Social Occasions Quotes

He suddenly became convinced that if he didn't do something sensible, something to put his mind to some use, then before he knew it he would be wondering round the streets having fights with himself and inviting domestic animals to social occasions too. ~ John Boyne

I missed the currency of ideas. In London we had been part of a wide circle of solicitors' families, and social occasions had been mentally stimulating as well as entertaining. ~ Tracy Chevalier

. . . when I talk to people I really like to talk to them, and not just exchange pleasantries and wonder which of us is going to try to get away first. Most social occasions leave me less than enthralled. ~ Edward Gorey

I'm not super social, don't really go to parties, or basketball games, or football games very often, the big social occasions. ~ Taylor Phinney

Catherine, who was extremely modest, had no desire to shine, and on most social occasions, as they are called, you would have found her lurking in the background. ~ Henry James

Is there any of the usual social occasions which it is not difficult to avoid? But if you decide that you cannot very well ignore your worldly obligations, and that you will therefore carry them out properly, the demands on your time will multiply, bringing physical hardship and mental tension; in the end, you will spend your whole life pointlessly entangled in petty obligations.
'The day is ending, the way is long; my life already begins to stumble on its journey.' The time has come to abandon all ties. I shall not keep promises, nor consider decorum. Let anyone who cannot understand my feelings feel free to call me mad, let him think I am out of my senses, that I am devoid of human warmth. Abuse will not bother me; I shall not listen if praised. ~ Yoshida Kenko

We are all members of the same great family ... On social occasions the formality of strictly military occasions should be relaxed, and a spirit of friendliness and goodwill should prevail. ~ John A. Lejeune

I will say that the socially oblivious extroverts do not represent the whole. As with introverts, social skills are independent of extroversion: some are skilled, some are not. The skilled ones know how to listen. But in contrast to socially unskilled introverts, who keep to themselves, socially unskilled extroverts insist on socializing. ~ Laurie A. Helgoe

The cultural Left has contributed to the formation of this politically useless unconscious not only by adopting "power" as the name of an invisible, ubiquitous, and malevolent presence, but by adopting ideals which nobody is yet able to imagine being actualized.

Among these ideals are participatory democracy and the end of capitalism. Power will pass to the people, the Sixties Left believed only when decisions are made by all those who may be affected by the results. This means, for example, that economic decisions will be made by stakeholders rather than by shareholders, and that entrepreneurship and markets will cease to play their present role. When they do, capitalism as we know it will have ended, and something new will have taken its place.

[…] Sixties leftists skipped lightly over all the questions which had been raised by the experience of non market economies in the so-called socialist countries. They seemed to be suggesting that once we were rid of both bureaucrats and entrepreneurs, "the people" would know how to handle competition from steel mills or textile factories in the developing world, price hikes on imported oil, and so on. But they never told us how "the people" would learn how to do this.

The cultural Left still skips over such questions. Doing so is a consequence of its preference for talking about "the system" rather than about specific social practices and specific changes in those practices. The rhetoric of this Le ~ Richard M. Rorty

Close your eyes, imagine yourself in the world of your dreams, imagine everything you ever wanted, live that moment, get the feel of it. Once you've lived that moment in your mind fully, open your eyes and get started with work, work as hard as possible, do all that it takes to live that moment in real. Just do it, it's possible. ~ Sharad Vivek Sagar

To serve is beautiful, but only if it is done with joy and a whole heart and a free mind. ~ Pearl S. Buck

I have observed over the years that the unanticipated consequences of social action are always more important, and usually less agreeable, than the intended consequences. ~ Irving Kristol

My younger sister retired a few years ago after a 30-year career teaching history and social studies at an inner-city high school. ~ Judy Woodruff

In al-Qaeda we see a terrorist grouping with, in many ways, a medieval ideology, employing today's technology to great advantage. It works in a thoroughly modern way, virtual, amorphous, franchised and unbounded by geography. It has recruited people from all over the world. It understands the power of images, both in its campaign of terror and in its recruitment and proselytising material. It skillfully exploits the instant communications and social networking of the IT age. ~ Eliza Manningham-Buller

Punctuality is a quality the need of which is bound up with social co-operation. It has nothing to do with the relation of the soul to God, or with mystic insight, or with any of the matters with which the more elevated and spiritual moralists are concerned. ~ Bertrand Russell

Secularity is a way of being dependent on the responses of our milieu. The secular or false self is the self which is fabricated, as Thomas Merton says, by social compulsions. 'Compulsive' is indeed the best adjective for the false self. It points to the need for ongoing and increasing affirmation. Who am I? I am the one who is liked, praised, admired, disliked, hated or despised. Whether I am a pianist, a businessman or a minister, what matters is how I am perceived by my world. If being busy is a good thing, then I must be busy. If having money is a sign of real freedom, then I must claim my money. If knowing many people proves my importance, I will have to make the necessary contacts. The compulsion manifests itself in the lurking fear of failure and the steady urge to prevent this by gathering more of the same - more work, more money, more friends. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

She was the girl growing up that other girls stared at, making her feel different and inadequate.

