Agnes Repplier Quotes

Observe decorum, and it will open a path to morality.

Taste is more to do with manners than appearances. Taste is both myth and reality; it is not a style.

Decency cannot be discussed without indecency!

Still, it doesn't do to murder people, no matter how offensive they may be.

I believe that bad taste is vulgar. It's like cursing. I think the world can be saved through design, because what is the most distasteful thing someone can do? Kill someone. So, good taste is the opposite of that.

Good taste is always bad.

Bad taste is a species of bad morals.

It is in bad taste," is the most formidable word an Englishman can pronounce.

A prude is a person who thinks that his own rules of propriety are natural laws.

I don't ever cross the line. I step right up to it. I put my toes on the line, but I don't ever cross that line. There are some barriers you just don't cross - you don't talk about religion; you don't talk about race. Those are lines I will never cross.

For the canons of good society are, or should be, the same as the canons of art. Form is absolutely essential to it.

More faults are often committed while we are trying to oblige than while we are giving offense.

A fine lady; by which term I wish to express the result of that perfect education in taste and manner, down to every gesture, which heaven forbid that I, professing to be a poet, should undervalue. It is beautiful, and therefore I welcome it in the name of the author of all beauty. I value it so highly that I would fain see it extend not merely from Belgravia to the tradesman's villa, but thence, as I believe it one day will, to the laborer's hovel and the needlewoman's garret.

moral, adj. Conforming to a local and mutable standard of right. Having the quality of general expediency.

One of the keys to our present definition of good taste is that it is better to be kind than to be 'correct.' There is no situation in which it is smart to be nasty.

A man can only be judged by his actions, and not by his good intentions or his beliefs.

I believe that while art is always beyond morality, it is never above it.

We shall be judged by what we do, not by how we felt while we were doing it.

Good behavior is everybody's business, and good taste can be everyone's goal.

I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies.

How we live is so different from how we ought to live that he who studies what ought to be done rather than what is done will learn the way to his downfall rather than to his preservation.

Morality is the thing upon which your friends smile, and immorality is the thing upon which they frown

You have to want to have taste. Some people have inherently bad taste. Their problem is really not the bad taste -- that can be fixed -- but that they don't know they have it!

That bad manners are so prevalent in the world is the fault of good manners.

Never create by law what can be accomplished by morality.