Top 100 A Respectable Quotes
#1. A struggle for liberty is in itself respectable and glorious ... When conducted with magnanimity, justice and humanity, it ought to command the admiration of every friend to human nature. But if sullied by crimes and extravagancies, it loses its respectability.
Alexander Hamilton
#2. I write plays because writing dialogue is the only respectable way of contradicting yourself. I put a position, rebut it, refute the rebuttal, and rebut the refutation.
Tom Stoppard
#3. Before the 20th century, the ulcer was not a respectable disease. Doctors would say, 'You're under a lot of stress.' Nineteenth-century Europe and America had all these crazy health spas and quack treatments.
Barry Marshall
#4. But they also awarded a quite respectable 55th place to Enoch Powell, thereby demonstrating that, for certain sections of the population, being an unpleasant racist constitutes no bar to greatness.
Marc Morris
#5. The docks were said to be quite tough, but there were pubs you didn't go into if you were a respectable ... but um, I never felt a sense of danger in Liverpool.
Derek Taylor
#6. Many respectable physicists said that they weren't going to stand for this
partly because it was a debasement of science, but mostly because they didn't get invited to those sort of parties.
Douglas Adams
#7. Architecture is a discipline that takes time and patience. If one spends enough years writing complex novels one might be able, someday, to construct a respectable haiku.
Thom Mayne
#8. One of the mitigating benefits of children is that they make a Lego habit more respectable.
Jonathan V. Last
#9. Every woman, even the most respectable, had roses blooming under glass; lips cut with a knife; curls of Indian ink; there was design, art, everywhere; a change of some sort had undoubtedly taken place.
Virginia Woolf
#10. DELUSION, n. The father of a most respectable family, comprising Enthusiasm, Affection, Self-denial, Faith, Hope, Charity and many other goodly sons and daughters.
Ambrose Bierce
#11. One, I have a wonderful publisher, Black Sparrow Press; as long as they exist, they will keep me in print. And they claim they sell very respectable numbers of my books, so I guess, and it's true, every place I go, my books are in libraries and on bookshelves.
Diane Wakoski
#12. It has been lately urged in a very respectable quarter that it is the mission of this country to spread civil and religious liberty all over the globe, and especially over this continent - even by force, if necessary. It is a sad delusion.
John C. Calhoun
#13. One effect of benefit-cost analysis is to give any respectable engineer or economist a means for justifying almost any kind of project the national government wants to justify ... Exclusive reliance on benefit-cost analysis has been one of the greatest threats to wise decisions in water development.
Gilbert F. White
#14. I like to assume that since I drive a car and maintain a respectable credit rating and rarely murder anyone and bury them in the back garden unless they really deserve it, that the fact that I hear voices wont unduly disturb anyone.
Robin McKinley
#15. A mere literary man is a dull man; a man who is solely a man of business is a selfish man; but when literature and commerce are united, they make a respectable man.
Samuel Johnson
#16. I felt early on I wasn't going to be a respectable citizen.
Cormac McCarthy
#17. War is not a means but an end. It makes violence respectable and makes sadists look like heroes.
Mary Horlock
#18. You know that deep down, a tiny part of that proper, respectable woman you are, wants to visit that reckless, sexy, uninhibited place inside you that's begging to get out. A place I can undoubtedly help you find.
K. Bromberg
#19. Jerkiness isn't as respectable as it used to be, not even in L.A. Which is why they had to build Vegas.
Ross Macdonald
#20. I mean, we make a 15-minute show that's incredibly silly, even though all of our scenic designers, puppet builders. animators, everybody that works on the show take their work very seriously. So somebody saying that we'd even be in contention for a very respectable award is really nice.
Seth Green
#21. It was a bowl cut, the hairstyle for someone who doesn't grasp respectable haircuts but suddenly has to have one.
David S. Atkinson
#22. It became clear to her that all men, however respectable in appearance and however elevated their position in society, were utter weaklings in front of a beautiful woman. - The Yacoubian Building, p. 42
Alaa Al Aswany
#23. A felicitous but unproved conjecture may be of much more consequence for mathematics than the proof of many a respectable theorem.
Atle Selberg
#24. By the Declaration of Independence, dreaded by the foes an for a time doubtfully viewed by many of the friends of America, everything stood on a new and more respectable footing, both with regard to the operations of war or negotiations with foreign powers.
