Respectability Quotes - Page 4

• We create an environment where it is alright to hate, to steal, to cheat, and to lie if we dress it up with symbols of respectability, dignity and love.

  Whitney M. Young

  Love, Hate, Lying

  Whitney M. Young (1964). “To be equal”

  48 Copy quote

  Show source

• Thyself and thy belongings
  Are not thine own so proper, as to waste
  Thyself upon thy virtues, they on thee.
  Heaven doth with us as we with torches do,
  Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues
  Did not go forth of us 't were all alike
  As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touch'd
  But to fine issues; nor Nature never lends
  The smallest scruple of her excellence,
  But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines
  Herself the glory of a creditor -
  Both thanks and use.

  William Shakespeare

  Light, Issues, Heaven

  William Shakespeare (1842). “The Comedies, Histories, Tragedies, and Poems of William Shakspere: Merry wives of Windsor. Twelfth night. As you like it. Measure for measure”, p.383

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Users of clichés frequently have more sinister intentions beyond laziness and conventional thinking. Relabelling events often entails subtle changes of meaning. War produces many euphemisms, downplaying or giving verbal respectability to savagery and slaughter.

  Patrick Cockburn

  War, Thinking, Giving

  5 Copy quote

• It seems to me that the god that is commonly worshipped in civilized countries is not at all divine, though he bears a divine name, but is the overwhelming authority and respectability of mankind combined. Men reverence one another, not yet God.

  Henry David Thoreau

  God, Country, Men

  1849 A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers,'Sunday'.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Sweet, sane, still Nakedness in Nature! — ah if poor, sick, prurient humanity in cities might really know you once more! Is not nakedness then indecent? No, not inherently. It is your thought, your sophistication, your fear, your respectability that is indecent. There come moods when these clothes of ours are not only too irksome to wear, but are themselves indecent. Perhaps indeed he or she to whom the free exhilarating ecstasy of nakedness in Nature has never been eligible (and how many thousands there are!) has not really known what purity is — nor what faith or art or health really is.

  Walt Whitman

  Sweet, Art, Cities

  Walt Whitman (2012). “Specimen Days & Collect”, p.104, Courier Corporation

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

• I care not for the theoretical symmetry and impregnable logic of your moral code, I care not for the hoary respectability and traditional mysticisms of your theological institutions, I care not for the beauty and solemnity of your rituals and religious ceremonies, I care not even for the reasonableness and unimpeachable fairness of your social ethics,--if it does not turn out better, nobler, truer, men and women,--if it does not add to the world's stock of valuable souls,--if it does not give us a sounder, healthier, more reliable product from this great factory of men--I will have none of it.

  Anna Julia Cooper

  Religious, Men, Giving

  Anna Julia Cooper, Charles C. Lemert, Esme Bhan (1998). “The Voice of Anna Julia Cooper: Including A Voice from the South and Other Important Essays, Papers, and Letters”, p.187, Rowman & Littlefield

  64 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is the habitual carriage of the umbrella that is the stamp of Respectability. Robinson Crusoe was rather a moralist than a pietist, and his leaf-umbrella is as fine an example of the civilised mind striving to express itself under adverse circumstances as we have ever met with.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Civilization, Mind, Example

  Robert Louis Stevenson (1908). “Robert Louis Stevenson”

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• My father was a civil servant, so having a regular job, being respectable is a big deal for me. Respectable in the sense that I support my family. That's what I mean by respectability.

  Hanif Kureishi

  Jobs, Father, Mean

  6 Copy quote

• I hated the idleness, the stupidity, the respectability, the petty unselfishness.

  E. M. Forster

  Hate, Stupidity, Petty

  E. M. Forster (2014). “Great Novels of E. M. Forster: Where Angels Fear to Tread, The Longest Journey, A Room with a View, Howards End”, p.71, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• People like nonfiction presented to them in a certain way, so that they don't have to think about whether it's true or not. They like it to have that imprimatur of respectability, of genuineness.

  Errol Morris

  Thinking, People, Way

  Interview with Nick Poppy, www.believermag.com. April 2004.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• I like my films to have a certain amount of realism - something that's thought provoking and intelligently written. More than the amount on the pay cheque, I look for a level of respectability as an actor.

  Arjun Rampal

  Thought Provoking, Looks, Actors

  8 Copy quote

• We claim no respectability. There's no status I would not surrender for a joke. So we don't have to defend anything.

  Stephen Colbert

  Surrender, Claims, Jokes

  "Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert: America's Anchors". Interview with Maureen Dowd, www.rollingstone.com. November 16, 2006.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• There's no denying that the way horror has been packaged in the past has done it no favours. Lurid black covers adorned with skulls, corpses crawling with insects and scantily clad maidens being chewed into by vampires -- all good clean fun, but it doesn't do much to give the genre an air of respectability or seriousness to the casual browser.

  Tim Lebbon

  Fun, Past, Air

  4 Copy quote

• You put a wage behind something, it gives the act a sort of respectability.

  Patrick deWitt

  Money, Giving, Behinds

  Patrick deWitt (2011). “The Sisters Brothers”, p.89, Granta Books

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Morality is not respectability.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Ethics, Morality, Morality And Ethics

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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”

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• There's a similarity in both being young people who are not about the politics of respectability.

  Stanley Nelson Jr.

  People, Young, Similarity

  "This New Film Will Change the Way You Think About the Black Panthers". Interview with Edwin Rios, www.motherjones.com. February 14, 2016.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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”

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• ... danger was always at its most lethal when disguised as respectability.

  Susan Moody

  Danger

  Susan Moody (1992). “Mosaic”, Dell Publishing Company

  4 Copy quote

  Show source