Quotes About Society

Men, who are rogues individually, are in the mass very honorable people.

Each particular society begins to feel its strength, whence arises a state of war between different nations.

It is not the young people that degenerate they are not spoiled till those of mature age are already sunk into corruption.

As soon as man enters into a state of society he loses the sense of his weakness equality ceases, and then commences the state of war.

Keep up appearances whatever you do.

The civility which money will purchase, is rarely extended to those who have none.

That sort of half sigh, which, accompanied by two or three slight nods of the head, is pity's small change in general society.

It is a pleasant world we live in, sir, a very pleasant world. There are bad people in it, Mr. Richard, but if there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.

They are Man's and they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance and this girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.

In a utilitarian age, of all other times, it is a matter of grave importance that fairy tales should be respected." ( Frauds on the Fairies , 1853)

I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out...

I do not know the American gentleman, God forgive me for putting two such words together.

If they would rather die, . . . they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.

People like us don't go out at night cause people like them see us for what we are

It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor relations.

A display of indifference to all the actions and passions of mankind was not supposed to be such a distinguished quality at that time, I think, as I have observed it to be considered since. I have known it very fashionable indeed. I have seen it displayed with such success, that I have encountered some fine ladies and gentlemen who might as well have been born caterpillars.

We spent as much money as we could and got as little for it as people could make up their minds to give us. We were always more or less miserable, and most of our acquaintance were in the same condition. There was a gay fiction among us that we were constantly enjoying ourselves, and a skeleton truth that we never did. To the best of my belief, our case was in the last aspect a rather common one.

This was a vagrant of sixty-five, who was going to prison for not playing the flute; or, in other words, for begging in the streets, and doing noting for his livelihood. In the next cell, was another man, who was going to the same prison for hawking tin saucepans without a licence; thereby doing something for his living, in defiance of the Stamp-office.

I kissed her cheek as she turned it to me. I think I would have gone through a great deal to kiss her cheek. But I felt the kiss was given to the coarse common boy as a piece of money might have been, and that it was worth nothing.

There are many pleasant fictions of the law in constant operation, but there is not one so pleasant or practically humorous as that which supposes every man to be of equal value in its impartial eye, and the benefits of all laws to be equally attainable by all men, without the smallest reference to the furniture of their pockets.

I have made up my mind that I must have money, Pa. I feel that I can't beg it, borrow it, or steal it; and so I have resolved that I must marry it.

The society of girls is a very delightful thing, Copperfield. It's not professional, but it's very delightful.

Yet a gentleman may not keep a public house; may he?' said I. 'Not on any account,' returned Herbert; 'but a public-house may keep a gentleman...

Shirking and sharking, in all their many varieties, have been sown broadcast by the ill-fated cause; and even those who have contemplated its history from the outermost circle of such evil, have been insensibly tempted into a loose way of letting bad things alone to take their own bad course, and a loose belief that if the world go wrong, it was, in some offhand manner, never meant to go right.