Respectable Quotes - Page 14

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

  Anthony Trollope

  Believe, Gentleman, Occupation

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  12 Copy quote

• 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.

  31 Copy quote

  Show source

• Many terms which have now dropped out of favour will be revived, and those that are at present respectable, will drop out, if useage so choose with whom resides the decision and the judgment and the code of speech.

  Horace

  Decision, Speech, Favour

  5 Copy quote

• A single woman with a narrow income must be a ridiculous, disagreeable old maid, the proper sport of boys and girls, but a single woman of fortune is always respectable, and may be as sensible and pleasant as anybody else.

  Jane Austen

  Girl, Sports, Boys

  Jane Austen (2007). “The Complete Novels of Jane Austen”, p.824, Wordsworth Editions

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Napping is too luxurious, too sybaritic, too unproductive, and it's free; pleasures for which we don't pay make us anxious. Besides, it seems to be a natural inclination. ... Fighting off natural inclinations is a major Puritan virtue, and nothing that feels that good can be respectable.

  Barbara Holland

  Sleep, Fighting, Pay

  "Literature,one screen at a time" by Alex Beam, www.nytimes.com. November 16, 2005.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• the less you respect, the less respectable you are; the less you honor, the less in you is to be honored. There are those 'whom not to know argues one's self unknown,' so if you have no reverence in a world where there is so much that is noble and venerable, then there will be something terrible lacking in your own character.

  Julia McNair Wright

  Appreciation, Character, Self

  5 Copy quote

• To the love of pleasure we may therefore ascribe most of the agreeable, to the love of action we may attribute most of the useful and respectable, qualifications. The character in which both the one and the other should be united and harmonised would seem to constitute the most perfect idea of human nature.

  Edward Gibbon

  Character, Ideas, History

  Edward Gibbon (1846). “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.488

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The orator, who may be silent without danger, may praise without difficulty and without reluctance; and posterity will confess that the character of Theodosius might furnish the subject of a sincere and ample panegyric. The wisdom of his laws and the success of his arms rendered his administration respectable in the eyes both of his subjects and of his enemies. He loved and practised the virtues of domestic life, which seldom hold their residence in the palaces of kings.

  Edward Gibbon

  Kings, Eye, Character

  Edward Gibbon (2000). “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume II: A.D. 395 to A.D. 1185 (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.47, Modern Library

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• A gentleman of Typee can bring up a numerous family of children and give them all a highly respectable cannibal education, with infinitely less toil and anxiety than he expends in the simple process of striking a light; whilst a poor European artisan, who through the instrumentality of a lucifer performs the same operation in one second, is put to his wits' end to provide for his starving offspring that food which the children of a Polynesian father, without troubling their parent, pluck from the branches of every tree around them.

  Herman Melville

  Children, Father, Simple

  Herman Melville (2012). “Typee: A Romance of the South Seas (Illustrated & Annotated Edition)”, p.129, Jazzybee Verlag

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation; it cannot be classified as an illness; we consider it to be a variation of the sexual function, produced by a certain arrest of sexual development. Many highly respectable individuals of ancient and modern times have been homosexuals, several of the greatest men among them (Plato, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, etc.). It is a great injustice to persecute homosexuality as a crime--and a cruelty, too. If you do not believe me, read the books of Havelock Ellis.

  Sigmund Freud

  Plato, Believe, Book

  7 Copy quote

• No one can write a best-seller by taking thought. The slightest touch of insincerity blurs its appeal. The writer who keeps his tongue in his cheek, who knows that he is writing for fools and that, therefore, he had better write like a fool, makes a respectable living out of serials and novelettes; but he will never make the vast, the blaring, half a million success. That comes of blended sincerity and vitality.

  Rebecca West

  Writing, Vitality, Fiction

  4 Copy quote

• We should have an army so organized and so officered as to be capable in time of emergency, in cooperation with the National Militia, and under the provision of a proper national volunteer law, rapidly to expand into a force sufficient to resist all probable invasion from abroad and to furnish a respectable expeditionary force if necessary in the maintenance of our traditional American policy which bears the name of President Monroe.

  William Howard Taft

  Army, Should Have, Law

  20 Copy quote

• I fancy that the Hell of Too Many People would occupy a respectable place in the hierarchy of infernal regions.

  J. B. Priestley

  People, Fancy, Hierarchy

  6 Copy quote

• America's only respectable form of bigotry is bigotry against religious people. And the only reason for hatred of religion is that it forces us to confront matters many would prefer to ignore.

  William Bennett

  Christian, Religious, America

  4 Copy quote

• There is a bigotry rampant in America, against evangelicals. It is the last respectable bigotry.

  Michael Novak

  Christian, Religious, America

  4 Copy quote

• A respectable man may love madly, but not foolishly.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Love, Men, May

  4 Copy quote

• One effect of benefit-cost analysis is to give any respectable engineer or economist a means for justifying almost any kind of project the national government wants to justify... Exclusive reliance on benefit-cost analysis has been one of the greatest threats to wise decisions in water development.

  Gilbert F. White

  Wise, Mean, Government

  9 Copy quote

• Anti-Catholicism is the last respectable prejudice. You can't hate black people anymore, of course, and you can't hate homosexuals anymore, but you can hate all the Catholics you want.

  Tom Clancy

  Hate, People, Catholic

  4 Copy quote

• One of the interesting things about "outsidership" is that underneath it there's a longing to belong. I just wish the thing I refused to belong to - the species, Western capital culture - was a little more respectable. My one true relaxation is my flotation tank, in which I can either meditate or just drift off.

  George Carlin

  Interesting, Relaxation, Wish

  Interview with Ricky Young, www.motherjones.com. March/April 1997.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• I guess I'd always mocked the American accent. I didn't consider it a respectable dialect, but I was told that it was.

  Callan McAuliffe

  Dialect, Accents

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Innocent amusements are such as excite moderately, and such as produce a cheerful frame of mind, not boisterous mirth; such as refresh, instead of exhausting, the system; such as recur frequently, rather than continue long; such as send us back to our daily duties invigorated in body and spirit; such as we can partake of in the presence and society of respectable friends; such as consist with and are favorable to a grateful piety; such as are chastened by self-respect, and are accompanied with the consciousness that life has a higher end than to be amused.

  William Ellery Channing

  Life, Fun, Grateful

  4 Copy quote

• An honest, sensible, humane man, . . . laboring to do good rather than be rich, to be useful rather than make a show, living in modest simplicity . . . is really the most respectable man in society, [and] makes himself and all about him most happy.

  John Adams

  Money, Men, Simplicity

  9 Copy quote

• I felt early on I wasn't going to be a respectable citizen.

  Cormac McCarthy

  House, Citizens, Felt

  4 Copy quote