Top 100 Respectable Quotes
#1. He just tarted up his misdemeanours and made them look respectable,
Margaret Atwood
#2. 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
#3. If you wish at once to do nothing and be respectable nowadays, the best pretext is to be at work on some profound study.
Leslie Stephen
#4. Some live in poverty but with their honor; some live in wealth but with no honor! Some lives are respectable, some are disgraceful!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#5. 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
#6. I have never understood disliking for war. It panders to instincts already catered for within the scope of any respectable domestic establishment.
Alan Bennett
#7. 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
#8. 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
#9. 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
#10. 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
#11. 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
#12. Virtue never has been as respectable as money.
Mark Twain
#13. One of the mitigating benefits of children is that they make a Lego habit more respectable.
Jonathan V. Last
#14. 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
#15. 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
#16. If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
Louis D. Brandeis
#17. 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
#18. 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
#19. 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
#20. Have no mean hours, but be grateful for every hour, and accept what it brings. The reality will make any sincere record respectable.
Henry David Thoreau
#21. 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
#22. The author says this socially respectable option NOT to parent has actually made parenthood more stressful. The knowledge that parents have chosen that role allows for unrealistic buildup of expectations and unavoidable second-guessing.
Jennifer Senior
#23. 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
#24. I felt early on I wasn't going to be a respectable citizen.
Cormac McCarthy
#25. The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable.
H.L. Mencken
#26. War is not a means but an end. It makes violence respectable and makes sadists look like heroes.
Mary Horlock
#27. 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
#28. 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
#29. 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
#30. It was a bowl cut, the hairstyle for someone who doesn't grasp respectable haircuts but suddenly has to have one.
David S. Atkinson
#31. It's not what hurts you that makes you respectable. It's how you get over it.
Deborah Smith
#33. Brand integrity is the ability to present one's brand both in words and deeds to be true, respectable and acceptable without compromising on standards (brand's promise).
Bernard Kelvin Clive
#34. Politicians, old buildings, and prostitutes become respectable with age.
Mark Twain
#35. 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
#36. A felicitous but unproved conjecture may be of much more consequence for mathematics than the proof of many a respectable theorem.
Atle Selberg
#37. 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
#39. 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
#40. 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
#41. I'm not sure what I'd do with you if you were respectable.
Richelle Mead
#42. 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
#43. If I go to Germany, I learn something in addition. The German television is very precise and respectable. One has never stress. In Italy it is more dynamic. But I amuse myself madly in both countries.
Michelle Hunziker
#44. 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
#45. 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
#46. 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
#47. 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
#48. Work only can keep even kings respectable.
Albert Pike
#49. The same old caveman feeling-greed, envy, violence, and mutual hate, which along the way assumed respectable pseudonyms like class struggle, racial struggle, mass struggle, labor-union struggle-are tearing our world to pieces.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#50. The body - the cage - is everything of the most respectable - but through the bars, the wild animal looks out.
Agatha Christie
#51. All great writers begin with a good leather binding and a respectable title.
James M. Barrie
#52. 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
#53. Who is respectable when thinking himself alone and free from observation will be so before the eye of all the world.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#54. When I found myself regarded as respectable, I began to wonder what sins I had committed. I must be very wicked, I thought. I began to engage in the most uncomfortable introspection.
Bertrand Russell
#55. My uncle, Mr. Stephen Maple, had been at the same time the most successful and the least respectable of our family, so that we hardly knew whether to take credit for his wealth or to feel ashamed of his position.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#57. 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
#58. Many a man may look respectable, and yet be able to hide at will behind a spiral staircase.
P.G. Wodehouse
#59. Faith that trusts on Jesus alone for salvation, and not on your respectable life, and the obedience that follows Him, are the indispensable steps to salvation. You admit that you have not taken these decisive steps. Then, however near you are, you are not in Christ.
Theodore L. Cuyler
#60. Command that your marshal be careful to be present over the household, and especially in the hall, to keep the household, within doors and without, respectable, without dispute or noise, or bad words.
Robert Grosseteste
#61. 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
#62. 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
#63. Being authentic is more respectable than being great.
K.P. Stafford
#64. The newspaper journalists like to believe the worst; they can sell more papers that way, as one of them told me himself; for even upstanding and respectable people dearly love to read ill of others.
Margaret Atwood
#65. 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
#66. Our literature, despite several false starts that promised much, is chiefly remarkable, now as always, for its respectable mediocrity.
H.L. Mencken
#67. 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
#68. Sex is the most respectable and holy thing in all creation, the most serious act in life.
George Sand
#69. He'll accept anyone at Hogwarts, s'long as they've got the talent. Knows people can turn out okay even if their families weren' ... well ... all tha' respectable.
J.K. Rowling
#70. 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
#71. 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
#73. 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
#74. 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
#75. To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.
Oscar Wilde
#76. 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
#77. The government is mainly an expensive organization to regulate evildoers, and tax those who behave: government does little for fairly respectable people except annoy them.
E.W. Howe
#78. I wrote without much effort; for I was rich, and the rich are always respectable, whatever be their style of writing.
Jane Austen
#79. Backup dancers are completely respectable. They're the studio musicians of dance.
Mike Birbiglia
#80. In populous cities, which are the seat of commerce and manufactures, the middle ranks of inhabitants, who derive their subsistence from the dexterity or labour of their hands, are commonly the most prolific, the most useful, and, in that sense, the most respectable part of the community.
Edward Gibbon
#81. SORCERY, n. The ancient prototype and forerunner of political influence. It was, however, deemed less respectable and sometimes was punished by torture and death.
Ambrose Bierce
#82. It's so respectable you could put it in a Christmas circular letter.
Helen Dunmore
#83. A respectable soul of good quality costs entirely too much to maintain.
A.E. Marling
#84. Marketers are making retirement respectable. Instead of being the beginning of the end, it sounds like Nirvana-do what you want without any responsibilities. The boomers think that they're 16. Marketers try to keep the charade going. Retirement will look so good, others are going to be jealous.
Jerry Della Femina
#85. MacPherson told me that my theorem can be viewed as blah blah blah Grothendieck blah blah blah, which makes it much more respectable.
Jim Propp
#86. The redemptive power of divine grace no longer seemed credible, nor very respectable in the arbitrary performance that was claimed for it.
Rebecca West
#87. 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
#88. 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
#89. Translating is a respectable, valuable, creative and worthwhile use of a human brain.
David Bellos
#90. Taxi-drivers in Frankfurt are said to dislike the annual Book Fair because literary folk, instead of being shuttled to prostitutes like respectable members of other convening professions, prefer to stay in their hotels and fuck one another
Julian Barnes
#91. Yes we dream of our selves, of what we will become," Chi Ling told me, "but it's the environment that tells us what is possible. I don't think our dreams are limitless; they are bounded by the society we live in and its conception of what is respectable and good.
Julie Lythcott-Haims
#93. 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
#94. People will think you're courting me.'
'Nonsense, everyone knows I don't court respectable women.
Julia Quinn
#95. A good editor can make a respectable writer remarkable, just like a good parent helps a child become amazing.
Justin Alcala
#96. Renounce poor work.
Shun trivial work.
Entertain respectable work.
Welcome superior work.
Honor transcendent work.
Matshona Dhliwayo
#97. 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
#98. I blame it on the heat. And Morgan had gone to India, and the heat had not undone him. He had remained respectable.
Damon Galgut
#99. But now respectable elderly women do not need to excuse themselves for buying brandy or even gin, though it is quite likely that some still do and perhaps one may hope that they always will.
Barbara Pym
#100. The goal is to do things that are exciting and respectable.
Jared Kushner