Mercy Otis Warren
#26. Because of the generation in which I came into the world, there were expectations. Of course there were expectations. It was something having to do with being a respectable Negro woman who would make the people in Baltimore proud.
Anna Deavere Smith
#27. Sympathy is why when a man is getting mugged, you let him keep his shirt after you take his life. Funerals are respectable affairs, after all.
Bauvard
#28. Am dining at Goldini's Restaurant, Gloucester Road, Kensington. Please come at once and join me there. Bring with you a jemmy, a dark lantern, a chisel, and a revolver. S. H. It was a nice equipment for a respectable citizen to carry through the dim, fog-draped streets.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#29. Falsifiability for a theory is great, but a theory can still be respectable even if it is not falsifiable, as long as it is verifiable.
Brian Greene
#30. I see myself more as an ambassador of the game. And I hope to bring chess to a higher level in the United States. Making bigger tournaments, more interesting events. Making it a respectable profession for young people to be able to pursue in the future.
Maurice Ashley
#31. Unless your government is respectable, foreigners will invade your rights; and to maintain tranquillity, it must be respectable - even to observe neutrality, you must have a strong government.
Alexander Hamilton
#32. A hobby is an activity done at one's leisure - an occupation is done at another's. Since nurses are called upon at all times of the day, it is by nature an occupation, and a highly innapropriate one at that for two respectable girls
Kelly Zekas
#33. All great writers begin with a good leather binding and a respectable title.
James M. Barrie
#34. There is not a respectable system of civilization known to history whose foundations were not laid in the institution of domestic slavery.
Robert M. T. Hunter
#36. I have no religion,' says Borneau, 'but I respect the religion of others. Religion is sacred.' Why this privilege, this immunity?... A believer creates God in his own image; if he is ugly, his God will be morally ugly. Why should moral ugliness be respectable?
Jules Renard
#37. Many a man may look respectable, and yet be able to hide at will behind a spiral staircase.
P.G. Wodehouse
#38. The extraordinary deference paid to physicians and their judgment preserved the idea that the woman's desire to end a pregnancy was not enough in itself, it had to be approved by a respectable authority figure, at the time almost always a man.
Katha Pollitt
#39. You must not let yourself become too respectable. Keep yourself a little wild. What is life for, if not for the living of it?
Cynthia Voigt
#40. I had the most reversed education possible. Every parent wants their son to be a businessman, respectable - me, it was the opposite. When I had an artist career my mum was like, 'Oh finally, I'm proud of you!'
David Guetta
#41. If he could not restore her to the status of a respectable woman, then Sohrab would make her into something else entirely, something hitherto unknown in their entire extended family, an educated woman, a professional woman.
Jasmin Darznik
#42. I used to think that once a writer became a man of letters, if only for a half hour, he was done for. And here I am now, at the very moment of such an odious, though respectable, danger.
Dylan Thomas
#43. When I go downstairs, my mom tells me I need to tuck in my shirt and wear a belt, "Why?" I ask, because I do not really care if I look respectable or not. I only want to get rid of Tiffany once and for all.
Matthew Quick
#44. The camel is an ugly animal, seen from above. Its shoulders slope formless like a sack, its silly little ears and fluff of bleached curls behind them have a respectable, boarding-house look, like some faded neatness that dresses for propriety but never dressed for love.
Freya Stark
#45. I led the life of so many other so-called respectable people, - that is, in debauchery. And like the majority, while leading the life of a debauche, I was convinced that I was a man of irreproachable morality.
Leo Tolstoy
#46. Bilbo was going to be eleventy-one, 111, a rather curious number, and a very respectable age for a hobbit (the Old Took himself had only reached 130); and Frodo was going to be thirty-three, 33, an important number: the date of his 'coming of age'.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#47. It's so respectable you could put it in a Christmas circular letter.
Helen Dunmore
#48. A respectable soul of good quality costs entirely too much to maintain.
A.E. Marling
#49. People pay all that money to sit in a chair in the theater mainly because it is a respectable way to see and experience things they cannot see and experience in their own lives.
Elizabeth Ashley
#50. Any respectable artist has really given up on a label because the labels are still kidding themselves that the only way to go is to sign these big names like Lady Gaga and expect to make gazillions.
Tony Visconti
#51. Translating is a respectable, valuable, creative and worthwhile use of a human brain.
