Millicent Fenwick Quotes

Propriety is the least of all laws, and the most observed.

A being whose activities are associated with others has a social environment. What he does and what he can do depend upon the expectations, demands, approvals, and condemnations of others.

Society becomes how you behave.

Considering how bad men are, it is wonderful how well they behave.

In civilized communities men's idiosyncrasies are mitigated by the necessity of conforming to certain rules of behavior. Culture is a mask that hides their faces.

Custom determines what is agreeable.

Etiquette is about all of human social behavior. Behavior is regulated by law when etiquette breaks down or when the stakes are high - violations of life, limb, property and so on. Barring that, etiquette is a little social contract we make that we will restrain some of our more provocative impulses in return for living more or less harmoniously in a community.

Yes, but also one of the problems for a novelist in Ireland is the fact that there are no formal manners. I mean some people have beautiful manners but there's no kind of agreed form of manners.

Societies depend on agreed rules.

I don't think morality can be decided on the private level. I think you need public guidance and public support for a moral consensus. The average person has to know instinctively, without thinking too much about it, how he should raise his children.

Society becomes how we behave.

You have to adhere to a certain morality, a certain level of decorum, or else you'll be punished and labeled.

Society will be obeyed; if you refuse obedience, you must take the consequences. Society has only one law, and that is custom. Even religion itself is socially powerful only just so far as it has custom on its side.

Morals are three-quarters manners.

I was brought up in a community, in a family that valued such things as good manners, and I still do.

I always expect people to behave much better than I do. When they actually behave worse, I am frankly incredulous.

Do you know what morals are? Morals are an obedience to rules that people laid down to help you live among them.

Culturally, it's very hard to change people's attitudes about public space.

Society's the mother of convention.

Man is a social animal formed to please in society.

because everybody lies. It's part of living in society .

It's not illegal to be an asshole.

There's times to be dainty and times to be a pig.

The line between the public life and the private life has been erased, due to the rapid decline of manners and courtesy. There is a certain crudeness and crassness that has suddenly become accepted behavior, even desirable.