Respectable Quotes - Page 3

• Time, which alone makes the reputation of men, ends by making their defects respectable.

  Voltaire

  Character, Men, Reputation

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• I mean in the South African case, many of those who were part of death squads would have been respectable members of their white community, people who went to church on Sunday, every Sunday.

  Desmond Tutu

  Mean, Sunday, Squad

  Interview with Nick Stadlen, www.theguardian.com. September 26, 2007.

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• I write plays because writing dialogue is the only respectable way of contradicting yourself. I put a position, rebut it, refute the rebuttal, and rebut the refutation.

  Tom Stoppard

  Writing, Play, Way

  Tom Stoppard, Paul Delaney (1994). “Tom Stoppard in Conversation”, p.31, University of Michigan Press

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• It is a strange enterprise to make respectable people laugh.

  Moliere

  People, Laughing, Strange

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• The long-established and noble rule of Law, one of the greatest products of the character and tradition of British history, has suffered a deadly blow. Blackmail has become respectable.

  Robert Menzies

  Character, Blow, Law

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• I believe that my children, who are young, will look back on the early years of the 21st century in rather the same way I look back on the middle of the 20th: as a time when seemingly respectable people supported discrimination against Americans simply because those Americans were different from themselves.

  Jon Meacham

  Children, Believe, Years

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• Falsifiability for a theory is great, but a theory can still be respectable even if it is not falsifiable, as long as it is verifiable.

  Brian Greene

  Long, Theory, Stills

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• The short story is still like the novel's wayward younger brother, we know that it's not respectable - but I think that can also add to the glory of it.

  Neil Gaiman

  Brother, Thinking, Add

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• Playing the good guy is tough because you know as well as I do, in real life, you have to watch your P's and Q's and conduct yourself in a respectable manner if you expect to have friends.

  R. Lee Ermey

  Real, Guy, Watches

  "'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Prequel' set visit: Q&A with R. Lee Ermey". Group interview, www.horror.com. November 21, 2005.

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• All Asian parents are into your children having a respectable, decent stable job. Acting was unimaginable to my parents.

  Joan Chen

  Jobs, Children, Parent

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Being a gossip reporter just isn't a respectable job. It'll chew you up and spit you out.

  Kim Cattrall

  Jobs, Gossip, Spit

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• Sometimes I want to clean up my desk and go out and say, respect me, I'm a respectable grown-up, and other times I just want to jump into a paper bag and shake and bake myself to death.

  Wendy Wasserstein

  Respect, Bags, Paper

  Wendy Wasserstein (1978). “Uncommon Women and Others”, p.29, Dramatists Play Service Inc

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• Once upon a time there lived in Berlin, Germany, a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress; he loved; was not loved; and his life ended in disaster. This is the whole of the story and we might have left it at that had there not been profit and pleasure in the telling; and although there is plenty of space on a gravestone to contain, bound in moss, the abridged version of a man's life, detail is always welcome.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Men, Space, Wife

  Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (1960). “Laughter in the Dark”, p.7, New Directions Publishing

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• My uncle, Mr. Stephen Maple, had been at the same time the most successful and the least respectable of our family, so that we hardly knew whether to take credit for his wealth or to feel ashamed of his position.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Uncles, Humorous, Successful

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated)”, p.6226, Delphi Classics

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• His mother?" Gracie couldn't believe it. Suzy Denton looked much too young to be his mother. And much too respectable. "But you're not a-" She cut herself off in mid-sentence as she realized what she'd almost let slip. Suzy's wedding ring clicked against the steering wheel as she gave it a hard smack. "I'm going to kill him! He's been telling that hooker story again, hasn't he?

  Susan Elizabeth Phillips

  Mother, Believe, Cutting

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• I am at a loss to understand why people hold Miss Austen's novels at so high a rate, which seem to me vulgar in tone, sterile in artistic invention, imprisoned in their wretched conventions of English society, without genius, wit, or knowledge of the world. Never was life so pinched and narrow. ... All that interests in any character [is this]: has he (or she) the money to marry with? ... Suicide is more respectable.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Suicide, Character, Loss

  "Emerson: Selected Journals 1841 - 1877" by Lawrence Rosenwald (p. 768), 2010.

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• So great is my veneration for the Bible that the earlier my children begin to read it the more confident will be my hope that they will prove useful citizens of their country and respectable members of society. I have for many years made it a practice to read through the Bible once every year.

  John Quincy Adams

  Bible, Country, Children

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• No excuses ever, for anyone; that is my principle at the outset. I deny the good intention, the respectable mistake, the indiscretion, the extenuating circumstance. With me there is no giving of absolution or blessing.

  Albert Camus

  Mistake, Blessing, Giving

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Fall”, p.131, Vintage

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• You must not let yourself become too respectable. Keep yourself a little wild. What is life for, if not for the living of it?

  Cynthia Voigt

  Littles, What Is Life, Ifs

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• I come from a family where the only emotion respectable to show is irritation. In some this tendency produces hives, in others literature, in me both.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Irritation, Literature, Emotion

  Flannery O'Connor (2012). “Flannery O'Connor: The Cartoons”, p.112, Fantagraphics Books

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• I can't bear to hear a human being spoken of with contempt just because of his group identification...It's these respectable people here who create those hooligans out there.

  Isaac Asimov

  People, Bears, Groups

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• I have no religion,’ says Borneau, ‘but I respect the religion of others. Religion is sacred.’ Why this privilege, this immunity?... A believer creates God in his own image; if he is ugly, his God will be morally ugly. Why should moral ugliness be respectable?

  Jules Renard

  Ugly, Sacred, Privilege

  Jules Renard, Louise Bogan, Elizabeth Roget (2008). “The Journal of Jules Renard”, p.187, Tin House Books

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• I have no pretensions whatever to that kind of elegance which consists in tormenting a respectable man.

  Jane Austen

  Men, Prejudice, Kind

  Jane Austen (1853). “Pride and Prejudice”, p.97

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• She conceived of life as a road down which one traveled, an easy enough road through a broad country, and that one's destination was there from the very beginning, a measured distance away, standing in the ordinary light like some plain house where one went in and was greeted by respectable people and was shown to a room where everything one had ever lost or put aside was gathered together, waiting.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Country, Distance, Light

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• Respectable people do not write music or make love as a career.

  Alexander Borodin

  Funny Love, Writing, Careers

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