Quotes About Behavior

These are, in sum, the two great uniquenesses of human life—regularized food-sharing and cooperation with others—and they are unknown among the subhuman primates.

The basic motivation for human behavior is our biological need to control our basic anxiety, to deny the terror of death.

An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.

Everyone behaves badly--given the chance.

Of all men the drunkard is the foulest. The thief when he is not stealing is like another. The extortioner does not practice in the home. The murderer when he is at home can wash his hands. But the drunkard stinks and vomits in this own bed and dissolves his organs in alcohol.

I am drunk, seest thou? When I am not drunk I do not talk. You have never heard me talk much. But an intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend his time with fools.

You have never heard me talk much. But an intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend his time with fools.

Everyone given the right opportunity will behave badly.

About morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.

Don't be snotty too soon. And then don't be snotty at all.

There are no man like them when they are good, but when they get bad, there's no world which is worse.

Then he was sorry for the great fish that had nothing to eat and his determination to kill him never relaxed in his sorrow for him. How many people will he feed, he thought. But are they worthy to eat him? No, of course not. There is no one worthy of eating him from the manner of his behaviour and his great dignity.

They're funny people," Thomas Hudson said. "They're all brave and some of them are so damned admirable. Then they have mean ones like this.

A részeg ember aljasabb, mint akármelyik gonosztevÅ'. A tolvaj, ha éppen nem lop, olyan ember, mint mindenki más. A zsaroló legalább otthon nem folytatja mesterségét. A gyilkos megmossa kezét, amikor hazatér. De milyen a részeg ember? Büdös, és berókáz a saját ágyába, és a szeszben eláznak a legfontosabb szervei.

E nisto consiste a moral: coisas que fazemos e das quais depois sentimos repulsa.

There are no men like them when they are good, but when they get bad, there's no world which is worse.

He was a boy born to be quite wicked who was being very good and he carried his wickedness around with him transmuted into a sort of teasing gaiety. But he was a bad boy and the others knew it and he knew it. He was just being good while his badness grew inside him.

Un uomo intelligente a volte è costretto a ubriacarsi per passare il tempo tra gli idioti.

Evil that arises out of ordinary thinking and is committed by ordinary people is the norm, not the exception.

When we allow that the individual projects a definition of the situation when he appears before others, we must also see that the others, however passive their role may seem to be, will themselves effectively project a definition of the situation by virtue of their response to the individual and by virtue of any lines of action they initiate to him.

The Ten Commandments are the lowest possible standard of humane living.

Great fiction shows us not how to conduct our behavior but how to feel. Eventually, it may show us how to face our feelings and face our actions and to have new inklings about what they mean. A good novel of any year can initiate us into our own new experience.

Beware of a man with manners.

As I said, I started with poetry, and I also wrote criticism and dialogue. But I realized that I was most successful at dialogue. Perhaps I abandoned criticism because I am full of contradictions, and when you write an essay you are not supposed to contradict yourself. But in the theater, by inventing various characters, you can. My characters are contradictory not only in their language, but in their behavior as well.