“In executing the duties of my present important station, I can promise nothing but purity of intentions, and, in carrying these into effect, fidelity and diligence.”

A Stranger to Command (Crown & Court 0.5, 2008)

Biederman v. Seymour (1841), 3 Beav. 371.
Quote

On the Nature of Places, a continuation of the treatise On Lines, Angles and Figures as quoted by Amelia Carolina Sparavigna, &quot;Translation and discussion of the De Iride, a treatise on optics by Robert Grosseteste&quot; arXiv:1211.5961v1 http://arxiv.org/abs/1211.5961 @arXiv.org, Cornell University (2012) <br class="br">Context: The diligent investigator of natural phenomena can give the causes of all natural effects... by the rules and roots and foundations given from the power of geometry.

Books, Pure Effect - Direct Mind Reading and Magical Artistry (2000)

Source: Lady Midnight

Extract from the Queen's Journal, Tuesday, 20th June 1837.
Context: Since it has pleased Providence to place me in this station, I shall do my utmost to fulfil my duty towards my country; I am very young and perhaps in many, though not in all things, inexperienced, but I am sure that very few have more real good will and more real desire to do what is fit and right than I have.

1860s, The Prayer of the Twenty Millions (1862)

The Ethics of Belief (1877), The Duty of Inquiry
Context: Belief, that sacred faculty which prompts the decisions of our will, and knits into harmonious working all the compacted energies of our being, is ours not for ourselves but for humanity. It is rightly used on truths which have been established by long experience and waiting toil, and which have stood in the fierce light of free and fearless questioning. Then it helps to bind men together, and to strengthen and direct their common action. It is desecrated when given to unproved and unquestioned statements, for the solace and private pleasure of the believer; to add a tinsel splendour to the plain straight road of our life and display a bright mirage beyond it; or even to drown the common sorrows of our kind by a self-deception which allows them not only to cast down, but also to degrade us. Whoso would deserve well of his fellows in this matter will guard the purity of his beliefs with a very fanaticism of jealous care, lest at any time it should rest on an unworthy object, and catch a stain which can never be wiped away.
It is not only the leader of men, statesmen, philosopher, or poet, that owes this bounden duty to mankind. Every rustic who delivers in the village alehouse his slow, infrequent sentences, may help to kill or keep alive the fatal superstitions which clog his race. Every hard-worked wife of an artisan may transmit to her children beliefs which shall knit society together, or rend it in pieces. No simplicity of mind, no obscurity of station, can escape the universal duty of questioning all that we believe.
It is true that this duty is a hard one, and the doubt which comes out of it is often a very bitter thing. It leaves us bare and powerless where we thought that we were safe and strong. To know all about anything is to know how to deal with it under all circumstances. We feel much happier and more secure when we think we know precisely what to do, no matter what happens, than when we have lost our way and do not know where to turn. And if we have supposed ourselves to know all about anything, and to be capable of doing what is fit in regard to it, we naturally do not like to find that we are really ignorant and powerless, that we have to begin again at the beginning, and try to learn what the thing is and how it is to be dealt with — if indeed anything can be learnt about it. It is the sense of power attached to a sense of knowledge that makes men desirous of believing, and afraid of doubting.

The Human: Truth and Consequences (p. 27)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)