Formalities Quotes

“I am at your service, my lady," I said, standing and releasing her hand. For the first time in my life I understood the true purpose of this sort of formal greeting. It gives you a script to follow when you have absolutely no idea what to say.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“There are some promotions in life, which, independent of the more substantial rewards they offer, acquire peculiar value and dignity from the coats and waistcoats connected with them. A field-marshal has his uniform; a bishop his silk apron; a counsellor his silk gown; a beadle his cocked hat. Strip the bishop of his apron, or the beadle of his hat and lace; what are they? Men. Mere men. Dignity, and even holiness too, sometimes, are more questions of coat and waistcoat than some people imagine.”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twistder Ungekürzte Originaltext

“When I say 'I will be true to you' I am drawing a quiet space beyond the reach of other desires. No-one can legislate love; it cannot be given orders or cajoled into service. Love belongs to itself, deaf to pleading and unmoved by violence. Love is not something you can negotiate. Love is the one thing stronger than desire and the only proper reason to resist temptation.
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When I say 'I will be true to you' I must mean it in spite of the formalities, instead of the formalities.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

“I suppose that St. George is our own original St. George, who killed the Dragon and afterwards married the grand lady. In many of the marriages of grand ladies, however, which take place in this parish, the preliminary ceremony of the gentleman killing a dragon is often omitted. I am against all this dropping of the full formalities.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton Volume 28: The Illustrated London News, 1908-1910

“Preferential tributes of respect in words and manners even to those who have no authority in the State - reverences, obeisances (compliments) and courtly phrases marking with the utmost precision every distinction in status (something altogether different from courtesy, which must also be reciprocal) - the Du, Er, Ihr and Sie, or Ew. Wohledeln, Hochedeln, Hochedelgeborenen, Wohlgeborenen (ohe, iam satis est!) as forms of address, a pedantry in which the Germans seem to outdo any other people in the world (except possibly the Indian castes): does not all this prove that there is a widespread propensity to servility in men? But one who makes himself a worm cannot complain if people step on him.”
― Immanuel Kant, The Doctrine of Virtue: Part 2 of The Metaphysic of Morals

“Fiestas always began as if they were being held in a parlor, amid teacups.”
― Warren Eyster, The Goblins of Eros

“You can just call me Vale,' he grumbled. 'I suppose that once someone has seen my bare ass, we can drop the titles.”
― Carissa Broadbent, Six Scorched Roses