Society Quotes - Page 33

• Tis a dainty thing to command, though 'twere but a flock of sheep.

  Miguel de Cervantes

  Leadership, Sheep, Literature

  Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Pierre Antoine Motteux (1749). “The history of the renowned don Quixote de la Mancha. Tr. by several hands: and publ. by mr. Motteux. Ozell”, p.55

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• America does to me what I knew it would do: it just bumps me. The people charge at you like trucks coming down on you -- no awareness. But one tries to dodge aside in time. Bump! bump! go the trucks. And that is human contact.

  D. H. Lawrence

  America, People, Trying

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• On the whole, the great success of marriage in the States is due partly to the fact that no American man is ever idle, and partly to the fact that no American wife is considered responsible for the quality of her husband's dinners.

  Oscar Wilde

  Marriage, Husband, Men

  Oscar Wilde (1969). “The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde”, p.62, University of Chicago Press

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• They flaunt their conjugal felicity in one's face, as if it were the most fascinating of sins.

  Oscar Wilde

  Marriage, Faces, Sin

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.83, GENERAL PRESS

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• Only people who look dull ever get into the House of Commons, and only people who are dull ever succeed there.

  Oscar Wilde

  People, House, Looks

  Oscar Wilde (1997). “Collected Works of Oscar Wilde: The Plays, the Poems, the Stories and the Essays Including De Profundis”, p.650, Wordsworth Editions

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• He thinks like a Tory, and talks like a Radical, and that's so important nowadays.

  Oscar Wilde

  Thinking, Important, Politics

  Oscar Wilde (2008). “The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays: Lady Windermere's Fan; Salome; A Woman of No Importance; An Ideal Husband; The Importance of Being Earnest”, p.26, OUP Oxford

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• Society soon grows used to any state of things which is imposed upon it without explanation.

  Edith Wharton

  Used, States, Explanation

  Edith Wharton (2008). “Old New York”, p.227, Simon and Schuster

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• If mankind had wished for what is right, they might have had it long ago.

  William Hazlitt

  Peace, Long Ago, Might

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1924, Delphi Classics

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• Accidents will occur in the best-regulated families; and in families not regulated by that pervading influence which sanctifies while it enhances... in short, by the influence of Woman, in the lofty character of Wife, they may be expected with confidence, and must be borne with philosophy.

  Charles Dickens

  Family, Philosophy, Character

  Charles Dickens (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Charles Dickens (Illustrated)”, p.4671, Delphi Classics

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• A man in public life expects to be sneered at -- it is the fault of his elevated situation, and not of himself.

  Charles Dickens

  Men, Faults, Situation

  "The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby". Book by Charles Dickens, Ch. 14, 1838 - 1839.

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• Quarrels are the dowry which married folk bring one another.

  Ovid

  Marriage, Dowry, Married

  Ovid (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ovid (Illustrated)”, p.316, Delphi Classics

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• A man perfects himself by working. Foul jungles are cleared away, fair seed-fields rise instead, and stately cities; and with the man himself first ceases to be a jungle, and foul unwholesome desert thereby. The man is now a man.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Work, Men, Cities

  Thomas Carlyle (2016). “Past and Present: The Historian”, p.189, 北戴河出版

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• There is no comparing the brutality and cynicism of today's pop culture with that of forty years ago: from High Noon to Robocop is a long descent.

  Charles Krauthammer

  Years, Long, Brutality

  International Herald Tribune, October 31, 1990.

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• Two things in America are astonishing: the changeableness of most human behavior and the strange stability of certain principles. Men are constantly on the move, but the spirit of humanity seems almost unmoved.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Moving, Men, Two

  Alexis de Tocqueville (2003). “Democracy in America”, p.708, Regnery Publishing

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• A decrepit society shuns humor as a decrepit individual shuns drafts.

  Malcolm Muggeridge

  Individual, Decrepit

  Malcolm Muggeridge (1966). “The Most of Malcolm Muggeridge”

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• Societies are healthiest when their radius of trust is broad and when people feel they can influence their own fate.

  James Fallows

  Fate, People, Influence

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• Successful societies-those which progress economically and politically and can control the terms on which they deal with the outside world-succeed because they have found ways to match individual self-interest to the collective good.

  James Fallows

  Successful, Self, Progress

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• So far as I have myself observed, the distinctive character of a child is to live always in the tangible present.

  John Ruskin

  Children, Character, Tangible

  "Aratra Pentelici: Six Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture, Given Before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870".

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• In spite of all our speeding it's still the style to be late.

  Kin Hubbard

  Style, Late, Spite

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• What they sell to the masses are the chains you must break if you are ever to be in control of your life.

  Michael Dolan

  Control Of Your Life, Break, Chains

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• It isn't so much that hard times are coming; the change observed is mostly soft times going.

  Groucho Marx

  Hard Times, Prosperity, Hard

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• I believe that one of the great problems for us as individuals is the depression and the tension resulting from existence in a world which is increasingly less pleasing to the eye.

  Lady Bird Johnson

  Believe, Eye, World

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• If some people got their rights they would complain of being deprived of their wrongs.

  Oliver Herford

  Rights, People, Complaining

  Oliver Herford, Addison Mizner (1907). “The Cynic's Calendar of Revised Wisdom...”

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• People had been working for so many years to make the world a safe organized place. Nobody realized how boring it would become.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Years, People, World

  Chuck Palahniuk (2001). “Choke: A Novel”, Anchor Books

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• There is no appeal from the ways of the world, which must continue on its own terms or take us all down with it into chaos and confusion.

  Mark Van Doren

  Confusion, World, Way

  Mark Van Doren (1961). “The Happy Critic and Other Essays”

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