Bred Quotes & Sayings

With his pewter-colored locks and sturdy jaw, Graham Seymour was the archetypal British civil servant, a man who'd been born, bred, and educated to lead. He was handsome, but not too; he was tall, but not remarkably so. He made others feel inferior, especially Americans. — Daniel Silva

Self-laudation abounds among the unpolished, but nothing can stamp a man more sharply as ill-bred. — Charles Buxton

Barrayar is bred in my bones. I cannot shake it, no matter how far I travel. This struggle, God knows, has no honor in it. But exile, for no other motive than ease - that would be to give up all hope of honor. The last defeat, with no seed of future victory in it. — Lois McMaster Bujold

I believe no satirist could breathe this air. If another Juvenal or Swift could rise up among us tomorrow, he would be hunted down. If you have any knowledge of our literature, and can give me the name of any man, American born and bred, who has anatomised our follies as a people, and not as this or that party; and who has escaped the foulest and most brutal slander, the most inveterate hatred and intolerant pursuit; it will be a strange name in my ears, believe me. — Charles Dickens

I've looked at pictures that my mom has of me, from when I was four years old at the turntable. I'm there, reaching up to play the records. I feel like I was bred to do what I do. I've been into music, and listening to music and critiquing it, my whole life. — Dr. Dre

Men are much more unrolling to have their weaknesses and their imperfections known than their crimes; and if you hint to a man that you think him silly, ignorant, or even ill-bred or awkward, he will hate you more and longer than if you tell him plainly that you think him a rogue. — Lord Chesterfield

Facts and Observations #1 If people think you're dishonored, it's no different from actually having been dishonored, except you still don't know anything. #2 When you've been ruined, there are only two options: death or marriage. #3 Since I am gravely healthy, the first option isn't likely. #4 On the other hand, ritual self-sacrifice in Iceland cannot be ruled out. #5 Lady Berwick advises marriage and says Lord St. Vincent is "bred to the bill." Since she once made the same remark about a stud horse she and Lord Berwick bought for their stable, I have to wonder if she's looked in his mouth. #6 Lord St. Vincent reportedly has a mistress. #7 The word "mistress" sounds like a cross between mistake and mattress. "We've — Lisa Kleypas

The vulgar only laugh, but never smile; whereas well-bred people often smile, but seldom laugh. — Lord Chesterfield

But confidence bred confidence, that's what her dad had always told her back in the days when she'd been a skinny, flat-chested nerd girl with a boy-intimidating vocabulary and no hope of being asked to the prom. — Megan Hart

As he lifted his head, he saw himself in the crude metal sheets that were supposed to be mirrors. Even though the reflection was dull, he noted his ugliness and thought of Throe just now. In spite of the fact that the soldier had been out fighting all night, his handsome visage had appeared fresh as a daisy, his well-bred looks overshadowing the reality that he had slayer blood on his clothes and had been scraped and bruised.
Xcor, however, could have taken rest for two weeks straight, eaten a large meal, and fed from a fucking Chosen, and he would still appear as repulsive. — J.R. Ward

Animals are born and bred in litters. Solitude grows blessed and peaceful only in old age. — George Santayana

But her feeling towards the vulgar rich was a sort of religious hatred: they had probably made all their money out of high prices for everything that was not paid in kind at the Rectory: such people were no part of God's plan in making the world; and their accent was an affliction to the ears. A town where such monsters abounded was hardly more than a sort of low comedy, which could not be taken account of in a well-bred scheme of the universe. — George Eliot

The evil done by oneself, self-begotten, self-bred, crushes the foolish, as a diamond breaks a precious stone. — Max Muller

I would like to believe that there is a resolution in the human tragedy and that order can be reimposed upon the earth in the same way it occurs in the fifth act of the Elizabethan drama that supposedly mirrors our lives. My experience has been otherwise. History seldom corrects itself in its own sequence, and when we mete out justice, we often do it in a fashion that perpetuates the evil of the transgressors and breathes new life into the descendants of Cain. I would like to believe the instincts of the mob can be exorcised from the species or genetically bred out of it. But there is no culture in the history of the world that has not lauded its warriors over its mystics. Sometimes in an idle moment, I try to recall the names of five slaves out of the whole sorry history of human bondage whose lives we celebrate. I have never had much success. — James Lee Burke

