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Propriety was a rigid master, but one that must be obeyed if one wanted to keep a sterling reputation. -- Lawana Blackwell
Propriety's never been Adrian's strong suit. -- Richelle Mead
Architecture depends on Order, Arrangement, Eurythmy, Symmetry , Propriety , and Economy. -- Marcus Vitruvius Pollio
Propriety is the least of all laws, and the most observed. -- Francois de La Rochefoucauld
This indigested vomit of the Sea,Fell to the Dutch by Just Propriety. -- Andrew Marvell
I am afraid that the pleasantness of an employment does not always evince its propriety. -- Jane Austen
Propriety of manners, and consideration for others, are the two main characteristics of a gentleman. -- Benjamin Disraeli
Female schools might be comprised in the list of those worthy the public patronage, with great propriety. -- Joseph Lancaster
IT is difficult to speak or write with becoming moderation or propriety, on topics to which we are biased by prejudice, interest, or even principle. -- Joseph Lancaster
Propriety is that perfection of style which comes when a work is authoritatively constructed on approved principles. It arises from prescription, from usage, or from nature. -- Marcus Vitruvius Pollio
The [President's] Nomination, of Course, brings the Subject fully under the Consideration of the Senate; who have then a Right to decide upon its Propriety or Impropriety. -- George Mason
The responsibility of a minister is to step aside when there is a criminal investigation of the department. That protects the propriety of Parliament and of responsible government. -- Jack Layton
Propriety and single interest divides the people of a land and the whole world into parties and is the cause of all wars and bloodshed and contention everywhere -- Gerrard Winstanley
I was a little doubtful about the propriety of going to the Mammoth Cave without a gentleman escort, but if two ladies travel alone they must have the courage of men. -- Maria Mitchell
Firstly you must always implicitly obey orders, without attempting to form any opinion of your own regarding their propriety. Secondly, you must consider every man your enemy who speaks ill of your king; and thirdly you must hate a Frenchman as you hate the devil. -- Horatio Nelson
It was the king's army, the king's people, the king's taxes; and he who questioned the propriety of the royal prerogative of taking from his people without return or accounting, was reckoned, and felt himself to be, a criminal, guilty of the highest crime of disloyalty. -- John Buchanan Robinson
Straight-forwardness, without the rules of propriety, becomes rudeness. -- Confucius
Be aroused by poetry; structure yourself with propriety, refine yourself with music. -- Confucius
If you cannot conduct yourself with propriety, give place to those who can. -- Horace
Without an acquaintance with the rules of propriety, it is impossible for the character to be established -- Confucius
Riches may enable us to confer favors, but to confer them with propriety and grace requires a something that riches cannot give. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Eating meat and drinking liquor are demonic vices. Those indulging in drink lose all sense of propriety, have no compassion or love and become demons. -- Sathya Sai Baba
A footman may swear; but he cannot swear like a lord. He can swear as often: but can he swear with equal delicacy, propriety, and judgment? -- Jonathan Swift
No man can well doubt the propriety of placing a president of the United States under the most solemn obligations to preserve, protect, and defend the constitution. -- Joseph Story
The Queen is most anxious to enlist everyone who can speak or write to join in checking this mad, wicked folly of Woman's Rights with all its attendant horrors on which her poor, feeble sex is bent, forgetting every sense of womanly feeling and propriety. -- Queen Victoria
I entirely concur in the propriety of resorting to the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation. In that sense alone it is the legitimate Constitution. And if that is not the guide in expounding it, there may be no security. -- James Madison
Women are told from their infancy, and taught by the example of their mothers, that a little knowledge of human weakness, justly termed cunning, softness of temper, outward obedience and a scrupulous attention to a puerile kind of propriety, will obtain for them the protection of man. -- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Rhetoric is useful because truth and justice are in their nature stronger than their opposites; so that if decisions be made, not in conformity to the rule of propriety, it must have been that they have been got the better of through fault of the advocates themselves: and this is deserving reprehension. -- Aristotle
It is graceful in a man to think and to speak with propriety, to act with deliberation, and in every occurrence of life to find out and persevere in the truth. On the other hand, to be imposed upon, to mistake, to falter, and to be deceived, is as ungraceful as to rave or to be insane. -- Marcus Tullius Cicero
A laugh, if purchased at the expense of propriety, costs too much. -- Quintilian
Those expressions are omitted which can not with propriety be read aloud in the family. -- Thomas Bowdler
