Quotes about decency
Anton Chekhov - A Life in Letters
Civilized people must, I believe, satisfy the following criteria:1) They respect human beings as individuals and are therefore always tolerant, gentle, courteous and amenable ... They do not create scenes over a hammer or a mislaid eraser; they do not make you feel they are conferring a great benefit on you when they live with you, and they don't make a scandal when they leave. (...)2) They have compassion for other people besides beggars and cats. Their hearts suffer the pain of what is hidden
Richard Llewellyn - How Green Was My Valley
Let all things be done in order, with right and decency. Those things are worth a man's life or two. Life without would be a hell, indeed.
Mike Klepper -
Decency is such a rare thing in this world, and it can only be repaid with loyalty.
Chögyam Trungpa -
If you are a warrior, decency means that you are not cheating anybody at all. You are not even about to cheat anybody. There is a sense of straightforwardness and simplicity. With setting-sun vision, or vision based on cowardice, straightforwardness is always a problem. If people have some story or news to tell somebody else, first of all they are either excited or disappointed. Then they begin to figure out how to tell their news. They develop a plan, which leads them completely away from simpl
Thomas Mann - Tonio Kröger
What they, in their innocence, cannot comprehend is that a properly constituted, healthy, decent man never writes, acts, or composes.
T.H. White - The Once and Future King
Mordred and Agravaine thought Arthur hypocritical—as all decent men must be, if you assume that decency can’t exist.
T.H. White - The Ill-Made Knight
The increasingly cynical court thought Arthur, "hypocritical, as all decent men must be if you assume decency cannot exist.
John Adams -
Be not intimidated...nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberties by any pretense of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery and cowardice.
Bryant McGill - Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
Almost everything you think is sacred, good and decent, is a lie and an all-out assault against truth and decency.
Bryant McGill - Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
REJECT THE LIES AND VIOLENCE. STAND FOR LOVE, TRUTH, DECENCY AND THE COMMON GOOD.
Mark Twain - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Mornings before daylight I slipped into cornfields and borrowed a watermelon, or a mushmelon, or a punkin, or some new corn, or things of that kind. Pap always said it warn’t no harm to borrow things if you was meaning to pay them back some time; but the widow said it warn’t anything but a soft name for stealing, and no decent body would do it.
Thomas Paine - The Age of Reason
The character of Moses, as stated in the Bible, is the most horrid that can be imagined. If those accounts be true, he was the wretch that first began and carried on wars on the score or on the pretence of religion; and under that mask, or that infatuation, committed the most unexampled atrocities that are to be found in the history of any nation. Of which I will state only one instance:When the Jewish army returned from one of their plundering and murdering excursions, the account goes on as fo
Alex Treacher -
Do right simply because it is right.
Alex Morritt - Impromptu Scribe
When a political opponent resorts to the racist card, it's a sure sign of moral bankruptcy: there's no decent argument left in the armoury.
Soke Behzad Ahmadi - Shorinjiryu Ryujin Kenpo
Karate is not about techniques and their execution, but about boldness, integrity and fight for justice and common good
Bryant McGill - Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
Being told you are wrong or insulted, gives you an opportunity to practice decency and having a non-response internally.
Bryant McGill - Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
Being insulted offers you an opportunity to practice decency and having a non-response internally.
Maya Angelou - Mom & Me & Mom
remember this: When you cross my doorstep, you have already been raised. With what you have learned...you know the difference between right and wrong. Do right. Don't anybody raise you from the way you have been raised. Know you will have to make adaptations, in love, in relationships, in friends, in society, in work, but don't let anybody change your mind.
Leigh Bardugo - Six of Crows
Survival wasn't nearly as hard as he'd thought once he left decency behind.
Rosalie De Rosset - Unseduced and Unshaken: The Place of Dignity in a Woman's Choices
The crux of my argument is this—we cannot truly understand what we should put on, say, or do, without looking at our behavior in relationship to Christ. In Christ, decency in behavior and dress is far larger than the particulars of modesty. By the world’s standards, modesty is a rule passed down from generation to generation which involves choosing a garment that submits to a certain standard set by a mother or community, one that constantly changes.” – Stacie Parlee-Johnson (Ch. 9, A Theology o
Deborah Kerr -
I respect anyone who has to fight and howl for his decency.
Mango Wodzak - The Eden Fruitarian Guidebook
No decent person deliberately chooses to be violent or cruel. We must remove our blinkers and learn that in order to live according to our true values, we need to stop viewing animals as commodities to be used, abused and killed for our own selfish benefit.
Dan Brown - Origin
... [T]he other lesson history has taught us - that tyranny and oppression are no match for compassion ... that the fanatical shouts of the bullies of the world are invariably silenced by the unified voices of decency that rise up to meet them.
