Decorum Quotes

• One hour of life, crowded to the full with glorious action, and filled with noble risks, is worth whole years of those mean observances of paltry decorum, in which men steal through existence, like sluggish waters through a marsh, without either honor or observation.

  Walter Scott

  Mean, Men, Years

  Sir Walter Scott (189?). “the bride of Lammermoor”

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• At the point when continuity was interrupted by the first nuclear explosion, it would have been too easy to recover the formal sediment which linked us with an age of poetic decorum, of a preoccupation with poetic sounds.

  Salvatore Quasimodo

  Age, Sound, Nuclear

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• Presidents should do whatever possible and practical to encourage an environment of cooperation and bipartisanship. And they should maintain a certain level of decorum, diplomacy and decency. But, at the end of the day, presidents get elected to enact change.

  Mark McKinnon

  The End Of The Day, President, Levels

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• The old Lie:Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.

  Wilfred Owen

  War, Lying, Latin

  "Dulce et Decorum Est" l. 21 (written 1918) See Horace 20

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• Observe decorum, and it will open a path to morality.

  Mason Cooley

  Path, Morality

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• Necessity dispenseth with decorum.

  Thomas Carlyle

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• Every man has his moral backside which he refrains from showing unless he has to and keeps covered as long as possible with the trousers of decorum.

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

  Men, Long, Morality

  "Aphorisms". Book by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Notebook B 12, 1799.

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• When decorum is repression, the only dignity free men have is to speak out.

  Abbie Hoffman

  Men, Speaks Out, Dignity

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• If in some smothering dreams you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin; If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,-- My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

  Wilfred Owen

  Dream, Children, Cancer

  "Dulce et Decorum Est" l. 21 (written 1918) See Horace 20

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• I have no limits, no filter, no class, no poise. No decorum. Just fun.

  Kathy Griffin

  Fun, Class, Filters

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• What I lack in decorum, I make up for with an absence of tact.

  Donald E. Williams, Jr.

  Ironic, Absence, Tact

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• A man who understands decorum and the courtesies is a great treasure; I hope to train and send into society as many such men as I can.

  Mas Oyama

  Men, Treasure, Courtesy

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• Writing an upbeat aphorism is a temptation, but decorum forbids.

  Mason Cooley

  Writing, Temptation, Aphorism

  "City Aphorisms: Eighth Selection". Book by Mason Cooley, 1991.

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• The most disgusting cad in the world is the man who on the grounds of decorum and morality avoids the game of love. He is one who puts his own ease and security above the most laudable of philanthropies.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Games, Ease

  H.L. Mencken (1920). “Prejudices Second Series”

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• You have to adhere to a certain morality, a certain level of decorum, or else you'll be punished and labeled.

  Margaret Cho

  Levels, Morality, Certain

  "Don't Call Them Comediennes". Elle interview, www.elle.com. June 21, 2016.

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• Women do not transgress the bounds of decorum so often as men; but when they do, they go greater lengths.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Women, Length, Greater

  Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.151

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• There are few things that so touch us with instinctive revulsion as a breach of decorum.

  Thorstein Veblen

  Respect, Revulsion, Breach

  Thorstein Veblen (2016). “THE THEORY OF THE LEISURE CLASS: An Economic Study of American Institutions and a Social Critique of Conspicuous Consumption: Development of Institutions That Shape Society and Influence the Livelihood of Citizens: Based on Sociological & Economical Theories of Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Adam Smith and Herbert Spencer”, p.32, e-artnow

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• The home is not the one tame place in the world of adventure. It is the one wild place in the world of rules and set tasks.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Inspirational, Home, Adventure

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.272, Simon and Schuster

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• The middle of 'America's Women' is about the Civil War, and how women, black and white, confronted slavery and abolition. As in every other period of crisis, the rules of sexual decorum were suspended due to emergency.

  Gail Collins

  War, Black And White, America

  Gail Collins (2009). “America's Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines”, p.9, Harper Collins

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• Decorum -- that bug-bear which deters so many from bliss until the opportunity for bliss has forever gone by.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Opportunity, Forever, Gone

  Edgar Allan Poe, Stuart Levine, Susan Levine (1976). “The Short Fiction of Edgar Allan Poe: An Annotated Edition”, p.340, University of Illinois Press

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• Boast quietly, with decorum.

  Mason Cooley

  Boast

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• Identification with one's office or title is very attractive indeed, which is precisely why so many men are nothing more than the decorum accorded to them by society. In vain would one look for a personality behind the husk. Underneath one would find a very pitiable little creature. That is why the office is so attractive: it offers easy compensation for personal deficiencies.

  Carl Jung

  Men, Office, Personality

  Carl Gustav Jung, Richard Francis Carrington Hull (1992). “Two Essays on Analytical Psychology”, p.145, Psychology Press

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• Wild liberty develops iron conscience. Want of liberty, by strengthening law and decorum, stupefies conscience.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Freedom, Law, Iron

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Ernest Spiller, Alfred Riggs Ferguson, Joseph Slater, Jean Ferguson Carr (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays, second series”, p.124, Harvard University Press

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• From a tale one expects a bit of wildness, of exaggeration and dramatic effect. The tale has no inherent concern with decorum, balance or harmony. ... A tale may not display a great deal of structural, psychological, or narrative sophistication, though it might possess all three, but it seldom takes its eye off its primary goal, the creation of a particular emotional state in its reader. Depending on the tale, that state could be wonder, amazement, shock, terror, anger, anxiety, melancholia, or the momentary frisson of horror.

  Peter Straub

  Eye, Emotional, Goal

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• As for the decorum at the time of a campaign, one must be mindful that he is a samurai. A person who loves beautification where it is unnecessary is fit for punishment.

  Kato Kiyomasa

  War, Love Is, Punishment

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