Honore de Balzac Quotes

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

No iconoclast can possibly escape the severest criticism. …. The world always demands of a prophet a double standard. He must live a life consistent with his dreams, and at the same time must obey the conventions of the world. He cannot be judged either by one or the other, but must be judged by both.

The conventions of society are all in the interests of morality. If you're conventional, you'll be good, in a negative sense, of course.

The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement.

The era of 'anything goes' is gone for ever.

A man must know how to fly in the face of opinion; a woman to submit to it.

You don't have to conform to a very specific aesthetic today, whereas 1950s women definitely had to.

It was considered oh, not proper for children to go to the movies.

The framework of men's wear is so narrow, that when you play at the edges you get labeled.

I shall be glad when you have strangled the invincible respectability that dogs your steps.

When I grew up, you needed to have straight hair. It's symbolic of needing to be like everyone else, needing to look like everyone else. And what that meant was looking like the dominant ruling class in America.

Sometimes I listen to songs by very smart writers who assume that the world is a civil place with certain formalities that people follow, but I don't see things that way. My own experience tells me that life is not like that.

The way of the world is to make laws, but follow custom.

I lived in a world where social arrangements were taken for granted and assumed to be timeless. A child's obligation was to learn these usages, not to question them. The complexities of racial deportment were of a piece with learning manners and etiquette more generally.

Basically, I hate conformity. I hate people telling me what to do. It makes me want to smash things. So-called normal behaviour patterns make me so bored, I could throw up!

The free, self-determining, self-developing soul may not walk its own path, however innocently, but must fit into the scheme and pattern …

No important institution is ever merely what the law makes it. It accumulates about itself traditions, conventions, ways of behavior, which ... are not less formidable in their influence.

A man must know how to act in the face of opinion; a woman to submit to it.

We are in the society of the teacher-judge, the doctor-judge, the educator-judge, the 'social-worker'-judge; it is on them that the universal reign of the normative is based; and each individual, wherever he may find himself, subjects to it his body, his gestures, his behavior, his aptitudes, his achievements.

If my life choices had to be predicated based on what was expected of me from a community on either side, that's going to make me feel really straitjacketed, and I don't want to feel that.

The frustration of being ordered around by somebody to do something - everyone can relate to that. I think Beetle represents that - the common man caught in that morass of rules and regulations. I don't even think of it as an army strip... it's a world anyone can understand.

We limit ourselves. We're told to act and behave in certain way from birth.

My mother sang. But back in the day, it was looked down upon if the lady of the house wanted to sing in public. So, she couldn't pursue her musical aspirations.

Humans can be cruel - kids and adults alike. That doesn't mean they have to be forced to a specific stereotype.

I think, especially growing up in the South, we are taught that women are supposed to be soft, gentle and kind of just goes along with everything and is submissive.