Respectability Quotes - Page 3

• Youth -- nothing else worth having in the world...and I had youth, the transitory, the fugitive, now, completely and abundantly. Yet what was I going to do with it? Certainly not squander its gold on the commonplace quest for riches and respectability, and then secretly lament the price that had to be paid for these futile ideals. Let those who wish have their respectability -- I wanted freedom, freedom to indulge in whatever caprice struck my fancy, freedom to search in the farthermost corners of the earth for the beautiful, the joyous and the romantic.

  Richard Halliburton

  Beautiful, Indulge In, Wish

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• The Great Man... is colder, harder, less hesitating, and without fear of 'opinion'; he lacks the virtues that accompany respect and 'respectability,' and altogether everything that is the 'virtue of the herd.' If he cannot lead, he goes alone... He knows he is incommunicable: he finds it tasteless to be familiar... When not speaking to himself, he wears a mask. There is a solitude within him that is inaccessible to praise or blame.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Men, Solitude, Opinion

  Friedrich Nietzsche, Jason Kingston (2017). “Friedrich Nietzsche: 100 Quotes on Strength, Power, and Honor”

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• Stop moping, sule," galladon said with a grunt."It doesn't suit you-it takes a fine sense of pessimism to brood with any sort of respectability.

  Brandon Sanderson

  Suits You, Pessimism, Said

  Brandon Sanderson (2011). “Elantris”, p.442, Hachette UK

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• You and I, we must carry on, Gemma. I cannot afford the luxury of love. I must marry well. And now I must look after you. It is my duty." "If you wish to suffer, you do so of your own free will, not on my behalf. Or Father's or Grandmama's or anyone's. You are a fine physician, Thomas. Why is that not enough?" "Because it isn't," he says with a rare candor. "Only this and the hope of nothing more? A quiet respectability with no true greatness or heroism in it, with only my reputation to recommend me. So you see, Gemma, you are not the only one who cannot rule her own life.

  Libba Bray

  Father, Greatness, Luxury

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• To be good, according to the vulgar standard of goodness, is obviously quite easy. It merely requires a certain amount of sordid terror, a certain lack of imaginative thought, and a certain low passion for middle-class respectability.

  Oscar Wilde

  Passion, Class, Easy

  Oscar Wilde (2012). “The Wit and Humor of Oscar Wilde”, p.191, Courier Corporation

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• We talk of wild animals but man is the only wild animal. It is man that has broken out. All other animals are tame animals; following the rugged respectability of the tribe or type.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Animal, Men, Broken

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.109, Simon and Schuster

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• To claim that theft or adultery or lying are "evil" simply reflects our degraded idea of good-—that it has something to do with respect for property, respectability, and sincerity.

  Simone Weil

  Lying, Ideas, Evil

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• The common belief that... the actual relations between religion and science over the last few centuries have been marked by deep and enduring hostility... is not only historically inaccurate, but actually a caricature so grotesque that what needs to be explained is how it could possibly have achieved any degree of respectability.

  Colin Archibald Russell

  Atheism, Degrees, Needs

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• The one thing I would never wish it to be thought is that you play serious roles in order to achieve some sort of respectability which you can't if you're playing comedic roles.

  Rowan Atkinson

  Order, Play, Wish

  Source: news.tvguide.co.uk

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• She wanted, passionately and persistently, two things which she believed should subsist together in any well-ordered life: amusement and respectability.

  Edith Wharton

  Two, Together, Amusement

  Edith Wharton (2013). “Delphi Works of Edith Wharton (Illustrated)”, p.1608, Delphi Classics

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• Smug respectability, like the poor, we've had with us always. Today, however, ... such obtuseness is an indulgence we can no longer afford. The computer, nuclear energy for better or worse, and sudden, simultaneous influences upon everyone's TV screen have raised the ante and the risk considerably.

  Studs Terkel

  Risk, Energy, Nuclear

  Studs Terkel (2011). “The Studs Terkel Reader: My American Century”, p.304, The New Press

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• In our Ashrams of East and West, places of spiritual retreat, we begin with what we call "The Morning of the Open Heart," in which we tell our needs. . . . We give four or five hours to this catharsis. The reaction of one member, who listened to it for the first time, was: "Good gracious, have we all the disrupted people in the country here?" My reply was: "No, you have a cross section of the church life honestly revealed." In the ordinary church, it is suppressed by respectability, by a desire to a appear better than we really are.