David Bellos
#52. belonged to the respectable class of society, but must have been poor; for he depended for support on a trade which he learned in accordance with rabbinical custom; it was the trade of tent-making, very common in Cilicia, and not profitable except in large cities.
Philip Schaff
#53. A good editor can make a respectable writer remarkable, just like a good parent helps a child become amazing.
Justin Alcala
#54. All decent people live beyond their incomes; those who aren't respectable live beyond other people's; a few gifted individuals manage to do both.
Hector Hugh Munro
#55. Aside from a brief stint as a writing tutor during graduate school, I have managed to avoid respectable employment all my adult life.
Jesse Kellerman
#56. In the face of the economic plight, it is our task to become pioneers of simplicity, that is, to find a simple form for all of life's necessities, which is at the same time respectable and genuine.
Oskar Schlemmer
#57. You could guarantee a decent cup of coffee in Betty's, but it went beyond the decent coffee and the respectable girls (and women) who had been parcelled up some time in the 1930s and freshly unwrapped this morning. It was the way that everything was exactly right and fitting. And clean.
Kate Atkinson
#58. The major obstacle to a religious renewal is the intellectual classes, who are highly influential and tend to view religion as primitive superstition. They believe that science has left atheism as the only respectable intellectual stance.
Robert Bork
#59. A respectable prison is still a prison.
V.E Schwab
#60. I fancy that the Hell of Too Many People would occupy a respectable place in the hierarchy of infernal regions.
J.B. Priestley
#61. His name tasted of fire and wings, of curling smoke, of subtlety and strength and the rasping whisper of scales. He eyed me and said stiffly, Don't land yourself into a boiling-pot, and as difficult as you may find it, try and present a respectable appearance.
Naomi Novik
#62. I don't know what a scoundrel is like, but I know what a respectable man is like, and it's enough to make one's flesh creep.
Joseph De Maistre
#63. Visiting a brothel is respectable, the vicar's widow asks with her brows raised?" "They
Jennifer Ashley
#64. As for sex, well, I mean sex is a perfectly respectable subject as far as Shakespeare is concerned. I mean, all history is love and violence.
Ian Fleming
#65. I suggest we embrace the phrase, "I don't know." It seems to get a bad rap, but "I don't know" is a respectable answer when one "doesn't know
Guy P. Harrison
#66. The straight line, a respectable optical illusion which ruins many a man.
Victor Hugo
#67. For years I felt that being respectable meant maintaining a sinister complacency, and the disreputable freedom I sought helped make me a writer.
Paul Theroux
#69. With still, underneath, the old respectable-girl-versus-slut thing. It's OK to fuck around if you're a feminist but it's also not OK to fuck around because most guys aren't feminists and won't respect you and won't call you again if you fuck around.
David Foster Wallace
#70. In 1903, Sir James Power, Lord Mayor of Dublin, was surprised to note on a transatlantic trip that the typical Irish immigrant in America was now "not merely a hewer of wood and a drawer of water." In fact, he remarked that they are "found occupying...respectable positions in society.
Rashers Tierney
#71. She might have made just as good a woman of consequence as Lady Bertram, but Mrs. Norris would have been a more respectable mother of nine children on a small income.
Jane Austen
#72. The best part? Probably being able to portray such a respectable, ethical, intelligent, strong woman. That's still pretty rare in our business, unfortunately.
Catherine Bell
#73. Beware: don't choose the convenient, the comfortable, the respectable, the socially acceptable. Choose something that rings a bell in your heart.
Rajneesh
#74. I don't like the city better, the more I see it, but worse. I am ashamed of my eyes that behold it. It is a thousand times meanerthan I could have imagined ... The pigs in the street are the most respectable part of the population.
Henry David Thoreau
#75. An epoch which had gilded individual liberty so that if a man had money he was free in law and fact, and if he had not money he was free in law and not in fact. An era which had canonized hypocrisy, so that to seem to be respectable was to be.
John Galsworthy
#76. When cowardice is made respectable, its followers are without number both from among the weak and the strong; it easily becomes a fashion.
Eric Hoffer
#77. But what can I do? I can - she leapt into the abyss - join a ladies' club. There! That's respectable! That's something I can do! I can be ladylike. Why, I can be more ladylike than anyone, as long as I can keep myself from saying the first thing that pops into my mind.
