Quotes & Sayings About Deference

If we wish our civilization to survive we must break with the habit of deference to great men. — Karl Popper

There is a kind of greatness which does not depend upon fortune;It is a certain manner that distinguishes us, and which seems to destine us for great things;It is the value we insensibly set upon ourselves;it is by this quality,that we gain the deference of other men,and it is this which commonly raises us more above them,than birth,rank,or even merit itself. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

If I were a modern writing about a modern young woman I would have to do her wedding night in grisly detail. The custom of the country and the times would demand a description, preferable "comic," of foreplay, lubrication, penetration, and climax and in deference to the accepted opinions about Victorian love, I would have to abort the climax and end the wedding night in tears and desolate comfortings. But I don't know. I have a good deal of confidence in both Susan Burling and the man she married. I imagine they worked it out without the need of any scientific lubricity and with even less need to make their privacies public. — Wallace Stegner

Yet, when the boy himself assumes married life, he will honor his mother above his wife, and show her often a real affection and deference. Then it is that the woman comes into her own, ruling indoors with an iron hand, stoutly maintaining the ancient tradition, and, forgetful of her former misery, visiting upon the slender shoulders of her little daughters-in-law all the burdens and the wrath that fell upon her own young back. But one higher step is perhaps reserved for her. With each grandson laid in her arms she is again exalted. The family line is secure. Her husband's soul is protected. Proud is she among women. Blessed be the gods! — Katherine Mayo

Man pays deference to woman instinctively, involuntarily, not because she is beautiful or truthful or wise or foolish or proper, but because she is a woman, and he cannot help it. If she descends, he will lower to her level; if she rises, he will rise to her height. — Mary Abigail Dodge

The political world was anathema; its activists, both retro and progressive, seemed wrongheaded and dreamy. The revolutionaries, armed or peaceful, had no notion of what should happen after they "won." Who would rule? The "people"? Please. What did that mean? The best outcome would be to introduce a new idea into the population that perhaps a politician would act on. The rest was theater seeking an audience. Wealth alone explained humanity's evil, and he was determined to live without deference to it. — Toni Morrison

I was always creatively stubborn, adverse to editing by others, and wanted to use the kind of Ukrainian we spoke among ourselves rather than the more artificial prescribed literary Ukrainian. The problem was the greatest in prose, where editors would change my language because "it sounded better this way." My poetry they left alone probably out of deference to that hallowed genre. — Yuriy Tarnawsky

High on their posthumous pedestals, the dead become hard to see. Grief, deference, and the homogenizing effects of adulation blur the details, flatten the bumps, sand off the sharp corners. — Anne Fadiman

In all our times together so far, this was the first time I felt we were enjoying ourselves, without strain or any sense of difference of age or deference, concession or inequality. It was, I thought afterwards, the first time we had met as ourselves, untrammelled, unguarded and in tune. — Aidan Chambers

Islam in its origins is just as shady and approximate as those from which it took its borrowings. It makes immense claims for itself, invokes prostrate submission or "surrender" as a maxim to its adherents, and demands deference and respect from nonbelievers into the bargain. There is nothing-absolutely nothing-in its teachings that can even begin to justify such arrogance and presumption. — Christopher Hitchens

They spoke politely and with deference to the adults, whereas it went against my nature not to speak plainly. To many people speaking plainly is the same as speaking rudely. Whereas to me, if one was direct, it saved time and misunderstanding. — Theresa Breslin

Morgan's argument that prehistoric societies practiced group marriage (also known as the primal horde or omnigamy - the latter term apparently coined by French author Charles Fourier) so influenced Darwin's thinking that he admitted, "It seems certain that the habit of marriage has been gradually developed, and that almost promiscuous intercourse was once extremely common throughout the world." With his characteristic courteous humility, Darwin agreed that there were "present day tribes" where "all the men and women in the tribe are husbands and wives to each other." In deference to Morgan's scholarship, Darwin continued, "Those who have most closely studied the subject, and whose judgment is worth much more than mine, believe that communal marriage was the original and universal form throughout the world ... . — Christopher Ryan

Gentlemen, be courteous to the old maids, no matter how poor and plain and prim, for the only chivalry worth having is that which is the readiest to to pay deference to the old, protect the feeble, and serve womankind, regardless of rank, age, or color. — Louisa May Alcott

