Civilised Quotes - Page 4

• Men play at tragedy because they do not believe in the reality of the tragedy which is actually being staged in the civilised world

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Believe, Men, Reality

  Jose Ortega Y Gasset (1960). “the Revolt of the Masses”

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• The artichoke above all is the vegetable expression of civilised living, of the long view, of increasing delight by anticipation and crescendo. No wonder it was once regarded as an aphrodisiac. It had no place in the troll's world of instant gratification. It makes no appeal to the meat-and-two-veg mentality.

  Jane Grigson

  Views, Expression, Vegetables

  Jane Grigson (2007). “Jane Grigson's Vegetable Book”, p.15, U of Nebraska Press

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• It is so far from being natural for a man and woman to live in a state of marriage, that we find all the motives which they have for remaining in that connection, and the restraints which civilised society imposes to prevent separation, are hardly sufficient to keep them together.

  Samuel Johnson

  Marriage, Men, Together

  Quoted in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) (entry for 31 Mar. 1772)

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• I was irrevocably betrothed to laughter, the sound of which has always seemed to me the most civilised music in the world.

  Peter Ustinov

  Happiness, Music, Laughter

  Dear Me (1977) ch. 3

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• If no set of moral ideas were truer or better than any other, there would be no sense in preferring civilised morality to savage morality.

  C. S. Lewis

  Ideas, Savages, Would Be

  C. S. Lewis (2009). “Mere Christianity”, p.13, Harper Collins

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• War was a hellish, horrible hideous thing - too horrible and hideous to happen in the twentieth century between civilised nations.

  Lucy Maud Montgomery

  War, Century, Horrible

  Lucy Maud Montgomery (2015). “Rilla of Ingleside”, p.21, Booklassic

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• A country is considered the more civilised the more the wisdom and efficiency of its laws hinder a weak man from becoming too weak and a powerful one too powerful.

  Primo Levi

  Country, Powerful, Men

  "If This Is a Man". Book by Primo Levi, 1947.

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• I would like you to teach [the orcs] civilised behaviour," said Ladyship coldly. He appeared to consider this. "Yes of course, I think that would be quite possible," he said. "And who would you send to teach the humans?

  Terry Pratchett

  Thinking, Behaviour, Orcs

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• It is the law of love that rules mankind. Had violence, i.e. hate, rules us we would have become extinct long ago. And yet, the tragedy of it is that the so-called civilised men and nations conduct themselves as if the basis of society was violence.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Love, Hate, Men

  Mahatma Gandhi, Thomas Merton (2007). “Gandhi on Non-Violence”, p.59, New Directions Publishing

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• Globalisation can provide the route for the development of a sustainable and prosperous planetary society in the next generation, provided that globalisation itself becomes more civilised than it is right now.

  Peter Ellyard

  Next, Generations, Development

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• I think you will agree the sign of a civilised society is a regular dining schedule.

  Philippa Ballantine

  Thinking, Dining, Schedules

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• I suffered most inconvenience from the difficulty of getting news from the civilised world down river, from the irregularity of receipt of letters, parcels of books and periodicals, and towards the latter part of my residence from ill health arising from bad and insufficient food.

  Henry Walter Bates

  Book, Rivers, Ill Health

  Henry Walter Bates (1873). “The Naturalist on the River Amazons: A Record of Adventures, Habits of Animals, Sketches of Brazilian and Indian Life, and Aspects of Nature Under the Equator, During Eleven Years of Travel”, p.253

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• The civilised cultures are the most cruel. It's the same with education - often it breeds sadistic forms of cruelty.

  Nellie McKay

  Culture, Sadistic, Form

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• A wasteland is a confrontation to a man of stature: an empty place, a gauntlet thrown down in challenge and defiance. A place like that cries out to be conquered and civilised.

  John C. Wright

  Men, Challenges, Empty Places

  John C. Wright (2012). “The Hermetic Millennia”, p.116, Macmillan

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• The vigour of civilised societies is preserved by the widespread sense that high aims are worth while. Vigorous societies harbour a certain extravagance of objectives, so that men wander beyond the safe provision of personal gratifications. All strong interests easily become impersonal, the love of a good job well done. There is a sense of harmony about such an accomplishment, the Peace brought by something worth while. Such personal gratification arises from aim beyond personality.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Strong, Jobs, Men

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• Just as the savage must wrestle with nature to satisfy his wants, to maintain and reproduce life, so must civilised man, and he must do so in all social formations and under all possible modes of production.

  Karl Marx

  Men, People, Savages

  Karl Marx (1999). “Capital: An Abridged Edition”, p.738, OUP Oxford

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• Society needs both justice and compassion, a head and a heart, if it is to be civilised.

  Julian Baggini

  Heart, Compassion, Justice

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• Going to a restaurant is one of my keenest pleasures. Meeting someplace with old and new friends, ordering wine, eating food, surrounded by strangers, I think is the core of what it means to live a civilised life.

  Adam Gopnik

  Wine, Mean, Thinking

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• Civilised adults do not take apple juice with dinner.

  Fran Lebowitz

  Food, Apples, Adults

  Fran Lebowitz (2011). “The Fran Lebowitz Reader”, p.128, Vintage

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• I think the police are a major part of the glue that holds civilised life together. They're not highly paid.

  Peter James

  Thinking, Police, Together

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• Globally, as the nation-state becomes increasingly less meaningful - a provider of positive goods and more and more just an army and some domestic enforcement - people are withdrawing to shape and support more localised forms of organisation and power. To the extent that it's part of that civilised and localising world, the same is true of the U.S.

  Rebecca Solnit

  Meaningful, Army, People

  "The growth of local power is a bright spot in seven bleak years of Bush" by Rebecca Solnit, www.theguardian.com. December 28, 2007.

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• England and all civilised nations stand in deadly peril of not having enough to eat. As mouths multiply, food resources dwindle. Land is a limited quantity, and the land that will grow wheat is absolutely dependent on difficult and capricious natural phenomena... I hope to point a way out of the colossal dilemma. It is the chemist who must come to the rescue of the threatened communities. It is through the laboratory that starvation may ultimately be turned into plenty... The fixation of atmospheric nitrogen is one of the great discoveries, awaiting the genius of chemists.

  William Crookes

  Food, Science, Discovery

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• The worth of men consists in their liability to persuasion. They can persuade and can be persuaded by the disclosure of alternatives, the better and the worse. Civilization is the maintenance of social order, by its own inherent persuasiveness as embodying the nobler alternative. The recourse to force, however, unavoidable, is a disclosure of the failure of civilization, either in the general society or in a remnant of individuals. Thus in a live civilization there is always an element of unrest.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Mean, Adventure, Men

  "Adventures of Ideas".

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• It is the habitual carriage of the umbrella that is the stamp of Respectability. Robinson Crusoe was rather a moralist than a pietist, and his leaf-umbrella is as fine an example of the civilised mind striving to express itself under adverse circumstances as we have ever met with.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Civilization, Mind, Example

  Robert Louis Stevenson (1908). “Robert Louis Stevenson”

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• This generation may either be the last to exist in any semblance of a civilised world or that it will be the first to have the vision, the bearing and the greatness to say, 'I will have nothing to do with this destruction of life, I will play no part in this devastation of the land, I am determined to live and work for peaceful construction for I am morally responsible for the world of today and the generations of tomorrow.'

  Richard St. Barbe Baker

  Life, Greatness, Land

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