Respectable Quotes

#1. Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.

Robert Towne

#2. Playing the good guy is tough because you know as well as I do, in real life, you have to watch your P's and Q's and conduct yourself in a respectable manner if you expect to have friends.

R. Lee Ermey

#3. Heidegger's parlamblings on 'Nothing' and 'Not' and 'the Nothing that Nothings' were the last supposedly respectable gasp of classical philosophy.

John Gardner

#4. Daydreaming with pencil and paper is a respectable form of meditation.

John Howe

#5. Nail up some indecency in plain sight over your door; from that time forward you will be rid of all respectable people,the most insupportable folk God has created.

Paul Gauguin

#6. The only really respectable Protestants are the fundamentalists. Unfortunately, they are also palpable idiots.

H.L. Mencken

#7. Surrealism was necessary - essential, even - in the 1920s to bridge the gap between rationalism and the subconscious. It started something important. But by the early '60s, it had become petit-bourgeois; it was too intellectual and romantic, and had ground to a halt. It had become respectable.

Alejandro Jodorowsky

#8. No excuses ever, for anyone; that is my principle at the outset. I deny the good intention, the respectable mistake, the indiscretion, the extenuating circumstance. With me there is no giving of absolution or blessing.

Albert Camus

#9. The impact of the human tragedies I've reported on is that, more often than not, I'll be angry. I want to know why is this child dying? These are not acts of God; they're results of respectable politicians' decisions.

John Pilger

#10. I come from a family where the only emotion respectable to show is irritation. In some this tendency produces hives, in others literature, in me both.

Flannery O'Connor

#11. Tall and thin, Mademoiselle Baptistine was a pale and gentle person. She was the incarnation of the word 'respectable,' whereas to be 'venerable,' a woman should lso be a mother.

Victor Hugo

#12. But it's no use now," thought poor Alice, "to pretend to be two people! Why, there's hardly enough of me left to make one respectable person!

Lewis Carroll

#13. When man tries to imagine Paradise on earth, the immediate result is a very respectable Hell.

Paul Claudel

#14. Thinking that being a good, decent, respectable person will mean that others will see you as weak, vulnerable, and easy to manipulate.

Paulo Coelho

#15. And a respectable man must be a coward and a slave not only at the present time, owing to some accidental circumstances, but generally in all periods of time. That's a law of nature for all respectable people on earth.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#16. Claiming my right to follow whethersoever science should lead ... it is as respectable to be modified monkey as modified dirt.

Thomas Huxley

#17. My mum translated this in her head to "witchfinder," which was good because like most West Africans, she considered witchfinding a more respectable profession than policeman.

Ben Aaronovitch

#18. A tanned skin is something more than respectable, and perhaps olive is a fitter color than white for a man,
a denizen of the woods. "The pale white man!" I do not wonder that the African pitied him.

Henry David Thoreau

#19. According to some researchers, hominids prior to Homo sapiens could not, for instance, produce the vowel i {ee}. But ultimately, this does not say very much, since by all accounts, et es perfectle pesseble to have a thoroughle respectable language wethout the vowel i.

Guy Deutscher

#20. Gambling has held human beings in thrall for millennia. It has been engaged in everywhere, from the dregs of society to the most respectable circles.

Peter L. Bernstein

#21. I think you'll have to marry me, Miss Fielding."
"To save your reputation?"
Derek grinned, bending to kiss the flash of pale throat revealed by the robe. "Someone has to make a respectable man of me.

Lisa Kleypas

#22. Virtue has never been as respectable as money.

Mark Twain

#23. History teaches us that, whatever we say, racists will always distort the words of mainstream politicians to make themselves sound more respectable.

David Blunkett

#24. Only sound common sense, respectable fellow that he is, in the homely realm of his own four walls, has very wonderful adventures directly he ventures out into the wide world of research.

Friedrich Engels

#25. Autobiography is probably the most respectable form of lying.

Humphrey Carpenter

#26. That partially due to the world of media and commerce, the idea of a comic book has been lost in the ghetto, whereas the graphic novel is now being held up as something to aspire to and as something that's respectable for adults to read.

Adrian Tomine

#27. Are you sure it is trustworthy, Mellanie?"
"I'd be dead if it wasn't."
"yes. I suppose that does generate a respectable level of personsal confidence

Peter F. Hamilton

#28. We all know what is meant by the term 'international community,' don't we? It's the West, of course, nothing more, nothing less. Using the term 'international community' is a way of dignifying the West, of globalising it, of making it sound more respectable, more neutral and high-faluting.

Martin Jacques

#29. The Roman Catholic Church is for saints and sinners alone - for respectable people, the Anglican Church will do.

Oscar Wilde

#30. I think we ought to decide that man-hating is not only respectable but honorable. To be a misandrist a woman needs considerable ingenuity, originality, and resilience. A misogynist requires no such resources.

Joanna Russ

#31. My sweet, there are altogether too many respectable ladies in the world. The supply has far exceeded the demand. But there's an appalling shortage of attractive pirates, and you do seem to have a gift for plundering and ravishing. I think we've found your true calling.