Two ways to choose, which way to go
Decide for me, please let me know
Pictures all around, of how a good life should be
A model for the rest, that bred insecurity
Everything seemed easy but I didn't have the heart
Me in my own world, yeah you there beside
The gaps are enormous, we stare from each side — Ian Thomas Curtis

Thousands of alienated young Muslims, most of them born and bred here but who regard themselves as an army within, are waiting for an opportunity to help to destroy the society that sustains them. — Melanie Phillips

Adaptation is one of the great advantages to being born and bred in Jersey. We're simply not bested by bad air or tainted water. We're like that catfish with lungs. Take us out of our environment and we can grow whatever body parts we need to survive. After Jersey the rest of the country's a piece of cake. You want to send someone into a fallout zone? Get him from Jersey. He'll be fine. — Janet Evanovich

To have birthed and bred her, beaten and raped her all for selling her to other scum. What god made such creatures as that and set them to prey on innocents? — J.D. Robb

Chiggen grinned, showing yellow teeth, and swallowed the raw meat in two bites. "Tastes well bred." "Better if you fry it up with onions," Bronn put in. — George R R Martin

Bad language or abuse, I never, never use, Whatever the emergency; Though 'Bother it' I may Occasionally say, I never use a big, big D : What, never? : No, never! : What never? : Well, hardly ever! : Hardly ever swears a big, big D Then give three cheers, and one cheer more, For the well-bred Captain of the Pinafore! — Walter Raleigh

I know whom I shall marry. He must be handsome, young, clever enough, and very rich-ever so much richer than the Lawrences. His family musn't object, and I shall be very happy, for they shall be kind, sell-bred, genrous people, and they shall like me. He shall be the oldest and have the estate, and should be a city house in a fashionable street, and twice as comfortable as anything and full of solid luxury. One of us must marry well; Meg didn't, Jo didn't, Beth can't yet, so I shall, and make everything cozy all around. — Louisa May Alcott

Well-bred English people never have imagination ... — Dorothy L. Sayers

In an even wilder part of the river's jungle of cane and gum and pin oak, there is an Indian mound. Aboriginal, it rises profoundly and darkly enigmatic, the only elevation of any kind in the wild, flat jungle of river bottom. Even to some of us - children though we were, yet we were descended to literate, town-bred people - it possessed inferences of secret and violent blood, of savage and sudden destruction, as though the yells and hatchets we associated with Indians through the hidden and seceret dime novels which we passed among ourselves were but trivial and momentary manifestations of what dark power still dwelled or lurked there, sinister, a little sardonic, like a dark and nameless beast lightly and lazily slumbering with bloody jaws ... — William Faulkner

Recently Mr. Mawdsley's donkey escaped from his stall, raced down the road, and somehow found his way into an enclosed pasture. Mr. Caird's prized mare was innocently grazing when the ill-bred seducer had his way with her. Now it appears the mare has conceived, and a feud is raging between Caird, who demands financial compensation, and Mawdsley, who insists that had the pasture fencing been in better repair, the clandestine meeting would never have occurred. Worse still, it has been suggested that the mare is a shameless lightskirt and did not try nearly hard enough to preserve her virtue. — Lisa Kleypas

The ability for anyone in our generation to self-amuse has sadly been bred out of our species. — Kim Askew

IT IS STARTLING to think that all Europe once looked like this Puszcza. To enter it is to realize that most of us were bred to a pale copy of what nature intended. Seeing elders with trunks seven feet wide, or walking through stands of the tallest trees here - gigantic Norway spruce, shaggy as Methuselah - should seem as exotic as the Amazon or Antarctica to someone raised among the comparatively puny, second-growth woodlands found throughout the Northern Hemisphere. Instead, what's astonishing is how primally familiar it feels. And, on some cellular level, how complete. — Alan Weisman

One of the greatest boons that can ever come to a human being is to be born on a farm and reared in the country. Self-reliance and grit are oftenest country-bred. — Orison Swett Marden

Here's the thing: I am not only a creature of civilization, I'm an asthmatic person. I will only live so long as I have stockpiled the proper inhalers. I'm effectively a cyborg. You know how in Jurassic Park, they bred those dinosaurs with the lysine deficiencies, so if they ever got off the island, they'd die? That's me. — John Hodgman