Dwight D. Eisenhower -
Don't be afraid to go to your library and read every book as long as any document does not offend your own ideas of decency.
Martin Luther King Jr. -
In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as 'right-to-work.' It provides no 'rights' and no 'works.' Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining…. We demand this fraud be stopped.
CM Punk -
Please. Thank you. Learn it. Love it. Or be disappointed.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. - or Lonesome No More!
I have had some experiences with love, or think I have, anyway, although the ones I have liked best could easily be described as "common decency". I treated somebody well for a little while, or even for a tremendously long time, and that person treated me well in return. Love need not have anything to do with it. (...)Love is where you find it. I think it is foolosh to go looking for it, and I think it can often be poisonous.I wish that people who are conventionally supposed to love each other w
Israelmore Ayivor -
If you lose your integrity, you will also lose your identity, your sensitivity and your dignity. Integrity is honesty, modesty and security in all kinds of weather. It should be our priority!
Theodore Roosevelt -
The most practical kind of politics is the politics of decency.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry - A Sense Of Life
The best place for discovering what a man is is the heart of the desert. Your plane has broken down, and you walk for hours, heading for the little fort at Nutchott. You wait for the mirages of thirst to gape before you. But you arrive and you find an old sergeant who has been isolated for months among the dunes, and he is so happy to be found that he weeps. And you weep, too. In the arching immensity of the night, each tells the story of his life, each offers the other the burden of memories in
Kevin Smith - Lazy Slob Who Did Good
Remember: It costs nothing to encourage an artist, and the potential benefits are staggering. A pat on the back to an artist now could one day result in your favorite film, or the cartoon you love to get stoned watching, or the song that saves your life. Discourage an artist, you get absolutely nothing in return, ever.
Margaret Mead -
Young people are moving away from feeling guilty about sleeping with somebody to feeling guilty if they are *not* sleeping with someone.
Gary Hopkins -
Integrity is never given. It is a quality that can only be proven over time.
Gary Hopkins -
Integrity is never a given. It is a quality that can only be proven over time.
Kōbō Abe - The Box Man
Clinging to one’s outward appearance interferes with living.
Siegmund Warburg -
Success from the financial and from the prestige point of view . . . is not enough; what matters even more is . . . adherence to high moral and aesthetic standards." — as quoted in "High Financier" by Niall Ferguson
Rick Remender - Vol. 1: Atomic Garden
All these years! All this time with us -- have you learned nothing?!You only live by the grace of our clan's tenet of forgiveness!Your judgement is shit!Rectitude is the bone that gives firmness and stature. Without decency, neither talent nor learning can make the human frame into a samurai.
John Masefield -
I have seen flowers come in stony placesAnd kind things done by men with ugly faces,And the gold cup won by the worst horse at the races,So I trust, too.
John Kendrick Bangs - and Some Others
Curious," it said. "What you call your decent self doesn't dare look me in the eye! What a mistake people make who say that the man who won't look you in the eye is not to be trusted! As if mere brazenness were a sign of honesty; really, the theory of decency is the most amusing thing in the world.
Kelsey Brickl - Paint
He was an indecent man, I told myself - prayerfully - and then I prayed for him to become decent.
Christopher Hitchens - god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it.
Terry Pratchett - Small Gods
What have I always believed?That on the whole, and by and large, if a man lived properly, not according to what any priests said, but according to what seemed decent and honest inside, then it would, at the end, more or less, turn out all right.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. - or Lonesome No More!
Love is where you find it. I think it is foolish to go around looking for it, and I think it can be poisonous. I wish that people who are conventionally supposed to love each other would say to each other, when they fight, 'Please — a little less love, and a little more common decency'.
George Sand - La mare au diable
The maid told him that a girl and a child had come looking for him, but since she didn't know them, she hadn't cared to ask them in, and had told them to go on to Mers."Why didn't you let them in?" asked Germain angrily. "People must be very suspicious in this part of the world, if they won't open the front door to a neighbor.""Well, naturally!" replied the maid. "In a house as rich as this, you have to keep a close watch on things. While the master's away I'm responsible for everything, and I c
Michael Bassey Johnson -
A virtuos woman is not moved by big names and flamboyance, but only men of profound wisdom and integrity move her.
H.L. Mencken -
In the present case it is a little inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible to any public office of trust or profit in the Republic. But I do not repine, for I am a subject of it only by force of arms.
Walter Scott - Kenilworth
I pretend not to be a champion of that same naked virtue called truth, to the very outrance. I can consent that her charms be hidden with a veil, were it but for decency's sake.