#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.”

“The problem with having a sense of humor is often that people you use it on aren't in a very good mood.”

“You know that one auntie, you don't wanna be rude,...But every holiday, nobody eatin' her food.”

“I was accepted by cool people because the cheerleaders thought I was cute. The jocks knew the jock-girls thought I was cute. I just chose not to hang around with them.”

“Two women seldom grow intimate but at the expense of a third person.”

“In affability there is no hatred of men, but for that very reason there is all too much contempt for men.”

“She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me, and I am in no humor at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men.”

“Whoever has provoked men to rage against him has always gained a party in his favor, too.”

“People who feel insecure in social situations never miss a chance to exhibit their dominance over close, submissive friends, whomthey put down publicly, in front of everyone--by teasing, for example.”

“Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way.”

“That will do extremely well, child. You have delighted us long enough. Let the other young ladies have time to exhibit.”

“Brandon is just the kind of man whom every body speaks well of, and nobody cares about; whom all are delighted to see, and nobody remembers to talk to.”

“Oh!” said she, “I heard you before, but I could not immediately determine what to say in reply. You wanted me, I know, to say ‘Yes,’ that you might have the pleasure of despising my taste; but I always delight in overthrowing those kind of schemes, and cheating a person of their premeditated contempt. I have, therefore made up my mind to tell you, that I do not want to dance a reel at all--and now despise me if you dare.” “Indeed I do not dare.”

“To flatter and follow others, without being flattered and followed in turn, is but a state of half enjoyment.”

“There are people who, like new songs, are in vogue only for a time.”

“People press toward the light not in order to see better but in order to shine better.--We are happy to regard the one before whomwe shine as light.”

“The hate of favourites is only a love of favour. The envy of NOT possessing it, consoles and softens its regrets by the contempt it evinces for those who possess it, and we refuse them our homage, not being able to detract from them what attracts that of the rest of the world.”

“The way to deal with worldly people is to frighten them by repeating their scandalous whisperings aloud.”

“We are praised or blamed, as the one or the other may be expedient, for displaying to advantage our power of discernment.”

“We praise or blame as one or the other affords more opportunity for exhibiting our power of judgement.”

“We are almost always bored by just those whom we must not find boring.”

“Satire is at once the most agreeable and most dangerous of mental qualities. It always pleases when it is refined, but we always fear those who use it too much; yet satire should be allowed when unmixed with spite, and when the person satirized can join in the satire.”

“When one child says to another, "I can do this, I bet you can't"; "My dad has a bigger car than yours"; or, "My dad is stronger than yours." Children identify with this or that, trying to build up a sense of self - a mentally defined sense of self.”

“A guest is really good or bad because of the host or hostess who makes being a guest an easy or a difficult task.”

“When you know to laugh and when to look upon things as too absurd to take seriously, the other person is ashamed to carry through even if he was serious about it.”

“She wanted to cry, but she did not want Peter to see her cry, and she especially did not want Teacher, with her flowing hair, to see her cry.”