Quotes About Behavior

ATHENA: You wish to be called righteous rather than act right.

Vices are their own punishment

It is absurd to ape our betters.

Do not tell others how to act unless you can set a good example.

A man is known by the company he keeps.

No gratitude from the wicked.

Change of habit cannot alter Nature.

Aunque a los malvados se les castigue severamente, difícilmente cambian su naturaleza desviada.

What's bred in the bone is sure to come out in the flesh.

Society ends up with the adults it deserves. It's just a little more obvious nowadays.

The lesson? To respond to the unexpected and hurtful behavior of others with something more than a wipe of the glasses, to see it as a chance to expand our understanding, even if, as Proust warns is, 'when we discover the true lives of other people, the real world beneath the world of appearance, we get as many surprises as on visiting a house of plain exterior which is full of hidden treasures, torture-chambers or skeletons.

The child teaches the adult something else about love: that genuine love should involve a constant attempt to interpret with maximal generosity what might be going on, at any time, beneath the surface of difficult and unappealing behavior.

By conceiving of love as biologically inevitable, key to the continuation of the species, Schopenhauer's theory of the will invites us to adopt a more forgiving stance towards the eccentric behaviour to which love so often makes us subject.

We are creature deeply marked by our expectations

Les jumeaux nous apprirent les attitudes des grandes personnes en train de fumer: la tête devait être un peu en biais, l'oeil droit à moitié fermé, la cigarette entre l'index et le majeur, le bout du filtre à peine calé enre les lèvres. Il fallait prendre son temps entre deux bouffées, faire semblant de discuter à grands gestes avec les autres.

I saw someone peeing in Jermym Street the other day. I thought, is this the end of civilization as we know it? Or is it simply someone peeing in Jermyn Street?

Good nature, or what is often considered as such, is the most selfish of all virtues: it is nine times out of ten mere indolence of disposition. William Hazlitt, 'On the Knowledge of Character' (1822)

The closest she got to pretence was politeness.

Etiquette may be bad, but embarassment is worse.

She was discrete about writing in her notebooks … This too pointed to potential derangement. What had her majesty to note down? She never used to do it. And like any change in behavior of the elderly, it was readily put down to decay. Probably Alzheimer's.

Sulking in children and the periodic cabinet member.

Etiquette may be bad but embarrassment is worse.

Watching people behave is nothing special; watching them trying to behave is always fascinating.

You cannot control the behavior of others, and you cannot dictate the choices they make. But you have total control over which aspects of them you are selecting to magnify in your experience. This is where your true authority lives. "My Father gives all power unto me