The welfare state has bred a generation of obnoxious, drug-addled criminals and ne'er-do-wells. It has also, incidentally, burdened what was once the world's biggest, most dynamic economy with the dead weight of an obstructive and vastly expensive state machine. — Martin Durkin

If you were a man, you'd know in your bones what direction you were going. It's an automatic thing, this knowing where you are, bred deep in a man's bones. — Catherine Coulter

(whom they could not find) and some sympathetic relatives. The poverty hurt, and they assumed, correctly, it had bred the intense desire to succeed. — John Grisham

The best time for marriage will be towards thirty, for as the younger times are unfit, either to choose or to govern a wife and family, so, if thou stay long, thou shalt hardly see the education of thy children, who, being left to strangers, are in effect lost; and better were it to be unborn than ill-bred; for thereby thy posterity shall either perish, or remain a shame to thy name. — Walter Raleigh

It's an amazingly consistent thing with Irish people. We will talk to strangers at parties for hours. It's what we were bred to do I think. And the Jewish people were bred to write the stuff that we say. — Greg Fitzsimmons

Fear has always been a diminisher of life. Whether bred in the bogs of superstition or clothed in the brocades of dogma and ritual, the specter of death has reduced the living to supplicants, powerless. — Marya Mannes

The worth of a child born and bred in Nigeria cannot be compared to that in the United States. — Yakubu Gowon

If Lucien is determined to have her, he won't let her be sensible. That's the entire point behind seduction. Men use passion to rob gentle bred ladies of their good sense."

-Cedric.
His Wicked Seduction — Lauren Smith

Well, what was I to do? For the well-bred gentleman there was clearly only one recourse. I fucked him. — Mark Gatiss

Divine blood purified our muddy race, bred heroes from dust and clay. — Madeline Miller

One of my own stray childhood fears had been to wonder what a whale might feel like had it been born and bred in captivity, then released into the wild-into its ancestral sea-its limited world instantly blowing up when cast into the unknowable depths, seeing strange fish and tasting new waters, not even having a concept of depth, not knowing the language of any whale pods it might meet. It was my fear of a world that would expand suddenly, violently, and without rules or laws: bubbles and seaweed and storms and frightening volumes of dark blue that never end — Douglas Coupland

Anywhere in the world you hear a Chicago bluesman play, it's a Chicago sound born and bred. — Ralph Metcalfe

If you have been a slave all your life, used to being ordered about and abused from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to sleep, it's impossible to adjust to normal life overnight. I had never been free to make my own decisions before and had no idea how to do it. I was like a bird that has been bred in captivity suddenly being released into the wild: I fell apart. — Jane Elliott

How skillful to tax the middle class to pay for the relief of the poor, building resentment on top of humiliation! How adroit to bus poor black youngsters into poor white neighborhoods, in a violent exchange of impoverished schools, while the schools of the rich remain untouched and the wealth of the nation, doled out carefully where children need free milk, is drained for billion-dollar aircraft carriers. How ingenious to meet the demands of blacks and women for equality by giving them small special benefits, and setting them in competition with everyone else for jobs made scares by an irrational, wasteful system. How wise to turn the fear and anger of the majority toward a class of criminals bred - by economic inequity - faster than they can be put away, deflecting attention from the huge thefts of national resources carried out within the law by men in executive offices. — Howard Zinn

But nobody ever forgot anything, not really, though sometimes they pretended, when it suited them. Memories were permanent. Sorrowful ones remained sad even with the passing of time, yet happy ones could never be recreated - not with the same joy. Remembering bred its own peculiar sorrow. It seemed so unfair: that time should render both sadness and happiness into a source of pain. — Rohinton Mistry

By education most have been misled; So they believe, because they were bred. The priest continues where the nurse began, And thus the child imposes on the man. — John Dryden

There are two sins of men that are bred in the bone and that continually come out in the flesh. One is self-dependence and the other is self-exultation. — Charles Spurgeon

We have bred multiple generations of people who have not experienced knowing where you are the moment a news story broke, with that news story being great and grand and something that elevates society instead of diminishes it. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

There is many a man without learning will get the better of a college-bred man, and will have better words, too. — Lady Gregory

