Quotes About Society

The emotionally Hobbesian meat market of the dating scene.

tends to put us before the television and its one-way window

well-trained viewer becomes even more allergic to people. Lonelier. Joe B.'s exhaustive TV-training in how to worry about how he might come across, seem to watching eyes, makes genuine human encounters even scarier.

Nothing matters in this goddamned lunatic asylum of a world but dough.

n tempo sembravano puttane. Adesso somigliavano a studentesse universitarie. Volevano tutte sembrare studentesse. Perché non ci andavano davvero, all'università, allora? Non avrebbero avuto niente di diverso dalle altre. Nessuno le avrebbe mai notate. Cristo, che maniera assurda di stare al mondo.

Un tempo sembravano puttane. Adesso somigliavano a studentesse universitarie. Volevano tutte sembrare studentesse. Perché non ci andavano davvero, all'università, allora? Non avrebbero avuto niente di diverso dalle altre. Nessuno le avrebbe mai notate. Cristo, che maniera assurda di stare al mondo.

Vanity Fair is a very vain, wicked, foolish place, full of all sorts of humbugs and falsenesses and pretensions.

If people only made prudent marriages, what a stop to population there would be!

They talked about each others' houses, and characters, and families--just as the Joneses do about the Smiths.

The moral world has no particular objection to vice, but an insuperable repugnance to hearing vice called by its proper name. A polite public will no more bear to read an authentic description of vice than a truly-refined English or American female will permit the word 'breeches' to be pronounced in her chaste hearing. And yet, madam, both are walking the world before our faces every day without much shocking us. If you were to blush every time they went by, what complexions you would have!

Who was the blundering idiot who said that 'fine words butter no parsnips'? Half the parsnips of society are served and rendered palatable with no other sauce.

The captain would...turn off the conversation, like a consummate man of the world, to some topic of general interest, such as the Opera, the Prince's last ball at Carlton House, or the weather - that blessing to society.

With this purpose, the author chose for the subject of his story a woman named Catherine Hayes, who was burned at Tyburn, in 1726, for the deliberate murder of her husband, under very revolting circumstances. Mr. Thackeray's aim obviously was to describe the career of this wretched woman and her associates with such fidelity to truth as to exhibit the danger and folly of investing such persons with heroic and romantic qualities.

And this I set down as a positive truth. A woman with fair opportunities, and without an absolute hump, may marry WHOM SHE LIKES. Only let us be thankful that the darlings are like the beasts of the fields, and don't know their own power. They would overcome us if they did.

Nature made you for that career which you fulfilled: you were from your birth to your dying a scoundrel; you COULDN'T have been anything else, however your lot was cast; and blessed it was that you were born among the prigs, — for had you been of any other profession

If every person is to be banished from society who runs into debt and cannot pay—if we are to be peering into everybody's private life, speculating upon their income, and cutting them if we don't approve of their expenditure—why, what a howling wilderness and intolerable dwelling Vanity Fair would be!

To watch the behaviour of a fine lady to other and humbler women is a very good sport for a philosophical frequenter of Vanity Fair.

A woman with fair opportunities, and without an absolute hump, may marry WHOM SHE LIKES. Only let us be thankful that the darlings are like the beasts of the field, and don't know their own power. They would overcome us entirely if they did.

William Makepeace Thackeray

Telle est la position de l'art de nos jours. Il est sans défense et fragilisé au milieu de l'océan de la brutalité utilitaire.

Y en una sociedad que se niega a ver a los combatientes como iguales; donde se niega que haya guerra, donde unos mueren asesinados y otros mueren dados de baja, donde los soldados pobres son sacrificados como patriotas y los rebeldes pobres son sacrificados como monstruos, no hay manera de exigirles a los enemigos que se comporten como héroes homéricos.

pueblo no tenía poder en Colombia.

So any order from on high, regardless of its moral worth, must be obeyed. Is that what America has really become? Did we let it slip away an inch at a time before we were attacked, and now we are finally driving straight off the cliff once and for all?

Unfortunately, one of the things that is lacking in our society is a good financial education. Most people barely understand what the stock market is and how it operates, and options are a level above even that.