decorum quotes

   Then let Ausonia, skilled in every art To soften manners, but corrupt the heart, Pour her exotic follies o'er the town, To sanctionVice, and hunt Decorum down.

-Rochdale
  Engish Bards and Scotch Reviewers, l.618^21.

Mr Kemblesacrificestoomuchto decorum.He ischiefly afraid of being contaminated by too close an identity with the character herepresents.This isthegreatest vice in an actor, who ought never to bilk his part.

-William Hazlitt
  Of  John Philip Kemble's performance as Sir Giles Overreach in Massinger's  A New Way to Pay Old Debts. In The Examiner, 5 May.

Every man also has his moral backside which he refrains fromshowing unlesshehastoand keeps covered as long as possible with the trousers of decorum.

- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
c.1770  Aphorisms, Notebook B (translated by R  J Hollingdale, 1990).