A philosopher might have deplored this lack of mental ambition, but only if he was really certain about where his next meal was coming from.
In fact Lancre's position and climate bred a hard-headed and straightforward people who often excelled in the world down below. it had supplied the planins with many of their greatest wizards and witches and, once again, the philospher might have marveled that such a four-square people could give the world so many successful magical practitioners, being quite unaware that only those with their feet on rock can build castles in the air. — Terry Pratchett

I know that I wasn't bred to be an Olympian. I didn't start running until high school, and I just stumbled upon to. — Allyson Felix

There isn't anything you can't stand if you are only born and bred to it. — Mark Twain

I'm bred for farm work, and for such folk, the only A's you get come from effort. Strife and strain are all the world can offer, and they temper you into something unbreakable because Lord knows they'll try
without let up
to break you. — Mary Karr

What troops Of generous boys in happiness thus bred Saturnians through life's Tempe led, Went from the North and came from the South, With golden mottoes in the mouth, To lie down midway on a bloody bed. — Herman Melville

I love a good wool suit, and I appreciate the fact that it's a natural fiber. I know where it comes from, and I know how it's bred. And it's built to last. It breathes, and it feels good. — Jason Clarke

We in America have gotten addicted to cheap food. The result of that is antibiotic-laden fish, foods that are bred to be portable. — Ruth Reichl

Artificial selection turned the wolf into the shepherd, and the wild grasses into wheat and corn. In fact, almost every plant and animal that we eat today was bred from a wild, less edible ancestor. If artificial selection can work such profound changes in only ten or fifteen thousand years, what can natural selection do operating over billions of years? The answer is all the beauty and diversity of life. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

During those days of whirling about the globe, I had an epiphany: travel was the only area of my life where I had no expectations. I anticipated nothing while fully engaging each moment. What bred adventure, surprise and deep experience was not knowing, surrendering to now and letting go of control. — Gina Greenlee

Being apart was wrong. Simply lying side by side did more for a relationship than words. A warm bed, a nest of animal intimacy. Words could be misunderstood, whereas loving companionship bred trust. — Michel Faber

The thorough bred against a clamor, or rather the Porsche vs. the pickup truck. — Larry Merchant

I make one image - though 'make' is not the right word; I let, perhaps, an image be 'made' emotionally in me and then apply to it what intellectual & critical forces I possess - let it breed another, let that image contradict the first, make, of the third image bred out of the other two together, a fourth contradictory image, and let them all, within my imposed formal limits, conflict. — Dylan Thomas

Two empty hours were a sinus in which infections bred. — Jonathan Franzen

As has happened so often in history, victory had bred a complacency and fostered an orthodoxy which led to defeat in the next war. — B.H. Liddell Hart

The early and relatively sophisticated Egyptians understood that their civilization would be threatened if they bred with the Negroes to their south, so pharaohs went so far as "to prevent the mongrelization of the Egyptian race" by making it a death penalty-eligible offense to bring blacks into Egypt. The ancient Egyptians even constructed a fort on the Nile in central Egypt to prevent blacks from immigrating to their lands. In spite of the efforts by the Egyptian government to defend their civilization, blacks still came to Egypt as soldiers, slaves, and captives from other nations. By 1,500 B.C., half of the population of southern Egypt was of mixed blood, and by 688 B.C., societal progress had ended in Egypt when Taharka became the first mulatto pharaoh. By 332 B.C., Egypt had fallen when Alexander the Great conquered the region. — Kyle Bristow

Idle Jeffrey, when asking his cousin for money: "I fear I have not a mercenary tendency."

The Chancellor of the Exchequer and his cousin, Plantagenet Palliser: "Men must have mercenary tendencies or they would not have bred. The man who plows, so he may live, does so because, luckily, he has mercenary tendencies."

Jeffrey: "Just so, but you see I am less lucky than the plowman."

