Society Quotes

“The breach of customIs breach of all.”

“Liberty plucks justice by the nose; The baby beats the nurse, and quite athwart Goes all decorum.”

“What is the city but the people?”

“Thou hast seen a farmer's dog bark at a beggar? And the creature run from the cur. There thou mightst behold the great image of authority-a dog's obeyed in office.”

“Ingratitude is monstrous; and for the multitude to be ingrateful were to make a monster of the multitude; of which we being members, should bring ourselves to be monstrous members.”

“A woman impudent and mannish grownIs not more loath'd than an effeminate man.”

“Have you not heard it said full oft,A woman's nay doth stand for naught?”

“As in a theatre, the eyes of men, after a well-graced actor leaves the stage, are idly bent on him that enters next.”

“Sick in the world's regard, wretched and low.”

“O Ceremony, show me but thy worth? What is thy soul of adoration? Art thou aught else but place, degree, and form, Creating awe and fear in other men?”

“Cannot you tell that? Every fool can tell that. It was the very day that young Hamlet was born, he that is mad and sent into England." "Ay, marry, why was he sent into England?" "Why, because he was mad. He shall recover his wits there, or, if he do not, it's no great matter there." "Why?" "'Twill not be seen in him there. There the men are as mad as he.”

“There is a law in each well-ordered nationTo curb those raging appetites that areMost disobedient and refractory.”

“O, the difference of man and man!To thee a woman's services are due.”

“Women being the weaker vessels, are ever thrust to the walls.”

“What a terrible era in which idiots govern the blind.”

“But now behold,In the quick forge and working-house of thought,How London doth pour out her citizens!”

“Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile,Hath not old custom made this life more sweetThan that of painted pomp? Are not these woodsMore free from peril than the envious court?”

“The fashion of the world is to avoid cost, and you encounter it.”

“Take but degree away, untune that string, and hark, what discord follows!”

“Let us kill all lawyers”

“I remember the thought which occurred to me when some ingenious and spiritual foreigners came to America, was, Have you been victimized in being brought hither?--or, prior to that, answer me this, "Are you victimizable?”

“Thought and knowledge are natures in which apparatus and pretension avail nothing. Gowns, and pecuniary foundations, though of towns of gold, can never countervail the least sentence or syllable of wit. Forget this, and out American colleges will recede in their public importance whilst they grow richer every year.”

“Lawyers are a prudent race though not very fond of liberty.”

“But to most of us society shows not its face and eye, but its side and back. To stand in true relations with men in a false age isworth a fit of insanity, is it not?”

“The masses have no habit of self-reliance or original action.”