To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.
We are here to add to the sum of human goodness. To prove the thing exists. And however futile each individual act of courage or generosity, self-sacrifice or grace-it still proves the thing exists. Each act adds to the fund. It needs replenishment. Not only because evil flourishes, and is, most indefensibly, defended. But because goodness is no longer a respectable aim in life. The hound of hell, envy, has driven it from the house.
No, I do my torturing in the dungeon like any other respectable castle owner,
I have no pretensions whatever to that kind of elegance which consists in tormenting a respectable man.
I've always thought respectable people scoundrels, and I look anxiously at my face every morning for signs of my becoming a scoundrel.
Virtue has never been as respectable as money.
A respectable appearance is sufficient to make people more interested in your soul
So long as society is founded on injustice, the function of the laws will be to defend injustice. And the more unjust they are the more respectable they will seem.
Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
Political language. . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.