Quotes About Social norms

Grey sat in his bedchamber, unshaven and attired in his nightshirt, banyan, and slippers, drinking tea and debating with himself whether the authoritative benefits conferred by wearing his uniform outweighed the possible consequences - both sartorial and social - of wearing it into the slumps of London to inspect a three-day-old corpse.

Murtagh was one of those men who always looked a bit startled to find that women had voices

I'm from the generation that had the boys' door and the girls' door when you went to school, and you got in big trouble if you went in the wrong one.

I tried to play the etiquette game - the respect game - for too long, and it didn't work out for me.

And we talked to each other at a restaurant and I was supposed to order wine and I would much rather have had something to eat. But that's just like them — they don't mind paying large sums for something to drink, but as soon as they have to pay just a small amount for something to eat they feel taken advantage of, because food is a necessity, but having a drink is superfluous and therefore elegant.

We took a bowl each and started eating. He went back into the little room, and by the time he returned to the table with his own bowl of food to eat with us, we had already finished. He was shocked and looked around to see if we had done something else with the food.

Any knowledge of homosexuality I might have had would have gone back to Victorian times. All those novels. You probably skirted under my radar, because you weren't wearing hoop skirts and high button boots.

I am always saying "Glad to've met you" to somebody I'm not at all glad I met. If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff, though.

and placing emphasis on the kinds of values that a male-dominated society and culture wants to read about and wants to see in the works themselves.

Children need to understand the way the world works: what's permissible and what's not.

We seem okay with violence, but nudity we race to criticize and censor.

I loathe and detest people who pretend they don't care what people think about them as if that is a virtue, when it is simply rude.

Most American women are very uncomfortable about having servants. They don't know what to do while you are there.

For what might happen if we lift the codicils on belching? If sex were permitted in the shopping malls? If people were allowed to sing arias from Don Giovanni , loudly and out of tune, waiting in line at Department of Motor Vehicles?

It was easier for girls. They could say This hurts, or I don't like how this feels, and have the complaint be socially acceptable. Boys, though, didn't speak that language. They didn't learn it as children and they didn't manage to pick it up as adults, either.

It makes me wonder how I'd be treated if I were like everyone else. Maybe I'm a pretty rotten person, not that anyone would ever have the guts to tell me this to my face. Maybe everyone thinks I'm rude or ugly or stupid but they have to be nice because it could be the circumstances of my life that make me that way.

This Earle of Oxford, making of his low obeisance to Queen Elizabeth, happened to let a Fart, at which he was so abashed and ashamed that he went to Travell, 7 yeares. On his returne the Queen welcomed him home, and sayd, My Lord, I had forgott the Fart.

We're none of us normal. Not in this fucking country.

I prefer ordinary girls - you know, college students, waitresses, that sort of thing. Most of the girls I go out with are just good friends. Just because I go out to the cinema with a girl, it doesn't mean we are dating.

As far as the 'Mad Men' thing, I love 'Mad Men.' It's one of my favorite shows; I think it's an amazing series.

When your kids are 5 or 6, they already start playing with makeup. And I was the only mother in freakin' elementary school getting called in to deal with makeup on her daughter.

What makes you a real girl or boy is that no one laughs at you. If you are imitation or unreal, the rules give you a right to exist provided you do what the real ones or brutes say. What makes you into me or Charles Morgan is that the rules allow all the girls to be better than me and all the boys better than Charles Morgan.

What's the good of being civilized, that's what I'd like to know? It just means other people can break the rules and you can't.

Violate conventions and you are marked as an outsider. A rude outsider, at that.