“Oft has good nature been the fool's defence,
And honest meaning gilded want of sense.”
William Shenstone (1714–1763) English gardener
To a Lady (1736)
“Immodest words admit of no defence,
For want of decency is want of sense.”
Source: Essay on Translated Verse (1684), Line 113.
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For want of decency is want of sense." by Wentworth Dillon, 4th Earl of Roscommon?
Wentworth Dillon, 4th Earl of Roscommon7
Irish poet 1637–1685Related quotes
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Highlighted section quoted in: Robert Shogan (2009) No Sense Of Decency: The Army-McCarthy Hearings. p. xiii
Army–McCarthy hearings (9 June 1954)
Context: Senator, may we not drop this? We know he belonged to the Lawyers Guild. Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?
Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist
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Mais, fat impudent, tu ne veux pas qu'on te pardonne, tu veux qu'on croie ou qu'on prétende n'avoir rien à te pardonner. Tu veux qu'on baise la main qui frappe et la bouche qui ment.
Source: Letter (17 June 1837) in The Intimate Journal of George Sand (1929) translated and edited by Marie Jenney Howe; also quoted in The Quotable Woman, 1800-1975 (1978) by Elaine Partnow
“I want you and I hate wanting things and I especially hate admitting I want them.”
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Source: The Coldest Girl in Coldtown
“No one really wants to admit I exist.”
James D. Watson (1928) American molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist.
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George Orwell book Keep the Aspidistra Flying
He liked to think of the lost people, the under-ground people: tramps, beggars, criminals, prostitutes. It is a good world that they inhabit, down there in their frowzy kips and spikes. He liked to think that beneath the world of money there is that great sluttish underworld where failure and success have no meaning; a sort of kingdom of ghosts where all are equal. That was where he wished to be, down in the ghost-kingdom, below ambition. It comforted him somehow to think of the smoke-dim slums of South London sprawling on and on, a huge graceless wilderness where you could lose yourself forever.
Source: Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), Ch. 10
“Necessity, now there's a word to feed every outrage on decency.”
Steven Erikson book Toll the Hounds
Toll the Hounds (2008)