“I hate being on my best behavior. It brings out the absolute worst in me.”
Justine, in The Thorn Birds (1977)
Source: Darkfever
“I hate being on my best behavior. It brings out the absolute worst in me.”
Justine, in The Thorn Birds (1977)
Source: Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
“The nerve. Threatening you and not being precise about it.”
Source: Dreamfever
“I know an Englishman,
Being flattered, is a lamb; threatened, a lion.”
Alphonsus, Emperor of Germany (1654), Act I, scene ii, lines 208–209. Attributed, probably falsely, to Chapman. Perhaps by George Peele.
Disputed
“To care only for well-being seems to me positively ill-bred.”
Part 1, Chapter 9 (page 32)
Notes from Underground (1864)
Context: To care only for well-being seems to me positively ill-bred. Whether it's good or bad, it is sometimes very pleasant, too, to smash things.
“The worst tragedy for a poet is to be admired through being misunderstood.”
Le Coq et l’Arlequin (1918)
Source: Money And Class In America (1989), Chapter 7, Descent Into The Mirror, p. 181