Quotes About Society

Society is a revolving body which is apt to be judged according to its place in each man's heaven; and at present it was turning its illuminated face to Lily.

What was the use of being beautiful and attracting attention if one were perpetually doomed to relapse again into the obscure mass of the Uninvited?

All they wanted now was what she herself wanted only a few short hours ago: to be bowed to when they caught certain people's eyes; to be invited to one more dull house; to be put on the Rector's Executive Committees, and pour tea at the Consuless's "afternoons".

At a stroke she had pricked the van der Luydens and they collapsed. He laughed, and sacrificed them.

What can you expect of a girl who was allowed to wear black satin at her coming out ball.

That Greiner house, now—a typical rung in the social ladder! The man who built it came from a MILIEU where all the dishes are put on the table at once. His facade is a complete architectural meal; if he had omitted a style his friends might have thought the money had given out. Not a bad purchase for Rosedale, though: attracts attention, and awes the Western sight-seer. By and bye he'll get out of that phase, and want something that the crowd will pass and the few pause before.

It did not occur to her that Selden might have been actuated merely by the desire to spend a Sunday out of town: women never learn to dispense with the sentimental motive in their judgments of men.

Because it's against the custom of the country. And whose fault is that? The man's again—I don't mean Ralph I mean the genus he belongs to: homo sapiens, Americanus. Why haven't we taught our women to take an interest in our work? Simply because we don't take enough interest in THEM.

If I were shabby no one would have me: a woman is asked out as much for her clothes as for herself.

The extravagance in dress—" Miss Jackson began. "Sillerton took me to the first night of the Opera, and I can only tell you that Jane Merry's dress was the only one I recognised from last year; and even that had had the front panel changed. Yet I know she got it out from Worth only two years ago, because my seamstress always goes in to make over her Paris dresses before she wears them.

Rich and idle and ornamental societies must produce many more such situations;

Couples were already gliding over the floor beyond: the light of the wax candles fell on revolving tulle skirts, on girlish heads wreathed with modest blossoms, on the dashing aigrettes and ornaments of the young married women's coiffures, and on the glitter of highly glazed shirt-fronts and fresh glacé gloves.

e ela concluiu que a vinda de Selden, se não provava que ele ainda estava envolvido com Mrs. Dorset, mostrava que ele estava completamente livre a ponto de não temer a proximidade dela.

It was the old New York way of taking life "without effusion of blood": the way of people who dreaded scandal more than disease, who placed decency above courage, and who considered that nothing was more ill-bred than "scenes," except the behaviour of those who gave rise to them.

Marry—but whom, in the name of light and freedom? The daughters of his own race sold themselves to the Invaders; the daughters of the Invaders bought their husbands as they bought an opera-box. It ought all to have been transacted on the Stock Exchange.

He went on to praise the company they had just left, declaring that he knew no better way for a young man to form his mind than by frequenting the society of men of conflicting views and equal capacity. "Nothing," said he, "is more injurious to the growth of character than to be secluded from argument and opposition; as nothing is healthier than to be obliged to find good reasons for one's beliefs on pain of surrendering them.

She was BAD . . . always. They used to meet at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, said my mother, as if the scene of the offence added to the guilt of the couple whose past she was revealing.

No había motivo para tratar de emancipar a una esposa que no tenía la más remota noción de que no fuera libre; y ya hacía tiempo que había descubierto que el único uso de esa libertad que May suponía poseer sería dipositar dicha libertad en el altar de su adoración de esposa.

Since the Americans have ceased to have dyspepsia," she reflected, "they have lost the only thing that gave them any expression.

La verdadera soledad consiste en vivir entre toda esa gente encantadora que sólo te pide que finjas!

Bilo je toliko o?igledno da je ona žrtva civilizacije koja ju je stvorila, da su karike njene narukvice delovale kao okovi koji je vezuju za njenu sudbinu.

It was horrible of a young girl to let herself be talked about; however unfounded the charges against her, she must be to blame for their having been made.

All the elderly ladies whom Archer knew regarded any woman who loved imprudently as necessarily unscrupulous and designing, and mere simple-minded man as powerless in her clutches.

Medora Manson, in her prosperous days, inaugurated a literary salon; but it had soon died out owing to the reluctance of the literary to frequent it.