Formality Quotes

1. "The questioning is a stupid formality aimed exclusively at preventing us from speaking at the demonstration."
Author: Alexei Navalny

2. "In love afairs, there is no mediator like a merry, simple-hearted child - ever ready to cement divided hearts, to span the unfriendly gulf of custom, to melt the ice of cold reserve, and overthrow the separating walls of dread formality and pride."
Author: Anne Brontë

3. "The closer they come to transcending technique and the memorization of lines--the closer to really beginning to act, in short--the more Chinese they begin to seem. Happy now approaches Miss Forsythe to pick her up in the restaurant with a wonderful formality, his back straight, head high, his hand-gestures even more precise and formal, but with a comic undertone that ironically comes closer to conveying the original American idea of the scene than when he was trying to be physically sloppy and "relaxed"--that is, imitating an American. I think that by some unplanned magic we may end up creating something not quite American or Chinese but a pure style springing from the heart of the play itself--the play as a nonnational event, that is, a human circumstance."
Author: Arthur Miller

4. "Just the usual formality before the chaos begins. Like playing the National Anthem before a Cubs game."
Author: Berkeley Breathed

5. "Grilling takes the formality out of entertaining. Everyone wants to get involved."
Author: Bobby Flay

6. "I have been giving the best of my advice to this project since 1975. At first I was extremely hopeful. The original objectives of the language included reliability, readability of programs, formality of language definition, and even simplicity. Gradually these objectives have been sacrificed in favor of power, supposedly achieved by a plethora of features and notational conventions, many of them unnecessary and some of them, like exception handling, even dangerous. ...It is not too late! I believe that by careful pruning of the ADA language, it is still possible to select a very powerful subset that would be reliable and efficient in implementation and safe and economic in use. The sponsors of the language have declared unequivocally, however, that there shall be no subsets. This is the strangest paradox of the whole strange project. If you want a language with no subsets, you must make it small."
Author: C.A.R. Hoare

7. "I dislike your formality."...."Your formality keeps us at arms length when I want not even a hairbreadths between us."
Author: Carolyn Jewel

8. "I am sure, sir, I should never mistake informality for insolence: one I rather like, the other nothing free-born would submit to, even for a salary"
Author: Charlotte Brontë

9. "He swallowed. "That wager. Did anyone succeed?"She stiffened slightly, and then her shoulders lowered in defeat. Now she did turn around. "Oh, Mr. Carhart." It was the first time she had spoken his name since he'd returned, and she imbued those few syllables with all the starch of sad formality. "As I recall, I vowed to forsake all others, keeping only unto you, for as long as we both should live."He winced. "I wasn't questioning your honor.""No." She put her hands on her waist and then looked up at him. "I merely wish to remind you that it was not I who forgot our wedding vows."
Author: Courtney Milan

10. "When your mother asks, 'Do you want a piece of advice?' it is a mere formality. It doesn't matter if you answer yes or no. You're going to get it anyway."
Author: Erma Bombeck

11. "The formality that is left in the South now is quite dead and done for of course."
Author: Flannery O'Connor

12. "We say that the most dangerouscriminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Comparedto him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men; my heartgoes out to them. They accept the essential ideal of man; theymerely seek it wrongly. Thieves respect property. They merely wishthe property to become their property that they may more perfectlyrespect it. But philosophers dislike property as property; theywish to destroy the very idea of personal possession. Bigamistsrespect marriage, or they would not go through the highlyceremonial and even ritualistic formality of bigamy. Butphilosophers despise marriage as marriage. Murderers respect humanlife; they merely wish to attain a greater fulness of human life inthemselves by the sacrifice of what seems to them to be lesserlives. But philosophers hate life itself, their own as much asother people's."
Author: G.K. Chesterton

13. "Arcadio found the formality of death rediculous. Death really did not matter to him but life did, and therefore the sensation he felt when they gave their decision was not a feeling of fear but of nostalgia."
Author: Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez

14. "Monogamy, in brief, kills passion -- and passion is the most dangerous of all the surviving enemies to what we call civilization, which is based upon order, decorum, restraint, formality, industry, regimentation. The civilized man -- the ideal civilized man -- is simply one who never sacrifices the common security to his private passions. He reaches perfection when he even ceases to love passionately -- when he reduces the most profound of all his instinctive experiences from the level of an ecstasy to the level of a mere device for replenishing the armies and workshops of the world, keeping clothes in repair, reducing the infant death-rate, providing enough tenants for every landlord, and making it possible for the Polizei to know where every citizen is at any hour of the day or night. Monogamy accomplishes this, not by producing satiety, but by destroying appetite. It makes passion formal and uninspiring, and so gradually kills it."
Author: H.L. Mencken

15. "Both formality and dinner forgotten we sat on the floor of the little library, choosing. Sometimes Dr Portman read passages aloud and turned his own memories with their dark side to face the light. And it was late afternoon when, with a headache of happiness, I returned to the ward. And from that day I felt in myself a reserve of warmth from which I could help myself, like coal from the cellar on a winter's day, if the snow came or if the frost fell in the night to blacken the flowers and wither the new fruit."
Author: Janet Frame

16. "Rule, she's always been an Archer. Putting a rock on her finger is just a formality. No one doubts how much you care about her, or that you are committed to her and her alone. Screw her obnoxious family and whatever headache Mom and Dad might want to cause, your want her forever, ask her."
Author: Jay Crownover

17. "You don't like my restaurant, Miss Connor?" "I couldn't say since the waiting list to get in is six months long." One side of his mouth curved up. "This is true." His finger lingered, and I tried to swallow the nervous lump in my throat. "I think you can call me by my first name now, seeing as how you're touching my boob. That puts us a little past formality, don't you think?"
Author: Jenny Lyn

18. "Loneliness is a hard thing to handle. I feel it, sometimes. When I do, I want it to end. Sometimes, when you're near someone, when you touch them on some level that is deeper than the uselessly structured formality of casual civilized interaction, there's a sense of satisfaction in it. Or at least, there is for me. It doesn't have to be someone particularly nice. You don't have to like them. You don't even have to want to work with them. You might even want to punch them in the nose. Sometimes just making that connection is its own experience, its own reward."
Author: Jim Butcher

19. "How do we get there? How did you get here, by the way?' [Will asked].He heard Halt's deep sigh and knew he'd done it again.'Do you ever,' the older Ranger said with great deliberation, 'manage to ask just one question at a time? Or does it always have to be multiple choice with you?'Will looked at him in surprise. 'Do I do that?' he asked. 'Are you sure?'Halt said nothing. He raised his hands in a 'See what I mean?' gesture...'Halt,' [Selethen said], 'I could be wrong, but I think you were just guilty of the same fault. I'm sure I heard you ask two questions just then.''Thank you for pointing that out, Lord Selethen,' Halt said with icy formality."
Author: John Flanagan

20. "I'd like to shower and change clothes," she said. "Would you mind waiting for me a half hour?" The question seemed to amuse him. "Not at all," he said with exaggerated formality. "Please take all the time you need." Michael watched her walk away. Did he mind waiting a half hour for her? Not at all. He'd been waiting years for her."
Author: Judith McNaught

21. "Lady," we always call each other, partly a joke, partly in earnest, using still the old word, in its full flavor a kind of exorcism against "saleslady," "old lady," "ladylike." Relishing the anachronism, even the formality a type of aphrodisiac, a contrast to our delight in the horny, the vulgar, the vernacular which we cultivate just as ardently."
Author: Kate Millett

22. "He went out with a variety of women, slept with some of them, hated the whole meaningless process. Drinks, dinners, plays and concerts and gallery openings ... He grew to despise the rigid formality of dating, missed the easy familiarity of simply being with someone, sharing friendly silences and unforced laughter."
Author: Ken Grimwood

23. "Liraz may have captured Ziri;s soul like a butterfly in a bottle, but that was only a formality. It was already hers.And, clearly, judging by the state of her laugh-sobbing in Karou's arms, hers was his, too."
Author: Laini Taylor

24. "Truly good manners are invisible: they ease the way for others, without drawing attention to themselves. It is no accident that the word "punctilious" ("attentive to formality or etiquette") comes from the same original root as punctuation."
Author: Lynne Truss

25. "Isn't the analogy with good manners perfect? Truly good manners are invisible: they ease the way for others, without drawing attention to themselves. It is no accident that the word 'punctilious' ('attentive to formality or etiquette') comes from the same original root word as punctuation. As we shall see, the practice of 'pointing' our writing has always been offered in a spirit of helpfulness, to underline meaning and prevent awkward misunderstandings between writer and reader."
Author: Lynne Truss

