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# Weekend Words: Resign
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/weekend-words-resign/
- Published: 2017-08-20T13:30:32.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:26:46.000Z
- Description: "The love of fame is the last weakness which even the wise resign."
- Author: Weekend Editors
- Tags: Art, Weekend, Weekend Words, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 07:30(2016, 2017, part 3)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2017/08/resign.jpg)

Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich, “Hungarian Rat Poison” (1757), engraving, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig (image via Web Gallery of Art)

The CEOS on Trump’s economic advisory panels have [resigned](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/08/business-leaders-are-fleeing-their-associations-with-the-trump-administration/536937/?ref=hyperallergic.com). So have members of the [Presidential Arts Commission](https://hyperallergic.com/members-of-presidents-arts-committee-resign-en-masse-in-protest-of-trump/). When will the [cabinet](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/08/17/lawrence-summers-trumps-ceos-resigned-his-cabinet-should-do-the-same/?utm%5Fterm=.b0b298287742&ref=hyperallergic.com)? When will Trump?

> The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself.  
>  
> **—Archibald MacLeish**

> The story of Americans is the story of arrested metamorphoses. Those who achieve success come to a halt and accept themselves as they are. Those who fail become resigned and accept themselves as they are.  
>  
> **—Harold Rosenberg**

> The love of fame is the last weakness which even the wise resign.  
>  
> **—Tacitus**

> I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.  
>  
> **—Willa Cather**

> We are all resigned to death: it’s life we aren’t resigned to.  
>  
> **—Graham Greene, *The Heart of the Matter***

> Crowds are somewhat like the sphinx of ancient fable: It is necessary to arrive at a solution of the problems offered by their psychology or to resign ourselves to being devoured by them.  
>  
> **—Gustave Le Bon**

> As her fate, she accepted the world of ice, shining, shimmering, dead; she resigned herself to the triumph of glaciers and the death of the world.  
>  
> **—Anna Kavan, Ice*The Heart of the Matter***

> I have a hundred times wished that one could resign life as an officer resigns a commission.  
>  
> **—Robert Burns**

> I commit my life to Him who made me, and may His blessing light upon my endeavors for serving my Country faithfully. To Him I resign myself and the just cause which is entrusted to me to defend. Amen. Amen. Amen.  
>  
> **—Admiral Horatio, Lord Nelson, diary entry on the eve of the Battle of Trafalgar**

> If a due participation of office is a matter of right, how are vacancies to be obtained. Few die and none resign.  
>  
> **—Thomas Jefferson**

> I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. But as President, I must put the interest of America first. America needs a full-time President and a full-time Congress, particularly at this time with problems we face at home and abroad.  
>  
> To continue to fight through the months ahead for my personal vindication would almost totally absorb the time and attention of both the President and the Congress in a period when our entire focus should be on the great issues of peace abroad and prosperity without inflation at home.  
>  
> Therefore, I shall resign the Presidency effective at noon tomorrow.  
>  
> **—Richard Milhous Nixon**

> If I could get my membership fee back, I’d resign from the human race.  
>  
> **—Fred Allen**

> Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave  
> Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;  
> Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.  
> I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.  
>  
> **—Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Dirge without Music”**