Honour

Honour is a term which has been the foundation of many long and brilliant reasonings, without annexing to it any precise or fixed idea.

To find this common divisor of the different ideas attached to the word honour, it will be necessary to go back to the original formation of society.

There is a remarkable difference between the civil laws, those jealous guardians of life and property, and the laws of, what is called, honour, which particularly respects the opinion of others.

they are not honours.

but honours, I should say, express the very opposite feelings.

And, for myself, I count him a happy man who is honoured thus;

For his ardour for glory is manifest, inasmuch as he undergoes many toils and many bodily discomforts to ensure his being proclaimed victor in the pancratium.

would not a person discover that they are all done for glory’s sake by persons willing to endure hardship and jeopardy, rather than by those who are drifting into the habit of preferring pleasure to a good name?

For false reputation is soon exposed when tried by experience, whereas true manly virtue,—barring the interposition of Providence,—confers ever more and more brilliant glory when put to the test of actual deeds.