Respectability Quotes

• My life has been one long descent into respectability.

  Mandy Rice-Davies

  Long, Descent, Has Beens

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

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• Every fairly intelligent person is aware that the price of respectability is a muffled soul bent on the trivial and the mediocre.

  Walter Lippmann

  Intelligent, Soul, Bent

  Walter Lippmann, Julien C. Sprott (2015). “Drift and Mastery: An Attempt to Diagnose the Current Unrest”, p.137, University of Wisconsin Pres

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• In economics, hope and faith coexist with great scientific pretension and also a deep desire for respectability.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Faith, Desire, Economics

  The New York Times Magazine, June 07, 1970.

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• A child who is allowed to be disrespectful to his parents will not have true respect for anyone.

  Billy Graham

  Family, Respect, Children

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• It is not pleasant to have a stranger doubt your respectability.

  Maud Younger

  Doubt, Stranger, Pleasant

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• I know how easy it is for some minds to glide along with the current of popular opinion, where influence, respectability, and all those motives which tend to seduce the human heart are brought to bear.

  Benjamin F. Wade

  Heart, Mind, Bears

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• Having the courage to live within one's means is respectability.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Respect, Mean

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• The resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible.

  Thomas Hardy

  Evil, Impossible, Framed

  Thomas Hardy (2016). “FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD (British Classics Series): Historical Romance Novel”, p.120, e-artnow

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• I will be as harsh as truth, and uncompromising as justice... I am in earnest, I will not equivocate, I will not excuse, I will not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard.

  William Lloyd Garrison

  Justice, Retreat, Excuse

  The Liberator, 1 Jan. 1831 (first issue)

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• Here in America, marriage still has a mystical, intangible power: It is a passport to adulthood and respectability and to a certain extent citizenship. Any relationship less than "married" is considered temporary and not worthy of honor.

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  America, Honor, Married

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• Satan mostly employs comparatively moral instruments and the language of ethics to give his aims an air of respectability.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Air, Giving, Ethics

  Mahatma Gandhi (1965). “Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi”

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• It is also, I would guess, a universal that in all societies people value respectability granted to them.

  Kenneth Lee Pike

  People, Granted, Universal

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• In the mass of mankind, I fear, there is too great a majority of fools and knaves; who, singly from their number, must to a certain degree be respected, though they are by no means respectable.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Respect, Mean, Numbers

  Lord Chesterfield, David Roberts (2008). “Lord Chesterfield's Letters”, p.125, Oxford University Press

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• You are all alike, you respectable people. You can't tell me the bursting strain of a ten-inch gun, which is a very simple matter;but you all think you can tell me the bursting strain of a man under temptation. You daren't handle high explosives; but you're all ready to handle honesty and truth and justice and the whole duty of man, and kill one another at that game. What a country! What a world!

  George Bernard Shaw

  Country, Honesty, Gun

  George Bernard Shaw (2015). “The Collected Plays of George Bernard Shaw (Illustrated): Including Renowned Titles like Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, The Inca Of Perusalem, Macbeth Skit, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion”, p.1455, e-artnow

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• Attention and respect give pleasure, however late, or however useless. But they are not useless, when they are late, it is reasonable to rejoice, as the day declines, to find that it has been spent with the approbation of mankind.

  Samuel Johnson

  Respect, Giving, Attention

  Samuel Johnson (1836). “Johnsoniana; or supplement to Boswell; being Anecdotes and sayings of Dr. Johnson, etc”

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• In the ordinary church, it is suppressed by respectability, by a desire to appear better than we really are.

  E. Stanley Jones

  Church, Desire, Ordinary

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• Respectability, n. The offspring of a liaison between a bald head and a bank account.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Bank Accounts, Liaison, Offspring

  Ambrose Bierce (2016). “The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World”, p.183, 谷月社

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• The seven deadly sins... food, clothing, firing, rent, taxes, respectability and children. Nothing can lift those seven millstones from Man's neck but money; and the spirit cannot soar until the millstones are lifted.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Money, Children, Men

  George Bernard Shaw (2015). “The Collected Plays of George Bernard Shaw (Illustrated): Including Renowned Titles like Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, The Inca Of Perusalem, Macbeth Skit, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion”, p.1472, e-artnow

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• Now that I'm over sixty, I'm veering toward respectability.

  Shelley Winters

  Age, Aging, Sixty

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• Let us renew our trust in god, and go forward without fear.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Trust In God, Guile

  Abraham Lincoln (2012). “The Life and Writings of Abraham Lincoln”, p.733, Modern Library

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• Much indeed to be regretted, party disputes are now carried to such a length, and truth is so enveloped in mist and false representation, that it is extremely difficult to know through what channel to seek it. This difficulty to one, who is of no party, and whose sole wish is to pursue with undeviating steps a path which would lead this country to respectability, wealth, and happiness, is exceedingly to be lamented. But such, for wise purposes, it is presumed, is the turbulence of human passions in party disputes, when victory more than truth is the palm contended for.

  George Washington

  Wise, Country, Party

  George Washington, Jared Sparks (1836). “The Writings of George Washington: Being His Correspondence, Addresses, Messages, and Other Papers, Official and Private, Selected and Published from the Original Manuscripts; with a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.40

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• Respectability is a very good thing in its way, but it does not rise superior to all considerations. I would not for a moment venture to hint that it was a matter of taste; but I think I will go as far as this: that if a position is admittedly unkind, uncomfortable, unnecessary, and superfluously useless, although it were as respectableasthe Church of England, the sooner a man is out of it, the better for himself, and all concerned.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Men, Thinking, Church

  1878 An Inland Voyage,'At Maubeuge'.

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• Towards the end of the seventies pop was gaining the momentum and respectability was very high with groups like Yes and Queen who were making "classical" rock records. They were also bringing in big bucks. So the eighties became the "bottom line" decade.

  Tony Visconti

  Queens, Rocks, Groups

  "Sound & Vision: Tony Visconti". Interview with Allyson Mccabe, therumpus.net. January 4, 2016.

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• The world of shabby gentility is like no other; its sacrifices have less logic, its standards are harsher, its relation to reality is dimmer than comfortable property or plain poverty can understand.

  Murray Kempton

  Sacrifice, Reality, World

  Murray Kempton (2012). “Part of Our Time: Some Ruins and Monuments of the Thirties”, p.16, New York Review of Books

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• The genteel is a mighty catafalque of service-with-a-smile and flattering solicitude smothering every spontaneous movement of thought or feeling.

  Marshall McLuhan

  Feelings, Movement, Spontaneous

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