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Conventionality Quotes

Browse 38 quotes about Conventionality.

Conventionality Quotes

“I long to get away, sometimes, from my own generation. I don't care whether it's into the past, or into the future, so long as it's away from the patter into simple realities again. I hate being a slave to my own age. ... We are so afraid of sentimentality that we're losing the power of human feeling. Our writers today understand all the brutalities and cynicisms; but how many of them understand the simple human affections that hold decent human beings together and make the world worth living in?”

HumanismLiberalismModernismConventionalityConformismSentimentalism
Book:The Sun Cure
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“We are not supposed to all be the same, feel the same, think the same, and believe the same. The key to continued expansion of our Universe lies in diversity, not in conformity and coercion. Conventionality is the death of creation.”

UniverseFreedomCreationDiversityConformitySpiritual LifeExpansionCoercionSelf ExpressionIndividuationConventionalityGroup ThinkSheepleGroup Mentality
Book:Divine Living: The Essential Guide To Your True Destiny
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“When people say they do not care what others think of them, for the most part they deceive themselves. Generally they mean only that no one will know their vulgarities; and at the utmost only that they are willing to act contrary to the opinion of the majority because they are supported by the approval of their neighbours. It is not difficult to be unconventional in the eyes of the world when your unconventionality is but the convention of your set. It affords you then an inordinate amount of self-esteem. You have the self-satisfaction of courage without the inconvenience of danger.”

CourageInsightfulApprovalConventionality
Book:Moon and Sixpence
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“When people say they do not care what others think of them, for the most part they deceive themselves. Generally they mean only that no one will know their vulgarities; and at the utmost only that they are willing to act contrary to the opinion of the majority because they are supported by the approval of their neighbours. It is not difficult to be unconventional in the eyes of the world when your unconventionality is but the convention of your set.”

SocialInsightfulApprovalConventionality
Book:Moon and Sixpence
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“It [women's culture] survives also because it's central fantasy, and the one this book elaborates, is the constantly emplotted desire of a complex person to rework the details of her history to become a vague or simpler version of herself, usually in the vicinity of a love plot”

Feminist TheoryConventionalityIntimate PublicWomen S Culture
Book:The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture
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“No convention gets to be a convention at all except by grace of a lot of clever and powerful people first inventing it, and then imposing it on others. You can be pretty sure, if you are strictly conventional, that you are following genius--a long way off. And unless you are a genius yourself, that is a good thing to do.”

PeopleIfsWayFirstsLongPowerfulGraceGeniusGood ThingsFollowingCleverThings To DoConventionsConventionalLong WayInventingImposingConventionality
Book:Modes and Morals
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“Every one knows about the young man who falls in love with the chorus-girl because she can kick his hat off, and his sister's friends can't or won't. But the youth who marries her, expecting that all her departures from convention will be as agile or as delightful to him as that, is still the classic example of folly.”

KnowsMenStillsYoungFallGirlMarriageExampleYouthFalling In LoveYoung ManClassicKicksFollyHatsConventionsExpectingDelightfulDepartureChorusConventionalityHats Off
Book:Modes and Morals
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“... if a person is to be unconventional, he must be amusing or he is intolerable: for, in the nature of the case, he guarantees you nothing but amusement. He does not guarantee you any of the little amenities by which society has assured itself that, if it must go to sleep, it will at least sleep in a comfortable chair.”

IfsLittlesPersonsDoeSleepCasesComfortableGuaranteesChairsAssuredAmusementGoing To SleepAmusingUnconventionalAmenitiesConventionality
Book:Modes and Morals
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“The need of an insecure psychiatrist to draw security from a virtuous adjustment to the conventionalities of his time and from a quest for approval from "the good and the great" may turn out to be another agent interfering with his ability to listen in a therapeutically valid fashion. This type of dependence gives rise to the danger that the psychiatrist may consider the changeable man-made standards of the society in which he lives to be eternal values to which he and his patients must conform.”

MenNeedsGivingMayMadeValuesTurnsAbilitySecurityFashionDangerTypeEternalDrawsStandardsPatientAgentsApprovalQuestsVirtuousInterfereDependenceConformInsecureAdjustmentPsychiatristConventionality
Book:Principles of Intensive Psychotherapy
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“'Mediocre' tends to mean 'undistinguished', while snobs enjoy their distinguishing hallmarks of style - how they wear clothes, use words, where they go and gather and gossip. ...Whatever the circumstances the genius has put you into, the fact of individuality defends the soul against all class-action claims. No soul is mediocre, whatever your personal taste for conventionality, whatever your personal record of middling achievements.”

MeanSoulFactsUseActionEnjoyClassRecordsStyleGeniusCircumstancesTasteAchievementClothesClaimsIndividualityGossipMediocreHallmarkSnobConventionalityPersonal Taste
Author:James Hillman
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“I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal--as we are!”

IfsSpiritTalkingFeetEqualFleshGravesMediumsMortalsAddressesCustomsNot TalkingConventionality
Book:The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
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“Life, my dear Watson, is infinitely stranger than fiction; stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We could not conceive the things that are merely commonplace to existence. If we could hover over this great city, remove the roofs, and peep in at the things going on, it would make all fiction, with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions flat, stale and unprofitable.”

IfsMenMindCitiesExistenceFictionDearStrangerConclusionRemoveFlatsRoofCommonplaceStaleWatsonGreat CitiesForeseenStranger Than FictionConventionality
Author:Arthur Conan Doyle
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“USAGE, n. The First Person of the literary Trinity, the Second and Third being Custom and Conventionality. Imbued with a decent reverence for this Holy Triad an industrious writer may hope to produce books that will live as long as the fashion.”

FirstsMayPersonsLongBookHopeFashionProduceHolyThirdsDecentCustomsReverenceFirst PersonTrinityUsageIndustriousConventionalityTriads
Book:The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
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“Nobody can live in society without conventions. The reason why sensible people are as conventional as they can bear to be is that conventionality saves so much time and thought and trouble and social friction of one sort or another that it leaves them much more leisure time for freedom than unconventionality does.”

PeopleDoeReasonSocialTroubleSocietyBearsReason WhySensibleConventionsLeisureConventionalFrictionLeisure TimeConventionality
Author:George Bernard Shaw
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