Quotes About Behavior

There is really no good English translation for adab. It means behaving well or good etiquette. It is acting with heedfulness, beauty, refinement, graciousness, and respect for others. The Koran teaches us the importance of acting beautifully. "Do what is beautiful. God loves those who do what is beautiful." (2:195)

It doesn't matter what you say you believe - it only matters what you do.

Don't worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you.

Thinking Fast and Slow.

Ben Graham gave us the same lesson: "In the short run the market is a voting machine but in the long run it is a weighing machine."51

I think there are a lot of nutters in the world, and the less we reward them for their nuttery, the better for all of us.

the women fell silent with the instinctive courtesy women often show to incapacitated males.

Even if Heather had barely known her, as seemed to be the case, her frank enjoyment of her fancy lunch and her persistent eyeing-up of Strike seemed both inappropriate and distasteful to Robin.

He drank as though his beer was medicine, without pleasure, intent on the result.

Did her faint eccentricity of manner mask something more serious, some fundamental cognitive problem?

Jasper always said, "Tory faithful likes bastards or buffoons", and that he was neither one nor the other.

mythomania, her need to provoke, to taunt, to test.

What makes people do things like that?" Robin asked, in genuine perplexity. "They're shits," said Strike.

Life in squats with my mother hadn't really prepared me for what to expect from the aristocracy. On balance, I'd have to say people were a lot better behaved in the squats.

person who cannot control his words shows that he cannot control himself, and is unworthy of respect.

People around you, constantly under the pull of their emotions, change their ideas by the day or by the hour, depending on their mood. You must never assume that what people say or do in a particular moment is a statement of their permanent desires.

Be Royal in your Own Fashion: Act like a King to be treated

Homo economicus would cheat only if he stood to benefit by enough and if the odds of being caught were sufficiently low. So the mere fact that he does not have a reputation for being a cheat tells us only that he's been prudent.

The innocence of the intention abates nothing of the mischief of the example.

Hatfield and her colleagues sum up emotional contagion research with an Arabic proverb: "A wise man associating with the vicious becomes an idiot.

He was afflicted with what I call "Asshole Blindness," where people don't realize or underestimate how dire an asshole problem is, how much they and perhaps others are suffering, and how important it is to get out as soon as possible.

As this VP discovered, being a boss is much like being a high-status primate in any group: the creatures beneath you in the pecking order watch every move you make – and so they know a lot more about you than you know about them.

But if you want to make a place safe for people to take on culprits, and admit their own bad behaviors too, it's crucial to treat alleged jerks with dignity and respect. That means starting with calm and backstage conversations with them and giving them chances to change. It also means realizing that some people aren't usually jerks, but there is something about the characters they work with, their customers

That "telling them where they stand, while giving them the chance to try a new environment, is often enough to get them to change their behavior.