Palliser: "There is no vulgar error so vulgar, that is to say common or erroneous, as that by which men have been taught to say that mercenary tendencies are bad. The desire for wealth is the source of all progress. Civilization comes from what men call greed. Let your mercenary tendencies be combines with honesty, and they cannot take you astray. — Anthony Trollope

I was bred as an outcast, part Negro and part Seminole, in my early years raised as an Indian. — Willie Stargell

Not all dogs are perfect dogs, but all dogs are inherently good. Like people, we are affected by environment and circumstance. Some breeds get a bad rap because sometimes humans breed them to be a certain way, like overly macho or protective. In our life on earth we are dependent on humans for everything, including our breeding. We can be bred for aggression or we can be bred for peace. — Kate McGahan

She wasn't," Heather said, crying now. "Pugs are bred to be useless. We have to take her to the vet. — Rainbow Rowell

is because you are kind and good, not a hard-hearted pitiless rat like Cluny. Please listen to me. Even the strongest and bravest must sometimes weep. It shows they have a great heart, one that can feel compassion for others. You are brave, Matthias. Already you have done great things for one so young. I am only a simple country-bred fieldmouse, but even I can see the courage and leadership in you. A burning brand shows the way, and each day your flame grows brighter. — Brian Jacques

On entering a place where animals are bred, my first thoughts are always about enslavement. Force. Captivity. — Alice Walker

What's bred in the bone will stick to the flesh. — Aesop

Salem"

In salem seasick spindrift drifts or skips
to the canvas flapping on the seaward panes
until the knitting sailor stabs at ships
nosing like sheep of Morpheus through his brain's
asylum. Seaman, seaman, how the draft
lashes the oily slick about your head,
beating up whitecaps! Seaman, Charon's raft
dumps its damned goods into the harbor-bed,--
There sewage sickens the rebellious seas.
Remember, seaman, Salem fisherman
Once hung their nimble fleets on the Great Banks.
Where was it that New England bred the men
who quartered the Leviathan's fat flanks
and fought the British Lion to his knees? — Robert Lowell

So yeah, we put llamas everywhere. That was us. We just liked looking at them, so we bred about six million and spread them around. — Dave Eggers

Not long after he moved, the mail carrier got embroiled in a battle with the Middletown government over the flock of chickens that he kept in his yard. He treated them just as Mamaw had treated her chickens back in the holler: Every morning he collected all the eggs, and when his chicken population grew too large, he'd take a few of the old ones, wring their necks, and carve them up for meat right in his backyard. You can just imagine a well-bred housewife watching out the window in horror as her Kentucky-born neighbor slaughtered squawking chickens just a few feet away. My sister and I still call the old mail carrier "the chicken man," and years later even a mention of how the city government ganged up on the chicken man could inspire Mamaw's trademark vitriol: "Fucking zoning laws. They can kiss my ruby-red asshole." The — J.D. Vance

The thorny point
Of bare distress hath ta'en from me the show
Of smooth civility; yet am I inland bred
And know some nurture. — William Shakespeare

It is hard for any one to be an honest politician who is not born and bred a Dissenter. — William Hazlitt

Huskies get in trouble. Huskies are well-known to be escape artists. Why? Because they were bred to go long-distance. They're not bred to be in the backyard and just look beautiful because they have blue eyes. — Cesar Millan

Do not be perturbed with by an ill-bred person; in most cases the one who is unsociable has a liver complaint and bad nerves. — Chico Xavier

Dogs' bond with humans is bred into their very cells, their genes; it's written through their entire history, a chronicle that can be read in their eyes. But inside this black wire cage, in the lolling eyes of what remained of a Pekingese, there was nothing legible at all. One could hardly grieve for the dog, because the dog was already gone. To euthanize it - which a BAWA vet mercifully did, moments later, with the customary dose of anesthesia - was merely to acknowledge its departure. — Bill Wasik

Where is fancy bred,
in the heart or in the head? — Gene Wilder

Eager to hear more about the aforementioned behaviors of the ill-bred Miss Bowman, Livia leaned back against the edge of the desk, facing Marcus. "I wonder what Miss Bowman did to offend you so?" she mused aloud. "Do tell, Marcus. If not, my imagination will surely conjure up something far more scandalous than poor Miss Bowman is capable of."
"Poor Miss Bowman?" Marcus snorted. "Don't ask, Livia. I'm not at liberty to discuss it."
Like most men, Marcus didn't seem to understand that nothing torched the flames of a woman's curiosity more violently than a subject that one was not at liberty to discuss. "Out with it, Marcus," she commanded. "Or I shall make you suffer in unspeakable ways."
One of his brows lifted in a sardonic arch. "Since the Bowmans have already arrived, that threat is redundant. — Lisa Kleypas