Lisa Kleypas

#32. It is ... [the citizens] choice, and depends upon their conduct, whether they will be respectable and prosperous, or contemptable and miserable as a Nation. This is the time of their political probation; this is the moment when the eyes of the World are turned upon them.

George Washington

#33. I try to make my comments like a woman's skirt: long enough to be respectable and short enough to be interesting.

Adam Clayton Powell III

#34. which is why she tried to join the RAF, so she could obtain a socially respectable opportunity to gratify her homicidal urges." "So

Jon Ronson

#35. The lodgings were on the top floor next to the well-guarded premises of a respectable dealer in stolen property because, as Granny had heard, good fences make good neighbors.

Terry Pratchett

#36. In the mass of mankind, I fear, there is too great a majority of fools and knaves; who, singly from their number, must to a certain degree be respected, though they are by no means respectable.

Lord Chesterfield

#37. Horse-play, romping, frequent and loud fits of laughter, jokes, and indiscriminate familiarity, will sink both merit and knowledge into a degree of contempt. They compose at most a merry fellow; and a merry fellow was never yet a respectable man.

Lord Chesterfield

#38. These days, there are many people around the world who listen to the songs that made me infamous and read the books that made me respectable.

Kinky Friedman

#39. wish to think all the world respectable, and are hurt if I speak ill of anybody. I only want to think YOU perfect, and you set yourself against it.

Jane Austen

#40. My work is not great, but it's respectable. I have no false illusions.

Maurice Sendak

#41. I started out as an opportunistic renegade. By now, I've lasted long enough to become sort of an American Original Respectable Renegade.

Wolfman Jack

#42. Novell has the necessary resources to be a much more profitable enterprise but it currently lacks the vision, strategy and execution to produce respectable returns.

Maynard James Keenan

#43. Any respectable alcoholic, worth his salt, should wish to wake up dead.

Robert Black

#44. The poorest being that crawls on earth, contending to save itself from injustice and oppression, is an object respectable in the eyes of God and man.

Edmund Burke

#45. Many terms which have now dropped out of favour will be revived, and those that are at present respectable, will drop out, if useage so choose with whom resides the decision and the judgment and the code of speech.

Horace

#46. Despair is not a particularly respectable condition and yet despair and delight alternate like systole and diastole in my heart.

Stephanie Mills

#47. Demmed nuisance, relations! But they make one so demmed respectable.

Oscar Wilde

#48. I just can't fathom why anyone would stand on a ledge when there's a respectable amount of walking space right next to it.

Stephanie Perkins

#49. And now, I have another good reason to speed up my baby narratives to make my author's profile appear more respectable.

Armineonila M.

#50. He rich ate and drank freely, accepting gout and apoplexy as things that ran mysteriously in respectable families ...

George Eliot

#51. Is it any wonder that no truly respectable society has ever trusted its artists?

Ursula K. Le Guin

#52. They were oddities, marginal and not exactly respectable. For her part, Chaps was too well read to be considered entirely proper. Books had made her unreasonably independent.

Sheridan Hay

#53. There is a bigotry rampant in America, against evangelicals. It is the last respectable bigotry.

Michael Novak

#54. Sometimes I ask myself if writing novels is even respectable.

Lorrie Moore

#55. There was no better path to autonomy for an ambitious young businesswoman than to be married off to a respectable corpse.

Elizabeth Gilbert

#56. The first bout of warm spring rain caused normally respectable women to pull off their stockings and run through muddy puddles alongside their children.

Leslye Walton

#57. For some strange reason murder has always seemed more respectable than fornication. Few people are shocked when they hear God described as the God of Battles; but what an outcry there would be if anyone spoke of him as the God of Brothels.

Aldous Huxley

#58. She was engaged in the task of defending her position in life," said Heyst. "It's a very respectable task.

Joseph Conrad

#59. I've never fully understood how Christianity became quite so tame and respectable, given its origins among drunkards, prostitutes, and tax collectors.

Nadia Bolz-Weber

#60. In the bosom of her respectable family resided Camilla.

Fanny Burney

#61. One of the good things about a Catholic church is that it isn't respectable," she had told Richard. "You can find anyone in it, from duchesses to whores, from tramps to kings.

Rumer Godden

#62. They often say woman cannot keep a secret, but every woman in the world, like every man, has a hundred secrets in her own soul which she hides from even herself. The more respectable she is, the more certain it is the secrets exist.

Austin O'Malley

#63. I dreamed about the nature of man, and about a courteous, reasonable, and respectable community of men - while the ghastly bloody feast went on in the temple behind them. Were they courteous and charming to one another, those sunny folk, out of silent regard for that horror?

Thomas Mann

#64. This conference is like a tour through the various levels of Hell, he thought. The only things missing are a respectable Virgil and hordes of people screaming.

Sylvain Reynard

#65. It is hardly respectable to be good nowadays.

Edith Sitwell

#66. A discontented young fellow, filled with self pride; he certainly should have considered it an honor to be sent on so respectable an embassy as he was.

