Propriety Quotes

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 welcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges, if by decency and propriety of conduct they appear to merit the enjoyment.

Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.

To Americans, English manners are far more frightening than none at all.

A well-bred youth neither speakes of himselfe, nor being spoken to is silent.

There is a fine line between sensuousness and vulgarity. I will not cross that line.

Androgyny suggests a spirit of reconciliation between the sexes; it suggests, further, a full range of experience…it suggests a spectrum upon which human beings choose their places without regard to propriety or custom.

[Benjamin Franklin's life was:] ... one continued insult to good manners and decency.

Sexual behavior was also generally considered off limits.

It is impossible for me, with any agreement to my sense of propriety, to accept any sort of compensation for services which I may endeavor to do upon a public account.

No real gentleman will tell the naked truth in the presence of ladies.

Customs and convictions change; respectable people are the last to know, or to admit, the change, and the ones most offended by fresh reflections of the facts in the mirror of art.

I'm big on what's in good taste.

Prior to the Revolution, the great majority, or rather the great body of our people had been so long accustomed to the practice and convenience of having slaves, that very few among them ever doubted the propriety and rectitude of it.

No gentleman ever discusses any relationship with a lady.

Genteel women suppose that those things do not really exist about which it is impossible to talk in polite company.

The more elegance the less virtue in all times and countries.

I don't like the word 'ladylike.'

Emily Post says that talking about oneself isn't very polite.' 'I'm sure Miss Post is perfectly correct, but that doesn't seem to stop the rest of us.

Modesty forbids what the law does not.

Proportion and propriety are among the best secrets of domestic wisdom; and there is no surer test of integrity than a well-proportioned expenditure.

Law never is, but is always about to be.

Those expressions are omitted which can not with propriety be read aloud in the family.

Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.

My mother is old-fashioned; she raised us like girls from a 19th-century book. My sisters and I are known for being the most polite girls in France. My mother wanted us to be like royalty: never ever will you be caught being rude, or superficial or being a star or whatever.

I'm a gentleman, if nothing else. It's taken me years to become one, but finally I have a sense of propriety.