“Stand before your god, bow before your king, kneel before your man.”
Terry Pratchett book Lords and Ladies
Source: Lords and Ladies
“But strive still to be a man before your mother.”
Connoisseur. Motto of No. iii.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Do you have more details about the quote "But strive still to be a man before your mother." by William Cowper?
William Cowper174
(1731–1800) English poet and hymnodist 1731–1800Related quotes
Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam
The Prophet said, "Your father."
Sahih al-Bukhari, 8:2
Sunni Hadith
“We shall strive for perfection. We shall not achieve it immediately — but we still shall strive.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States
1940s, Fourth Inaugural Address (1945)
Context: We shall strive for perfection. We shall not achieve it immediately — but we still shall strive. We may make mistakes — but they must never be mistakes which result from faintness of heart or abandonment of moral principle.
“I still think too much about the mothers
And ask what is man born of woman.”
Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator
"Preparation," trans. Czesław Miłosz and Robert Hass
Unattainable Earth (1986)
Context: I still think too much about the mothers
And ask what is man born of woman.
He curls himself up and protects his head
While he is kicked by heavy boots; on fire and running,
He burns with bright flame; a bulldozer sweeps him into a clay pit.
Her child. Embracing a teddy bear. Conceived in ecstasy.
“A mother is a mother still,
The holiest thing alive.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher
The Three Graves
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“You may break your heart, but men will still go on as before.”
Marcus Aurelius book Meditations
Ὅτι οὐδὲν ἧττον τὰ αὐτὰ ποιήσουσι, κἂν σὺ διαρραγῇς.
VIII, 4
Source: Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VIII
“We can acknowledge that oppression will always be with us, and still strive for justice.”
Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America
2009, Nobel Prize acceptance speech (December 2009)
Context: We can acknowledge that oppression will always be with us, and still strive for justice. We can admit the intractability of deprivation, and still strive for dignity. Clear-eyed, we can understand that there will be war, and still strive for peace. We can do that — for that is the story of human progress; that's the hope of all the world; and at this moment of challenge, that must be our work here on Earth.
“Man errs as long as he strives.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe book Faust
Es irrt der Mensch, so lang er strebt.
Variant translation: Man will err while yet he strives.
Prologue in Heaven
Faust, Part 1 (1808)
“In a place where there are no men, strive to be a man.”
Hillel the Elder (-112–9 BC) Mishnah rabbi
<span lang="he" dir="rtl">במקום שאין אנשים, השתדל להיות איש.</span>
Bemakom she'ein anashim, hishtadel lihyot ish.
2:6
Pirkei Avot