She was the woman that stared at them, she made them feel inadequate, as she could be her own true self. Free from the social conformity, that imprisons them.

They were now jealous. ~ Tina J. Richardson

With 'Delirium,' I had to spend time thinking about the political, social and religious structure of a different world. But it was a fun challenge. ~ Lauren Oliver

Social networks particularly will tend to converge and consolidate over time, especially because they're inherently governed by network effects. So the bigger ones will just get bigger, their value will multiply exponentially, and the smaller ones will become less and less relevant. ~ Clara Shih

The increased participation of women in the workforce, the dramatic changes in the education of women, and changes in social values have also led to significant structural changes in the institution of the family. Divorces have increased dramatically in almost every part of the world, partly due to new legislation making them easier to obtain, and, according to experts, partly because of the increased participation of women in the workforce. Some experts also note the role of online relationships; according to several analyses, between 20 and 30 percent of all divorces in the U.S. now involve Facebook. ~ Al Gore

Naturally, it causes psychological harm as well; it shouldn't surprise you that a national survey of 24,000 workers found that men and women with few social ties were two to three times more likely to suffer from major depression than people with strong social bonds.9 When we enjoy strong social support, on the other hand, we can accomplish impressive feats of resilience, and even extend the length of our lives. One study found that people who received emotional support during the six months after a heart attack were three times more likely to survive.10 Another found that participating in a breast cancer support group actually doubled women's life expectancy post surgery.11 In fact, researchers have found that social support has as much effect on life expectancy as smoking, high blood pressure, obesity, and regular physical activity.12 ~ Shawn Achor

Why does a little girl lose her emotional equilibrium in a moment of parental discipline, or a megastar musician forget who she is because of one criticism? Or why, when a text message or the subject line of an e-mail says, "We need to talk" (or for us pastors, "About your sermon") are we struck with a sudden feeling of doom? Why do we spend hours in the gym or in front of the mirror or online meticulously editing our social media profiles? Why is the perfect "selfie" such a large part of how we present ourselves to the world? Why do we live in constant disequilibrium about what our real or imagined critics might say about us? ~ Scott Sauls

Much of what is today called "social criticism" consists of members of the upper classes denouncing the tastes of the lower classes (bawdy entertainment, fast food, plentiful consumer goods) while considering themselves egalitarians. ~ Steven Pinker

Virtually anything is more stimulating than conversations with strangers at social gatherings. ~ James Cook

While hereditary chiefs inhabit the apex of our traditional social systems, it would be a mistake to think they hold all the power. They aren't kings. They aren't dictators. They're answerable to their clans and their matriarchs. All decisions that affect our communities require lengthy, deliberate discussions and careful negotiation. ~ Eden Robinson

The general fact is that the most effective way of utilizing human energy is through an organized rivalry, which by specialization and social control is, at the same time, organized co-operation. ~ Charles Horton Cooley

One form of insecurity of attachment, called "disorganized/disoriented", has been associated with marked impairments in the emotional, social, and cognitive domains, and a predisposition toward a clinical condition known as dissociation in which the capacity to function in an organized, coherent manner is at times impaired.

Studies have also found that youths with a history of disorganized attachments are at great risk of expressing hostility with their peers and have the potential for interpersonal violence as they mature (Lyons-Ruth & Jacobwitz, 1999; Carlson, 1998). This disorganized form of attachment has been proposed to be associated with the caregiver's frightened, frightening, or disoriented behavior with the child. Such experiences create a state of alarm in the child. The parents of these children often have an autobiographical narrative finding, as revealed in the Adult Attachment Interview, of unresolved trauma or grief that appears as a disorientation in their narrative account of their childhoods. Such linguistic disorientation occurs during the discussion of loss or threat from childhood experiences. Lack of resolution appears to be associated with parental behaviors that are incompatible with an organized adaptation on the part of the child. Lack of resolution of trauma or grief in a parent can lead to parental behaviors that create "paradoxical", unsolvable, and problematic situations for the child. The attachment figure is intended to be the s ~ Daniel J. Siegel, M.D.

What people think about you is not supposed to matter much, so long as you yourself know where the truth lies; but I have found out, as have others who move in and out of newspaper headlines, that on occasion it can matter a good deal. For once you enter the world of headlines you learn there is not one truth but two: the one which you know from the facts; and the one which the public, or at any rate a highly imaginative part of the public, acquires by osmosis. ~ Richard E. Byrd

The difference between PR and social media is that PR is about positioning, and social media is about becoming, being and improving. ~ Chris Brogan

You can't stop people from being
human. We're creative, we're social. People are like water. If you
try to contain them, they find a way to break free. ~ Katie Kacvinsky

If a society permits one portion of its citizenry to be menaced or destroyed, then, very soon, no one in that society is safe. The forces thus released in the people can never be held in check, but run their devouring course, destroying the very foundations which it was imagined they would save.

