Propriety Quotes - Page 6

• It has been so written, for the most part, that the times it describes are with remarkable propriety called dark ages. They are dark, as one has observed, because we are so in the dark about them.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Dark, History, Age

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.125, Delphi Classics

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• Avant-garde art jousts with propriety, but takes care never to unseat it.

  Mason Cooley

  Art, Avant Garde, Care

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• Architecture depends on Order, Arrangement, Eurythmy, Symmetry , Propriety , and Economy.

  Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

  Order, Architecture, Economy

  "De architectura". Book by Vitruvius. Book I, Chapter II: "The Fundamental Principles of Architecture", Section 1,

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• There will be natural propriety in using an eastern light for bedrooms and libraries, a western light in winter for baths and winter apartments, and a northern light for picture galleries and other places in which a steady light is needed; for that quarter of the sky grows neither light nor dark with the course of the sun, but remains steady and unshifting all day long.

  Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

  Dark, Winter, Light

  "De architectura". Book by Vitruvius. Book I, Chapter II, Section 7,

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• Propriety is that perfection of style which comes when a work is authoritatively constructed on approved principles. It arises from prescription, from usage, or from nature.

  Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

  Perfection, Style, Principles

  "The Ten Books On Architecture". Book I. Chapter II, Sec. 5, 15BC.

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• There will be no propriety in the spectacle of an elegant interior approached by a low mean entrance.

  Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

  Mean, Entrances, Lows

  "The Ten Books On Architecture". Book I. Chapter II, Sec. 6, 15BC.

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• Propriety of thought and propriety of diction are commonly found together. Obscurity and affectation are the two greatest faults of style. Obscurity of expression generally springs from confusion of ideas; and the same wish to dazzle, at any cost, which produces affectation in the manner of a writer, is likely to produce sophistry in his reasonings.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Spring, Expression, Ideas

  John Morley, Thomas B. Macaulay (2016). “Machiavelli : the Founder of the Political”, p.89, Editions Le Mono

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• How often should a woman be pregnant? Continually, or hardly ever? Or must there be a certain number of pregnancy anniversaries established by fashion? What do you, at the age of forty-three, have to say on the subject? Is it a fact that the laws of nature, or of the country, or of propriety, have ordained this time of life for sterility?

  Lord Chesterfield

  Country, Fashion, Pregnancy

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• He who today utters a bold truth that seems to shock some old institution with the premonition of destruction, and that scares men from their propriety, will a hundred years hence be regarded as a remarkably conservative man. And yet the people who stand peculiarly upon what they call the foundations of conservatism, and hold to hard, practical facts, now stand upon that which one hundred years ago was rank heresy.

  Edwin Hubbel Chapin

  Men, Years, People

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• A certain class of novels may with propriety be called fables.

  Richard Whately

  Class, May, Fables

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• Politeness has been defined to be artificial good-nature; but we may affirm, with much greater propriety, that good-nature is natural politeness.

  Stanisław I Leszczyński

  May, Natural, Politeness

  duc de François La Rochefoucauld, François La Rochefoucauld (duc de), King of Poland Stanisław, Stanisław I Leszczyński (King of Poland) (1851). “Moral reflections, sentences and maxims of Francis, duc de la Rochefoucauld”, p.178

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• All fear of 'offensive' speech is bourgeois and reactionary. Historically, profane or bawdy language was common in both the upper and the lower classes, who lived together in rural areas amid the untidy facts of nature. Notions of propriety and decorum come to the fore in urbanized periods ruled by an expanding middle class, which is obsessed with cleanliness, respectability, and conformism.

  Camille Paglia

  Class, Together, Rural Areas

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• I've got confidence that most people in America still have a decent sense of manners, propriety, morality.

  Rush Limbaugh

  America, People, Morality

  Source: www.rushlimbaugh.com

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• A novice always behaves with propriety.

  Martial

  Novices, Behave

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• In most old communities there is a common sense even in sensuality. Vice itself gets gradually digested into a system, is amenable to certain laws of conventional propriety and honor, has for its object simply the gratification of its appetites, and frowns with quite a conservative air on all new inventions, all untried experiments in iniquity.

  Edwin Percy Whipple

  Air, Law, Common Sense

  Edwin Percy Whipple (1866). “Character and Characteristic Men”, p.39

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• It is not every man that can afford to wear a shabby coat; and worldly wisdom dictates to her disciples the propriety of dressing somewhat beyond their means, but of living somewhat within them,--for every one, sees how we dress, but none see how we live, except we choose to let them. But the truly great are, by universal suffrage, exempted from these trammels, an may live or dress as they please.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Mean, Men, Dresses

  Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.121

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• Worldly wisdom dictates to her disciples the propriety of dressing somewhat beyond their means, but of living somewhat within them.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Mean, Disciple, Dressings

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.112

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• If once a woman breaks through the barriers of decency, her ease is desperate; and if she goes greater lengths than the men, and leaves the pale of propriety farther behind her, it is because she is aware that all return is prohibited, and by none so strongly as by her own sex.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Sex, Men, Break Through

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• Any one may mouth out a passage with a theatrical cadence, or get upon stilts to tell his thoughts; but to write or speak with propriety and simplicity is a more difficult task. Thus it is easy to affect a pompous style, to use a word twice as big as the thing you want to express; it is not so easy to pitch upon the very word that exactly fits it.

  William Hazlitt

  Writing, Simplicity, Style

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1270, Delphi Classics

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• How do our philosophers act? Do they not inscribe their signatures to the very essays they write on the propriety of despising glory.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Writing, Signatures, Philosopher

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• The propriety of thoughts and words, which are the hidden beauties of a play, are but confusedly judged in the vehemence of action.

  John Dryden

  Drama, Play, Vehemence

  John Dryden (1808). “The works of John Dryden: now first collected in eighteen volumes. Illustrated with notes, historical, critical, and explanatory, and a life of the author”, p.379

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• Our large trading cities bear to me very nearly the aspect of monastic establishments in which the roar of the mill-wheel and the crane takes the place of other devotional music, and in which the worship of Mammon and Moloch is conducted with a tender reverence and an exact propriety; the merchant rising to his Mammon matins, with the self-denial of an anchorite, and expiating the frivolities into which he maybe beguiled in the course of the day by late attendance at Mammon vespers.

  John Ruskin

  Self, Cities, Rising

  John Ruskin (1872). “The Political Economy of Art: Being the Substance (with Additions) of Two Lectures Delivered at Manchester, July 10th and 13th, 1857”, p.124

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• The camel is an ugly animal, seen from above. Its shoulders slope formless like a sack, its silly little ears and fluff of bleached curls behind them have a respectable, boarding-house look, like some faded neatness that dresses for propriety but never dressed for love.

  Freya Stark

  Silly, Animal, House

  Freya Stark (2011). “A Winter in Arabia: A Journey Through Yemen”, p.121, The Overlook Press

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• In part of Lord Kames' Elements of Criticism, he says that "music improves the relish of a banquet." That I deny,--any more than painting might do. They may both be additional pleasures, as well as conversation is, but are perfectly distinct notices; and cannot, with the least propriety, be said to mix or blend with the repast, as none of them serve to raise the flavor of the wine, the sauce, the meat, or help to quicken appetite. But music and painting both add a spirit to devotion, and elevate the ardor.

  Laurence Sterne

  Music, Wine, Criticism

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• Fashionable dances as now carried on are revolting to every feeling of delicacy and propriety and are fraught with the greatest danger to millions.

  Horace Bushnell

  Dancing, Feelings, Delicacy

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