31 Quotes About Propriety

You are mistaken, Mr. Darcy, if you suppose that the mode of your declaration affected me in any other way, than as it spared the concern which I might have felt in refusing you, had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner." (Elizabeth Bennett)

There are certain phrases potent to make my blood boil -- improper influence! What old woman's cackle is that?""Are you a young lady?""I am a thousand times better: I am an honest woman, and as such I will be treated.

Repression is a seamless garment; a society which is authoritarian in its social and sexual codes, which crushes its women beneath the intolerable burdens of honour and propriety, breeds repressions of other kinds as well.

Being able to do whatever we want to do is the most precious natural gift that we possess, but doing only what we ought to do is the only adequate expression of our gratitude for it.

But my way of writing is rather to think aloud, and follow my own humours, than much to consider who is listening to me; and, if I stop to consider what is proper to be said to this or that person, I shall soon come to doubt whether any part at all is proper.

...the pleasantness of an employment does not always evince its propriety.

What she had done over the past year had required an equivalent expenditure of energy to a year-long sprint, and when she thought of it that way it was obviously an unreasonable thing to do. Remaining sane--clinging and grasping at it, seeking to please a propriety constructed by people whose boyfriends had never killed themselves--was in fact the most insane thing she could have done, and anyone properly equipped by the right kind of experience would understand that.

Propriety is a poor substitute for desire.

It was the first time I had let go of my inhibitions in aeons. She had the key to the cage of propriety in which I had imprisoned myself. I was introduced to a lifestyle of decadence.