Imperfect Duties

Famous quotes containing the words imperfect and/or duties:

    ... the aspiring immigrant ... is not content to progress alone. Solitary success is imperfect success in his eyes. He must take his family with him as he rises.
    Mary Antin (1881–1949)

    Men are to be guided only by their self-interests. Good government is a good balancing of these; and, except a keen eye and appetite for self-interest, requires no virtue in any quarter. To both parties it is emphatically a machine: to the discontented, a “taxing- machine;” to the contented, a “machine for securing property.” Its duties and its faults are not those of a father, but of an active parish-constable.
    Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)