573 Social Quotes

The expression of vanity and self-love becomes less offensive, when it retains something of simplicity and frankness.

I have Social Disease. I have to go out every night. If I stay home one night I start spreading rumors to my dogs.

My social life is much better, since I stopped spending it with other people.

Before my eyes are many miserable scenes, the suffering of others and myself forces my hands to move. I become a machine for writing.

Young men and young women meet each other with much less difficulty than was formerly the case, and every housemaid expects at least once a week as much excitement as would have lasted a Jane Austen heroine throughout a whole novel.

I don't keep any close friends. I don't keep any secrets. I don't need friends. I just tell everybody everything, that's all.

I was hardly fit for human society. Thus destiny shaped me to be a science fiction writer.

Keep up appearances whatever you do.

I can win an argument on any topic, against any opponent. People know this, and steer clear of me at parties. Often, as a sign of their great respect, they don't even invite me.

How easy it is to tell tales!

Bores bore each other too; but it never seems to teach them anything.

The aim of flattery is to soothe and encourage us by assuring us of the truth of an opinion we have already formed about ourselves.

Never underestimate the joy people derive from hearing something they already know.

The less satisfaction we derive from being ourselves, the greater is our desire to be like others.

Although there exist many thousand subjects for elegant conversation, there are persons who cannot meet a cripple without talking about feet.

Better a dish of husks to the accompaniment of a muted lute than to be satiated with stewed shark's fin and rich spiced wine of which the cost is frequently mentioned by the provider.

Oppression is the essence of power.

The telephone is a good way to talk to people without having to offer them a drink.

Money is like muck, not good except it be spread.

Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.

Games give you a chance to excel, and if you're playing in good company you don't even mind if you lose because you had the enjoyment of the company during the course of the game.

People with opinions just go around bothering each other.

One great thing about getting old is that you can get out of all sorts of social obligations just by saying you're too tired.

A bore is a person who opens his mouth and puts his feats in it.

It is better to hide ignorance, but it is hard to do this when we relax over wine.

Be of the disciples of Aaron, loving peace and pursuing peace, loving your fellow creatures and drawing them near to the Law.

Solitude is fine, but you need someone to tell you that solitude is fine.

We can drink till all look blue.

The true definition of a snob is one who craves for what separates men rather than for what unites them.

One good turn asketh another.

A nickname may be the best record of a success. That's what I call putting the face of a joke upon the body of a truth.

Gossip is what no one claims to like, but everybody enjoys.

Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far.

It's odd how people waiting for you stand out far less clearly than people you are waiting for.

When you see a woman who can go nowhere without a staff of admirers, it is not so much because they think she is beautiful, it is because she has told them they are handsome.

It is so difficult to mix with artists! You must choose business men to talk to, because artists only talk of money.

Everybody wants ta get inta da act!

Doesn't surprise me that Christ our Lord preferred to live with whores & sinners, seeing I go in for that myself.

A man's manners are a mirror in which he shows his portrait.

A collection of anecdotes and maxims is the greatest of treasures for the man of the world, for he knows how to intersperse conversation with the former in fit places, and to recollect the latter on proper occasions.

From wine what sudden friendship springs!

Archie Rice: Let me know where you're working tomorrow night and I'll come and see you.

I honestly have no clue how to play [piano]. But if you walk into a room with a baby grand, you're kind of obligated to fuck around on it. (2003)

never considered myself an outsider. But I definitely didn't consider myself an insider. (2006)

I've always liked everybody. [Laughs.] I'm not sure everybody likes me.

Estranha gente, para quem e fora de duvida que ninguem pode ser moral sem ler a Biblia, ser forte sem jogar o criquete e ser gentlemun sem ser ingles! E e isto que os torna detestados. Nunca se fundem, nunca se desinglesam.

O ingles cai sobre as ideias e as maneiras dos outros como uma massa de granito na agua: e ali fica pesando, com a sua Biblia, os seus clubes, os seus sports, os seus prejuizos, a sua etiqueta, o seu egoismo - fazendo na circulacao da vida alheia um incomodativo tropeco. E por isso que nos paises onde vive ha seculos e ele ainda o estrangeiro.

'Peace, reconciliation and unity are sentiments meant not only for the person next door but for all people.'

Say nothing good of yourself, you will be distrusted; say nothing bad of yourself, you will be taken at your word.

You can deny all you want that there is etiquette, and a lot of people do in everyday life. But if you behave in a way that offends the people you're trying to deal with, they will stop dealing with you...There are plenty of people who say, 'We don't care about etiquette, but we can't stand the way so-and-so behaves, and we don't want him around!' Etiquette doesn't have the great sanctions that the law has. But the main sanction we do have is in not dealing with these people and isolating them because their behavior is unbearable.

