Respectable Quotes - Page 12

• It appears to me that our sex is only discussed publicly in a derogatory manner. The respectable woman is doomed to anonymity.

  Karen Essex

  Sex, Derogatory, Doomed

  Karen Essex (2008). “Stealing Athena: A Novel”, p.146, Anchor

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• If all good, respectable people had one face, I'd spit in it.

  Jean Rhys

  People, Faces, Spit

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• Had he been willing to live a hypocrite, he would have been respectable, he at least could have died surrounded by other hypocrites, and at his death there would have been an imposing funeral, with miles of carriages, filled with hypocrites, and above his hypocritical dust there would have been a hypocritical monument covered with lies.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Lying, Hypocrite, Dust

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.806, Library of Alexandria

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• It is not easy to make our lives respectable by any course of activity. We must repeatedly withdraw into our shells of thought, like the tortoise, somewhat helplessly; yet there is more than philosophy in that.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Thinking

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Familiar Letters (Annotated Edition)”, p.148, Jazzybee Verlag

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• What is any respectable girl brought up to do but to catch some rich man's fancy and get the benefit of his money by marrying him?--as if a marriage ceremony could make any difference in the right or wrong of the thing!

  George Bernard Shaw

  Marriage, Girl, Sex

  George Bernard Shaw (2010). “Mrs. Warren's Profession”, p.30, Cosimo, Inc.

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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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• Every paper published in a respectable journal should have a preface by the author stating why he is publishing the article, and what value he sees in it. I have no hope that this practice will ever be adopted.

  Morris Kline

  Practice, Should Have, Paper

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• The most dangerous lechers and creeps are not drunks wearing rags on the street, but respectable men wearing hairspray, pinstripes, and wedding rings who lurk in the halls of power.

  Michelle Malkin

  Men, Rags, Hairspray

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• In 1980, a well-meaning fundraiser came to see me and said, "Miss Graham, the most powerful thing you have going for you to raise money is your respectability." I wanted to spit. Respectable! Show me any artist who wants to be respectable.

  Martha Graham

  Powerful, Artist, Missing

  Martha Graham (1991). “Blood memory”, Doubleday

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• Jesus loves sinners. He only loves sinners. He has never turned anyone away who came to Him for forgiveness, and He died on the cross for sinners, not for respectable people.

  Corrie Ten Boom

  Jesus, People, Crosses

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• Every art is a church without communicants, presided over by a parish of the respectable. An artist is born kneeling; he fights to stand. A critic, by nature of the judgment seat, is born sitting.

  Hortense Calisher

  Art, Fighting, Church

  Hortense Calisher (2013). “Herself: An Autobiographical Work”, p.343, Open Road Media

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• Wesco had a market capitalization of $40 million when we bought it [in the early 1970s]. It's $2 billion now. It's been a long slog to a perfectly respectable outcome - not as good as Berkshire Hathaway or Microsoft, but there's always someone in life who's done better.

  Charlie Munger

  Long, Microsoft, Done

  Charlie Munger's comments on Wesco and Berkshire Hathaway at the 2001 Wesco Financial Annual Meeting, www.tilsonfunds.com. May 2, 2001.

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• I am on this account not displeased that the Figure is not known as a Bald Eagle, but looks more like a Turkey. For the Truth the Turkey is in Comparison a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America... He is besides, though a little vain & silly, a Bird of Courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his Farm Yard with a red Coat on.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Silly, Eagles, Turkeys

  Franklin's Letter to His Daughter (excerpt), www.greatseal.com.

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• Who is respectable when thinking himself alone and free from observation will be so before the eye of all the world.

  Johann Kaspar Lavater

  Eye, Thinking, World

  "Aphorisms on man. Translated from the original manuscript of the Rev. John Caspar Lavater, citizen of Zuric. ; [One line from Juvenal]" by Johann Kaspar Lavater, 1790.

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• Faith that trusts on Jesus alone for salvation, and not on your respectable life, and the obedience that follows Him, are the indispensable steps to salvation. You admit that you have not taken these decisive steps. Then, however near you are, you are not in Christ.

  Theodore L. Cuyler

  Jesus, Taken, Steps

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers". Book by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 229, 1895.

