Conventionality Quotes

• The world is put back by the death of every one who has to sacrifice the development of his or her peculiar gifts to conventionality.

  Florence Nightingale

  Nursing, Sacrifice, Peculiar

  Florence Nightingale (2017). “Cassandra and Suggestions for Thought by Florence Nightingale”, p.201, Routledge

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• Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last.

  Charlotte Bronte

  Self, Independence, Lasts

  'Jane Eyre' (2nd ed., 1848) preface

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• Conventionality is not morality.

  Charlotte Bronte

  Wisdom, Fun, Motherhood

  'Jane Eyre' (2nd ed., 1848) preface

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• What worse illness can there be than acute conventionality. You should pray every night that you don't wake up with it.

  George Weinberg

  Night, Wake Up, Praying

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• Here society is reduced to its original elements, the whole fabric of art and conventionality is struck rudely to pieces, and men find themselves suddenly brought back to the wants and resources of their original natures.

  Francis Parkman

  Art, Men, Rude

  Francis Parkman (1991). “The Oregon Trail ; The Conspiracy of Pontiac”, p.63, Library of America

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• USAGE, n. The First Person of the literary Trinity, the Second and Third being Custom and Conventionality. Imbued with a decent reverence for this Holy Triad an industrious writer may hope to produce books that will live as long as the fashion.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Hope, Fashion, Book

  Ambrose Bierce (2016). “The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World”, p.229, 谷月社

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• I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal--as we are!

  Charlotte Bronte

  Talking, Feet, Addresses

  Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, Anne Bronte (2009). “The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.207, Penguin

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• Conventionality is the tacit agreement to set appearances before reality, form before content.

  Ellen Key

  Reality, Agreement, Appearance

  Ellen Key (1911). “The Morality of Woman: And Other Essays”

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• Call on literary convention, and it will gladly tell your story for you.

  Mason Cooley

  Stories, Conventions

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• Nobody can live in society without conventions. The reason why sensible people are as conventional as they can bear to be is that conventionality saves so much time and thought and trouble and social friction of one sort or another that it leaves them much more leisure time for freedom than unconventionality does.

  George Bernard Shaw

  People, Society, Doe

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• All human rules are more or less idiotic.

  Mark Twain

  Idiotic, Humans

  Mark Twain (2015). “Following the Equator: "A Journey Around the World"”, p.508, eKitap Projesi

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• I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will.

  Charlotte Bronte

  Inspirational, Life, Inspiring

  Charlotte Bronte (2004). “Jane Eyre”, p.130, Variocity

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• Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education; they grow firm there, firm as weeds among stones.

  Charlotte Bronte

  Sad, Education, Weed

  Charlotte Bronte (2013). “Jane Eyre”, p.426, Simon and Schuster

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• He who would be a man must therefore be a non-conformist.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Creativity, Men, Innovation

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• The actual state of our knowledge is always provisional and... there must be, beyond what is actually known, immense new regions to discover.

  Louis de Broglie

  Knowledge, Discovery, Limits

  "Causality and Chance in Modern Physics". Foreword of book by David Bohm, p.10, 1984.

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• Historically, Alaska is a place that has attracted those fed up with conventionality.

  Bill O'Reilly

  Alaska, Feds, Fed Up

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• Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Life, Men, Mind

  Arthur Conan Doyle (2012). “The Adventures and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes - books 1 and 2 (illustrated)”, p.66, The Planet

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• There is a bond of fellowship in sorrow that knows no conventionality.

  Harold Bell Wright

  Sorrow, Fellowship, Knows

  Harold Bell Wright (1970). “The Shepherd of the Hills”, p.30, Pelican Publishing

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• 'Mediocre' tends to mean 'undistinguished', while snobs enjoy their distinguishing hallmarks of style - how they wear clothes, use words, where they go and gather and gossip. ...Whatever the circumstances the genius has put you into, the fact of individuality defends the soul against all class-action claims. No soul is mediocre, whatever your personal taste for conventionality, whatever your personal record of middling achievements.

  James Hillman

  Mean, Class, Clothes

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• The need of an insecure psychiatrist to draw security from a virtuous adjustment to the conventionalities of his time and from a quest for approval from "the good and the great" may turn out to be another agent interfering with his ability to listen in a therapeutically valid fashion. This type of dependence gives rise to the danger that the psychiatrist may consider the changeable man-made standards of the society in which he lives to be eternal values to which he and his patients must conform.

  Frieda Fromm-Reichmann

  Fashion, Insecure, Men

  Frieda Fromm-Reichmann (1960). “Principles of Intensive Psychotherapy”, p.32, University of Chicago Press

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• Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Fashion, Teenage, Laughing

  1854 Walden, or Life in the Woods,'Economy'.

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• Perhaps what you call conventionality, I call decency.

  Dodie Smith

  Decency

  Dodie Smith (1963). “The New Moon with the Old”

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• I want to emphasize the idea of black as intellectuality and conventionality.

  Ad Reinhardt

  Ideas, Black, Want

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• Life, my dear Watson, is infinitely stranger than fiction; stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We could not conceive the things that are merely commonplace to existence. If we could hover over this great city, remove the roofs, and peep in at the things going on, it would make all fiction, with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions flat, stale and unprofitable.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Men, Cities, Mind

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• England is so surrounded by the boredom of conventionalities, that it is all one to them whether music is good or bad, since they have to hear it from morning till night. For here they have flower-shows with music, dinners with music, sales with music.

  Frederic Chopin

  Morning, Flower, Night

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