Respectable Quotes - Page 5

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

  Voltaire

  Character, Men, Reputation

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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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• If a statement is untrue, it is not the more respectable because it has been said in Latin.

  A. A. Milne

  Latin, Said, Untrue

  A. A. Milne (2012). “Not That it Matters”, p.52, The Floating Press

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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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• I started out as an opportunistic renegade. By now, I've lasted long enough to become sort of an American Original Respectable Renegade.

  Wolfman Jack

  Long, Enough, Renegades

  Wolfman Jack, Byron Laursen (2011). “Have Mercy!: Confessions of the Original Rock 'n' Roll Animal - Wolfman Jack”, p.369, BookBaby

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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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• I think you'll have to marry me, Miss Fielding." "To save your reputation?" Derek grinned, bending to kiss the flash of pale throat revealed by the robe. "Someone has to make a respectable man of me.

  Lisa Kleypas

  Kissing, Men, Thinking

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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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• Every vice was once a virtue, and may become respectable again, just as hatred becomes respectable in wartime.

  Will Durant

  Hatred, Vices, May

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• Money has become the grand test of virtue. By this test beggars fail, and for this they are despised. If one could earn even ten pounds a week at begging, it would become a respectable profession immediately. A beggar, looked at realistically, is simply a businessman, getting his living, like other businessmen, in the way that comes to hand. He has not, more than most modem people, sold his honour; he has merely made the mistake of choosing a trade at which it is impossible to grow rich.

  George Orwell

  Mistake, Hands, People

  George Orwell (2016). “Homage to Catalonia / Down and Out in Paris and London”, p.404, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The newspaper journalists like to believe the worst; they can sell more papers that way, as one of them told me himself; for even upstanding and respectable people dearly love to read ill of others.

  Margaret Atwood

  Believe, People, Paper

  Margaret Atwood (1997). “Alias Grace”

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• But it's no use now," thought poor Alice, "to pretend to be two people! Why, there's ahrdly enough of me left to make one respectable person!

  Lewis Carroll

  Two, People, Use

  Lewis Carroll (1972). “Alice in Wonderland”, p.9, Jeff Koo

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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 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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• We had enough years in front of us to be serious and grown-up and respectable. Why rush it? But on the other hand we always complained when teachers and other adults treated us as kids. In fact there was nothing that annoyed me more. So it was a frustrating situation. What we needed was a two-sided badge that said 'Mature' on one side and 'Childish' on the other. Then at any moment we could turn it to whatever side we felt like being and the adults could treat us accordingly.

  John Marsden

  Teacher, Kids, Hands

  John Marsden (1999). “Darkness Be My Friend”, p.69, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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