Traditionally, a luncheon is a lunch that takes an eon.

I am not a judge. I don't want to express my opinion. Before I came to Mondorf, I wouldn't shake hands with Goring, I didn't like him. I never saw Streicher before Mondorf, and in the beginning I wouldn't talk with him. Now I do. We all have the same destiny, at least for the present, and I see no reason for not being on friendly terms with each other.

What's your name, new best friend?

Rokossovsky was an imposing figure, tall, very good-looking, and well dressed; I understand he was a bachelor and was much admired by ladies.

And we meet, with champagne and a chicken, at last.

'Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, Slavery', said I, 'still thou art a bitter draught'.

Reputation is everything.

The theater is the only branch of art much cared for by people of wealth; like canasta, it does away with the bother of talk after dinner.

Regret is a sign of weakness. Besides, girls have cooties.

It is not enough to be wrong, one must also be polite.

Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no fibs.

He is really not so ugly after all, provided, of course, that one shuts one's eyes, and does not look at him.

On [George Bernard Shaw] An excellent man: he has no enemies, and none of his friends like him.

I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones.

The absence of old friends one can endure with equanimity. But even a momentary separation from anyone to whom one has just been introduced is almost unbearable.

If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being immensely over-educated.

To speak frankly, I am not in favour of long engagements. They give people the opportunity of finding out each other's character before marriage, which I think is never advisable.

Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.

However, it is always nice to be expected, and not to arrive.

My dear father, when one pays a visit it is for the purpose of wasting other people's time, not one's own.

I don't at all like knowing what people say of me behind my back. It makes me far too conceited.

When a voice behind me whispered low, 'That fellow's got to swing.'

And alien tears will fill for him Pity's long-broken urn, For his mourners will be outcast men, And outcasts always mourn.

We are specially designed to appeal to the sense of humour.

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.

He wore the unmistakable look of a man about to be present at a row between women, and only a wet cat in a strange backyard bears itself with less jauntiness than a man faced by such a prospect.

Honoria, you see, is one of those robust, dynamic girls with the muscles of a welterweight and a laugh like a squadron of cavalry charging over a tin bridge. A beastly thing to face over the breakfast table. Brainy, moreover.

You know how it is with some girls. They seem to take the stuffing right out of you. I mean to say, there is something about their personality that paralyses the vocal cords and reduces the contents of the brain to cauliflower.

'Oh, look,' she said. She was a confirmed Oh-looker. I had noticed this at Cannes, where she had drawn my attention in this manner on various occasions to such diverse objects as a French actress, a Provencal filling station, the sunset over the Estorels, Michael Arlen, a man selling coloured spectacles, the deep velvet blue of the Mediterranean, and the late mayor of New York in a striped one-piece bathing suit.

'Beginning with a _critique_ of my own limbs, which she said, justly enough, were nothing to write home about, this girl went on to dissect my manners, morals, intellect, general physique, and method of eating asparagus with such acerbity that by the time she had finished the best you could say of Bertram was that, so far as was known, he had never actually committed murder or set fire to an orphan asylum.'

'There are moments, Jeeves, when one asks oneself, 'Do trousers matter?'' 'The mood will pass, sir.'

'You know your Shelley, Bertie!' 'Oh, am I?'

As far as the eye could reach, I found myself gazing on a surging sea of aunts. There were tall aunts, short aunts, stout aunts, thin aunts, and an aunt who was carrying on a conversation in a low voice to which nobody seemed to be paying the slightest attention.

For some moments after silence had come like a poultice to heal the blows of sound, all that occupied his mind was the thought of what pests the gentler sex were when they got hold of a telephone. The instrument seemed to go to their heads like a drug. Connie Keeble, for instance. Nice sensible woman when you talked to her face to face, never tried to collar the conversation and all that, but the moment she got on the telephone, it was gab, gab, gab, and all about nothing.

And as he, too, seemed disinclined for chit-chat, we stood for some moments like a couple of Trappist monks who have run into each other at the dog races.

'Stinko, is he?' 'Not perhaps stinko, but certainly effervescent.'

'You're one of those guys who can make a party just by leaving it. It's a great gift.'

Too often, when you introduce a ringer into a gaggle of Pekes, there ensues a scrap like New Year's Eve in Madrid; but tonight, after a certain amount of tentative sniffing, the home team issued their O.K., and he left them all curled up in their baskets like so many members of The Athenaeum.

Politeness is organized indifference.

Contrary to general belief, I do not believe that friends are necessarily the people you like best, they are merely the people who got there first.

Fashion exists for women with no taste, etiquette for people with no breeding.

Perhaps you will find me more agreeable.