26. "Cotrim, who was present, said: "Those came who had a genuine interest in you and in us. The eighty would have come only as a formality, would have talked about the inertia of the government, about patent medicines, about the price of real estate, or about each other…" Damasceno listened in silence, shook his head again, and sighed: "But they should have at least come."
Author: Machado De Assis

27. "But this practice [vegetarianism], in which youthful love of austerity finds charm, calls for attentions more complicated than those of culinary refinement itself; and it separates us too much from the common run of men in a function which is nearly always public, and in which either friendship or formality presides."
Author: Marguerite Yourcenar

28. "House-training, I must tell you, is a formality that can elude young dachshunds for some time; this is particularly true in climates that affront their sensibilities with outrageous meteorological insults. Rain, for example, or a startling gust of wind."
Author: Mary Doria Russell

29. "It was not certain what significance the ceremony held... but the formality was no less sacred for it being unintelligible"
Author: Mervyn Peake

30. "The water-dragon's name was Lady Kiyomizu, although much to Junichiro's horror she breezily told Laurence to call her Kiyo, and not to stand on formality. "You have no manners anyway," she said, "and there is no sense your trying to put out sakura blossoms, when you are a bamboo."
Author: Naomi Novik

31. "In the modern world there's no such thing as formality. A dinner jacket used to mean a tuxedo, you know?"
Author: Noah Emmerich

32. "The day when a Frenchman switches from the formality of vous to the familiarity of tu is a day to be taken seriously. It is an unmistakable signal that he has decided - after weeks or months or sometimes years - that he likes you. It would be chulish and unfriendly of you not to return the compliment. And so, just when you are at last feeling comfortable with vous and all the plurals that go with it, you are thrust headlong in to the singular world of tu."
Author: Peter Mayle

33. "And Ellie, if Fin is offering his heart to you, it's just a formality because believe me when I say you already have it."
Author: Rachel Higginson

34. "We've become much more casual and much more relaxed in social interactions, where there was a formality and maybe a kind of respect at that time that doesn't exist now."
Author: Radha Mitchell

35. "...there remained a strange formality between them, and her pleasure in his presence felt too much like missing him had felt during the last week."
Author: Robin McKinley

36. "I cling to my anger with every ounce of humanity left in my ruined body, but it's no use. It slips away, like a wave from shore. I am pondering this sad fact when I realize the blackness of sleep is circling my head. It's been there awhile, biding its time and growing closer with each revolution. I give up on rage, which at this point has become a formality, and make a mental note to get angry again in the morning. Then I let myself drift, because there's really no fighting it."
Author: Sara Gruen

37. "I realize the blackness of sleep is circling my head. It's been there a while, biding its time and growing closer with each revolution. I give up on rage, which at this point has become a formality, and make a mental note to get angry in the morning."
Author: Sara Gruen

38. "Writing in other voices is almost Japanese in the sense that there's a certain formality there which allows me to sidestep the embarrassment of directly expressing to complete strangers the most intimate details of my life."
Author: Suzanne Vega

39. "No matter that they had been together for years, always a feeling of formality when they first saw each other again, even if the separation had been only hours. It had something to do with the attention [he] paid to her – the fact that he never took anyone's return for granted."
Author: Tatjana Soli

40. "For here again, we come to a dilemma. Different though the sexes are, they intermix. In every human being a vacillation from one sex to the other takes place, and often it is only the clothes that keep the male or female likeness, while underneath the sex is the very opposite of what it is above.For it was this mixture in her of man and woman, one being uppermost and then the other, that often gave her conduct an unexpected turn. The curious of her own sex would argue how, for example, if Orlando was a woman, did she never take more than ten minutes to dress? And were not her clothes chosen rather at random, and sometimes worn rather shabby? And then they would say, still, she has none of the formality of a man, or a man's love of power."
Author: Virginia Woolf

41. "An open-minded and diverse population that readily shares information, encourages experimentation, accepts failure and dispenses with formality and hierarchy is what makes Silicon Valley the successful hub that it is."
Author: Vivek Wadhwa

42. "I despise formal restaurants. I find all of that formality to be very base and vile. I would much rather eat potato chips on the sidewalk."
Author: Werner Herzog

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