Decorum Quotes - Page 3

• Liberty ... was a two-headed boon. There was first, the liberty of the people as a whole to determine the forms of their own government, to levy their own taxes, and to make their own laws.... There was second, the liberty of the individual man to live his own life, within the limits of decency and decorum, as he pleased -- freedom from the despotism of the majority.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Law, Two

  Lapham's Quarterly, Alexander Hamilton, Ezra Pound, Richard Hofstadter, Thomas Jefferson (2016). “Alexander Hamilton: Lapham's Quarterly - Special Issue”, p.124, Pronoun

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• Liberty plucks justice by the nose; The baby beats the nurse, and quite athwart Goes all decorum.

  William Shakespeare

  Baby, Nurse, Justice

  'Measure for Measure' (1604) act 1, sc. 3, l. 23

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• I had only to remember that centuries before, men fell in battle for the daughter of Troy, that passions carried greater weight than decorum. It took so little to prove that human life and property are devastatingly temporary. All she had to do was lie down for a prince. They burned the city to the ground.

  Brenna Yovanoff

  Daughter, Lying, Passion

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• There's an honesty to the wolf world that is liberating. There's no diplomacy, no decorum. You tell your enemy you hate him; you show your admiration by confessing the truth. That directness doesn't work with humans, who are masters of subterfuge. Does this dress make me look fat? Do you really love me? Did you miss me? When a person asks this, she doesn't want to know the real answer. She wants you to lie to her. After two years of living with wolves, I had forgotten how many lies it takes to build a relationship.

  Jodi Picoult

  Honesty, Real, Lying

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• I do have a very conscious desire not to be academic. I'm antiacademic. I hate jargon. I hate that sort of pretension. I am a person who [commits] breaches of decorum - not in private life, but in my work. They are part of my mode of operation. That kind of playfulness is part of my nature in general. The paradox that, in a way, to take something very seriously, you can't always be serious about it.

  William H. Gass

  Hate, Desire, Jargon

  Interview with Stephen Schenkenberg, www.believermag.com. November, 2005.

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• For a moment, I was captivated as I studied them side by side. My mother: the perfect picture of guardian excellence and decorum. My father: always capable of achieving his goals, no matter how twisted the means. Uneasily, I began to understand how I’d inherited my bizarre personality.

  Richelle Mead

  Mother, Father, Mean

  Richelle Mead (2010). “Last Sacrifice: A Vampire Academy Novel”, p.123, Penguin

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• [Barack] Obama's executive amnesty has been frozen via a stay by a judge on the appellate court. You remember, this is the judge that discovered the Defense Department lawyers were lying to him in open court, and instead of actually sanctioning them, he demanded that they go to a new ethics course to learn the proper behavior and decorum and the law in court, that you just can't lie with impunity to a judge.

  Rush Limbaugh

  Lying, Law, Judging

  Source: www.rushlimbaugh.com

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• Unsuccessful candidates for the Presidency should be quietly hanged as a matter of public sanitation and decorum.

  H. L. Mencken

  Matter, Should, Unsuccessful

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• I do think of my reader, or listener, really, more often, if I give a lecture, for example, and I know that I'm talking to these people; I enjoy sort of preening them a bit. But it's a matter of decorum, basically.

  William H. Gass

  Thinking, Talking, People

  The Believer interview, www.believermag.com. November 2005.

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• Drinking can not be sacramentalised except in religions which set no store on decorum. The worship of Dionysos or the Celtic god of beer was a loud and disorderly affair.

  Aldous Huxley

  Drinking, Beer, Worship

  Aldous Huxley (2002). “Complete Essays: 1939-1956”, Ivan R Dee

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• There is an innate decorum in man, and it is not fair to thrust Truth upon people when they don't expect it. Only the very generous are ready for Truth impromptu.

  Christopher Morley

  Truth, Men, People

  CHRISTOPHER MORLEY (1923). “INWARD HO!”

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• The British have their own conception of what constitutes the typical American. He must have a flavor of the Wild West about him. He must do spectacular things. He must not be punctilious about dignity, decorum and other refinements characteristic of the real British gentleman. The Yankee pictured by the Briton must be a bustler. If he is occasionally flagrantly indiscreet in speech and action, then he is so much more surely stamped the genuine article. The most typical American the British ever set their eyes on was, in their judgment, Theodore Roosevelt.

