Being Civilized Quotes

What's the good of being civilized, that's what I'd like to know? It just means other people can break the rules and you can't. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

With an evening coat and a white tie, as you told me once, anybody, even a stock-broker, can gain a reputation for being civilized. ~ Oscar Wilde

Be a dog, be a jerk, be a devil, be a worst imaginable creature, but never be a good man, for being civilized in chaos is itself a chaos. ~ Abdul Mueed

Being civilized meant knowing about the right things. However much people pretend that doesn't matter, it's true. Disclaiming that is as foolish as thinking that beauty doesn't matter. And to get among the right things, you have to be among the people who possess them. Since one also likes to be thorough, knowing the difference between a hereditary and an honorary marquess always comes in handy. ~ L.S. Hilton

Where the Depression years had aroused a deep sense of concern over how American wealth was distributed and American society structured, the successive crises of the 1960s and early 1970s, by highlighting the contradiction between the destructive capability of American technology and the moral opaqueness of those Americans who had ultimate control over its use, raised questions about the very course of "modern" historical development. After Vietnam, there could be no more easy assumptions about the goodness of American power, no more easy equating of being "modern" with being "civilized. ~ Paul A. Cohen

The creatures who act as though they belong to the world follow the peace-keeping law, and because they follow that law, they give the creatures around them a chance to grow toward whatever it's possible for them to become. That's how man came into being. The creatures around Australopithecus didn't imagine that the world belonged to them, so they let him live and grow. How does being civilized come into it? Does being civilized mean that you have to destroy the world?" "No." "Does being civilized make you incapable of giving the creatures around you a little space in which to live?" "No." "Does it make you incapable of living as harmlessly as sharks and tarantulas and rattlesnakes?" "No." "Does it make you incapable of following a law that even snails and earthworms manage to follow without any difficulty?" "No." "As I pointed out some time ago, human settlement isn't against the law, it's subject to the law - and the same is true of civilization. ~ Daniel Quinn

You know what?' said Vimes aloud. 'This is going to be the world's first democratically killed dragon. One man, one stab.'
Then you've got to stop them. You can't let them kill it!' said Lady Ramkin.
Vimes blinked at her.
Pardon?' he said.
It's wounded!'
Lady, that was the intention, wasn't it? Anyway, it's only stunned,' said Vimes.
I mean you can't let them kill it like this,' said Lady Ramkin insistently. 'Poor thing!'
What do you want to do, then?' demanded Vimes, his temper unravelling. 'Give it a strengthening dose of tar oil and a nice comfy basket in front of the stove?'
It's butchery!'
Suits me fine!'
But it's a dragon! It's just doing what a dragon does! It never would have come here if people had left it alone!'
Vimes thought: it was about to eat her, and she can still think like this. He hesitated. Perhaps that did give you the right to an opinion ... ~ Terry Pratchett

I think being interested is really what being civilized is about. I mean, you have to be conscious of everything. ~ Peter Schjeldahl

I might have added, as it entered my mind to do, that some people found satisfaction in being. Being. Others in becoming. Being people have all the breaks. Becoming people are very unlucky, always in a tizzy. The Becoming people are always have to make explanations or offer justifications of the Being people. While the Being people provoke these explanations. ~ Saul Bellow

I don't mind being single. In fact, I like it. ~ Alana Stewart

He'd hated being separated from her in the aftermath of something so traumatic but he'd had no choice. When ~ Kaylea Cross

My being charming ... is not quite enough to induce me to marry. I must find other people charming - one other person at least. ~ Jane Austen

The purpose of the Federalist Society was to bring together young people who had this skepticism about what they were being taught and to let them know that there were others who shared this skepticism. ~ Antonin Scalia

Stop being afraid. Stop thinking too much.Fill the holes left behind. Drive again. Write. Breathe. ~ Jennifer Niven

It's funny. No matter how hard you try, you can't close your heart forever. And the minute you open it up, you never know what's going to come in. But when it does, you just have to go for it! Because if you don't, there's not point in being here. ~ Kirstie Alley

Just because someone thinks he is being attacked by the media doesn't mean he is. Many times the media actually is being fair, and they're attacking for good reason. ~ Roger Ailes

Stillness is our most intense mode of action. It is in our moments of deep quiet that is born every idea, emotion, and drive which we eventually honor with the name of action. We reach highest in meditation, and farthest in prayer. In stillness every human being is great. ~ Leonard Bernstein

What does it look like to live life in a manner worthy of the gospel? It looks like dying with Christ to one's self and being raised in Christ to walk in the newness of life with our brothers and sisters. It means living grace-filled lives that grant patience and mercy and gentleness for the spiritual journeys of others and a respect for the differences and idiosyncrasies we all bring to the Lord's table. ~ Matt Chandler

None of it lay fallow and neglected, none of it under another's control; for being an extremely thrifty guardian of his time he never found anything for which it was worth exchanging. So he had enough time; but those into whose lives the public have made great inroads inevitably have too little. ~ Seneca.