Rudeness, abruptness, gory tales of blood and thunder, and coarse language usually show up the greenhorn or counterfeit, and certainly the ill-bred. "The bravest are the tenderest; the gentlest are the daring. — Kenneth W. Estes

I am like a mariner born and bred on board a buccaneer brig whose soul has become so inured to storm and strife that if cast ashore he would weary and languish no matter how alluring the shady groves and how bright the gentle sun. — Mikhail Lermontov

What is bred in the bone will come out in the flesh. — Kathryn Lasky

I'm English, without a doubt. I will never ever say I'm not English. English born and bred. I'm Turkish, though — Colin Kazim-Richards

What made pigs different? Why were they bred for food and held in captivity, while dogs and cats were welcomed into our homes and treated like family? Aside from physicality, we could see no difference between her and our dogs. — Caprice Crane

Nineteen months ago, he mourned, partridges were here. Nineteen months ago the open pine forest was compassionate. What rare concentrated tragedies will have occurred within another nineteen months - not here, for this place has bred a tragedy greater than any recorded in the Nation's past - but elsewhere, all over the South, through back roads and on wharves and in legislative rooms, in foundries which rust because the fires have gone out? — MacKinlay Kantor

If we bred better programmers we'd clearly breed better bugs. — Anonymous

But really, where leadership is born and where leadership is really bred is ... — Wes Moore

To be born, or at any rate bred, in a hand-bag, whether it had handles or not, seems to me to display a contempt for the ordinary decencies of family life that reminds one of the worst excesses of the French Revolution. — Oscar Wilde

If you are ambitious to talk well, you must be as much as possible in the society of well-bred, cultured people. If you seclude yourself, though you are a college graduate, you will be a poor converser. — Orison Swett Marden

Observe it, the vulgar often laugh, but never smile, whereas well-bred people often smile, and seldom or never laugh. A witty thing never excited laughter, it pleases only the mind and never distorts the countenance. — Lord Chesterfield

The desire for bad art is the desire bred of habit: like the smoker's desire for tobacco, more marked by the extreme malaise of denial than by any very strong delight in fruition. — C.S. Lewis

A refined simplicity is the characteristic of all high bred deportment, in every country, and a considerate humanity should be the aim of all beneath it. — James F. Cooper

You were bred for humanity and sold to society. One day you'll wake up in the present day, a million generations removed from the expectations of being who you really want to be. — Jethro Tull

Let us be very strange and well-bred:Let us be as strange as if we had been married a great while;And as well-bred as if we were not married at all. — William Congreve

No well-bred person goes ashore on someone else's island when there's no one home. But if they put up a sign, then you do it anyway, because it's a slap in the face — Tove Jansson

A woman well bred and well taught, furnished with the additional accomplishments of knowledge and behaviour, is a creature without comparison. Her society is the emblem of sublimer enjoyments, her person is angelic, and her conversation heavenly. She is all softness and sweetness, peace, love, wit, and delight. She is every way suitable to the sublimest wish, and the man that has such a one to his portion, has nothing to do but to rejoice in her, and be thankful. — Daniel Defoe

It matters not at all that I do not want to marry, that I am afraid of the wedding, afraid of consummating the marriage, afraid of childbirth, afraid of everything about being a wife. Nobody even asks if I have lost my childhood sense of vocation, if I still want to be a nun. Nobody cares what I think at all. They treat me like an ordinary young woman, bred for wedding and bedding, and since they do not ask me what I think, nor observe what I feel, there is nothing that gives them pause at all. — Philippa Gregory

I have seen many people, who, while you are speaking to them, instead of looking at, and attending to you, fix their eyes upon theceiling, or some other part of the room, look out of the window, play with a dog, twirl their snuff-box, or pick their nose. Nothing discovers a little, futile, frivolous mind more than this, and nothing is so offensively ill-bred. — Lord Chesterfield

Treachery is always a hairy caterpillar bred of a small butterfly called envy, no matter how lofty the principles involved. — Fazil Iskander

'Tis well enough for a servant to be bred at an University. But the education is a little too pedantic for a gentleman. — William Congreve