  B. C. Forbes

  Real, Eye, America

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• Should you be unfortunate enough to have vices, you may, to a certain degree, even dignify them by a strict observance of decorum;at least they will lose something of their natural turpitude.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Vices, Degrees, May

  Lord Chesterfield (1998). “Lord Chesterfield's Letters”, p.381, Oxford Paperbacks

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• Of all modern notions, the worst is this: that domesticity is dull. Inside the home, they say, is dead decorum and routine; outside is adventure and variety. But the truth is that the home is the only place of liberty, the only spot on earth where a man can alter arrangements suddenly, make an experiment or indulge in a whim. The home is not the one tame place in a world of adventure; it is the one wild place in a world of rules and set tasks.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Home, Adventure, Men

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• Hope's Folly is a rapid-fire romp through futuristic political intrigue and high-risk passion The tug of war between decorum and passion keeps the romantic intrigue smoldering. With Hope's Folly, Linnea Sinclair builds on a secure reputation as a leading fashioner of science fiction romance. She straddles and blends these genres with a unique bravura and wit.

  Philip K. Jason

  War, Passion, Unique

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• Americans also seem to believe that the monarchy is a kind of mediaeval hangover, encumbered by premodern notions of decorum; the reality is that the British monarchy, for good or ill, is a modern political institution - perhaps the first modern political institution.

  Adam Gopnik

  Hangover, Believe, Reality

  The New Yorker, September 29, 1997.

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• In golf, the customs and etiquette and decorum are as important as the rules of play.

  Bobby Jones

  Golf, Play, Important

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• If the prudence of reserve and decorum dictates silence in some circumstances, in others prudence of a higher order may justify us in speaking our thoughts.

  Edmund Burke

  Order, Silence, May

  Edmund Burke (1912). “Reflections on the French Revolution”, p.9, CUP Archive

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• Temperance keeps the senses clear and unembarrassed, and makes them seize the object with more keenness and satisfaction. It appears with life in the face, and decorum in the person; it gives you the command of your head, and secures your health, and preserves you in a condition for business.

  Jeremy Collier

  Giving, Sobriety, Satisfaction

  Jeremy COLLIER (the Nonjuror.), J. E. (1838). “Pearls of Great Price: or, Maxims, reflections, characters and thoughts, on miscellaneous subjects ... Selected from the works of the Rev. Jeremy Collier by the editor of “Sir William Jones's Discourses,” etc. [The editor's preface signed: J. E., i.e. James Elmes.]”, p.118

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• The sight of a paunchy playboy groping a scantily-dressed Diana must appal and humiliate Prince William... As the mother of two young sons she ought to have more decorum and sense. She has for many years criticised Prince Charles for being a distant, undemonstrative father. In the long run he's been the more responsible parent and certainly inflicted less damage, anguish and hurt.

  Lynda Lee-Potter

  Mother, Running, Hurt

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• When the photographer Philippe Halsman said, 'Jump,' no one asked how high. People simply pushed off or leapt up to the extent that physical ability and personal decorum allowed. In that airborne instant Mr. Halsman clicked the shutter. He called his method jumpology.
  The idea of having people jump for the camera can seem like a gimmick, but it is telling that jumpology shares a few syllables with psychology. As Halsman, who died in 1979, said, 'When you ask a person to jump, his attention is mostly directed toward the act of jumping, and the mask falls, so that the real person appears.'

  Philippe Halsman

  Real, Fall, Ideas

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• Nothing, indeed, could be more unlike the tone of the [Patristic] Fathers, than the cold, passionless, and prudential theology of the eighteenth century; a theology which regarded Christianity as an admirable auxiliary to the police force, and a principle of decorum and of cohesion in society, but which carefully banished from it all enthusiasm, veiled or attenuated all its mysteries, and virtually reduced it to an authoritative system of moral philosophy.

  William Edward Hartpole Lecky

  Philosophy, Father, Police

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• I think we are all of us a pretty milky lot, without tea-table convictions and our radicalism that keeps so consistently within the bounds of decorum . . . .I'd like to annihilate these stupid colleges of ours . . . instillers of stodginess.

  John Dos Passos

  Stupid, College, Thinking

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• I am sensible that my keenness of temper, and a vanity to be distinguished for the day, make me too often splash in life.... I amresolved to restrain myself and attend more to decorum.

  James Boswell

  Ambition, Vanity, Manners

  James Boswell (2001). “Boswell's Edinburgh Journals 1767-1786”, Mercat Press Books

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• Conventions vs. spontaneity. This is a dialectical choice, it depends on the assessment you make of your own times. If you judge that your own time is ridden with empty insincere formalities, you plump for spontaneity, for indecorous behavior even...Much of morality is the task of compensating for one's age. One assumes unfashionable virtues, in an indecorous time. In a time hollowed out by decorum, one must school oneself in spontaneity.

  Susan Sontag

  School, Assessment, Judging

  Susan Sontag (2009). “Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963”, p.135, Macmillan

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