behaviour quotes

Learned men†do many times fail to observe decency and discretion in their behaviour and carriage, so as the vulgar sort of capacities do make a judgment of them in greater matters by that which they find them wanting in smaller. 46

- Francis,Viscount St Albans Bacon
  The Advancement of Learning, bk.1.

My common conversation I do acknowledge austere, my behaviour full of rigor, sometimes not without morosity; yet at mydevotion I loveto usethe civility of my knee, my hat, and hand, withall thoseoutward and sensiblemotions which may express or promote my invisible devotion.

- SirThomas Browne
^5  Religio Medici (published1643), pt.1, section 3.

CONSENSUS TERRORISM:The process that decides in- office attitudes and behavior.

- Douglas Coupland
Generation X,'Quit Recycling the Past'.

The abdication of Belief Makes the Behavior small Better an ignis fatuus Than no illume at all.

- Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
c.1882  Complete Poems, no.1551 (first published1945).

Fearful and hostile behavior is not rational but neither is it uncommon, either to individuals or to nations, including our own.

-J(ames) William Fulbright
  On the'arrogance of power'of US policy on Vietnam. In the NewYorker, 6 Mar.

   It is really intolerable that we can say only one thing at a time; for social behavior displays many features at the same time, and so in taking them up one by one we necessarily do outrage to its rich, dark, organic unity.

- George C Homans
Social Behavior: Its Elementary Forms.

The quality of moral behaviour varies in inverse ratio to the number of human beings involved.

- Aldous Leonard Huxley
Grey Eminence, ch.10.

   There is no such thing as inner peace. There is only nervousness or death. Anyattempt to prove otherwise constitutes unacceptable behaviour.

- Fran(ces Ann) Lebowitz
  Metropolitan Life,'Manners'.

A spirit of contradiction has always, to some extent, guided my behaviour.

- Sir Fitzroy Hew Maclean
  Eastern  Approaches.

The self-fulfilling prophecy is, in the beginning, a false definition of thesituation evoking a new behavior which makes the originally false conception come true. The specious validity of the self-fulfilling prophecy perpetuates a reign of error.

- Robert King Merton
  'The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy', in Social Theory and Social Structure (rev. edn,1968), p.477. This is the first use of the phrase 'self-fulfilling prophecy'.

Whatever his private behavior, the man and his work existed in different realms. Mencken's defects were commonplace; his virtues were not. So wonderfully uninhibited was his style that even a single sentence in a routine article proclaimed its begetter.

- Karl Ernest Meyer
  Of H L Mencken. In the NewYork Times Book Review, 8 May.

Economics is the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between scarce resources and ends which have alternative uses† It does not attempt to pick out certain kinds of behaviour, but focusesattentionona particular aspect of behaviour, the form imposed by the influence of scarcity.

-Market
  An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science, p.16^17.

A man's behaviour may be quite harmless and even beneficial, when he ismorally behaving like a scoundrel. And he may do great harm when he is morally acting on the highest principles.

- George Bernard Shaw
  BB.The Doctor's Dilemma, act 3.

My brothers and sister and I were brought up in an atmosphere which I would describe as 'Puritan decadence'. Puritanism names the behaviour which is condemned; Puritan decadence regards the name itself as indecent, and pretends that the object behind that name does not exist until it is named.

- Sir Stephen Harold Spender
World withinWorld, p.314^15.

Ifell inlovethat istheonlyexpression Icanthinkofat once, and am still at the mercy of words, though sometimes now, knowing a little of their behaviour very well, I think I can influence them slightly and have even learned to beat them now and gain, which they appear to enjoy.

- Dylan Marlais Thomas
  Letter to a student.

I didn't set out to be a feminist writer. I just look at the sheep out of the window and watch their behaviour.

- Fay originally Franklin Birkinshaw Weldon
  In the Observer, 30 Apr.