Quotes About Behavior

another reason not to say critical things about other people: "spontaneous trait transference." Studies show that because of this psychological phenomenon, people unintentionally transfer to me the traits I ascribe to other people.

Habit makes it dangerously easy to become numb to our own existence.

He had carefully avoided her out of the natural cowardice that characterizes the stronger sex.

Self-confidence depends on environment: one does not speak in the same tone in the drawing room than in the kitchen.

By dint of railing at idiots, one runs the risk of becoming an idiot oneself.

Els burgesos admiraven els seu sentit de l'estalvi, els clients els seus modals, els pobres la seva caritat. I, tanmateix, era un antre de cobejances, d'odis i de ràbia.

Tiens, tu es stupide comme toutes les femmes. Vous n'agissez jamais que par passion. Vous ne savez pas vous plier aux circonstances… vous êtes stupides ! 

Her husband was not malicious, but he did bully, though without anger or animosity, as do petty tyrants who think that giving orders means swearing. In front of any stranger he behaved himself, but in his family he let himself go and pretended to be terrible although he was really scared of everybody.

I should add, however, by way of justification of French politeness, that our fellow-countrymen are, when travelling, models of good manners in comparison with the abominable English, who seem to have been brought up in a stable, so careful are they not to discommode themselves in any way, while they always discommode their neighbors.

There are kinds of action, for good or ill, that lie so far outside the boundaries of normal behavior that they force us, in acknowledging that they have occurred, to restructure our own understanding of reality. We have to make room for them.

Sé positivo. Las tácticas para asustar son difíciles de digerir y pueden tener un efecto contrario al deseado. Por ejemplo, la advertencia de que «Veinticinco millones de personas se están matando fumando cigarrillos» podría convencer a la gente de que fumar es aceptable porque hay veinticinco millones de personas que lo hacen. Dibuja una imagen realista de los beneficios futuros en vez de intentar asustar a la gente.

Asigna una etiqueta «Para resumir un argumento complejo en pocas palabras: no son los motivos perversos los que llevan a una conducta perversa, sino todo lo contrario: la conducta perversa, con el tiempo, genera motivaciones perversas.» Howard S. Becker

Accept that people aren't good or bad. Good people can do bad things, and bad people can do good things.

Men are the only animals that devote themselves, day in and day out, to making one another unhappy. It is an art like any other. Its virtuosi are called altruists.

A man loses his sense of direction after four drinks; a woman loses hers after four kisses.

As animals go, even in so limited a space as our world, man is botched and ridiculous. Few other brutes are so stupid, so docile or so cowardly.

function—thoughtless, careless, and liquorish

The dog is a peasant and the cat is a gentleman.

In seinem Verhalten schien eine kryptische, sardonische Arroganz zu lauern, als ödeten ihn alle menschlichen Wesen nur noch an.

You philosophers are sages in your maxims, and fools in your conduct.

In the extreme, fads can arise, spread through, and then disappear from a community in a fraction of a human generation.

This degree of specialization is not expected unless it takes some practice to drive fish well. It is not clear why certain dolphins become specialized like this—they don't obviously seem to get more fish and surely use more energy herding than do their comrades, waiting for their food to arrive.

In this scenario, complexity and change may be driven by female choice.83

is a specialized behavior and, as a consequence, only occurs in areas where the ecology is right—where prey and sponges are available.34