Respectable Quotes - Page 10

• Gambling has held human beings in thrall for millennia. It has been engaged in everywhere, from the dregs of society to the most respectable circles.

  Peter L. Bernstein

  Gambling, Circles, Dregs

  Peter L. Bernstein (2012). “Peter L. Bernstein Classics Collection: Capital Ideas, Against the Gods, The Power of Gold and Capital Ideas Evolving”, p.321, John Wiley & Sons

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• There is yet another illusion, that it is important to be respectable, to be loved and appreciated, to be important. Many say we have a natural urge to be loved and appreciated, to belong. That’s false. Drop this illusion and you will find happiness. We have a natural urge to be free, a natural urge to love, but not to be loved.

  Anthony de Mello

  Important, Finding Happiness, Appreciated

  Anthony De Mello (2011). “Awareness: Conversations with the Masters”, p.112, Image

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• Writers are much better behaved nowadays, for a couple of reasons. Once upon a time nobody was thinking of a career, unless you lived in New York, so there wasn't as much pressure to present a respectable exterior. And secondly, there was no social media. So if you were found face down on the floor - people did do that quite a bit; usually men, but not always - or fell through plate glass windows or got into scrapes, it became a rumor, and rumors are hard to pin down.

  Margaret Atwood

  New York, Couple, Writing

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• I never deal in transformations, for they are not honest, and no respectable sorceress likes to make things appear to be what they are not.

  L. Frank Baum

  Likes, Honest, Transformation

  L. Frank Baum (2013). “The Marvellous Land of Oz”, p.94, Hesperus Press

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• They often say woman cannot keep a secret, but every woman in the world, like every man, has a hundred secrets in her own soul which she hides from even herself. The more respectable she is, the more certain it is the secrets exist.

  Austin O'Malley

  Women, Soul, Secret

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• Metaphor is, as a common feature of linguistic practice, an incidental expediency, a homely administering of first-aid by mother-wit to jams or halts in expression suddenly confronting speakers, with no respectable linguistic solution immediately in sight.

  Laura Riding

  Mother, Sight, Expression

  "The Matter of Metaphor". "Rational Meaning and Supplementary Essays". Book by Laura Riding and Schuyler B. Jackson, edited by William Harmon, 1997.

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• Only sound common sense, respectable fellow that he is, in the homely realm of his own four walls, has very wonderful adventures directly he ventures out into the wide world of research.

  Friedrich Engels

  Wall, Adventure, Common Sense

  Friedrich Engels (2008). “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific”, p.47, Cosimo, Inc.

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• If the street life, not the Whitechapel street life, but that of the common but so-called respectable part of town is in any city more gloomy, more ugly, more grimy, more cruel than in London, I certainly don't care to see it. Sometimes it occurs to one that possibly all the failures of this generation, the world over, have been suddenly swept into London, for the streets are a restless, breathing, malodorous pageant of the seedy of all nations.

  Willa Cather

  Breathing, Cities, This Generation

  "Willa Cather in Europe". Book by Willa Cather, 1956.

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• Fortune has dealt with me rather too well. I have known little struggle, not much poverty, many generosities. Now and then I have, for my books or myself, been somewhat warmly denounced -- there was one good pastor in California who upon reading my Elmer Gantry desired to lead a mob and lynch me, while another holy man in the state of Maine wondered if there was no respectable and righteous way of putting me in jail.

  Sinclair Lewis

  Reading, Struggle, Book

  Erik Axel Karlfeldt, Sinclair Lewis (1931). “Why Sinclair Lewis got the Nobel prize”

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• Teach the child to respect that which is not respectable and you teach the child the first requirement of slavery: submission to unjust authority. Children are persons. They are small persons whose perfect souls have not yet been ground through the meat grinder of slavery.

  Gerry Spence

  Children, Perfect, Soul

  Gerry Spence (1999). “Give Me Liberty: Freeing Ourselves in the Twenty-First Century”, p.202, Macmillan

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• Since the Greeks the predominant attitude of thinkers towards intellectual activity was to glorify it insofar as (like aesthetic activity) it finds its satisfaction in itself, apart from any attention to the advantages it may procure. Most thinkers would have agreed with Renan's verdict that the man who loves science for its fruits commits the worst of blasphemies against that divinity. The modern clercs have violently torn up this charter. They proclaim the intellectual functions are only respectable to the extent that they are bound up with the pursuit of concrete advantage.

