Quotes about dignity

If we cannot live entirely like human beings, at least let us do everything in our power not to live entirely like animals.

He did the housework as Philopoemen sawed his wood, communicating the simplicity of doing to all his actions, maintaining his dignity, for he seemed to understand that the goal ennobles everything.

And for the first time in his very long life he realized how hard it is to be helpless yet maintain one’s dignity. This insight struck him like a lightning bolt, shattering the pride that he had so carefully nurtured and fostered for such a long time, that he had inherited and was determined to pass down.

Because of the insolence of all the white race he was afraid to lose his dignity in friendliness.

Whats'ever 'appens to you—whats'ever—you'd be a princess all the same—an' nothin' couldn't make you nothin' different.

If I am a princess in rags and tatters, I can be a princess inside. It would be easy to be a princess if I were dressed in cloth of gold, but it is a great deal more of a triumph to be one all the time when no one knows it.

Sometimes I do pretend I am a princess. I pretend I am a princess, so that I can try and behave like one.

“But wherever I go, I know I will feel most at home with the wounded of the world, who hold their heads up high no matter how broken they may seem.”

Of course I was afraid. But I had learned to fear other things more: being despised, whittled down one small piece of myself at a time, smirked at and taken advantage of. I put my chin up and said, as cold as I could be in answer, “And what will you give me in return?

I am not your subject or your servant, and if you want a cowering mouse for a wife, go find someone else who can turn silver to gold for you.

All the dispossessed and pariahs of society are on the move; they beg for some light, air, and a life that accords with human dignity. It is therefore only natural that, in our century, a serious and vast movement has emerged among the last and most numerous of pariahs who form half of humanity-that is, women.

I am human, i am a human being, a soul, and not a piece of garbage, no matter how poor and ragged I look, and I deserve respect, he heard himself say, time and again as he descended to and repossessed his body."