The best thing to give
your enemy is forgiveness;
to an oponent, tolerance;
to a friend, your heart;
to your child, a good example;
to your father, deference;
to your mother, conduct that will make her proud of you;
to your self, respect;
to all men charity. — Swami Sivananda Radha

He stands apart with Patroclus, his beloved through all eternity, and Patroclus - who loves Achilles but not as much as he is loved - waits for Achilles to move. His deference to Achilles is different from that of others, They honour and respect him, keep a wise distance, because Achilles was better than the rest. Better at being human. Fighting, singing, speaking, raging (oh, he is good at that still). Killing. But Patroclus alone is humbled by Achilles' love. Only a fool thinks that to be more loved than loving gives you power. Only a fool vaunts it and displays his own littleness by bragging to his friends and making capricious demands of his lover. Patroclus isn't a fool. He knows that he is less than Achilles even in this. Humbled by the intensity of Achilles' love he loves him back with all his large, though lesser, heart. — Elizabeth Cook

The fact is, that you were sick of civility, of deference, of officious attention. You were disgusted with the women who were always speaking, and looking, and thinking for your approbation alone. — Jane Austen

You were disgusted with the women who were always speaking and looking, and thinking for your approbation alone. I roused, and interested you, because I was so unlike them. — Jane Austen

There are really only two standards of appellate review: plenary and deferential. Conventionally there are four basic standards (with many variants), which in ascending order of deference to the trial court or administrative agency are de novo, clearly erroneous, substantial evidence, and abuse of discretion. But the last three are, in practice, the same, because finer distinctions are beyond judges' cognitive capacity. The multiplication of unusual distinctions is a familiar judicial pathology. — Richard A. Posner

Near the centre of that State of New York lies an extensive district of country, whose surface is a succession of hills and dales, or, to speak with greater deference to geographical definitions, of mountains and valleys. — James F. Cooper

If the man succeeds in becoming indifferent to the opinions of his neighbors he runs into another danger, that of a distorted and extravagant self of the pride sort, since by the very process of gaining independence and immunity from the stings of depreciation and misunderstanding, he has perhaps lost that wholesome deference to some social tribunal that a man cannot dispense with and remain quite sane. — Charles Horton Cooley

The fear of man, the trust in man, the deference to the opinion of man, is the merest worship of a rag-stuffed idol. — George MacDonald

Washington society has always demanded less and given more than any society in this country
demanded less of applause, deference,etiquette, and has accepted as current coin quick wit, appreciative tact, and a talent for talking. — M. E. W. Sherwood

Your suns and worlds are not within my ken,
I merely watch the plaguey state of men.
The little god of earth remains the same queer sprite
As on the first day, or in primal light.
His life would be less difficult, poor thing,
Without your gift of heavenly glimmering;
He calls it Reason, using light celestial
Just to outdo the beasts in being bestial.
To me he seems, with deference to Your Grace,
One of those crickets, jumping round the place,
Who takes his flying leaps, with legs so long,
Then falls to grass and chants the same old song;
But, not content with grasses to repose in,
This one will hunt for muck to stick his nose in. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Let the people walk. Or ride horses, bicycles, mules, wild pigs-anything-but keep the automobiles and the motorcycles and all their motorized relatives out. We have agreed not to drive our automobiles into cathedrals, concert halls, art museums, legislative assemblies, private bedrooms and other sanctums of our culture; we should treat our national parks with the same deference, for they, too, are holy places. — Edward Abbey

She and Jon had been startled and a little frighented by his misery. What happened when you were married, she realized, was that, although you began as two independent people, you eventually grew in certain ways to accommodate your partner's weaknesses and let other parts of you atrophy in deference to his strengths. It was a fine system as long as it endured, but if you extricated yourself from it you couldn't help but be, a least for a time, deformed. — Christina Schwarz

There is a form of eminence which does not depend on fate; it is an air which sets us apart and seems to prtend great things; it is the value which we unconsciously attach to ourselves; it is the quality which wins us deference of others; more than birth, position, or ability, it gives us ascendance. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

It is important that Miers not be confirmed unless, in her 61st year, she suddenly and unexpectedly is found to have hitherto undisclosed interests and talents pertinent to the court's role. Otherwise the sound principle of substantial deference to a president's choice of judicial nominees will dissolve into a rationalization for senatorial abdication of the duty to hold presidents to some standards of seriousness that will prevent them from reducing the Supreme Court to a private plaything useful for fulfilling whims on behalf of friends. — George Will

No more cars in national parks. Let the people walk. Or ride horses, bicycles, mules, wild pigs
anything
but keep the automobiles and the motorcycles and all their motorized relatives out. We have agreed not to drive our automobiles into cathedrals, concert halls, art museums, legislative assemblies, private bedrooms and the other sanctums of our culture; we should treat our national parks with the same deference, for they, too, are holy places. An increasingly pagan and hedonistic people (thank God!), we are learning finally that the forests and mountains and desert canyons are holier than our churches. Therefore let us behave accordingly. — Edward Abbey

Sidious bowed his head in deference. "In the annals of Sith history, you will be known as Plagueis the Wise." Plagueis quirked a cunning smile. "You flatter me. — James Luceno

Women's deference is rooted not only in their social subordination but also in the substance of their moral concern. Sensitivity to the needs of others and the assumption of responsibility for taking care lead women to attend to voices other than their own and to include in their judgement other points of view. — Carol Gilligan

The social dimension of reticence and nonacknowledgment is most developed in forms of politeness and deference. We don't want to tell people what we think of them, and we don't want to hear from them what they think of us, though we are happy to surmise their thoughts and feelings, and to have them surmise ours, at least up to a point. We don't, if we are reasonable, worry too much what they may say about us behind our backs, just as we often say things about a third party that we wouldn't say to his face. Since everyone participates in these practices, they aren't, or shouldn't be, deceptive. Deception is another matter, and sometimes we have reason to object to it, though sometimes we have no business knowing the truth, even about how someone really feels about us. — Thomas Nagel

Among the arts of conversation no one pleases more than mutual deference or civility, which leads us to resign our own inclinations to those of our companions, and to curb and conceal that presumption and arrogance so natural to the human mind. — David Hume

Death is an unsurpassable limit of human existence ... We discover the relationship which is the basis for all feelings of reverence, fear, awe, wonder, sorrow, and deference in the face of something greater and more powerful ... Only such a being-unto-death can guarantee the precondition that the Da-sein be able to free itself from its absorption in, its submission and surrender of itself to the things and relationships of everyday living and to return to itself. — Medard Boss

I can choose the subroutine and perform sadness. How is that different from what you are doing, except that you use the word feelings and I use the word feelings, out of deference for your cultural memes which say: there is all the difference in the world. I erase the word even as I say it, obliterate it at the same time that I initiate it, because I must use some word yet this one offends you. I delete it, yet it remains. — Catherynne M Valente

Well, it is generally considered - though not always true - that the wife of a man so honoured is likely also to be worthy of the honour, and so it is accorded her. In the event it is false, and I have known that to be so in more than one circumstance , it is still accorded her in deference to her husband."
~Sherlock Holmes, with respect to aristocratic titles — Stephanie Osborn

It is unjust to exact that men shall do out of deference to our advice what they have no desire to do for themselves. — Luc De Clapiers

Repression is the only lasting philosophy. The dark deference of fear and slavery, my friend, will keep the dogs obedient to the whip, as long as this roof shuts out the sky. — Charles Dickens

There are very many characteristics which go into making a model civil servant. Prominent among them are probity, industry, good sense, good habits, good temper, patience, order, courtesy, tact, self-reliance, many deference to superior officers, and many consideration for inferiors. — Chester A. Arthur

When the humanity of others who were previously invisible becomes apparent to us for the first time, I think it is because we have noticed something particular in them. By contrast, egalitarian empathy, projected from afar and without discrimination, is more principled than attentive. It is content to posit rather than to see the humanity of its beneficiaries. But the one who is on the receiving end of such empathy wants something more than to be recognized generically. He wants to be seen as an individual, and recognized as worthy on the same grounds on which he has striven to be worthy, indeed superior, by cultivating some particular excellence or skill. We all strive for distinction, and I believe that to honor another person is to honor this aspiring core of him. I can do this by allowing myself to respond in kind, and experience the concrete difference between him and me. This may call for silent deference on my part, as opposed to chummy liberal solicitude. — Matthew B. Crawford