I'm waiting for the day when my children cease to find my domestic propriety reassuring and actually find it annoying. -- Rachel Cusk
I'm a gentleman, if nothing else. It's taken me years to become one, but finally I have a sense of propriety. -- Eric Stoltz
Emancipation, to be of any value to the slave, must be the free, voluntary act of the master, performed from a conviction of its propriety. -- Elijah Parish Lovejoy
Look not at what is contrary to propriety; listen not to what is contrary to propriety; speak not what is contrary to propriety; make no movement which is contrary to propriety. -- Confucius
I respectfully suggest the propriety of having stationed at the arsenal a full company of U. S. troops, that they may be made available in any emergency, from fire, insurrection, or any thing else. -- Thomas L. Smith
I did documentary film for a long time, and I spent a lot of time behind the camera, fervently wishing that the reality I was filming would conform to my narrative propriety. But you can't control it. -- Ruth Ozeki
The charge was left entirely to himself from midnight until the rising of the sun; and if all the shepherds in the Forest had been there to have assisted him, they could not have effected it with greater propriety. -- James Hogg
Yes, yes, children must early be made to practise piety, godliness, and propriety; a person of good breeding is one into whom 'good maxims' have been instilled and impressed, poured in through a funnel, thrashed in and preached in. -- Max Stirner
I do not mean that you could continue to do this with propriety or even with safety; I merely assert that the power is, in point of fact, in your hands. And for such a power, what a responsibility to God and man! -- Jay Alan Sekulow
The important consequences to the American States from this Declaration of Independence, considered as the ground and foundation of a future government, naturally suggest the propriety of proclaiming it in such a manner as that the people may be universally informed of it. -- John Hancock
A person is born with desires of the eyes and ears, and a liking for beautiful sights and sounds. If he gives way to them, they will lead him to immorality and lack of restriction, and any ritual principles and propriety will be abandoned. -- Xun Zi
I feel a real need to observe a level of propriety in what I'm handing out. Instead of me just venting or spilling my guts, I've got to consider how it's going to affect people. How it's going to affect me, as well. Because it's like a cycle. -- Eric Clapton
To be a pleasant person, you would at least need to see the point of being a pleasant person, or have it explained to you at some sort of 'finishing school' where you could actually learn the laws of propriety and the skills of appearing well-adapted, easygoing and attractively trouble free. But where do you learn these things? I don't know. -- Michael Leunig
A novice always behaves with propriety. -- Martial
a deviation from propriety scarcely ever escapes punishment. -- Regina Maria Roche
Even in killing men, observe the rules of propriety. -- Confucius
A certain class of novels may with propriety be called fables. -- Richard Whately
Avant-garde art jousts with propriety, but takes care never to unseat it. -- Mason Cooley
Modern Christians should not mistake our post-Victorian sense of propriety for moral purity. -- Gene Edward Veith Jr.
The propriety of some persons seems to consist in having improper thoughts about their neighbors. -- F. H. Bradley
Generosity, pleasing address, courage and propriety of conduct are not acquired, but are inbred qualities. -- Chanakya
Genius disregards the boundaries of propriety. Genius is permitted to shout if shouting is productive. -- Lois Lowry
That only can with propriety be styled refinement which, by strengthening the intellect, purifies the manners. -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
It is the effect of scarcity; one's rules of propriety make one thirst for the improper. -- Mohsin Hamid
A prude is a person who thinks that his own rules of propriety are natural laws. -- Robert A. Heinlein
The row of dolls watched her impassively from the bookshelf, their tea party propriety almost certainly offended. -- Holly Black
Let a man be stimulated by poetry, established by the rules of propriety, and perfected by music. -- Confucius
I've got confidence that most people in America still have a decent sense of manners, propriety, morality. -- Rush Limbaugh
I've got confidence that most people in America still have a decent sense of manners, propriety, morality. -- Rush Limbaugh
There will be no propriety in the spectacle of an elegant interior approached by a low mean entrance. -- Marcus Vitruvius Pollio
Once the demands of necessity and propriety have been met, the rest that one owns belongs to the poor. -- Pope Leo XIII
It is said that the propriety even of old Cato often yielded to the exciting influence of the grape. -- Horace
Worldly wisdom dictates to her disciples the propriety of dressing somewhat beyond their means, but of living somewhat within them. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Politeness has been defined to be artificial good-nature; but we may affirm, with much greater propriety, that good-nature is natural politeness. -- StanisÅ?aw I LeszczyÅ?ski
