Propriety Quotes - Page 3

• ...many of us inhibit our capacity for growth because the culture encourages us to live lives of uniformity. We stall, deny, ignore the ensuing crisis because of confusion, malaise, and yes, even propriety.

  Joan Anderson

  Live Life, Confusion, Growth

  4 Copy quote

• If a man is not good, what has he to do with the rules of propriety? If he is not good, what has he to do with music?

  Confucius

  Music, Men, Ifs

  7 Copy quote

• Generosity, pleasing address, courage and propriety of conduct are not acquired, but are inbred qualities.

  Chanakya

  Wisdom, Generosity, Quality

  10 Copy quote

• The first monster that an audience has to be scared of is the filmmaker. They have to feel in the presence of someone not confined by the normal rules of propriety and decency.

  Wes Craven

  Firsts, Normal, Monsters

  23 Copy quote

• I'm a gentleman, if nothing else. It's taken me years to become one, but finally I have a sense of propriety.

  Eric Stoltz

  Taken, Years, Gentleman

  9 Copy quote

• It has been my experience as a teacher over the years and incarnations that what really counts are not techniques. What really counts is spirit, love. What really counts is a sense of propriety and dedication.

  Frederick Lenz

  Teacher, Buddhist, Buddhism

  4 Copy quote

• I believe the power of observation in numbers of very young children to be quite wonderful for its closeness and accuracy. Indeed, I think that most grown people who are remarkable in this respect, may with greater propriety be said not to have lost the faculty, than to have acquired it; the rather, as I generally observe such men to retain a certain freshness, and gentleness, and capacity of being pleased, which are also an inheritance they have preserved from their childhood.

  Charles Dickens

  Children, Believe, Thinking

  "The Personal History of David Copperfield".

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Oh, propriety," says Mrs Benjamin. "We're always so concerned with propriety. Even in total madness, we still stick to our hierarchies and chains of command.

  Robert Jackson Bennett

  Hierarchy, Sticks, Madness

  6 Copy quote

• Ceremony forbids us to express by words things that are lawful and natural, and we obey it; reason forbids us to do things unlawful and ill, and nobody obeys it.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Reason, Natural, Unlawful

  Michel de Montaigne (2015). “Montaigne's Essays: Top Essays”, p.666, 谷月社

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The authour who imitates his predecessors only by furnishing himself with thoughts and elegances out of the same general magazine of literature, can with little more propriety be reproached as a plagiary, than the architect can be censured as a mean copier of Angelo or Wren, because he digs his marble out of the same quarry, squares his stones by the same art, and unites them in columns of the same orders.

  Samuel Johnson

  Art, Mean, Writing

  Samuel Johnson (1828). “The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752”, p.278

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is the censor's business to make a judgment about the propriety of the content or message of the proposed expressive activity. The regulation here does not authorize any judgment about the content of any speeches. ... A park is a limited space, and to allow unregulated access to all comers could easily reduce rather than enlarge the park's utility as a forum for speech. Just imagine two rallies held at the same time in the same park area using public-address systems that drowned out each other's speakers.

  Richard Posner

  Government, Two, Space

  9 Copy quote

• The maxim of Cleobulus, "Mediocrity is best," has been long considered a universal principle, extending through the whole compass of life and nature. The experience of every age seems to have given it new confirmation, and to show that nothing, however specious or alluring, is pursued with propriety or enjoyed with safety beyond certain limits.

  Samuel Johnson

  Safety, Long, Age

  Samuel Johnson (1825). “The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752”, p.68

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Propriety of thought and propriety of diction are commonly found together. Obscurity and affectation are the two greatest faults of style. Obscurity of expression generally springs from confusion of ideas; and the same wish to dazzle, at any cost, which produces affectation in the manner of a writer, is likely to produce sophistry in his reasonings.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Spring, Expression, Ideas

  John Morley, Thomas B. Macaulay (2016). “Machiavelli : the Founder of the Political”, p.89, Editions Le Mono

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Poesy is a beauteous damsel, chaste, honourable, discreet, witty, retired, and who keeps herself within the limits of propriety. She is a friend of solitude; fountains entertain her, meadows console her, woods free her from ennui, flowers delight her; in short, she gives pleasure and instruction to all with whom she communicates.

