Society Quotes

"Those who talk most about the blessings of marriage and the constancy of its vows are the very people who declare that if the chain were broken and the prisoners left free to choose, the whole social fabric would fly asunder. You cannot have the argument both ways. If the prisoner is happy, why lock him in? If he is not, why pretend that he is?" ~ Man And Superman by George Bernard Shaw This man, who violated the laws of heaven and earth with little terror of the Divine vengeance, feared above all to be cut by the men of his set. ~ Run to Earth by Mary Elizabeth Braddon "There is a pale shade of bribery which is sometimes called prosperity." ~ Middlemarch by George Eliot She was not accustomed to taste the joys of solitude except in company. ~ The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton Few people can resist doing what is universally expected of them. This invisible pressure is more difficult to stand against than individual tyranny. ~ That Fortune by Charles Dudley Warner The complex affair we call the world requires a great variety of people to keep it going. ~ The Golden House by Charles Dudley Warner Men are idolaters, and want something to look at and kiss and hug, or throw themselves down before; they always did, they always will; and if you don't make it of wood, you must make it of words. ~ The Poet at the Breakfast Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. By ten o'clock the police organization, and by midday even the railway organizations, were losing coherency, losing shape and efficiency, guttering, softening, running at last in that swift liquefaction of the social body. ~ The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells She belongs to a race of delightful women, who never do any harm, whom everybody calls good, and who are very severe on those who do not pretend to be good. ~ Mrs. Falchion by Gilbert Parker "The majority is never right. Never, I tell you! That's one of these lies in society that no free and intelligent man can help rebelling against. Who are the people that make up the biggest proportion of the population -- the intelligent ones or the fools? I think we can agree it's the fools, no matter where you go in this world, it's the fools that form the overwhelming majority." ~ An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen