top of page
.png){kind=small}
Behavior Quotes
"You were saying that once when visiting Yale, you were struck that unlike Pound, Williams's thinking was volatile, I mean, did not stay locked into a pattern of concepts that then defined his subsequent necessary behavior, whereas Pound did."
25
"Kindness is the supreme intelligence."
23
"Her thoughts are full of other things just now; and people have such different ways of showing feeling: some by silence, some by words."
23
"The most expensive sex is free sex."
21
"There were, however, a few exceptions.One was Norma Dodsworth, the poet, who had not unpleasantly drunk but had been sensible enough to pass out before any violent action proved necessary. He had been deposited, not very gently, on the lawn, where it was hoped that a hyena would give him a rude awakening. For all practical purposes he could, therefore, be regarded as absent."
20
"Often those that criticise others reveal what he himself lacks."
20
"What is inspiration in strangers is jealousy in kinsmen."
19
"All movements go too far."
19
"Man alone suffers so excruciatingly in the world that he was compelled to invent laughter."
19
"It's easy finding reasons why other folks should be patient."
19
"Eccentric behavior is not routinely noticed around a movie set."
18
"Still, intuitive assumptions about behavior is only the starting point of systematic analysis, for alone they do not yield many interesting implications."
18
"Stubbornness is the bearer of disaster."
18
"To do exactly as your neighbors do is the only sensible rule."
18
"Isn't it sad how some people's grip on their lives is so precarious that they'll embrace any preposterous delusion rather than face an occasional bleak truth?"
18
"A dog reflects the family life. Whoever saw a frisky dog in a gloomy family, or a sad dog in a happy one? Snarling people have snarling dogs, dangerous people have dangerous ones."
18
"Most of the men had simple souls. They could relate facts, but they said very little about what they dimly felt."
18
"As long as male behavior is taken to be the norm, there can be no serious questioning of male traits and behavior. A norm is by definition a standard for judging; it is not itself subject to judgment."
18
"I lay it down as a fact that if all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world."
18
"Behavior which appears superficially correct but is intrinsically corrupt always irritates those who see below the surface."
18
"There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil, a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome.""And your defect is a propensity to hate everybody.""And yours," he replied with a smile, "is wilfully to misunderstand them."
17
"Survival," I said softly. "It's selfish, and it's dark, and we've always been a species willing to do anything to satisfy our needs. Individuals have morals. Mobs have appetites."
17
"Ger says that Kat has a tendency to push things to extremes, to go over the edge, merely from a juvenile desire to shock, which is hardly a substitute for wit. One of these days, he says, she will go way too far. Too far for him, is what he means."
17
"My father had taught me to be nice first, because you can always be mean later, but once you've been mean to someone, they won't believe the nice anymore. So be nice, be nice, until it's time to stop being nice, then destroy them."
17
"All of us are born with a set of instinctive fears - of falling, of the dark, of lobsters, of falling on lobsters in the dark, of speaking before a Rotary Club, and of the words 'Some Assembly Required'."
17
"Marianne had now been brought by degrees, so much into the habit of going out every day, that it was become a matter of indifference to her, whether she went or not: and she prepared quietly and mechanically for every evening's engagement, though without expecting the smallest amusement from any, and very often without knowing, till the last moment, where it was to take her."
17
"I have found there to be little distance between the unlatching of a chain and the spreading of a woman's legs. As if they can never unbar only a single entrance. It's a disease called hope. Women suffer from it greatly."
16
"Lazy people live lonely lives."
16
"Look, tiny - i'm trying to be on my best behavior, but you have to understand - i'm always standing on the edge of something bad. and sometimes someone like you can make me look the other way, so that i don't know how close i am to falling over. but i always end up turning my head. always."
16
"When I was a child, I first thought that these shades might be malevolent spirits who fostered evil in those people around whom they swarmed. I've since discovered that many human beings need no supernatural mentoring to commit acts of savagery; some people are devils in their own right, their telltale horns having grown inward to facilitate their disguise."
16
"The people naturally adhere most to doctrines which demand the least self-exertion and the least use of their own reason, and which can best accommodate their duties to their inclinations."
16
"We are tossed about by external causes in many ways, and like waves driven by contrary winds, we waver and are unconscious of the issue and our fate.' We think we are most ourselves when we are most passionate, whereas it is then we are most passive, caught in some ancestral torrent of impulse or feeling, and swept on to a precipitate reaction which meets only part of the situation because without thought only part of a situation can be perceived."
15
"To say 'we' and mean 'I' is one of the most recondite insults."
15
bottom of page