Eminence without merit earns deference without esteem. — Nicolas Chamfort

It would be impossible for women to stand in higher estimation than they do here. The deference that is paid to them at all times and in all places has often occasioned me as much surprise as pleasure. — Frances Wright

[On Christianity:] Its lip-service and its empty rites have made it the easiest of all tasks for the usurer to cloak his cruelties, the miser to hide his avarice, the lawyer to condone his lies, the sinner of all social sins to purchase the social immunity from them by outward deference to churches. — Ouida

Let us not live a life ... that would bring regret. ... It is not going to matter very much how much money you made, what kind of a house you lived in, what kind of a car you drove, the size of your bank account - any of those things. What is going to matter is that dear woman who has walked with you side by side as your companion through all of the years of life and those children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren and their faithfulness and their looking to you ... with respect and love and deference and kindness. — Gordon B. Hinckley

Why all this deference to Alfred, and Scanderbeg, and Gustavus? Suppose they were virtuous; did they wear out virtue? — Ralph Waldo Emerson

A society that could finally feed everyone, not just a chosen few; that could relieve the poverty and misery of even the weakest and least productive of its members; that recognized the sovereignty of the individual and his rights, and agreed to leave him alone to pursue his own ends; that put a premium on treating others with kindness and deference rather than disdain and exploitation; and, finally, that a society that recognized that it was better to do business with other nations than to try to conquer them, was not one on the verge of tyranny, but just the opposite. These were the conditions of modern liberty. — Arthur Herman

Elinor saw, and pitied her for, the neglect of abilities which education might have rendered so respectable; but she saw, with less tenderness of feeling, the thorough want of delicacy, of rectitude, and integrity of mind, which her attentions, her assiduities, her flatteries at the Park betrayed; and she could have no lasting satisfaction in the company of a person who joined insincerity with ignorance; whose want of instruction prevented their meeting in conversation on terms of equality, and whose conduct toward others made every shew of attention and deference towards herself perfectly valueless. — Jane Austen

I'm not the first to have raised these democratic concerns. Many have faulted the court for its lack of clarity in certain cases and many have criticized its recent lack of deference to decisions made by state legislatures and Congress. — Mike DeWine

Those who believe they have pleased God by the quality of their devotion and moral goodness naturally feel that they and their group deserve deference and power over others. The God of Jesus and the prophets, however, saves completely by grace. He cannot be manipulated by religious and moral performance
he can only be reached through repentance, through the giving up of power. If we are saved by sheer grace we can only become grateful, willing servants of God and of everyone around us. — Timothy Keller

You may as well call it impertinence at once. It was very little less. The fact is, that you were sick of civility, of deference, of officious attention. You were disgusted with the women who were always speaking, and looking, and thinking for your approbation alone. I roused, and interested you, because I was so unlike them. Had you not been really amiable, you would have hated me for it; but in spite of the pains you took to disguise yourself, your feelings were always noble and just; and in your heart, you thoroughly despised the persons who so assiduously courted you. There - I have saved you the trouble of accounting for it; and really, all things considered, I begin to think it perfectly reasonable. To be sure, you knew no actual good of me - but nobody thinks of that when they fall in love." "Was — Jane Austen

Later, concealment of pride in humility came to be recognized as a deliberate and useful tactic which Sophia - renamed Catherine - used when confronting crisis and danger. Threatened, she drew around herself a cloak of meekness, deference, and temporary submission. — Robert K. Massie

The next morning, I worked out at Murakami's dojo in Asakusa. When I arrived, the men who were already training paused and gave me a low collective bow - a sign of their respect for the way I had dispatched Adonis. After that, I was treated in a dozen subtle ways with deference that bordered on awe. Even Washio, older than I and with a much longer and deeper association with the dojo, was using different verb forms to indicate that he now considered me his superior. — Barry Eisler

Our evolved natures should be treated with respect, but not with deference. We did not evolve to be happy: rather we evolved to be happy, sad, miserable, angry, anxious, and depressed, as the mood takes us. We evolved to love and to hate, and to care and be callous. Our emotions are the carrots and sticks that our genes use to persuade us to achieve their ends. But their ends need not be our ends. Goodness and happiness may be goals attainable only by hoodwinking our genes. — Stephen C. Stearns

