Conformity Quotes - Page 17

• With the spread of conformity and image-driven superficiality, the allure of an individuated woman in full possession of herself and her powers will prove irresistible. We were born for plenitude and inner fulfillment.

  Betsy Prioleau

  Strong Women, Independent, Driven

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• Our expense is almost all for conformity. It is for cake that we run in debt; 'tis not the intellect, not the heart, not beauty, not worship, that costs so much.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Running, Heart, Cake

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1851). “Essays, lectures and orations”, p.562

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• Endeavor to be always patient of the faults and imperfections of others; for thou hast many faults and imperfections of thine own that require forbearance. If thou art not able to make thyself that which thou wishest, how canst thou expect to mold another in conformity to thy will?

  Thomas a Kempis

  Art, Imperfection, Mold

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• We show wisdom by a decent conformity to social etiquette; it is excess of neatness or display that creates dandyism in men, and coquetry in women.

  Robert Adam

  Men, Excess, Coquetry

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• You either go along with the system - conform to what is expected to be a hit - or you have very tough going

  Budd Schulberg

  Tough, Conform, Expected

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• Legalism insists on conformity to manmade religious rules and requirements, which are often unspoken but are nevertheless very real... There are far too many instances within Christendom where our traditions and rules are, in practice, more important than God's commands.

  Jerry Bridges

  Religious, Real, Practice

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• None can know their election but by their conformity to the image of Christ; for all that are chosen are chosen to sanctification.

  Matthew Henry

  Election, Christ, Chosen

  "Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible: Volume VI-I - Acts - Romans".

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• All true obedience comes from the heart. It was heart work with Christ. And if we consent, He will so identify Himself with our thoughts and aims, so blend our hearts and minds into conformity to His will, that when obeying Him we shall be but carrying out our own impulses. The will, refined and sanctified, will find its highest delight in doing His service. When we know God as it is our privilege to know Him, our life will be a life of continual obedience. Through an appreciation of the character of Christ, through communion with God, sin will become hateful to us.

  Ellen G. White

  Appreciation, Heart, Character

  Ellen G. White (2015). “The Complete Conflict of the Ages”, p.2240, Simon and Schuster

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• Everything in life that deviates from the straight and, so to speak, normal line, makes people first curious and then indignant.

  Stefan Zweig

  People, Lines, Firsts

  "Beware of Pity". Book by Stefan Zweig, 1939.

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• True majorities, in a TV-dominated and anti-intellectual age, may need sound bites and flashing lights and I am not against supplying such lures if they draw children into even a transient concern with science. But every classroom has one [Oliver] Sacks , one [Eric] Korn, or one [Jonathan] Miller , usually a lonely child with a passionate curiosity about nature, and a zeal that overcomes pressures for conformity. Do not the one in fifty deserve their institutions as well magic places, like cabinet museums, that can spark the rare flames of genius?

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Lonely, Children, Museums

  Stephen Jay Gould (1995). “Dinosaur in a haystack: reflections in natural history”, Harmony

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• When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other. Originality is deliberate and forced, and partakes of the nature of a protest. A society which gives unlimited freedom to the individual, more often than not attains a disconcerting sameness.

  Eric Hoffer

  People, Giving, Originality

  'Passionate State of Mind' (1955) p. 21

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• The only distinction that democracies reward is a high degree of conformity.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Democracy, Degrees, Rewards

  Ambrose Bierce (2013). “Epigrams by Ambrose Bierce”, p.10, e-artnow

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• In a Society in which there is no law, and in theory no compulsion, the only arbiter of behaviour is public opinion. But public opinion, because of the tremendous urge to conformity in gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any system of law. When human beings are governed by "thou shalt not", the individual can practise a certain amount of eccentricity: when they are supposedly governed by "love" or "reason", he is under continuous pressure to make him behave and think in exactly the same way as everyone else.

  George Orwell

  Thinking, Animal, Law

  George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.305, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• To deny one's self, to take up the cross, denotes something immeasurably grander than self-imposed penance or rigid conformity to a Divine statute. It is the surrender of self to an ennobling work, an absolute subordination of personal advantages and of personal pleasures for the sake of truth and the welfare of others, and a willing acceptance of every disability which their interests may entail.

  George C. Lorimer

  Acceptance, Self, May

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, (p. 169), 1895.

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• It is not a certain conformity of manners that the painting of Van Gogh attacks, but rather the conformity of institutions themselves. And even external nature, with her climates, her tides, and her equinoctial storms, cannot, after Van Gogh's stay upon earth, maintain the same gravitation.

  Antonin Artaud

  Storm, Climate, Earth

  Antonin Artaud, Susan Sontag (1976). “Antonin Artaud, Selected Writings”, p.484, Univ of California Press

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• He who rides and keeps the beaten track studies the fences chiefly.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Travel, Track, Study

  Henry David Thoreau (1873). “The Maine Woods”, p.87

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• If some of the greats had followed the traditional ways we would be missing so much fine art.

  Gene Black

  Art, Missing, Would Be

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• Yourself a newborn bard of the Holy Ghost, cast behind you all conformity, and acquaint men at first hand with Deity.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Hands, Firsts

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1838). “An Address Delivered Before the Senior Class in Divinity College, Cambridge, Sunday Evening, 15 July, 1838”, p.27

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• I find nothing healthful or exalting in the smooth conventions of society. I do not like the close air of saloons. I begin to suspect myself to be a prisoner, though treated with all this courtesy and luxury. I pay a destructive tax in my conformity.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Air, Luxury, Pay

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.280, Harvard University Press

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• We pray to be conventional. But the wary Heaven takes care you shall not be, if there is anything good in you. Dante was very badcompany, and was never invited to dinner.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Heaven, Care, Dinner

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.282, Penguin

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• All men are partially buried in the grave of custom, and of some we see only the crown of the head above ground. Better are the physically dead, for they more lively rot. Even virtue is no longer such if it be stagnant. A man's life should be constantly as fresh as this river. It should be the same channel, but a new water every instant.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Rivers, Water

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.93, Xist Publishing

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• Art is not a mirror but an icon. It takes the chaos in which we live and shows us structure and pattern, not the structure of conformity which imprisons but the structure which liberates,
  sets us free to become growing, mature human beings.

  Madeleine L'Engle

  Art, Mirrors, Icons

  Madeleine L'Engle (2016). “A Circle of Quiet”, p.74, Open Road Media

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• When we receive with an entire and perfect resignation the afflictions which God sends us they become for us favors and benefits; because conformity to the will of God is a gain far superior to all temporal advantages.

  Vincent de Paul

  Religious, Perfect, Favors

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• The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. Act singly, and what you have already done singly will justify you now. Greatness appeals to the future.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Distance, Greatness, Average

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.266, Library of America

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• Religion, as distinguished from modern paganism, implies a life in conformity with nature. It may be observed that the natural life and the supernatural life have a conformity to each other which neither has with the mechanistic life...A wrong attitude towards nature implies, somewhere, a wrong attitude towards God...[We should] struggle to recover the sense of relation to nature and to God.

  T. S. Eliot

  Attitude, Struggle, May

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