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• Scholars, who pride themselves on speaking their minds, often engage in a form of self-censorship which is called "realism." To be "realistic" in dealing with a problem is to work only among the alternatives which the most powerful in society put forth. It is as if we are all confined to a, b, c, or d in the multiple choice test, when we know there is another possible answer. American society, although it has more freedom of expression than most societies in the world, thus sets limits beyond which respectable people are not supposed to think or speak.

  Howard Zinn

  Powerful, Pride, Thinking

  Howard Zinn (2011). “The Zinn Reader: Writings on Disobedience and Democracy”, p.289, Seven Stories Press

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• Liberalism itself, is, on all matters connected with Church and Education, only a kind of corporate and "respectable" ungodliness.

  Henry Parry Liddon

  Church, Matter, Kind

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• Whoever imposes severe punishment becomes repulsive to the people; while he who awards mild punishment becomes contemptible. But whoever imposes punishment as deserved becomes respectable. For punishment when awarded with due consideration, makes the people devoted to righteousness and to works productive of wealth and enjoyment; while punishment, when ill-awarded under the influence of greed and anger or owing to ignorance, excites fury even among hermits and ascetics dwelling in forests, not to speak of householders.

  Chanakya

  Ignorance, Punishment, Dwelling

  "Arthashastra". Book by Chanakya, Translated by R. Shamasastry. Bangalore: Government Press, Book I: "Concerning Discipline", Chapter 4 "Determination of the Place of Varta and of Dandaniti", 1915.

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• I am obliged to interpolate some remarks on a very difficult subject: proof and its importance in mathematics. All physicists, and a good many quite respectable mathematicians, are contemptuous about proof. I have heard Professor Eddington, for example, maintain that proof, as pure mathematicians understand it, is really quite uninteresting and unimportant, and that no one who is really certain that he has found something good should waste his time looking for proof.

  G. H. Hardy

  Good Man, Example, Waste

  "Ramanujan: Twelve Lectures on Subjects Suggested by His Life and Work". Book by G. H. Hardy, 1940.

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• The impact of the human tragedies I've reported on is that, more often than not, I'll be angry. I want to know why is this child dying? These are not acts of God; they're results of respectable politicians' decisions.

  John Pilger

  Children, Impact, Decision

  "This much I know". Interview with Tom Templeton, www.theguardian.com. November 13, 2005.

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• Faculty Psychology is getting to be respectable again after centuries of hanging around with phrenologists and other dubious types. By faculty psychology I mean, roughly, the view that many fundamentally different kinds of psychological mechanisms must be postulated in order to explain the facts of mental life. Faculty psychology takes seriously the apparent heterogeneity of the mental and is impressed by such prima facie differences as between, say, sensation and perception, volition and cognition, learning and remembering, or language and thought.

  Jerry Fodor

  Mean, Differences, Views

  "Modularity of Mind". Book by Jerry Fodor, 1983.

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• I believe journalism is coming to be regarded as quite a respectable occupation for gentlemen nowadays.

  Anthony Trollope

  Believe, Gentleman, Occupation

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• To proclaim himself an agnostic, while to some it might appear more respectable and cautious, would be to say in effect that he hadn't decided what to believe.

  E. Haldeman-Julius

  Believe, Atheism, Would Be

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• As a social and as a personal force, religion has become a dependent variable. It does not originate; it reacts. It does not denounce; it adapts. It does not set forth new models of conduct and sensibility; it imitates. Its rhetoric is without deep appeal; the worship it organizes is without piety. It has become less a revitalization of the spirit in permanent tension with the world than a respectable distraction from the sourness of life.

  C. Wright Mills

  Atheism, World, Variables

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• What astonishing changes a few years are capable of producing! I am told that even respectable characters speak of a monarchical form of government without horror. From thinking proceeds speaking, thence to acting is often but a single step. But how irrevocable and tremendous! What a triumph for the advocates of despotism to find that we are incapable of governing ourselves, and that systems founded on the basis of equal liberty are merely ideal and falacious! Would to God that wise measures may be taken in time to avert the consequences we have but too much reason to apprehend.

  George Washington

  Wise, Taken, Character

  Letter to John Jay, August 15, 1786.

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