Society

A society, or a human society, is a group of people related to each other through persistent relations, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or virtual territory, subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations.

Sourced

  • The more corrupt a society, the more numerous its laws.
    • Edward Abbey, in A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto) (1990).
  • A person who cannot live in society, or does not need to because he is self-sufficient, is either a beast or a god.
  • What is not good for the beehive, cannot be good for the bees.
  • Man seeketh in society comfort, use, and protection.
  • The history of society is the history of the inventive labors that man alter man, alter his desires, habits, outlook, relationships both to other men and to physical nature, with which man is in perpetual physical and technological metabolism.
  • But now being lifted into high society,
    And having pick'd up several odds and ends
    Of free thoughts in his travels for variety,
    He deem'd, being in a lone isle, among friends,
    That without any danger of a riot, he
    Might for long lying make himself amends;
    And singing as he sung in his warm youth,
    Agree to a short armistice with truth.
  • What times! What manners!
  • The only living socities are those which are animated by inequality and injustice.
  • It is the retention by twentieth-century, Atom-Age men of the Neolithic point of view that says: You stay in your village and I will stay in mine. If your sheep eat our grass we will kill you, or we may kill you anyhow to get all the grass for our own sheep. Anyone who tries to make us change our ways is a witch and we will kill him. Keep out of our village.
  • In human society the warmth is mainly at the bottom.
    • Noel Jack Counhian, Age (1986).
  • The rout is Folly's circle, which she draws
    With magic wand. So potent is the spell,
    That none decoy'd into that fatal ring,
    Unless by Heaven's peculiar grace, escape.
    There we grow early gray, but never wise.
  • It's not sex and drug advice these kids need, so much as help in acquiring a world view, in motivating them to take responsibilty and enabling them to build proper relationships.
    • George Curry, Daily Mail (1996).
  • Society is a handout.
    • Gregory Alan Elliott, Toronto Graffiti Artists
  • The virtues of society are the vices of the saint.
  • Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.
  • In the affluent society, no sharp distinction can be made between luxuries and necessaries.
  • I do not think there is anything deserving the name of society to be found out of London.
  • We have really lost in our society the sense of the sacredness of life.
    • Basil Hume, The Observer Review (1995).
  • We enter into a covenant that we shall build the society in which all South Africans, both black and white, will be able to walk tall, without any fear in their hearts, assured of their inalienable right to human dignity - a rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world.
  • A society made up of the individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable. The pressure of ideas would simply drive it frantic.
  • When society requires to be rebuilt, there is no use in attempting to rebuild it on the old plan.
  • Heav'n forming each on other to depend,
    A master, or a servant, or a friend,
    Bids each on other for assistance call,
    Till one man's weakness grows the strength of all.
  • The men with the muck-rakes are often indispensable to the well-being of society; but only if they know when to stop raking the muck, and to look upward to the celestial crown above them.
    • Theodore Roosevelt, address on the laying of the cornerstone of the House Office Building, Washington, D.C. (1906-04-14).
  • No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.
  • As long as men are men, a poor society cannot be too poor to find a right order of life, nor a rich society too rich to have need to seek it.
  • They're casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It's our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations.
  • Wherever a man goes, men will pursue him and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate oddfellow society.
  • I suppose Society is wonderfully delightful.
    To be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it is simply a tragedy.
    • Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance (1893), Act III.
  • Society became my glittering bride,
    And airy hopes my children.
  • Society can imprison one's happiness
    • Katherine Szabo and Jenna Huskic, The Q Bus.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 724-25.
  • For it is most true that a natural and secret hatred and aversation towards society in any man, hath somewhat of the savage beast.
  • A people is but the attempt of many
    To rise to the completer life of one—
    And those who live as models for the mass
    Are singly of more value than they all.
  • Those families, you know, are our upper crust, not upper ten thousand.
    • Cooper, The Ways of the Hour, Chapter VI.
  • Every man is like the company he is wont to keep.
  • For every social wrong there must be a remedy. But the remedy can be nothing less than the abolition of the wrong.
  • The noisy and extensive scene of crowds without company, and dissipation without pleasure.
  • I live in the crowds of jollity, not so much to enjoy company as to shun myself.
  • Le sage quelquefois évite le monde de peur d'être ennuyè.
    • The wise man sometimes flees from society from fear of being bored.
    • Jean de La Bruyère, Les Caractères, V.
  • He might have proved a useful adjunct, if not an ornament to society.
  • Society is like a large piece of frozen water; and skating well is the great art of social life.
    • L. E. Landon.
  • The Don Quixote of one generation may live to hear himself called the savior of society by the next.
  • Old Lady T-sh-nd [Townshend] formerly observed that the human race might be divided into three separate classes—men, women and H-v-eys [Herveys].
    • Attributed to Lady Mary Wortley Montague in Lord Wharncliffe's Ed. of her Letters and Works. Lady Louisa Stuart, in introductory anecdotes to the same, also credits the saying to Lady Montague, Volume I, p. 67. Attributed to Charles Pigott in The Jockey Club, Part II, p. 4. (Ed. 1792).
  • La Société est l'union des hommes, et non pas les hommes.
  • This new rage for rhyming badly,
    Which late hath seized all ranks and classes,
    Down to that new estate 'the masses.'
    • Thomas Moore, The Fudges in England, Letter 4. The classes and the masses. A phrase used by Gladstone.
  • What will Mrs. Grundy say?
  • Sociale animal est.
    • [Man] is a social animal.
    • Seneca, De Beneficiis, Book VII. 1.
  • Whilst I was big in clamour came there in a man,
    Who, having seen me in my worst estate,
    Shunn'd my abhorr'd society.
  • To make society
    The sweeter welcome, we will keep ourself
    Till supper-time alone.
  • Men lived like fishes; the great ones devoured the small.
  • As the French say, there are three sexes,—men, women, and clergymen.
  • Ah, you flavour everything; you are the vanille of society.
  • Society therefore is as ancient as the world.
    • Voltaire, Dictionnaire philosophique portatif ("A Philosophical Dictionary") (1764), Policy.
  • Other people are quite dreadful. The only possible society is oneself.
  • At present there is no distinction among the upper ten thousand of the city.
  • Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
    The dreary intercourse of daily life.
  • There is
    One great society alone on earth:
    The noble Living and the noble Dead.
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Last modified on 12 April 2013, at 00:56