  E. Stanley Jones

  Country, Spiritual, Morning

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• For that, one has to drop all the masks, one has to risk many things, particularly respectability. That is a bribe by the society. It will give you a Nobel prize and it will give you many honours; it will do everything to make you feel great, if you can fulfil one condition: if you are obedient, obedient like a robot, then all respect is for you. Then the society will make you a great hero, but there will be no grace, no beauty, no freedom, no truth, no being; you have committed a real suicide.

  Rajneesh

  Suicide, Real, Hero

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• What, in the devil's name, is the use of respectability, with never so many gigs and silver spoons, if thou inwardly art the pitifulness of all men?

  Thomas Carlyle

  Respect, Art, Men

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• Ambition is a passion, at once strong and insidious, and is very apt to cheat a man out of his happiness and his true respectability of character

  Edward Bates

  Strong, Passion, Ambition

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• Let those who wish have their respectability- I wanted freedom, freedom to indulge in whatever caprice struck my fancy, freedom to search in the farthermost corners of the earth for the beautiful, the joyous, and the romantic.

  Richard Halliburton

  Beautiful, Indulge In, Wish

  RICHARD HALLIBURTON (1925). “THE ROYAL ROAD TO ROMANCE”

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• Do you think that a man is renewed by God's Spirit, when except for a few religious phrases, and a little more outside respectability, he is just the old man, the same character at heart he ever was?

  Charles Kingsley

  Religious, Heart, Character

  Charles Kingsley (2008). “The Good News of God: Easyread Comfort Edition”, p.125, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• Respectability is the dickey on the bosom of civilization.

  Elbert Hubbard

  Civilization, Bosoms

  Elbert Hubbard, Bert Hubbard (1923). “Selected writings of Elbert Hubbard: his mintage of wisdom, coined from a life of love, laughter and work”

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• We are so placid that the smallest tremor of objection to anything at all is taken as a full-scale revolution. Should any soul speak up in favor of the obvious, it is taken as a symptom of the influence of the left, the right, the pink, the black, the dangerous. An idea for its own sake - especially an obvious idea - has no respectability.

  Cynthia Ozick

  Taken, Ideas, Soul

  Cynthia Ozick (1983). “Art & ardor: essays”, Alfred A. Knopf

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• A musical audience is at best uninspiring, at worst definitely drab. ... Respectability hangs like a pall over the orchestra and the boxes; a sort of sterile sobriety ill-fitted to the passionate geometry of music.

  Marya Mannes

  Sobriety, Musical, Passionate

  Marya Mannes (1948). “Message from a Stranger: A Novel”

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• Republicans seems to me to be chiefly concerned with holding on to what they have: in society, it's position, or respectability, or what you will; in business, of course, it's profit.

  Marya Mannes

  Party, Political, Holding On

  Marya Mannes (1958). “More in Anger”

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• Morality is not respectability.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Ethics, Morality, Morality And Ethics

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• Women deluded by these sentiments, sometimes boast of their weakness, cunningly obtaining power by playing on the weakness of men; and they may well glory in their illicit sway, for, like Turkish bashaws, they have more real power than their masters: but virtue is sacrificed to temporary gratifications, and the respectability of life to the triumph of an hour.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Real, Men, May

  Mary Wollstonecraft (1796). “A vindication of the rights of woman: with strictures on political and moral subjects”, p.80

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• The queers of the sixties, like those since, have connived with their repression under a veneer of respectability. Good mannered city queens in suits and pinstripes, so busy establishing themselves, were useless at changing anything.

  Derek Jarman

  Queens, Cities, Good Man

  Derek Jarman (2010). “At Your Own Risk: A Saint's Testament”

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• By elevating the dictum of the market to the role of the sole criterion of rationality and efficiency, economics denies even all "respectability" to the distinction between essential and non-essential consumption, between productive and unproductive labor, between actual and potential surplus.

  Paul A. Baran

  Essentials, Roles, Economics

  Paul A. Baran (1968). “Political Econ of Growth”, p.25, NYU Press

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