SOCIETY
Addison, Joseph
There is a sort of economy in Providence that one shall excel where another is defective, in order to make them more useful to each other, and mix them in society.
From social intercourse are derived some of the highest enjoyments of life; where there is a free interchange of sentiments the mind acquires new ideas, and by a frequent exercise of its powers, the understanding gains fresh vigor.
Adler, Alfred
The only worthwhile achievements of man are those which are socially useful.
Bruyere, Jean de la
We are more sociable, and get on better with people by the heart than the intellect.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward George
Society is a wall of very strong masonry, as it now stands; it may be sapped in the course of a thousand years, but stormed in a day—no! You dash your head against it—you scatter your brains, and you dislodge a stone. Society smiles in scorn, effaces the stain, and replaces the stone.
Byron, George Gordon Noel
Society is now one polished horde, formed of two mighty tribes, the bores and bored.
Chamfort, Sebastian Roch
We take our colors, chameleon-like, from each other.
Society is composed of two great classes: those who have more dinners than appetite, and those who have more appetite than dinners.
Too elevated qualities often unfit a man for society. We do not go to market with ingots, but with silver and small change.
Colton, Caleb C.
No company is preferable to bad, because we are more apt to catch the vices of others than their virtues, as disease is far more contagious than health.
Cowper, William
Man, in society, is like a flower blown in its native bud. It is there only that his faculties, expanded in full bloom, shine out, there only reach their proper use.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
Society undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is Christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. For everything that is given something is taken. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts. The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet; he has a fine Geneva watch, but cannot tell the hour by the sun.
Besides the general infusion of wit to heighten civility, the direct splendor of intellectual power is ever welcome in fine society, as the costliest addition to its rule and its credit.
There exists a strict relation between the class of power and the exclusive and polished circles. The last are always filled, or filling from the first. Fashion, though in a strange way, represents all manly virtue. It is virtue gone to seed; a kind of posthumous honor; a hall of the past. Great men are not commonly in its halls: they are absent in the field: they are working, not triumphing Fashion is made up of their children.
The secret of success in society is a certain heartiness and sympathy. A man who is not happy in company, cannot find any word in his memory that will fit the occasion; all his information is a little impertinent. A man who is happy there, finds in every turn of the conversation occasions for the introduction of what he has to say. The favorites of society are able men, and of more spirit than wit, who have no uncomfortable egotism, but who exactly fill the hour and the company, contented and contenting.
Frohman, Daniel
Half of the secret of getting along with people is consideration of their views; the other half is tolerance in one's own views.
Fuller, Thomas
Let him who expects one class of society to prosper in the highest degree, while the other is in distress, try whether one side of his face can smile while the other is pinched.
Greville, Lord
What an argument in favor of social connections is the observation that, by communicating our grief we have less, and by communicating our pleasures we have more.
Haldane, John B. S.
The ideal society would enable every man and woman to develop along their individual lines, and not attempt to force all into one mould, however admirable.
Hall, Joseph
Society is the atmosphere of souls; and we necessarily imbibe from it something which is either infectious or healthful.
Hamerton, Philip G.
Society has only one law, and that is custom.—Even religion is socially powerful only so far as it has custom on its side.
Hibben, John Grier
In the pioneer days of our history it was easy to love one's neighbor and respect his rights, when possibly the neighbor lived at a distance of four or five miles and the relations were not intimate enough to occasion a clash of interests. Now one finds that society rather than another individual is his neighbor.
Huntington, Frederick D.
Socialism is only a blind yearning after liberty and equality. It is the unsteady and brilliant dream of an earthly republic which can be realized only in the true Church of God.
Irving, Washington
Society is like a lawn, where every roughness is smoothed, every bramble eradicated, and where the eye is delighted by the smiling verdure of a velvet surface. He, however, who would study nature in its wildness and variety, must plunge into the forest, must explore the glen, must stem the torrent, and dare the precipice.
Lippmann, Walter
The uprooting of human beings from the land, the concentration in cities, the breakdown of the authority of the family, of tradition, and of moral conventions, the complexity and the novelty of modern life, and finally the economic insecurity of our industrial system have called into being the modern social worker. They perform a function in modern society which is not a luxury but an absolute necessity.
Locke, John
We are a kind of chameleons, taking our hue—the hue of our moral character, from those who are about us.
Lowell, James Russell
The code of society is stronger with some persons than that of Sinai; and many a man who would not scruple to thrust his fingers in his neighbor's pocket, would forego peas rather than use his knife as a shovel.
Massinger, Philip
Without good company all dainties lose their true relish, and like painted grapes, are only seen, not tasted.
Millikan, Robert A.
The change from the individual life of the animal to the group life of civilized man, which becomes a life of ever-expanding complexity as our scientific civilization advances, would obviously be impossible unless the individual learned in ever-increasing measure to subordinate his impulses and interests to the furtherance of the group life.
Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat
Man is a social animal, formed to please and enjoy in society.
Nansen, Fridtjof
Social problems can no longer be solved by class warfare any more than international problems can be solved by wars between nations. Warfare is negative and will sooner or later lead to destruction, while good will and cooperation are positive and supply the only safe basis for building a better future.
O'Malley, Austin
You may live in the fashionable quarter of town, but there is a dark slum somewhere on your property.
Patri, Angelo
We must have the press of the crowd to draw virtue from us.
Phillips, Wendell
Society—the only field where the sexes have ever met on terms of equality, the arena where character is formed and studied, the cradle and the realm of public opinion, the crucible of ideas, the world's university, at once a school and a theatre, the spur and the crown of ambition, the tribunal which unmasks pretension and stamps real merit, the power that gives government leave to be, and outruns the lazy church in fixing the moral sense.
Rochefoucauld, Francois, Duc de la
Men would not live long in society if they were not the dupes of each other.
Rule of Life, The
It is certain that either wise bearing or ignorant carriage is caught, as men take diseases, one from another: therefore, let all take heed as to the society in which they mingle, for in a little while they will be like it.
Shakespeare, William
Society is no comfort to one not sociable.
Sigourney, Lydia H.
To attain excellence in society, an assemblage of qualifications is requisite: disciplined intellect, to think clearly, and to clothe thought with propriety and elegance; knowledge of human nature, to suit subject to character; true politeness, to prevent giving pain; a deep sense of morality, to preserve the dignity of speech; and a spirit of benevolence, to neutralize its asperities, and sanctify its powers.
Southey, Robert
The history of any private family, however humble, could it be fully related for five or six generations, would illustrate the state and progress of society better than the most elaborate dissertation.
Taine, Hippolyte A.
There are four varieties in society; the lovers, the ambitious, observers, and fools. The fools are the happiest.
Thomson, James
Hail, social life! into thy pleasing bounds I come to pay the common stock, my share of service, and, in glad return, to taste thy comforts, thy protected joys.
Tuckerman, Henry Theodore
Society is the offspring of leisure; and to acquire this forms the only rational motive for accumulating wealth, notwithstanding the cant that prevails on the subject of labor.
Webb, Beatrice
I believe that we already have a science of society—a very young and very incomplete science, but one that is steadily growing and that is capable of indefinite extension.
Wilde, Oscar
Other people are quite dreadful. The only possible society is oneself.
