Propriety Quotes - Page 4

• There will be no propriety in the spectacle of an elegant interior approached by a low mean entrance.

  Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

  Mean, Entrances, Lows

  "The Ten Books On Architecture". Book I. Chapter II, Sec. 6, 15BC.

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• Propriety is that perfection of style which comes when a work is authoritatively constructed on approved principles. It arises from prescription, from usage, or from nature.

  Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

  Perfection, Style, Principles

  "The Ten Books On Architecture". Book I. Chapter II, Sec. 5, 15BC.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• There will be natural propriety in using an eastern light for bedrooms and libraries, a western light in winter for baths and winter apartments, and a northern light for picture galleries and other places in which a steady light is needed; for that quarter of the sky grows neither light nor dark with the course of the sun, but remains steady and unshifting all day long.

  Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

  Dark, Winter, Light

  "De architectura". Book by Vitruvius. Book I, Chapter II, Section 7,

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• One moment it's a cathedral, at another time there is no words to describe it when it ceases, for short periods of time, to have any regard for the proprieties that constitute not only Parliament, but its tradition. I've seen it in all its greatness. I have inwardly wept over it when it is degraded.

  John Diefenbaker

  Greatness, Tradition, Moments

  18 Copy quote

• We are disgusted by gossip; yet it is of importance to keep the angels in their proprieties.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Angel, Gossip, Disgusted

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.403

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Everything we did was done in form and with propriety, and the result of our proceedings is the document [the Quebec Resolutions] that has been submitted to the imperial government as well as to this house and which we speak of here as a treaty. And that there may be no doubt about our position in regard to that document we say, question it you may, reject it you may, or accept it you may, but alter it you may not.

  Thomas D'Arcy McGee

  Government, House, Doubt

  Legislative Assembly, February 9, 1865.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• The love of action is a principle of a much stronger and more doubtful nature. It often leads to anger, to ambition, and to revenge; but when it is guided by the sense of propriety and benevolence, it becomes the parent of every virtue, and, if those virtues are accompanied with equal abilities, a family, a state, or an empire may be indebted for their safety and prosperity to the undaunted courage of a single man.

  Edward Gibbon

  Revenge, Ambition, Men

  Edward Gibbon (1846). “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.488

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• The happy man . . . will be always or at least most often employed in doing and contemplating the things that are in conformity with virtue. And he will bear changes of fortunes most nobly, and with perfect propriety in every way.

  Aristotle

  Happiness, Men, Perfect

  Aristotle (1996). “The Nicomachean Ethics”, p.19, Wordsworth Editions

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• The definition of good prose is proper words in their proper places; of good verse, the most proper words in their proper places.The propriety is in either case relative. The words in prose ought to express the intended meaning, and no more; if they attract attention to themselves, it is, in general, a fault.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Poetry, Attention, Definitions

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1835). “Specimens of the Table Talk of the Late Samuel Taylor Coleridge: In Two Volumes”, p.214

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Let the girl be thoroughly developed in body and soul, not modeled, like a piece of clay, after some artificial specimen of humanity, with a body like some plate in Godey's book of fashion, and a mind after the type of Father Gregory's pattern daughters, loaded down with the traditions, proprieties, and sentimentalities of generations of silly mothers and grandmothers, but left free to be, to grow, to feel, to think, to act. Development is one thing, that system of cramping, restraining, torturing, perverting, and mystifying, called education, is quite another.

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton

  Girl, Mother, Daughter

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan Brownell Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Ida Husted Harper (1889). “History of woman suffrage”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In San Francisco, vulgarity, "bad taste," ostentation are regarded as a kind of alien blight, an invasion or encroachment from outside. In Los Angeles, there is so much money and power connected with ostentation that is no longer ludicrous: it commands a kind of respect. For if the mighty behave like this, then quiet good taste means that you can't afford the conspicuous expenditures, and you become a little ashamed of your modesty and propriety.

