Propriety Quotes
More Propriety Quotes
Eutrapelia . "A happy and gracious flexibility," Pericles calls this quality of the Athenians...lucidity of thought, clearness and propriety of language, freedom from prejudice and freedom from stiffness, openness of mind, amiability of manners.
Matthew Arnold— "Irish Essays. A Speech at Eton" (1882).
By going on the defensive... libertarians are, inadvertently, conceding that speech should be policed for propriety, and that those who violate standards set by the PC set are somehow defective on those grounds alone and deserve to be purged from “polite” company."
— "Fee-fi-fo-fem, I Smell The Blood Of A Racist", WorldNetDaily.com, May 15, 2014
The feeling of commiseration is the beginning of humanity ; the feeling of shame and dislike is the beginning of righteousness ; the feeling of deference and compliance is the beginning of propriety ; and the feeling of right and wrong is the beginning of wisdom .
— Mencius, in A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, p.65
propriety is that perfection of style which comes when a work is authoritatively constructed on approved principles. It arises from prescription, from usage, or from nature.
vitruvius— Chapter II, Sec. 5
propriety is that perfection of style which comes when a work is authoritatively constructed on approved principles. It arises from prescription, from usage, or from nature.
— Chapter II, Sec. 5 (Book I)
We are now, as we have always been, decidedly and conscientiouslyattached to what is called theTory, and which might with more propriety be called the Conservative party.
Critias— 1830 Quarterly Review, Jan.
A propriety of thoughts and words; or, in other terms, thought and words elegantly adapted to the subject.
john dryden— 1677 Definition of wit.'The Author's Apology for Heroic Poetry and Heroic Licence', an essay prefacing State of Innocence, a libretto based on Paradise Lost.
Hail, wedded love, mysterious law, true source Of human offspring, sole propriety In Paradise of all things common else. 583
john milton— 1665 Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.4, l.750-2.
Everything we did was done in form and with propriety, and the result of our proceedings is the document [the Quebec Resolutions] that has been submitted to the imperial government as well as to this house and which we speak of here as a treaty. And that there may be no doubt about our position in regard to that document we say, question it you may, reject it you may, or accept it you may, but alter it you may not. (Hear, hear.)
thomas d'arcy mcgee— Legislative Assembly, February 9, 1865 (Known in Ottawa as "The curse of D'Arcy Mcgee")
The feeling of commiseration is the beginning of humanity; the feeling of shame and dislike is the beginning of righteousness; the feeling of deference and compliance is the beginning of propriety; and the feeling of right or wrong is the beginning of wisdom.Men have these Four Beginnings just as they have their four limbs. Having these Four Beginnings, but saying that they cannot develop them is to destroy themselves.
mencius— 2A:6, as translated by Wing-tsit Chan A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (1963), p. 65
There are three things, young gentlemen, which you are constantly to bear in mind. Firstly, you must always implicitly obey orders, without attempting to form any opinion of your own respecting their propriety. Secondly, you must consider every man your enemy who speaks ill of your king; and thirdly, you must hate a Frenchman, as you do the devil.
horatio nelson— Nelson's advice to his Midshipmen (1793). Pettigrew, Thomas Jos. Memoirs of the Life of Vice-Admiral Lord Viscount Nelson K.B., Volume 2. London: T. and W. Boone, New Bond Street. 1849, pg 580.
Most comic writers like to think they could play it straight if only their public would let them. Waugh is able to be grave without difficulty for he has always been comic for serious reasons. He has his own, almost romantic sense of propriety.
v. s pritchett— Ibid. (p. 101)
The man who barely abstains from violating either the person, or the estate, or the reputation of his neighbours, has surely very little positive merit. He fulfils, however, all the rules of what is peculiarly called justice, and does every thing which his equals can with propriety force him to do, or which they can punish him for not doing. We may often fulfil all the rules of justice by sitting still and doing nothing.
Adam Smith— Section II, Chap. I
The bosom of America is open to receive not only the Opulent and respectable Stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations And Religions; whom we shall wellcome to a participation of all our rights and previleges, if by decency and propriety of conduct they appear to merit the enjoyment.
