Social Dynamics Quotes

“What the great ones do, the less will prattle of”

“Manners have been somewhat cynically defined to be a contrivance of wise men to keep fools at a distance. Fashion is shrewd to detect those who do not belong to her train, and seldom wastes her attentions. Society is very swift in its instincts, and if you do not belong to it, resists and sneers at you, or quietly drops you.”

“Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinction. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit. It is like ice, on which no beauty of form, no majesty of carriage, can plead any immunity; they must walk gingerly, according to the laws of ice, or down they must go, dignity and all.”

“It is hard, if not impossible, to snub a beautiful woman - they remain beautiful and the snub recoils.”

“Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins”

“Your life experience will never far exceed the expectations of your peers, because to stay connected to them there is an unconscious contract that says we're going to be within this range of each other. Now, on the other hand, if for some reason your friends have a higher expectation for life than you do, just to stay on the team you've got to raise your standard.”

“Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit.”

“When one's character begins to fall under suspicion and disfavor, how swift, then, is the work of disintegration and destruction.”

“The society of the energetic class, in their friendly and festive meetings, is full of courage, and of attempts, which intimidatethe pale scholar.”

“Humor is a great defense, and an offense too. Usually the recipient isn't too happy about it, but the people around are laughing.”

“Gossip is one thing, hurtful gossip is completely another, and even in high school we weren't THAT mean.”

“If humanity is to progress, Gandhi is inescapable.”

“Quietly endure, silently suffer and patiently wait.”

“Your friends may love you in private but your enemies will hate you in public.”

“He liked to like people, therefore people liked him.”

“When people are forced to interact to survive, their prejudices diminish.”

“Why is it you always meet people when you look your worst?”

“There are many times when a woman will ask another girl friend how she likes her new hat. She will reply, 'Fine,' but slap her hand to her forehead the minute the girl leaves to yipe, 'What a horror!'”

“All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.”

“An eye for an eye leaves everybody blind.”

“Man is more sensitive to the contempt that others feel towards him than to the contempt that he feels towards himself.”

“Among the wealthy, generosity is often merely a kind of shyness.”

“Spiritual strength and passion, when accompanied by bad manners, only provoke loathing.”

“I'm with an old family" was the euphemism used to dignify the professions of white folks' cooks and maids who talked so affectedly among their own kind in Roxbury [Massachusetts] that you couldn't even understand them.”

“The refinement of morality increases together with the refinement of fear. Today the fear of disagreeable feelings in other people is almost the strongest of our own disagreeable feelings.”