  Julien Benda

  Attitude, Men, Greek

  "Treason of the Intellectuals". Book by Julien Benda, pp. 151-152, 1927.

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• The essence of being a gentleman is to understand the way you're supposed to treat a respectable woman.

  Ne-Yo

  Essence, Gentleman, Way

  "A Blogger & A Gentelman: Buzzworthy Goes Backstage With Ne-Yo". Interview with Tamar Anitai, www.mtv.com. June 11, 2008.

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• By far the greater part of violence that humans inflicted on each other is not the work of criminals or mentally deranged, but of normal, respectable citizens service of the collective ego. One can go so far as to say that on this planet "normal" equals insane. What is it that lies at the root of this insanity? Complete identification with thought and emotion, that is to say, ego.

  Eckhart Tolle

  Lying, Roots, Insanity

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• DJs used to be American heroes. No more. Today, being a disk jockey is generally regarded as being slightly more respectable than snatching purses for a living, or robbing graves.

  Larry Lujack

  Hero, Jockeys, Today

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• A struggle for liberty is in itself respectable and glorious. . . . When conducted with magnanimity, justice and humanity, it ought to command the admiration of every friend to human nature. But if sullied by crimes and extravagancies, it loses its respectability.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Struggle, Justice, Humanity

  Alexander Hamilton, Donald R. Hickey, Connie D. Clark (2006). “Citizen Hamilton: The Wit and Wisdom of an American Founder”, p.88, Rowman & Littlefield

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• What I intend to do is uphold a standard of intellectual seriousness on the right. [These books] should be written in a way that they are serious, soberly argued, well researched, and make a respectable case-agree or disagree.

  Adam Bellow

  Book, Intellectual, Way

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• People sometimes rationalize their greed by saying that it is all for the good of their children but this is nothing but an excuse they use to make their despicable actions appear respectable and praiseworthy.

  Democritus

  Children, Hypocrisy, People

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• Politicians, old buildings, and prostitutes become respectable with age.

  Mark Twain

  Old Buildings, Age, Politician

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• That partially due to the world of media and commerce, the idea of a comic book has been lost in the ghetto, whereas the graphic novel is now being held up as something to aspire to and as something that's respectable for adults to read.

  Adrian Tomine

  Book, Ghetto, Media

  Interview with Nicole Rudick, believermag.com. October 1, 2007.

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• Call yourself "Colonel" and declare that your fortune was left to you by Dutch burghers from the seventeenth century. Now you're a solid citizen, the embodiment of hard work and rugged individualism. You're no criminal. The criminal is the guy who comes up short, who gets caught, who fails to adopt a respectable cover.

  Luc Sante

  Hard Work, Guy, Criminals

  Source: www.believermag.com

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• I don't like the city better, the more I see it, but worse. I am ashamed of my eyes that behold it. It is a thousand times meanerthan I could have imagined.... The pigs in the street are the most respectable part of the population.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Eye, Pigs, Cities

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Familiar Letters (Annotated Edition)”, p.68, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Reviewing the day's lessons. Isn't it joyful? Friends come from far. Isn't it delightful? One has never been angry at other's misunderstanding. Isn't he a respectable man?

  Confucius

  Men, Lessons, Joyful

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• Seen from a lower point of view, the Constitution, with all its faults, is very good; the law and the courts are very respectable;even this State and this American government are, in many respects, very admirable, and rare things, to be thankful for, such as a great many have described them; but seen from a point of view a little higher, they are what I have described them; seen from a higher still, and the highest, who shall say what they are, or that they are worth looking at or thinking of at all?

  Henry David Thoreau

  Thinking, Law, Government

  Henry David Thoreau (2004). “Walden and Other Writings”, p.108, Bantam Classics

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• The redemptive power of divine grace no longer seemed credible, nor very respectable in the arbitrary performance that was claimed for it.

  Rebecca West

  Grace, Arbitrary, Divine

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• When I was asked: "Will shame do it?" Meaning: Will welfare people be shamed into getting respectable work? And I said that shame plays the biggest role there is: The biggest shame is that there is so much abundance around but that so many have so little and so few have so much. That's the shame.

  Studs Terkel

  People, Shame, Abundance

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