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81 " The respectable family that supports worthless relatives or covers up their crimes in order to " protect the family name" (as if the moral stature of one man could be damaged by the actions of another)-the bum who boasts that his great-grandfather was an empire-builder, or the small-town spinster who boasts that her maternal great-uncle was a state senator and her third cousin gave a concert at carnegie hall (as if the achievement of one man could rub off on the mediocrity of another)-the parents who search geneological trees in order to evaluate their prospective son-in-law.-the celebrity who starts his autobiography with a detailed account of his family history -All these are samples of racism. "
82 " I came from a family where the only emotion respectable to show is irritation. "
― Flannery O'Connor
83 " There was no better path to autonomy for an ambitious young businesswoman than to be married off to a respectable corpse. "
― Elizabeth Gilbert , Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage
84 " Alfred . . . stands, high and haughty, on that good old respectable ground, the right of the strongest; and he says, and I think quite sensibly, that the American planter is 'only doing, in another form, what the English aristocracy and capitalists are doing by the lower classes;' that is, I take it, appropriating them, body and bone, soul and spirit, to their use and convenience. He defends both, – and I think, at least, consistently. He says that there can be no high civilization without enslavement of the masses, either nominal or real. There must, he says, be a lower class, given up to physical toil and confined to an animal nature; and a higher one thereby acquires leisure and wealth for a more expanded intelligence and improvement, and becomes the directing soul of the lower. So he reasons, because, as I said, he is born an aristocrat; – so I don't believe, because I was born a democrat. "
― Harriet Beecher Stowe , Uncle Tom's Cabin
85 " Bonhoeffer examined and dismissed a number of approaches to dealing with evil. " Reasonable people," he said, think that " with a little reason, they can pull back together a structure that has come apart at the joints." Then there are the ethical " fanatics" who " believe that they can face the power of evil with the purity of their will and their principles." Men of" conscience" become overwhelmed because the " countless respectable and seductive disguises and masks in which evil approaches them make their conscience anxious and unsure until they finally content themselves with an assuaged conscience instead of a good conscience." They must " deceive their own conscience in order not to despair." Finally there are some who retreat to a " private virtuousness. Such people neither steal, nor murder,nor commit adultery, but do good according to their abilities. but... they must close their eyes and ears to the injustice around them. Only at the cost of self-deception can they keep their private blamelessness clean from the stains of responsible action in the world. In all that they do, what they fail to do will not let them rest. "
86 " I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain’d, I stand and look at them long and long.They do not sweat and whine about their condition, They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things, Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago, Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth. "
― Walt Whitman , Leaves of Grass
87 " When asked what gave her the strength and commitment to refuse segregation, (Rosa) Parks credited her mother and grandfather " for giving me the spirit of freedom... that I should not feel because of my race or color, inferior to any person. That I should do my very best to be a respectable person, to respect myself, to expect respect from others. "
88 " ... he couldn't, as a respectable master in an English public school, have taken us to a brothel. Yet how I wish he had! His introduction to sexual experience would, I feel sure, have been a masterpiece of tact; it might well have speeded up our development by a good five years. "
― Christopher Isherwood , Lions and Shadows: An Education in the Twenties
89 " In economics, it is often professionally better to be associated with highly respectable error than uncertainly established truth. "
― John Kenneth Galbraith , The Affluent Society
90 " It may well be on such a night of clouds and cruel colors that there is brought forth upon the earth such a portent as a respectable poet. You say you are a poet of law "
91 " 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. "