  Miguel de Cervantes

  Witty, Flower, Giving

  4 Copy quote

• Yes, yes, children must early be made to practise piety, godliness, and propriety; a person of good breeding is one into whom good maxims have been instilled and impressed, poured in through a funnel, thrashed in and preached in.

  Max Stirner

  Children, Breeding, Made

  Max Stirner (1995). “Stirner: The Ego and its Own”, p.75, Cambridge University Press

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• How often should a woman be pregnant? Continually, or hardly ever? Or must there be a certain number of pregnancy anniversaries established by fashion? What do you, at the age of forty-three, have to say on the subject? Is it a fact that the laws of nature, or of the country, or of propriety, have ordained this time of life for sterility?

  Lord Chesterfield

  Country, Fashion, Pregnancy

  4 Copy quote

• By going on the defensive. [...] libertarians are, inadvertently, conceding that speech should be policed for propriety, and that those who violate standards set by the PC set are somehow defective on those grounds alone and deserve to be purged from "polite" company.

  Ilana Mercer

  Standards Set, Libertarian, Speech

  "Fee-fi-fo-fem, I Smell The Blood Of A Racist". www.wnd.com. May 15, 2014.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• He who today utters a bold truth that seems to shock some old institution with the premonition of destruction, and that scares men from their propriety, will a hundred years hence be regarded as a remarkably conservative man. And yet the people who stand peculiarly upon what they call the foundations of conservatism, and hold to hard, practical facts, now stand upon that which one hundred years ago was rank heresy.

  Edwin Hubbel Chapin

  Men, Years, People

  4 Copy quote

• A certain class of novels may with propriety be called fables.

  Richard Whately

  Class, May, Fables

  4 Copy quote

• I am too inexperienced and ignorant to conduct myself with propriety in this town, where every thing is new to me, and many things are unaccountable and perplexing.

  Fanny Burney

  Ignorant, Towns

  Fanny Burney (1857). “Evelina: Or, The History of a Young Lady's Introduction to the World”, p.56

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Sundry manifestations of nature in men and women, are greatly perverted by existing social conventions upheld by both. There are feelings which, under our predatory régime, with its adapted standard of propriety, it is not considered manly to show; but which, contrariwise, are considered admirable in women. Hence repressed manifestations in the one case, and exaggerated manifestations in the other; leading to mistaken estimates.

  Herbert Spencer

  Men, Feelings, Social

  HERBERT SPENCER (1874). “THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY”, p.421

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Politeness has been defined to be artificial good-nature; but we may affirm, with much greater propriety, that good-nature is natural politeness.

  Stanisław I Leszczyński

  May, Natural, Politeness

  duc de François La Rochefoucauld, François La Rochefoucauld (duc de), King of Poland Stanisław, Stanisław I Leszczyński (King of Poland) (1851). “Moral reflections, sentences and maxims of Francis, duc de la Rochefoucauld”, p.178

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Each speech having its own character, the poetry it engenders will be peculiar to that speech also in its own intrinsic form. The effect is beauty, what in a single object resolves our complex feelings of propriety.

  William Carlos Williams

  Character, Feelings, Peculiar

  William Carlos Williams, A. Walton Litz, Christopher MacGowan (1991). “The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams: 1939-1962”, p.54, New Directions Publishing

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• All fear of 'offensive' speech is bourgeois and reactionary. Historically, profane or bawdy language was common in both the upper and the lower classes, who lived together in rural areas amid the untidy facts of nature. Notions of propriety and decorum come to the fore in urbanized periods ruled by an expanding middle class, which is obsessed with cleanliness, respectability, and conformism.

  Camille Paglia

  Class, Together, Rural Areas

  4 Copy quote

• The feeling of commiseration is the beginning of humanity; the feeling of shame and dislike is the beginning of righteousness; the feeling of deference and compliance is the beginning of propriety; and the feeling of right or wrong is the beginning of wisdom.Men have these Four Beginnings just as they have their four limbs. Having these Four Beginnings, but saying that they cannot develop them is to destroy themselves.

  Mencius

  Men, Feelings, Humanity

  "The Mencius". 2A:6, as translated by Wing-tsit Chan in "A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy", p. 65, 1963.

  30 Copy quote

  Show source