Annie Barrows
#78. Confidence comes from within and as long as you are putting forth a respectable effort to take good care of yourself, you should feel confident about that path.
Stacy Keibler
#79. It is a strange enterprise to make respectable people laugh.
Moliere
#80. The entrance into the Kingdom is through the panging pains of repentance crashing into a man's respectable goodness; then the Holy Ghost, who produces these agonies begins the formation of the Son God in the life.
Oswald Chambers
#81. To a chemist nothing on earth is unclean. A writer must be as objective as a chemist, he must lay aside his personal subjective standpoint and must understand that muck heaps play a very respectable part in a landscape, and that the evil passions are as inherent in life as the good ones.
Anton Chekhov
#82. I had seen a Pfizer's pilot plant in 1965 and decided that, 'I'll build a Pfizer.' If not Pfizer, I have built Dr Reddy's, which is no less respectable.
Kallam Anji Reddy
#83. There is an odd quirk in the human mind that makes a fearful man prefer to go quietly to a wicked-looking, gnarled "witch" for a countercharm than to a respectable licensed sorcerer or an accredited priest of the Church.
Randall Garrett
#84. Tom was like the rest of the respectable boys, in that he envied Huckleberry his gaudy outcast condition, and was under strict orders not to play with him. So he played with him every time he got a chance. Huckleberry
Mark Twain
#85. Free sexual intercourse between young males and respectable girls" was urgently necessary or society was "doomed to fall a victim to incurable neuroses which reduce the enjoyment of life to a minimum, destroy the marriage relation and bring hereditary ruin on the whole coming generation.
Sigmund Freud
#86. The jail was Maycomb's only conversation piece: its detractors said it looked like a Victorian privy; its supporters said it gave the town a good solid respectable look, and no stranger would ever suspect that it was full of niggers. As
Harper Lee
#87. Most Southerners of my parents' era were raised to feel that it wasn't respectable to be rich. We felt that all patriotic Southerners had lost everything in defense of the South, and sufficient time hadn't elapsed for respectable rebuilding of financial security in a war- impoverished region.
Sarah-Patton Boyle
#88. Because of the audience I get and the fact that these people aren't traditional comics buyers I don't think the comic industry looks at that and thinks that is a very respectable thing. I'm very used to it. I'm not the guy who wins awards and gets mentioned in magazines.
Jhonen Vasquez
#89. To travel across Spain and finally to reach Barcelona is like drinking a respectable red wine and finishing up with a bottle of champagne.
James A. Michener
#90. It is said that the British Empire is very large and respectable, and that the United States are a first-rate power. We do not believe that a tide rises and falls behind every man which can float the British Empire like a chip, if he should ever harbor it in his mind.
Henry David Thoreau
#91. Behind the contained and orderly lives we lead as members of the respectable middle class there's a terrible human capacity that may one day overwhelm any of us.
Diana Trilling
#92. It's satisfaction to the soul / To make something out of nothing, and to trim / A figured piece to fit a gaping hole, / And turn and twist and scheme until it matches. / There's nothing more respectable than patches.
Jane Merchant
#93. Fitz did not censor her mail but, as the head of the family, he had the right to read any letter addressed to a female relative living in his house. No respectable woman would object.
Ken Follett
#94. For the greatest fool and rascal in creation there is yet a worse condition; and that is, not to know it, but to think himself a respectable man.
George MacDonald
#95. What I intend to do is uphold a standard of intellectual seriousness on the right. [These books] should be written in a way that they are serious, soberly argued, well researched, and make a respectable case-agree or disagree.
Adam Bellow
#96. Your impression of him as a respectable man brings to my mind the work of a painter whose pictures show attractively at a distance but unpleasantly up close."
"I
John Bunyan
#97. Your little r changes the status of a single lady 'Ms' into a respectable lady 'Mrs'. Man, you make the difference!
Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
#98. When one has never heard a man's name in the course of one's life, it speaks volumes for him; he must be quite respectable.
Oscar Wilde
#99. He catches the thieves that lie in the hearts of their pure and respectable wives. And he compares them to the purity in the heart of a whore in a brothel.
Saadat Hasan Manto
#100. I do not dislike him. I consider him, on the contrary, as a very respectable man, who has everybody's good word and nobody's notice ...
Jane Austen
