Propriety Quotes - Page 6

• Anyone must be mainly ignorant or thoughtless, who is surprised at everything he sees; or wonderfully conceited who expects everything to conform to his standard of propriety.

  William Hazlitt

  Character, Conceited, Ignorant

  William Hazlitt (1841). “Lectures on the English Comic Writers. By William Hazlitt. Third edition. Edited by his son [William Hazlitt the Younger].”, p.49

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• The censor is always quick to justify his function in terms that are protective of society. But the First Amendment, written in terms that are absolute, deprives the States of any power to pass on the value, the propriety, or the morality of a particular expression.

  William O. Douglas

  Expression, Freedom Of Speech, Firsts

  "Memoirs v. Massachusetts, 383 U.S. 413". U.S. Supreme Court case, supreme.justia.com. March 21, 1966.

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• It is almost impossible to translate verbally and well at the same time; for the Latin (a most severe and compendious language) often expresses that in one word which either the barbarity or the narrowness of modern tongues cannot supply in more. ...But since every language is so full of its own proprieties that what is beautiful in one is often barbarous, nay, sometimes nonsense, in another, it would be unreasonable to limit a translator to the narrow compass of his author's words; it is enough if he choose out some expression which does not vitiate the sense.

  John Dryden

  Beautiful, Latin, Expression

  "William Gilbert of Colchester". Book by P. Fleury Mottelay, 1893.

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• I do not comprehend those rules of conduct that make us so content with self and so cold to those we love. I detest prudence, I even hate (suffer me to say so) those duties of friendship which substitute propriety for interest, and circumspection for feeling. How shall I say it? I love the abandonment to impulse, I act from impulse only, and I love to madness that others do the same by me.

  Jeanne Julie Eleonore de Lespinasse

  Hate, Self, Feelings

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• But although we have noticed the ark as being the first ship, we cannot with propriety place it in the front of the history of navigation. After the flood the ark seems to have been soon forgotten, or at least imperfectly remembered, and men reverted to their little canoes and clumsy boats, which sufficed for all their limited wants. It was not until about a thousand years later in the world

  R. M. Ballantyne

  Men, Years, Sailing

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• Proportion and propriety are among the best secrets of domestic wisdom; and there is no surer test of integrity than a well-proportioned expenditure.

  Hannah More

  Integrity, Secret, Tests

  Hannah More (1838). “Cœlebs in Search of a Wife. Comprehending observations on domestic habits and manners, religion and morals ... With a memoir of the author”, p.253

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• There's this line between propriety and how we really speak and how we really think. And I'm just trying to have fun with that stuff.

  Paul Beatty

  Fun, Thinking, Trying

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• A prig always finds a last refuge in responsibility.

  Jean Cocteau

  Responsibility, Lasts, Refuge

  Jean Cocteau (1967). “The Infernal Machine: And Other Plays”, p.154, New Directions Publishing

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• Any woman may act the part of a coquette successfully who has the reputation without the scruples of modesty. If a woman passes the bounds of propriety for our sakes, and throws herself unblushingly at our heads, we conclude it is either from a sudden and violent liking, or from extraordinary merit on our parts, either of which is enough to turn any man's head who has a single spark of gallantry or vanity in his composition.

  William Hazlitt

  Women, Vanity, Coquette

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• In many parts of the world-including Polynesia, north Africa & the Middle East-public dancing that focused on a physically linked couple would have been unthinkable, a violation of communal propriety.

  Gerald Jonas

  Dance, Couple, Dancing

  Gerald Jonas (1998). “Dancing: The Pleasure, Power, and Art of Movement”, Turtleback Books

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• Androgyny suggests a spirit of reconciliation between the sexes; it suggests, further, a full range of experience…it suggests a spectrum upon which human beings choose their places without regard to propriety or custom.

  Carolyn Heilbrun

  Sex, Spirit, Range

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• For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling in the nation must be quickened, the conscience of the nation must be roused, the propriety of the nation must be startled, the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed: and its crimes against God and man must be denounced.

  Frederick Douglass

  Men, Fire, Light

  Speech, Rochester, N.Y., 5 July 1852

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• I've got confidence that most people in America still have a decent sense of manners, propriety, morality.