You merely picture in your mind having already accomplished or attained your goal, whatever it may be. Hold it firmly in your thoughts, picture it as already being yours, and amazing things will happen. ~ Og Mandino

Experts in ancient Greek culture say that people back then didn't see their thoughts as belonging to them. When ancient Greeks had a thought, it occurred to them as a god or goddess giving an order. Apollo was telling them to be brave. Athena was telling them to fall in love.
Now people hear a commercial for sour cream potato chips and rush out to buy, but now they call this free will.
At least the ancient Greeks were being honest. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

Being wrong opens us up to the possibility of change. Being wrong brings the opportunity for growth. ~ Mark Manson

We are stronger for the people who leave us, you know? Being able to live without them just shows how much better we are. No one can hold us back but ourselves, and I, for one, am proud of the person I am. ~ Toni Aleo

There are people that I didn't like, but I saw them suffer and it changed me. I promised myself that I would never tell a lie, never hurt another human being, and I would try to make the world as positive as I could. ~ Jack Kirby

Social sin is the crystallization ... of individuals' sins into permanent structures that keeps sin in being and makes its force to be felt by the majority of people. ~ Oscar Romero

I couldn't go anywhere unless there was a security guard with me. That spoiled my life. It was like being in captivity. Those days are gone, and I don't ever want to see that happen to me again. Now I can wander around the streets of Los Angeles on my own. I like it that way. ~ Christine McVie

Every act of will is an act of self-limitation. To desire action is to desire limitation. In that sense, every act is an act of self-sacrifice. When you choose anything, you reject everything else... Every act is an irrevocable selection and exclusion. Just as when you marry one woman you give up all the others, so when you take one course of action you give up all the other courses… Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame. If you draw a giraffe, you must draw him with a long neck. If, in you bold creative way, you hold yourself free to draw a giraffe with a short neck, you will really find that you are not free to draw a giraffe. The moment you step into the world of facts, you step into a world of limits. You can free things from alien or accidental laws, but not from the laws of their own nature. You may, if you like, free a tiger from his bars; but do not free him from his stripes. Do not free a camel from the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel. Do not go about as a demagogue, encouraging triangles to break out of the prison of their three sides. If a triangle breaks out of its three sides, its life comes to a lamentable end. Somebody wrote a work called "The Loves of the Triangles"; I never read it, but I am sure that if triangles ever were loved, they were loved for being triangular. This is certainly the case with all artistic creation, which is in some ways the most decisive example of pure will. The artist loves his lim ~ G.K. Chesterton

Rather than being medicalized or romanticized, mental disorders, or mental dis-eases, should be understood as nothing less or more than what they are, an expression of our deepest human nature. By recognizing their traits in ourselves and reflecting upon them, we may be able both to contain them and to put them to good use. This is, no doubt, the highest form of genius. ~ Neel Burton

The dirty little secret is that both houses of Congress are irrelevant ... America's domestic policy is now being run by Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve, and America's foreign policy is now being run by the International Monetary Fund [IMF] ... when the president decides to go to war, he no longer needs a declaration of war from Congress. ~ Robert Reich

For the first time, she recognized the symptoms of infatuation which she had felt incipiently as a child, as a girl in her early teens, and later as a young woman. The recognition did not lessen the reality, the poignancy of the revelation by any suggestion or promise of instability. The past was nothing to her; offered no lesson which she was willing to heed. The future was a mystery which she never attempted to penetrate. The present alone was significant; was hers, to torture her as it was doing then with the biting conviction that she had lost that which she had held, she had been denied that which her impassioned, newly awakened being demanded. ~ Kate Chopin

They leave the genitals off Barbie and Ken, but they manufacture every kind of war toy. Because sex is more threatening to us than aggression. There have been strict rules about sex since the beginning of written rules, and even before, if we can believe myth. I think that's because it's in sex that men feel most vulnerable. In war they can hype themselves up, or they have a weapon. Sex means being literally naked and exposing your feelings. And that's more terrifying to most men than the risk of dying while fighting a bear or a soldier. ~ Marilyn French

There's a fine line between giving the sense of freedom and being too free. ~ Joe Satriani

You're such a young king. I barely remember being your age."
"Then clearly we're talking about how old you are, not how young I am. ~ Jennifer A. Nielsen

We in Wales see ourselves as a nation. We're not English. We're far from it. Yeah, we're part of the U.K. We've benefited from being members of the U.K. ~ Carwyn Jones

You can not have peace with just feelings. It comes only about by prayer and being on the journey. Like the wise men, find your peace this Christmas. ~ Phil Mitchell

Being on 'Glee' was amazing. I remember my first day on set, my first day I arrived to the set I was in my trailer and all of the actors came and banged on my door - Lea Michele, Chris Colfer, Amber Riley, Naya Rivera. They all welcomed me with open arms, so it was a great experience. It felt like family, and I miss them a lot over there. ~ NeNe Leakes

Coupling, I realized, can encourage a fairly static way of being, with each partner exaggerating or repressing certain qualities in relation to the other's. ~ Kate Bolick

Eagleman cited studies in which people were asked to evaluate different groups of sentences, some false, some true, for several weeks. They snuck in a few repeated sentences and after seeing these sentences a few times, the readers evaluated the false sentences as being true, and even when the sentences were shown to be false, a large number of the participants insisted they were true. This is known as the illusion-of-truth effect. It ~ Jeffrey Dean Doty

Everyday empty: a state of being that happens when the enormity and momentum of everyday life begins to take over, taking up any space that could be left over for fun and joy. Many times, we allow our lives to continue at this pace because we are afraid to acknowledge the way we're feeling. We feel guilty for feeling anything but happy and grateful. ~ Emily Ley

I was a very introverted individual and this became an important outlet for me to express myself, to communicate, to take positions, make statements, take a stand and so forth. But I never really thought I had much a future at all So the thing that I had to do was to really go inward and really work super hard in the hope that someday it would pay off. And in using that term I don't mean necessarily money, but just the fact that I would have more depth and dimension both as a human being and as an artist. ~ Ed Paschke