How to Use noblesse oblige in a Sentence

noblesse oblige

noun
  • He was raised to have a strong sense of noblesse oblige.
  • Voting for a Bush meant voting for the establishment, for ethics and noblesse oblige.
    — Dallas News, 28 May 2022
  • Much more significant than a one-time $50-million noblesse oblige gesture.
    — Aaron Pressman, Fortune, 28 Mar. 2018
  • But the old spirit of noblesse oblige was often troubled by a certain condescension, a sense that rules are for the little people.
    — Washington Post, 21 Oct. 2020
  • Everything is up to date in this museum of video screens and touch panels except its founding principle, which is the old noblesse oblige.
    — Washington Post, 21 Oct. 2020
  • Her new role obligated her to master a shifting vocabulary of noblesse oblige.
    — Evan Osnos, The New Yorker, 16 Jan. 2023
  • Graham had a medical degree and was living in settlement housing, where the wealthy lived alongside the poor, which appealed to his sense of noblesse oblige.
    — Jennifer Szalai, New York Times, 4 Mar. 2020
  • Where others see noblesse oblige, in other words, Giridharadas spies disingenuous self-dealing.
    — Fortune, 20 Aug. 2019
  • Even when the theme isn’t noble, a strange sense of noblesse oblige, of privileged people privileging people with culture, redeems it.
    — Matthew Carey Salyer, Forbes, 17 Feb. 2023
  • So, his children and certain of his grandchildren became fully aware of an obligation that is characterized by the phrase noblesse oblige.
    — Jamie Katz, Smithsonian Magazine, 5 Oct. 2020
  • Taken further, these credos of noblesse oblige could be viewed as an open invitation for reverse discrimination.
    — Sam Walker, WSJ, 6 Oct. 2018
  • Though Alger indeed extols the virtues of hard work, prayer, honesty and saving, his books also hinge upon chance encounters and the noblesse oblige of someone much higher on the class ladder.
    — New York Times, 5 Apr. 2022
  • This job of noblesse oblige raises a host of uncomfortable ethical conundrums, but Peter, in typical fashion, squares them away by showing his self-awareness.
    — Ryu Spaeth, The New Republic, 9 July 2020
  • Equality of opportunity has produced a new meritocratic aristocracy that has all the aloofness of the old aristocracy with none of its sense of noblesse oblige.
    — The Economist, 25 Jan. 2018
  • His Zorro dedicates himself to the equitable treatment of every citizen and rouses his fellow caballeros to practice a democratic form of noblesse oblige.
    — Washington Post, 1 Jan. 2021
  • One feels in Chiang Mai the same sense of pride, of noblesse oblige, that one senses in other ancient cities with wealthy, royal pasts, like, say, Jaipur and Kyoto; this is a storied place.
    — Hanya Yanagihara, Condé Nast Traveler, 10 Jan. 2022

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'noblesse oblige.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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