemorative ceremonies are not only false but dangerous, as are all statues of famous men. Long live forgetfulness, I've always said—the only dignity I see is in oblivion. ↗

— Luis Buñuel

#de-sade #death #dignity #legacy #marquis-de-sade