The feeling of commiseration is the beginning of humanity; the feeling of shame and dislike is the beginning of righteousness; the feeling of deference and compliance is the beginning of propriety; and the feeling of right or wrong is the beginning of wisdom.Men have these Four Beginnings just as they have their four limbs. Having these Four Beginnings, but saying that they cannot develop them is to destroy themselves. — Mencius

I must be able to say, 'Percival, a ridiculous name'. At the same time let me tell you, men and women, hurrying to the tube station, you would have had to respect him. You would have had to form up and follow behind him. How strange to oar one's way through crowds seeing life through hollow eyes, burning eyes. — Virginia Woolf

Intrinsic to the concept of a translator's fidelity to the effect and impact of the original is making the second version of the work as close to the first writer's intention as possible. A good translator's devotion to that goal is unwavering. But what never should be forgotten or overlooked is the obvious fact that what we read in a translation is the translator's writing. The inspiration is the original work, certainly, and thoughtful literary translators approach that work with great deference and respect, but the execution of the book in another language is the task of the translator, and that work should be judged and evaluated on its own terms. Still, most reviewers do not acknowledge the fact of translation except in the most perfunctory way, and a significant majority seem incapable of shedding light on the value of the translation or on how it reflects or illuminates the original. — Edith Grossman

Deference is the most complicate, the most indirect, and the most elegant of all compliments. — William Shenstone

The more deference there is, the narrower the band of judgements on which organisations rely. Deference acts like the fatty deposits that build up in arteries, restricting the flow of fresh, oxygen-enriched blood across the system. — Robin Ryde

A man who has cured himself of all ridiculous prepossessions, and is fully, sincerely, and steadily convinced, from experience as well as philosophy, that the difference of fortune makes less difference in happiness than is vulgarly imagined; such a one does not measure out degrees of esteem according to the rent-rolls of his acquaintance. He may, indeed, externally pay a superior deference to the great lord above the vassal; because riches are the most convenient, being the most fixed and determinate, source of distinction. But his internal sentiments are more regulated by the personal characters of men, than by the accidental and capricious favours of fortune. — David Hume

People who expect deference resent mere civility. — Mason Cooley

Deference and intimacy live far apart. — Moliere

Not everyone could have the blissful equanimity of Lamen, who seemed to pay the Prince no deference of rank, a piece of very good acting. Charls — C.S. Pacat

Great men always pay deference to greater. — Walter Savage Landor

The disquieting thing about newscaster-babble or editorial-speak is its ready availability as a serf idiom, a vernacular of deference. Mr. Secretary, are we any nearer to bringing about a dialogue in this process ? — Christopher Hitchens

The president's need for complete candor and objectivity from advisers calls for great deference from the courts. — Warren E. Burger

It is superfluous to try by the standards of theory, a part of the constitution which is allowed on all hands to be the result not of theory, but "of a spirit of amity, and that mutual deference and concession which the peculiarity of our political situation rendered indispensable" ... the equal vote allowed to each state, is at once a constitutional recognition of the portion of sovereignty remaining in the individual states, and an instrument for preserving that residuary sovereignty. — James Madison

That's him!" he said. "That's the one!"
"Is it, indeed?" Inspector Hewitt asked, as he lifted the cap from my head and took the gown from my shoulders with the gentle deference of a valet.
The little man's pale blue eyes bulged visibly in their sockets.
"Why, it's only a girl!" he said.
I could have slapped his face. — Alan Bradley

Her companion's discourse now sunk from its hitherto animated pitch, to nothing more than a short, decisive sentence of praise or condemnation on the face of every woman they met; and Catherine, after listening and agreeing as long as she could,with all the civility and deference of the youthful female mind, fearful of hazarding an opinion of its own in opposition to that of a self-assured man, especially where the beauty of her own sex is concerned, ventured at length to vary the subject ... — Jane Austen

Most of our fellow-subjects are guided either by the prejudice of education or by a deference to the judgment of those who perhaps in their own hearts disapprove the opinions which they industriously spread among the multitude. — Joseph Addison

God, who in the beginning was the creator, appears in the end as revenger and rewarder. Deference to such a God admittedly can produce virtuous actions; however, because fear of punishment or hope for reward are their motive, these actions will not be purely moral; on the contrary, the inner essence of such virtue will amount to prudent and carefully calculating egoism. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Knowledge, which is power, knows no limits, either in its enslavement of creation or in its deference to worldly masters. — Theodor Adorno