  Pauline Kael

  Mean, San Francisco, Invasion

  pauline kael (1965). “i lost it at the movies”

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• The way in which modern German poetry follows theories reminds me of pupils who, scolded by their teacher for their insubordination, justify themselves by saying that they invented new rules of propriety according to which they are quite well- behaved.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Teacher, Poetry, Way

  13 Copy quote

• Even the street, the sunshine, the very air had a special Sunday quality. We walked differently on Sundays, with greater propriety and stateliness. Greetings were more formal, more subdued, voices more meticulously polite. Everything was so smooth, bland, polished. And genuinely so, because this was Sunday. In church the rustling and the stillness were alike pervaded with the knowledge that all was for the best. Propriety ruled the universe. God was in His Heaven, and we were in our Sunday clothes.

  Rose Wilder Lane

  Sunshine, Sunday, Air

  "Old Home Town". Book by Rose Wilder Lane, 1935.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• All right, so there he is, our representative to the world, Mr. Western Civilization, in codpiece and pantyhose up there on the boards, firing away at the rapt groundlings with his blank verses, not less of a word-slinger and spellbinder than the Bard himself and therefore not to be considered too curiously on such matters as relevance, coherence, consistency, propriety, sanity, common decency.

  Marvin Mudrick

  Civilization, Common Decency, Consistency

  6 Copy quote

• It has been so written, for the most part, that the times it describes are with remarkable propriety called dark ages. They are dark, as one has observed, because we are so in the dark about them.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Dark, History, Age

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.125, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Avant-garde art jousts with propriety, but takes care never to unseat it.

  Mason Cooley

  Art, Avant Garde, Care

  4 Copy quote

• Architecture depends on Order, Arrangement, Eurythmy, Symmetry , Propriety , and Economy.

  Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

  Order, Architecture, Economy

  "De architectura". Book by Vitruvius. Book I, Chapter II: "The Fundamental Principles of Architecture", Section 1,

  66 Copy quote

  Show source

• For proverbs are the pith, the proprieties, the proofs, the purities, the elegancies, as the commonest so the commendablest phrases of a language. To use them is a grace, to understand them a good.

  John Florio

  Grace, Phrases, Use

  4 Copy quote

• Genius disregards the boundaries of propriety. Genius is permitted to shout if shouting is productive.

  Lois Lowry

  Genius, Boundaries, Shouting

  Lois Lowry (1977). “A Summer to Die”, p.98, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The same rule that teaches the propriety of a partition between the various branches of power, teaches us likewise that this partition ought to be so contrived as to render the one independent of the other.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Independent, Branches, Separation

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay, Henry Barton Dawson (1864). “The Fœderalist: A Collection of Essays, Written in Favor of the New Constitution, as Agreed Upon by the Fœderal Convention, September 17, 1787. Reprinted from the Original Text. With an Historical Introduction and Notes”, p.499, New York : C. Scribner ; London : Sampson Low

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• In a certain sense, and to a certain extent, he [the president] is the representative of the people. He is elected by them, as well as congress is. But can he, in the nature [of] things, know the wants of the people, as well as three hundred other men, coming from all the various localities of the nation? If so, where is the propriety of having a congress?

  Abraham Lincoln

  Nature, Men, People

  Abraham Lincoln (1989). “Abraham Lincoln: Speeches & Writings Part 1: 1832-1858: Library of America #45”, p.208, Library of America

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Money is, with propriety, considered as the vital principle of the body politic; as that which sustains its life and motion, and enables it to perform its most essential functions.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Principles, Essentials, Body

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Quentin P. Taylor, John Jay (1998). “The Essential Federalist: A New Reading of the Federalist Papers”, p.159, Rowman & Littlefield

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• A prude is a person who thinks that his own rules of propriety are natural laws.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Thinking, Law, Prudes

  "Stranger in a Strange Land". Book by Robert A. Heinlein, June 1, 1961.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Once the demands of necessity and propriety have been met, the rest that one owns belongs to the poor.

  Pope Leo XIII

  Demand, Poor, Mets

  74 Copy quote

• Propriety of manners, and consideration for others, are the two main characteristics of a gentleman.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Two, Gentleman, Consideration

  13 Copy quote