Deference quotes:

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Deference often shrinks and withers as much upon the approach of intimacy as the sensitive plant does upon the touch of one's finger. -- William Shenstone
Deference is the most complicate, the most indirect, and the most elegant of all compliments. -- William Shenstone
Deference and intimacy live far apart. -- Moliere
If we wish our civilization to survive we must break with the habit of deference to great men. -- Karl Popper
The condition of leadership adds new degrees of solitariness to the basic solitude of mankind. Every order that we issue increases the extent to which we are alone, and every show of deference which is extended to us separates us from our fellows. -- Thornton Wilder
Great men always pay deference to greater. -- Walter Savage Landor
People who expect deference resent mere civility. -- Mason Cooley
Eminence without merit earns deference without esteem. -- Nicolas Chamfort
The most congenial social occasions are those ruled by cheerful deference of each for all. -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The president's need for complete candor and objectivity from advisers calls for great deference from the courts. -- Warren E. Burger
Nothing is more natural to men in office, than to look with peculiar deference towards that authority to which they owe their official existence. -- Alexander Hamilton
A gentleman is one who understands and shows every mark of deference to the claims of self-love in others, and exacts it in return from them. -- William Hazlitt
The disquieting thing about newscaster-babble or editorial-speak is its ready availability as a serf idiom, a vernacular of deference. "Mr. Secretary, are we any nearer to bringing about a dialogue in this process ? -- Christopher Hitchens
However much I have been blamed for not showing more deferences to a great party, and for not acting more steadily on party principles, all I have to regret is that I showed so much. -- Robert Peel
The superior man has nothing to compete for. But if he must compete, he does it in an archery match, wherein he ascends to his position, bowing in deference. Descending, he drinks the ritual cup. -- Confucius
Death is a dignitary who when he comes announced is received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him. In the code of military etiquette silence and fixity are forms of deference -- Ambrose Bierce
Among well bred people a mutual deference is affected, contempt for others is disguised; authority concealed; attention given to each in his turn; and an easy stream of conversation maintained without vehemence, without interruption, without eagerness for victory, and without any airs of superiority. -- David Hume
Gentlemen, be courteous to the old maids, no matter how poor and plain and prim, for the only chivalry worth having is that which is the readiest to to pay deference to the old, protect the feeble, and serve womankind, regardless of rank, age, or color. -- Louisa May Alcott
The best thing to give to your enemy is forgiveness; to an opponent, tolerance; to a friend, your heart; to your child, a good example; to a father, deference; to your mother, conduct that will make her proud of you; to yourself, respect; to all others, charity. -- Benjamin Franklin
Islam in its origins is just as shady and approximate as those from which it took its borrowings. It makes immense claims for itself, invokes prostrate submission or "surrender" as a maxim to its adherents, and demands deference and respect from nonbelievers into the bargain. There is nothing-absolutely nothing-in its teachings that can even begin to justify such arrogance and presumption. -- Christopher Hitchens
Countries are effectively paid deference in direct and indirect ways if they're huge oil suppliers. -- R. James Woolsey, Jr.
[ Donald Trump] deference to the president [Barack Obama] whose legitimacy he questioned. -- George Stephanopoulos
Countries are effectively paid deference in direct and indirect ways if they're huge oil suppliers. -- R. James Woolsey, Jr.
Why all this deference to Alfred, and Scanderbeg, and Gustavus? Suppose they were virtuous; did they wear out virtue? -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Knowledge, which is power, knows no limits, either in its enslavement of creation or in its deference to worldly masters. -- Theodor Adorno
Truth cannot be sacrificed at the altar of pretended tolerance. Real tolerance is deference to all ideas, not indifference to the truth. -- Ravi Zacharias
I just think that we show an awful lot of deference to chefs in our culture and maybe not enough deference to customers. -- Pete Wells
What I find is with all due deference to - deference to our male colleagues, that women's styles tend to be more collaborative. -- Susan Collins
It is unjust to exact that men shall do out of deference to our advice what they have no desire to do for themselves. -- Luc de Clapiers
A person that would secure to himself great deference will, perhaps, gain his point by silence as effectually as by anything he can say. -- William Shenstone
A rich dress adds but little to the beauty of a person. It may possibly create a deference, but that is rather an enemy to love. -- William Shenstone
With all deference to Chairman Mao and other authors whose quotations derive from longer works, it seemed that I was becoming the world's first writer of self-contained ready-made quotations. -- Ashleigh Brilliant
We show deference to the civil authorities when they respect the divine origin of their power and when they serve the people with objective reference to the law of God. -- Angelo Scola
Repression is the only lasting philosophy. The dark deference of fear and slavery, my friend, will keep the dogs obedient to the whip, as long as this roof shuts out the sky. -- Charles Dickens
Washington society has always demanded less and given more than any society in this country--demanded less of applause, deference,etiquette, and has accepted as current coin quick wit, appreciative tact, and a talent for talking. -- M. E. W. Sherwood
In deference to American traditions, my family put our oven to rare use at Thanksgiving during my childhood, with odd roast-turkey experiments involving sticky-rice stuffing or newfangled basting techniques that we read about in magazines. -- Jennifer Lee

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