Just because I tread heavily on propriety's toes doesn't mean I can't play the game when it's of use to me. -- Patrick Rothfuss
The propriety of thoughts and words, which are the hidden beauties of a play, are but confusedly judged in the vehemence of action. -- John Dryden
How do our philosophers act? Do they not inscribe their signatures to the very essays they write on the propriety of despising glory. -- Marcus Tullius Cicero
Proportion and propriety are among the best secrets of domestic wisdom; and there is no surer test of integrity than a well-proportioned expenditure. -- Hannah More
If a man has no humaneness what can his propriety be like? If a man has no humaneness what can his happiness be like? -- Confucius
The propriety of a law, in a constitutional light, must always be determined by the nature of the powers upon which it is founded. -- Alexander Hamilton
Fashionable dances as now carried on are revolting to every feeling of delicacy and propriety and are fraught with the greatest danger to millions. -- Horace Bushnell
Whamming someone smaller than oneself in order to teach that person civilized behavior is not within Miss Manners' concept of propriety, much less logic. -- Judith Martin
There are as many kinds of modesty as there are races. To the English woman it is a duty; to the French woman a propriety. -- Hippolyte Taine
There's this line between propriety and how we really speak and how we really think. And I'm just trying to have fun with that stuff. -- Paul Beatty
Oh, propriety," says Mrs Benjamin. "We're always so concerned with propriety. Even in total madness, we still stick to our hierarchies and chains of command. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
The superior man, extensively studying all learning, and keeping himself under the restraint of the rules of propriety, may thus likewise not overstep what is right. -- Confucius
Anyone must be mainly ignorant or thoughtless, who is surprised at everything he sees; or wonderfully conceited who expects everything to conform to his standard of propriety. -- William Hazlitt
If a man is not good, what has he to do with the rules of propriety? If he is not good, what has he to do with music? -- Confucius
If there are such things as political axioms, the propriety of the judicial power of a government being co-extensive with its legislative, may be ranked among the number. -- Alexander Hamilton
I am too inexperienced and ignorant to conduct myself with propriety in this town, where every thing is new to me, and many things are unaccountable and perplexing. -- Fanny Burney
In many parts of the world-including Polynesia, north Africa & the Middle East-public dancing that focused on a physically linked couple would have been unthinkable, a violation of communal propriety. -- Gerald Jonas
Money is, with propriety, considered as the vital principle of the body politic; as that which sustains its life and motion, and enables it to perform its most essential functions. -- Alexander Hamilton
If the public safety be provided, liberty and propriety secured, justice administered, virtue encouraged, vice suppressed, and the true interest of the nation advanced, the ends of government are accomplished . . . -- Algernon Sidney
Perhaps propriety is as near a word as any to denote the manners of the gentleman; elegance is necessary to the fine gentleman; dignity is proper to noblemen; and majesty to kings. -- William Hazlitt
Far better, and more cheerfully, I could dispense with some part of the downright necessaries of life, than with certain circumstances of elegance and propriety in the daily habits of using them. -- Thomas de Quincey
The first monster that an audience has to be scared of is the filmmaker. They have to feel in the presence of someone not confined by the normal rules of propriety and decency. -- Wes Craven
Oratory is good only if it has the qualities of fitness for the occasion, propriety of style, and originality of treatment, while in the case of letters there is no such need whatsoever. -- Isocrates
A gentleman considers justice to be essential in everything. He practices it according to the principles of propriety. He brings it forth in modesty and faithfully completes it. This is indeed a gentleman. -- Confucius
...many of us inhibit our capacity for growth because the culture encourages us to live lives of uniformity. We stall, deny, ignore the ensuing crisis because of confusion, malaise, and yes, even propriety. -- Joan Anderson
Androgyny suggests a spirit of reconciliation between the sexes; it suggests, further, a full range of experienceâ?¦it suggests a spectrum upon which human beings choose their places without regard to propriety or custom. -- Carolyn Heilbrun
Eutrapelia . "A happy and gracious flexibility," Pericles calls this quality of the Athenians...lucidity of thought, clearness and propriety of language, freedom from prejudice and freedom from stiffness, openness of mind, amiability of manners. -- Matthew Arnold
I find it awfully difficult to determine if the habit of talking about oneself at length runs contrary to the basic rules of propriety, or if instead the man exempt from this vice is rare. -- Giacomo Leopardi

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