92 " Temperance Dews stood with quiet confidence, a respectable women who lived in the sewer that was St. Giles. Her eyes had widened at the sight of Lazarus, but she made no move to flee. Indeed, finding a strange man in her pathetic sitting room seemed not to frighten her at all.Interesting.“I am Lazarus Huntington, Lord Caire,” he said.“I know. What are you doing here?”He tilted his head, studying her. She knew him, yet did not recoil in horror? Yes, she’d do quite well. “I’ve come to make a proposition to you, Mrs. Dews.”Still no sign of fear, though she eyed the doorway. “You’ve chosen the wrong woman, my lord. The night is late. Please leave my house.”No fear and no deference to his rank. An interesting woman indeed.“My proposition is not, er, illicit in nature,” he drawled. “In fact, it’s quite respectable. Or nearly so.”She sighed, looked down at her tray, and then back up at him. “Would you like a cup of tea?”He almost smiled. Tea? When had he last been offered something so very prosaic by a woman? He couldn’t remember.But he replied gravely enough. “Thank you, no.”She nodded. “Then if you don’t mind?”He waved a hand to indicate permission.She set the tea tray on the wretched little table and sat on the padded footstool to pour herself a cup. He watched her. She was a monochromatic study. Her dress, bodice, hose, and shoes were all flat black. A fichu tucked in at her severe neckline, an apron, and cap—no lace or ruffles—were all white. No color marred her aspect, making the lush red of her full lips all the more startling. She wore the clothes of a nun, yet had the mouth of a sybarite.The contrast was fascinating—and arousing.“You’re a Puritan?” he asked.Her beautiful mouth compressed. “No. "
― Elizabeth Hoyt , Wicked Intentions (Maiden Lane, #1)
93 " [T]he source of everything respectable in man either as an intellectual or as a moral being namely, that his errors are corrigible. "
― John Stuart Mill , On Liberty
94 " Sometimes I want to clean up my desk and go out and say, “Respect me; I’m a respectable grown-up!" and other times I just want to jump into a paper bag and shake and bake myself to death. "
95 " When you lay down a proposition which is forthwith controverted, it is of course optional with you to take up the cudgels in its defence. If you are deeply convinced of its truth, you will perhaps be content to leave it to take care of itself; or, at all events, you will not go out of your way to push its fortunes; for you will reflect that in the long run an opinion often borrows credit from the forbearance of its patrons. In the long run, we say; it will meanwhile cost you an occasional pang to see your cherished theory turned into a football by the critics. A football is not, as such, a very respectable object, and the more numerous the players, the more ridiculous it becomes. Unless, therefore, you are very confident of your ability to rescue it from the chaos of kicks, you will best consult its interests by not mingling in the game. "
― Henry James , Views and Reviews (Project Gutenberg, #37424)
96 " --As I must therefore conclude that you are not serious in your rejection of me, I shall choose to attribute it to your wish of increasing my love by suspense, according to the usual practice of elegant females." --" I do assure you, sir, that I have no pretensions whatever to that kind of elegance which consists in tormenting a respectable man. I would rather be paid the compliment of being believed sincere. "
97 " Observing others go through them, he used to admire midlife crises, the courage and shamelessness and existential daring of them, but after he'd watched his own wife, a respectable nursery school teacher, produce and star in a full-blown one of her own, he found the sufferers of such crises not only self-indulgent but greedy and demented, and he wished them all weird unnatural deaths with various contraptions easily found in garages. "
― Lorrie Moore , Bark
98 " 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 , Alias Grace
99 " 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. "
100 " A shell in the pit," said I, " if the worst comes to worst will kill them all." The intense excitement of the events had no doubt left my perceptive powers in a state of erethism. I remember that dinner table with extraordinary vividness even now. My dear wife's sweet anxious face peering at me from under the pink lampshade, the white cloth with it silver and glass table furniture—for in those days even philosophical writers had luxuries—the crimson-purple wine in my glass, are photographically distinct. At the end of it I sat, tempering nuts with a cigarette, regretting Ogilvy's rashness, and denouncing the shortsighted timidity of the Martians.So some respectable dodo in the Mauritius might have lorded it in his nest, and discussed the arrival of that shipful of pitiless sailors in want of animal food. " We will peck them to death tomorrow, my dear. "