Zebulon Pike

#67. The respectable, like the despised, are always at the mercy of circumstances; the influences of environment and the weight of tradition are vastly important to them, for these hide their inward poverty. The

Jiddu Krishnamurti

#68. There is a certain cowardice, a certain weakness, rather, among respectable folk. Only brigands are convinced-of what? That they must succeed. And so they do succeed.

Charles Baudelaire

#69. No government, any more than an individual, will long be respected without being truly respectable; nor be truly respectable, without possessing a certain portion of order and stability.

James Madison

#70. There's no way in the world you're going to make a political party respectable unless you keep it out of office.

Will Rogers

#71. I had an honest, ordered, respectable and unexciting life to look forward to. I had sown my wild oats and it was time to grow sage. Or so I imagined.

Stephen Fry

#72. You're calling Illium a pretty boy?" Elena snorted, glad to focus on something other than the heavy cloud of death that hung over the city. "Have you looked in a mirror lately?"

"I have scars, like any respectable male.

Nalini Singh

#73. Being a gossip reporter just isn't a respectable job. It'll chew you up and spit you out.

Kim Cattrall

#74. Freethought is respectable. Freethought is crucial. Freethought needs to be publicized.

Dan Barker

#75. The purpose of clothing, as best he could tell, was to keep one unembarrassed and at the right temperature. If an outfit served that purpose for a respectable period - twenty years, say - and at the lowest price available, then it was successful.

Tom Rachman

#76. In every age in which books have been produced, the governing class, the respectable, have been opposed to the works of real genius.

Robert Green Ingersoll

#77. Unquestionably the discovery of the Mississippi is a datable fact which considerably mellows and modifies the shiny newness of our country, and gives her a most respectable outside-aspect of rustiness and antiquity.

Mark Twain

#78. No one was interested in picking up a midlist series, even though I have a decent fanbase and respectable numbers.

J.A. Konrath

#79. Why couldn't Obama have picked somebody respectable as his running mate, you know, like John Kerry did?

Ann Coulter

#80. The reason crime doesn't pay is that when it does, it is called a more respectable name.

Laurence J. Peter

#81. The greater part of violence that humans have inflicted on each other is not the work of criminals or the mentally deranged, but of normal, respectable citizens in the service of the collective ego.

Eckhart Tolle

#82. Artists put as much vitality and delight into their saintliness and escape out as most men do their escapes into similar places from respectable existence.

Wyndham Lewis

#83. It is respectable to have no illusions, and safe, and profitable and dull.

Joseph Conrad

#84. His talent was to express his readers' most stupid and ignorant prejudices as if they made sense, so that the shameful seemed respectable. That was why they bought the paper.

Ken Follett

#85. I grew up thinking that renting is perfectly normal. And then, strangely enough, I never did buy a house. I live in New York City, and I'm still renting. My own personal narrative shows that it is possible to live a respectable life without ever having owned a home.

Edmund Phelps

#86. I'm a relatively respectable citizen. Multiple felon perhaps, but certainly not dangerous.

Hunter S. Thompson

#87. The short story is still like the novel's wayward younger brother, we know that it's not respectable - but I think that can also add to the glory of it.

Neil Gaiman

#88. The toppling of idols - even respectable, admired, best-practice, fastest-growing idols - is always the road to liberation.

John Ortberg

#89. Testing was never going to be fashionable, but you could hardly run a respectable software development shop with no testing effort at all.

Stephen Baxter

#90. [The English] find ill-health not only interesting but respectable and often experience death in the effort to avoid a fuss.

Pamela Frankau

#91. A wise man should marry a virgin of a respectable family even if she is deformed. He should not marry one of a low-class family, through beauty. Marriage in a family of equal status is preferable.

Chanakya

#92. If wrappings of cloth can impart respectability, the most respectable persons are the Egyptian mummies, all wrapped in layers and layers of gauze

Kamala Suraiyya Das

#93. He does not praise himself - yet he is respectable.

Laozi

#94. When you are older you will meet a man who will love you for yourself. A good-natured, charming respectable man who is liked by you family.

Amanda Grange

#95. 'Hubba-Hubba' never slips out," Zeke said. "You selected those words with deliberate intent, and I question your commitment to the respectable use of the English language.

Sarah Beth Durst

#96. Oh dear gods. I think my underwear just fell off." "Nicole," Tina hissed. "Keep your comments to yourself! Be a respectable fucking lady, for fuck's sake!

T.J. Klune

#97. that the city be governed by a choice of respectable members of the community who would promise not to give themselves airs or betray the public trust at every turn, was instantly the subject of music-hall jokes all over the city.

Terry Pratchett

#98. If you can build a business up big enough, it's respectable.

Will Rogers

#99. Greenwich Village always had its share of mind readers, but there are many more these days, and they seem to have moved closer to the mainstream of life in the city. What was crazy 10 years ago is now respectable, even among the best-educated New Yorkers.

Aravind Adiga

#100. I came from a family where the only emotion respectable to show is irritation.

Flannery O'Connor