  Rush Limbaugh

  America, People, Morality

  Source: www.rushlimbaugh.com

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• It is not every man that can afford to wear a shabby coat; and worldly wisdom dictates to her disciples the propriety of dressing somewhat beyond their means, but of living somewhat within them,--for every one, sees how we dress, but none see how we live, except we choose to let them. But the truly great are, by universal suffrage, exempted from these trammels, an may live or dress as they please.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Mean, Men, Dresses

  Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.121

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• There are as many kinds of modesty as there are races. To the English woman it is a duty; to the French woman a propriety.

  Hippolyte Taine

  Race, French Woman, Modesty

  Hippolyte Taine (1875). “Notes on Paris”, p.317

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• Let a man be stimulated by poetry, established by the rules of propriety, and perfected by music.

  Confucius

  Men

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• [The American public demands] a sense of legitimacy from and in the presidency. There is more to this than dignity, more than propriety. The president is expected to personify our betterness in an inspiring way, to express in what he does and is, not just what he says, a moral idealism which, in much of the public mind, is the very opposite of politics.

  James David Barber

  Opposites, Mind, President

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• Just supposing for the sake of the argument that there is a being of such a kind as that He may with any propriety be called "God", it does seem antecedently very improbable that weak and limited creatures of a day, such as we are, should discover Him by our own efforts.... who could be discovered in that way would hardly be worth discovering. I think we ought to stick to that principle rather firmly. I think we ought to be rather sure that we cannot know God unless God has been pleased to reveal Himself to us.

  John Gresham Machen

  Thinking, Effort, May

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• Manners or etiquette ('accessibility, affability, politeness, refinement, propriety, courtesy, and ingratiating and captivating behavior') call for no large measure of moral determination and cannot, therefore, be reckoned as virtues. Even though manners are no virtues, they are a means of developing virtue.... The more we refine the crude elements in our nature, the more we improve our humanity and the more capable it grows of feeling the driving force of virtuous principles.

  Immanuel Kant

  Determination, Communication, Mean

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• Tis impossible to judge with much Præcision of the true Motives and Qualities of human Actions, or of the Propriety of Rules contrived to govern them, without considering with like Attention, all the Passions, Appetites, Affections in Nature from which they flow. An intimate Knowledge therefore of the intellectual and moral World is the sole foundation on which a stable structure of Knowledge can be erected.

  John Adams

  Passion, Judging, Intellectual

  John Adams, Charles Francis Adams (1850). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: Diary, with passages from an autobiography. Notes of debates in the Continental Congress, in 1775 and 1776. Autobiography”, p.79

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• If the people are governed by laws and punishment is used to maintain order, they will try to avoid the punishment but have no sense of shame. If they are governed by virtue and rules of propriety are used to maintain order, they will have a sense of shame and will become good as well.

  Confucius

  Order, Law, Punishment

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• The important consequences to the American States from this Declaration of Independence, considered as the ground and foundation of a future government, naturally suggest the propriety of proclaiming it in such a manner as that the people may be universally informed of it.

  John Hancock

  Government, People, Independence

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• The superior man, extensively studying all learning, and keeping himself under the restraint of the rules of propriety, may thus likewise not overstep what is right.

  Confucius

  Men, May, Study

  Confucius (2013). “Confucian Analects, The Great Learning & The Doctrine of the Mean”, p.193, Courier Corporation

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• In part of Lord Kames' Elements of Criticism, he says that "music improves the relish of a banquet." That I deny,--any more than painting might do. They may both be additional pleasures, as well as conversation is, but are perfectly distinct notices; and cannot, with the least propriety, be said to mix or blend with the repast, as none of them serve to raise the flavor of the wine, the sauce, the meat, or help to quicken appetite. But music and painting both add a spirit to devotion, and elevate the ardor.

  Laurence Sterne

  Music, Wine, Criticism

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• Fashionable dances as now carried on are revolting to every feeling of delicacy and propriety and are fraught with the greatest danger to millions.

  Horace Bushnell

  Dancing, Feelings, Delicacy

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