conduct quotes

Conduct is three-fourths of our life and its largest concern.

- Matthew Arnold
  Literature and Dogma, ch.1.

But if marriage be such a blessed state, how comes it, may you say, that there are so few happy marriages? Now in answer to this, is it not to be wondered that so few succeed, we should rather be surprized to find so manydo, considering how imprudently menengage, the motive they act by, and the very strange conduct they observe throughout.

- Mary Astell
  Some Reflections upon MarriageOccasion'd by the Duke and Duchess of Mazarine's Case which is also consider'd, preface (1706 edn).

When a public man lays his hand on his heart and declares that his conduct needs no apology, the audience hastens to put up its umbrellas against the particularly severe downpour of apologies in store for it. I won't give the customary warning. My conduct shrieks aloud for apology, and you are in for a thorough drenching.

- Sir (Henry) Max(imilian) Beerbohm
  'A Straight Talk' (parody of George Bernard Shaw), in the Saturday Review, 22 Dec.

There can be no law if we were to invoke one code of international conduct for those who oppose us and another for our friends.

- Dwight D(avid) Eisenhower
  Speech on the Suez crisis, 31 Oct.

Everyone who receives the protection of society owes a return for the benefit, and the fact of living in a society renders it indispensable that each should be bound to observe a certain line of conduct towards the rest. That conduct consists†in each person bearing his share of the labours and sacrifices incurred for defending the society or its members from injuryand molestation.

-John Stuart Mill
  On Liberty.

When it comes to the final judgements on political conduct, history is not merciful. It is just.

-NewYorkTimes
  'Justice and Mercy in  Arkansas', editorial,17 Dec.

Sir Plume, of amber snuff-box justly vain, And the nice conduct of a clouded cane.

- Alexander Pope
  The Rape of the Lock, canto 4, l.123^4.

   We are a democracy, and there is only one way to get a democracy on its feet in the matter of its individual, its social, its municipal, its State, its National conduct, and that is by keeping the public informed about what is going on.There isnot a crime, there isnot a dodge, there is not a trick, there is not a swindle, there is not a vice which does not live by secrecy.Get these things out in the open, describe them, attack them, ridicule them in the press, and sooner or later public opinion will sweep them away.

-Joseph Pulitzer
c.1910  Quoted in Alleyne Ireland An Adventure with a Genius, ch.4.

It is the maxim of every prudent master of a family never to attempt to make at home what it will cost him more to makethantobuy.Thetaylordoesnot attempttomakehis ownshoe†All ofthemfind itfor their interestto employ their whole industry in a way in which they have some advantage over their neighbours and to purchase with a part of its produce†whatever else they have occasion for† What is prudence in the conduct of every private family, can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom† Would it be a reasonable law to prohibit the importation of all foreign wines, merely to encourage the making of claret and burgundy in Scotland?

- Adam Smith
  An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of theWealth of Nations, bk.4, ch.2.

   Men, indeed, appear to me to act in a very unphilosophical manner when they try to secure the good conduct of women by attempting to keep them always in a state of childhood.

- Mary also known as Mrs Godwin Wollstonecraft
  AVindication of the Rights ofWoman, pt.1, ch.2.