But we are unbelievably ignorant concerning what goes on in our country--to say nothing of what goes on in the rest of the world--and appear to have become too timid to question what we are told. Our failure to trust one another deeply enough to be able to talk to one another has become so great that people with these questions in their hearts do not speak them; our opulence is so pervasive that people who are afraid to lose whatever they think they have persuade themselves of the truth of a lie, and help disseminate it; and God help the innocent here, that man or womn who simply wants to love, and be loved. Unless this would-be lover is able to replace his or her backbone with a steel rod, he or she is doomed. This is no place for love. I know that I am now expected to make a bow in the direction of those millions of unremarked, happy marriages all over America, but I am unable honestly to do so because I find nothing whatever in our moral and social climate--and I am now thinking particularly of the state of our children--to bear witness to their existence. I suspect that when we refer to these happy and so marvelously invisible people, we are simply being nostalgic conce ~ James Baldwin

The promise of a social gospel was for Luther an irrelevant and ultimately irrelevant and ultimately cruel delusion. ~ Andrew Pettegree

Improvising, I participated in the discussion, and questioned another woman in the group. I asked her how old she was and she answered, "Thirty." I replied, "No, you are not thirty but instead eighty and lying on your deathbed. And now you are looking back on your life, a life which was childless but full of financial success and social prestige." And then I invited her to imagine what she would feel in this situation. "What will you think of it? What will you say to yourself?" Let me quote what she actually said from a tape which was recorded during that session. "Oh, I married a millionaire, I had an easy life full of wealth, and I lived it up! I flirted with men; I teased them! But now I am eighty; I have no children of my own. Looking back as an old woman, I cannot see what all that was for; actually, I must say, my life was a failure! ~ Viktor E. Frankl

Love is the most dangerous and uncertain element in life; and because we do not want to be uncertain, because we do not want to be in danger, we live in the mind. A man who loves is dangerous, and we do not want to live dangerously; we want to live efficiently, we want to live merely in the framework of organization because we think organizations are going to bring order and peace in the world. Organizations have never brought order and peace. Only love, only goodwill, only mercy can bring order and peace, ultimately and therefore now. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Feminists know that if women are paid equal wages for equal work, women will gain sexual as well as economic independence. But feminists have refused to face the fact that in a woman-hating social system, women will never be paid equal wages. Men in all their institutions of power are sustained by the sex labor and sexual subordination of women. The sex labor of women must be maintained; and systematic low wages for sex-neutral work effectively force women to sell sex to survive. The economic system that pays women lower wages than it pays men actually punishes women for working outside marriage or prostitution, since women work hard for low wages and still must sell sex. The economic system that punishes women for working outside the bedroom by paying low wages contributes significantly to women's perception that the sexual serving of men is a necessary part of any woman's life: or how else could she live? Feminists appear to think that equal pay for equal work is a simple reform, whereas it no reform at all; it is revolution. Feminists have refused to face the fact that equal pay for equal work is impossible as long as men rule women, and right-wing women have refused to forget it. ~ Andrea Dworkin

Sociological method as we practice it rests wholly on the basic principle that social facts must be studied as things, that is, as realities external to the individual. There is no principle for which we have received more criticism; but none is more fundamental. Indubitably for sociology to be possible, it must above all have an object all its own. It must take cognizance of a reality which is not in the domain of other sciences ... there can be no sociology unless societies exist, and that societies cannot exist if there are only individuals. ~ Emile Durkheim

Whether it's social class status or your economic status, it is very evident that the top, if they get their way, will survive and be strong. They will lead those who are helpless, in many ways, to suffer. ~ Edwin Hodge

The issue is not whether people are "good enough" for a particular type of society; rather it is a matter of developing the kind of social institutions that are most conducive to expanding the potentialities we have for intelligence, grace, sociability and freedom. ~ Paul Goodman

This idealization of motherhood is essentially a means of keeping women from developing a sexual consciousness and from breaking through the barriers of sexual repression, of keeping alive their sexual anxieties and guilt feelings. The very existence of woman as a sexual being would threaten authoritarian ideology; her recognition and social affirmation would mean its collapse. ~ Wilhelm Reich

To attempt social reform, educational reform, industrial expansion, the moral improvement of the race without aiming, first and foremost, at political freedom is the very height of ignorance and futility. ~ Sri Aurobindo

In all sectors of society there should be roughly equal prospects of culture and achievement for everyone similarly motivated and endowed. The expectations of those with the same abilities and aspirations should not be affected by their social class. ~ John Rawls

We are never without our technology. It surrounds us. It permeates our lives. We have powerful computers in our pockets, and we have been - you know, we are training our children from the youngest age to use social media, so it's something that comes very naturally to us. ~ Lance Ulanoff

Perhaps... Perhaps he could make her happy. Not with the Granville money or his social cachet, but just by being the man he was, at his core. Sometimes, when he looked deep into those blue eyes, it felt like anything was possible. ~ Tessa Dare

Remember that people who seek to do evil can play hit and miss all they want. People who are seeking companionship online have to be right every time. Miss out on this one and the price could be very dear, even costing your life. ~ John Patrick Hickey

People might not protest for overtly political or social causes, but when they can't feed themselves and their family, they will take to the streets. ~ Marcus Samuelsson

Twitter represents a collective collaboration that manifests our ability to unconsciously connect kindred voices through the experiences that move us. As such, Twitter is a human seismograph. ~ Brian Solis