Quotes About Social norms

I don't get the big deal myself. If you can die for your country at eighteen, why not have a beer?

I feel that familiar niggle of not wanting to disappoint anyone, ever, for any reason. Another female quirk, isn't it? Always be polite, meet expectations, smile when you don't want to, cry instead of getting angry. Be pleasing.

I liked how she never offered any physical comfort. I appreciate people who have a healthy respect for personal boundaries. Our culture is too touchy-feely; everyone wants a hug these days. But Dr. Cooper just sat and was present.

Never slam a car door. According to the Westchester elite, it's a heinous crime, as heartless as kicking a puppy.

There was never any comfortable way to mention or discuss one's successes without breaking the rule against bragging, even if one didn't mean to.

No one mentioned such things; it was not a rule, but was considered rude to call attention to things that were unsettling or different about individuals.

It was against the rules for children or adults to look at another's nakedness; but the rule did not apply to newchildren or the Old. Jonas

It was true. Men could be with whomever they pleased. But women had to date better, kinder, richer, and bright, bright, bright, or else people got embarrassed.

I am a governess myself. Oh, indeed! said Miss Kate, but she might as well have said, Dear me, how dreadful! for her tone implied it, and something in her face made Meg color, and wish she had not been so frank. Mr. Brooke looked up and said quickly, Young ladies in America love independence as much as their ancestors did, and are admired and respected for supporting themselves.

Lo que públicamente se entiende por normal no es lo más habitual, sino lo normativo, lo convencionalmente obligatorio. Pero dentro del secreto de nuestra intimidad, todos nos desviamos de la regla, todos somos de algún modo heterodoxos.

Having sex multiple times on the first sleepover does not count as more than one "date"…

talking with him made me realize I wasn't the only one. "I mean, it's like everybody's acting out a part," he'd tell me. "They say stuff they don't really think, or do stuff they don't really feel like doing, and after a while you find yourself acting the same way.

Because the comic hero deviates, by the nature of his role, from social norms, he leads an alienated existence: he is slapped, reviled, insulted, treated as an outcast, disinherited. Yet he bears everything with the rigid patience of the wise Fool, whose foolery is in his passport to safety. (In his introduction to Habiby's Secret Life of Saeed the Pessoptimist)

Because the comic hero deviates, by the nature of his role, from social norms, he leads an alienated existence: he is slapped, reviled, insulted, treated as an outcast, disinherited. Yet he bears everything with the rigid patience of the wise Fool, whose foolery is in his passport to safety. (In her introduction to Habiby's Secret Life of Saeed the Pessoptimist)

There are people in Europe who, confounding together the different characteristics of the sexes, would make of man and woman beings not only equal but alike. They would give to both the same functions, impose on both the same duties, and grant to both the same rights; they would mix them in all things—their occupations, their pleasures, their business.

Why is there always this twitchiness, when you introduce a man to a woman friend, about whether the man will be bored or put off?

They were tolerant of what most people in town would think of as moral lapses in each other, but quite intolerant of departures in dress and hair style, and people not cutting the crusts off of sandwiches ...

MISS, n. The title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate that they are in the market. Miss, Missis (Mrs.) and Mister (Mr.) are the three most distinctly disagreeable words in the language, in sound and sense. Two are corruptions of Mistress, the other of Master. In the general abolition of social titles in this our country they miraculously escaped to plague us. If we must have them let us be consistent and give one to the unmarried man. I venture to suggest Mush, abbreviated to Mh.

While it might be fashionable for a lady to attend a publuc lecture on the afterlife, or participate in a seance from time to time, claiming to have seen a ghost yourself does not go down well in polite circles.

I think life is easier if you're straight.

I try to preserve whatever balance society has between public and personal life. I never try to eat on the subway. I never try to listen to loud music on the subway.

I wished we had been the kind of girls those boys would have been nice to, automatically. I'm not even sure what kind of girls that would have been, why some girls were attractive to boys and others weren't.

Boobs are just inherently undignified.

Club members refuse to abide by certain unwritten rules, and they make people aware of the existence of those rules by breaking them in public situations.