— George Washington, letter to the members of the Volunteer Association and other Inhabitants of the Kingdom of Ireland who have lately arrived in the City of New York (December 2, 1783), John C. Fitzpatrick, ed., The Writings of George Washington (1938), vol. 27, p. 254.
Each speech having its own character, the poetry it engenders will be peculiar to that speech also in its own intrinsic form. The effect is beauty, what in a single object resolves our complex feelings of propriety.
william carlos williams— Introduction
Many young poets, nowadays, are insured against everything. For them poetry is a game like court tennis or squash racquets one they learned at college and they play it with propriety, as part of their social and academic existence; their poems are occasional verse for which life itself is only one more occasion.
Randall Jarrell— "Recent Poetry," The Yale Review (Autumn 1955) [p. 231]
There will be no propriety in the spectacle of an elegant interior approached by a low mean entrance.
vitruvius— Chapter II, Sec. 6
There will... be natural propriety in using an eastern light for bedrooms and libraries, a western light in winter for baths and winter apartments, and a northern light for picture galleries and other places in which a steady light is needed; for that quarter of the sky grows neither light nor dark with the course of the sun, but remains steady and unshifting all day long.
vitruvius— Chapter II, Sec. 7
Anyone must be mainly ignorant or thoughtless, who is surprised at everything he sees; or wonderfully conceited who expects everything to conform to his standard of propriety.
— William Hazlitt, Lectures on the English Comic Writers. On Wit and Humour.
The bosom of America is open to receive not only the Opulent and respectable Stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations And Religions; whom we shall wellcome to a participation of all our rights and previleges, if by decency and propriety of conduct they appear to merit the enjoyment.
— George Washington, letter to the members of the Volunteer Association and other Inhabitants of the Kingdom of Ireland who have lately arrived in the City of New York (December 2, 1783), John C. Fitzpatrick, ed., The Writings of George Washington (1938), vol. 27, p. 254.
A leading Welsh minister and Welsh ministers are, I think, among the best preachers was invited to preach an anniversary sermon before one of the great societies in London. Naturally anxious to disregard no propriety, he consulted the proper authority, the secretary. "Should I read my sermon?" "Oh, it is no matter, only bring some of your Welsh fire with you." " But you cannot, my dear sir, carry fire on paper." "No, that is true; but you may use the paper to kindle the fire."
— P. 483. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
It has been so written, for the most part, that the times it describes are with remarkable propriety called dark ages. They are dark, as one has observed, because we are so in the dark about them.
— Henry David Thoreau, in A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849)
Monuments are memorials of great use in questions of descent, and in matters of family interest; decency and propriety likewise require that they should not remain in a state of ruin and decay.
— Sir William Scott, Bardin v. Calcott (1789), 1 Hagg. Con. Rep. 16.
The conversation of the true bourgeois about men and life, which is no more than a collection of ugly details, brings on a profound attack of spleen when I am obliged out of propriety to listen to it for any length of time.
— Stendhal (1835–1836), The Life of Henry Brulard, J. Sturrock, trans., p. 223
Proportion, or symmetry, is the basis of beauty; propriety, of grace.
— Henry Fuseli, Aphorism 46, in The Life and Writings of Henry Fuseli (1831) Vol. III, edited by John Knowles.
There will be no propriety in the spectacle of an elegant interior approached by a low mean entrance.
— Chapter II, Sec. 6 (Book I)
This indigested vomit of the Sea,Fell to the Dutch by Just propriety.
Andrew Marvell— The Character of Holland (c. 1653).
Architecture depends on Order, Arrangement, Eurythmy, Symmetry , propriety , and Economy.
vitruvius— Chapter II "The Fundamental Principles of Architecture" Sec. 1
Architecture depends on Order, Arrangement, Eurythmy, Symmetry , propriety , and Economy.
— Chapter II "The Fundamental Principles of Architecture" Sec. 1
