Behavior Quotes

What we believe to be the motives of our conduct are usually but the pretexts for it.[Los que creemos móviles de nuestra conducta no suelen ser sino pretextos.]

We are all civilized people, which means that we are all savages at heart but observing a few amenities of civilized behavior.

Up to a certain point it is good for us to know that there are people in the world who will give us love and unquestioned loyalty to the limit of their ability. I doubt, however, if it is good for us to feel assured of this without the accompanying obligation of having to justify this devotion by our behavior.

Those who meant well behaved in the same way as those who meant badly.

They’re all alike. At first they behave very well, they’re obedient and prompt and they don’t seem capable of killing a fly, but as soon as their beards appear they go to ruin.[Todos son iguales. Al principio se crían muy bien, son obedientes y formales y parecen incapaces de matar una mosca, y apenas les sale la barba se tiran a la perdición.]

The manners I speak of might rather be called conduct, perhaps, the result of good principles; the effect, in short, of those doctrines which it is their duty to teach and recommend; and it will, I believe, be everywhere found, that as the clergy are, or are not what they ought to be, so are the rest of the nation.

The common behaviour of mankind is the system of reference by means of which we interpret an unknown language.[Die gemeinsame menschliche Handlungsweise ist das Bezugssystem, mittels welches wir uns eine fremde Sprache deuten.]

It’s not what happens to us, but our response to what happens to us that hurts us.

I am only resolved to act in that manner, which will, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness, without reference to you, or to any person so wholly unconnected with me.