Niceties Quotes

• I am, as I have always been, of the opinion that while the niceties of normal moral constraints should be our guides, they must not be our masters.

  Iain Banks

  Normal, Morality, Opinion

  "Excession (The Culture, Book 5)". Book by Iain Banks (Chapter 8 "Killing Time", Section VII, p. 269), 1996.

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• There are two ways to aquire the niceties of life:
  1) To produce them or
  2) To plunder them.
  When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.

  Paul Valery

  Men, Two, Together

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• The great people I've met always have time for the niceties.

  Mercedes McCambridge

  People, Great People, Mets

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• A bizarre sensation pervades a relationship of pretense. No truth seems true. A simple morning's greeting and response appear loaded with innuendo and fraught with implications. Each nicety becomes more sterile and each withdrawal more permanent.

  Maya Angelou

  Love, Morning, Truth

  Maya Angelou (2012). “The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou”, p.423, Modern Library

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• It's the niceties that make the difference fate gives us the hand, and we play the cards.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Philosophical, Fate, Gambling

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• A commodity appears at first sight an extremely obvious, trivial thing. But its analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties.

  Karl Marx

  Business, Sight, Analysis

  Karl Marx (1988). “Marx Selections”, MacMillan Publishing Company

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• Rugby football is a game I can't claim absolutely to understand in all its niceties, if you know what I mean. I can follow the broad, general principles, of course. I mean to say, I know that the main scheme is to work the ball down the field somehow and deposit it over the line at the other end and that, in order to squalch this programme, each side is allowed to put in a certain amount of assault and battery and do things to its fellow man which, if done elsewhere, would result in 14 days without the option, coupled with some strong remarks from the Bench.

  P. G. Wodehouse

  Football, Strong, Mean

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• It is clear enough that you are making some distinction in what you said, that there is some nicety of terminology in your words. I can't quite follow you.

  Flann O'Brien

  Enough, Said, Distinction

  Flann O'Brien (2007). “The Complete Novels”, Everyman's Library

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• I remember being awed by it - the uniqueness and nicety of style - and I suspect I was a bit jealous because we were more or less of the same generation.

  George Plimpton

  Fear, Jealous, Style

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• A bizarre sensation pervades a relationship of pretense. No truth seems true.

  Maya Angelou

  Bizarre, Innuendo, Seems

  Maya Angelou (2012). “The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou”, p.423, Modern Library

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• When plunder becomes a way of life, men create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Life, Money, Men

  "Economic Sophisms". Book by Frédéric Bastiat, Second series, 1848.

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• The body should be bedecked naturally and without affectation, with simplicity, with neglect rather than nicety, not with costly and dazzling apparel, but with ordinary clothes, so that nothing be lacking to honesty and necessity, yet nothing be added to increase its beauty.

  Ambrose

  Honesty, Clothes, Simplicity

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• The natural progress of the works of men is from rudeness to convenience, from convenience to elegance, and from elegance to nicety.

  Samuel Johnson

  Men, Progress, Rudeness

  Samuel Johnson (1823). “The works of Samuel Johnson”, p.252

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• A barber is by nature and inclination a sport. He can tell you at what exact hour the ball game is to begin, can foretell its issue without losing a stroke of the razor, and can explain the points of inferiority of all the players, as compared with the better men that he has personally seen elsewhere, with the nicety of a professional.

  Stephen Leacock

  Sports, Player, Men

  Stephen Leacock (2014). “Literary Lapses”, p.55, The Floating Press

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• My father always has been attractive because of his energy, warmth, charm, and talent for finding some connection with people from all cultures and walks of life. He rarely observed social formalities and niceties - something he has passed on to his boys.

  Ezekiel Emanuel

  Father, Boys, People

  Ezekiel J. Emanuel (2013). “Brothers Emanuel: A Memoir of an American Family”, p.42, Halban Publishers

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• There is a field where all wonderful perfections of microscope and telescope fail, all exquisite niceties of weights and measures, as well as that which is behind them, the keen and driving power of the mind. No facts however indubitably detected, no effort of reason however magnificently maintained, can prove that Bach's music is beautiful.

  Edith Hamilton

  Music, Beautiful, Failure

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• To me this technical acceptation seems not applicable here, where we have to deal with the simplest moral precepts, and not with psychological niceties of Buddhist philosophy.

  Max Muller

  Buddhist, Philosophy, Moral

  F. Max Muller (2014). “The Dhammapada and Sutta-Nipata”, p.58, Routledge

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• I was kind of a wild child. I wasn't taught the niceties of life.

  Barbra Streisand

  Children, Taught, Kind

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• Pride looks back upon its past deeds, and calculating with nicety what it has done, it commits itself to rest; whereas humility looks to that which is before, and discovering how much ground remains to be trodden, it is active and vigilant. Having gained one height, pride looks down with complacency on that which is beneath it; humility looks up to a higher and yet higher elevation. The one keeps us on this earth, which is congenial to its nature; the other directs our eye, and tends to lift us up to heaven.

  James McCosh

  Eye, Humility, Pride

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilber, p. 485, 1895.

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• During the nineteenth century, the rapid emergence and proliferation of new manufacturing methods and building technologies led to the establishment of polytechnic schools that concentrated on the practicalities of engineering and construction rather than the niceties of stylistic correctness or adherence to established precedent.

  Martin Filler

  School, Technology, Engineering

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• Nothing is so easy as to deceive one’s self when one does not lack wit and is familiar with all the niceties of language. Language is a prostitute queen who descends and rises to all roles. Disguises herself, arrays herself in fine apparel, hides her head and effaces herself; an advocate who has an answer for everything, who has always foreseen everything, and who assumes a thousand forms in order to be right. The most honorable of men is he who thinks best and acts best, but the most powerful is he who is best able to talk and write

  George Sand

  Queens, Powerful, Writing

  George Sand “Les ëuvres Choisies de George Sand. The Selected Works of George Sand”, Library of Alexandria

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• Those who live alone slide into the habit of vertical eating: why bother with the niceties when there's no one to share or censure? But laxity in one area may lead to derangement in all.

  Margaret Atwood

  May, Slides, Eating

  Margaret Atwood (2007). “The Blind Assassin: A Novel”, p.365, Anchor

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• It's obsequious little nicety-nice girls like me who allow assholes to run the world: Miss Harlot O'Harlots, billionaire phony tree huggers, hypocrite drug-snorting, weed-puffing peace activists who fund the mass-murdering drug cartels and perpetuate crushing poverty in dirt-poor banana republics. It's my petty fear of personal rejection that allows so many true evils to exist. My cowardice enables atrocities.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Crush, Girl, Running

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• We think sometimes we're only drawn to the good, but we're actually drawn to the authentic. We like people who are real more than those who hide their true selves under layers of artificial niceties

  Copyright: Elisabeth Kubler-Ross Family Limited Partnership.

  Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

  Fake People, Real, Thinking

  Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, David Kessler (2012). “Life Lessons: How Our Mortality Can Teach Us About Life And Living”, p.27, Simon and Schuster

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• When putting words together is good to do it with nicety and caution, your elegance and talent will be evident if by putting ordinary words together you create a new voice.

  Horace

  Latin, Voice, Together

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