William Shakespeare on honor

If music be the food of love, play on.

This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.

Cowards die many times before their deaths. The valiant never taste of death but once.

It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.

Mark Twain1835–1910

The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.

Ralph Waldo Emerson1803–1882The Conduct of Life (1860), Worship

It is the dissimilarities and inequalities among men which give rise to the notion of honor; as such differences become less, it grows feeble; and when they disappear, it will vanish too.

Alexis de Tocqueville1805–1859Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book Three, Chapter XVIII.