RESPECTABILITY, n. The offspring of a _liaison_ between a bald head and a bank account. - Ambrose Bierce
To be good, according to the vulgar standard of goodness, is obviously quite easy. It merely requires a certain amount of sordid terror, a certain lack of imaginative thought, and a certain low passion for middle-class respectability. - Oscar Wilde
The seven deadly sins ... Food, clothing, firing, rent, taxes, respectability and children. Nothing can lift those seven milestones from man's neck but money; and the spirit cannot soar until the milestones are lifted. - George Bernard Shaw
Users of clichés frequently have more sinister intentions beyond laziness and conventional thinking. Relabelling events often entails subtle changes of meaning. War produces many euphemisms, downplaying or giving verbal respectability to savagery and slaughter. - Patrick Cockburn
It is only in virtue that you can discover, that you can live - not in the cultivation of a virtue, which merely brings about respectability, not understanding and freedom. - Jiddu Krishnamurti
We talk of wild animals but man is the only wild animal. It is man that has broken out. All other animals are tame animals; following the rugged respectability of the tribe or type. - G.K. Chesterton