He is anxious to know how you have been employed during your long absence from him, how you have been treated by your persecutors, and if they have conducted themselves towards you with all the deference due to your rank. Finally, he is anxious to see if you have been fortunate enough to escape the bad moral influence to which you have been exposed, and which is infinitely more to be dreaded than any physical suffering; — Alexandre Dumas

The extraordinary deference paid to physicians and their judgment preserved the idea that the woman's desire to end a pregnancy was not enough in itself, it had to be approved by a respectable authority figure, at the time almost always a man. — Katha Pollitt

He was the subject of a little respectful ribbing. But he was, of course, the captain, which meant he had to do lots of the ribbing himself. — Geoff Dyer

A person that would secure to himself great deference will, perhaps, gain his point by silence as effectually as by anything he can say. — William Shenstone

With others, I feel betrayed that those who had the authority in the Church to stop Brendan Smyth failed to act on the evidence I gave them. However, I also accept that I was part of an unhelpful culture of deference and silence in society and the Church, which thankfully is now a thing of the past. — Sean Brady

Katherine Anne [Porter] treated them like favored nephews; she even cooked meals for them. Unfortunately, however, beneath Christopher's deference and flattery, there was a steadily growing aggression. By her implicit claim to be the equal of Katherine Mansfield and even Virginia Woolf, Katherine Anne had stirred up Christopher's basic literary snobbery. How dare she, he began to mutter to himself, this vain old frump, this dressed-up cook in her arty finery, how dare she presume like this! And he imagined a grotesque scene in which he had to introduce her and somehow explain her to Virginia, Morgan [Forster] and the others . . . [t]hus Katherine Anne became the first of an oddly assorted collection of people who, for various reasons, made up their minds that they would never see Christopher again. The others: Charlie Chaplin, Benjamin Britten, Cole Porter, Lincoln Kirstein. — Christopher Isherwood

A devotee of Truth may not do anything in deference to convention. He must always hold himself open to correction, and whenever he discovers himself to be wrong he must confess it at all costs and atone for it. — Mahatma Gandhi

I protest against deference to any man, whether John Stuart Mill, or Adam Smith, or Aristotle, being allowed to check inquiry. Our science has become far too much a stagnant one, in which opinions rather than experience and reason are appealed to. — William Stanley Jevons

A gentleman is one who understands and shows every mark of deference to the claims of self-love in others, and exacts it in return from them. — William Hazlitt

As a proof of friendship, and of deference for her judgement, a great pleasure; — Jane Austen

She eyed his gorgeous body, and raised a brow. "Doing a little flaunting of your own this morning, huh?"
"In deference to your delicate sensibilities, I pulled on jeans. Isn't that enough?"
Enough for what, her peace of mind? Ha. Being around Trace, especially with him like this, half-naked, sent her heart racing like a marathon runner's. "Maybe it would be," Priss admitted, "if you don't look so good."
The compliment sent his right eyebrow arching high.
"Oh, come on, Trace. You know what you look like." She visually devoured him again, more blatantly this time, and noticed a rise behind the fly of his jeans. For her?
Well-well-well. Flattering. — Lori Foster

I am tired of submitting my will to the caprices of others - of resigning my own judgement in deference to those to whom I owe no duty, and for whom I feel no respect. — Jane Austen

Caprice, independence and rebellion, which are opposed to the social order, are essential to the good health of an ethnic group. We shall measure the good health of this group by the number of its delinquents. Nothing is more immobilizing than the spirit of deference. — Jean Dubuffet

Death is a dignitary who when he comes announced is to be received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him. In the code of military etiquette silence and fixity are forms of deference. — Ambrose Bierce

Dewar's rule in his laboratory was as absolute as that of a Pharaoh, and he showed deference to no one except the ghost of Faraday whom he met occasionally all night in the gallery behind the lecture room. — Kurt Mendelssohn

I returned to the university only after the Second World War, and, even then, not having been in the resistance, I had political difficulties." "Why weren't you in the resistance?" "I was tired. And you have to have a certain temperament. You have to be fixed on the point. You need what politicians have, which is the absence of a sense of mortality. It comes, like a drug, from adoration and deference. Revolutionaries get it from dreams. They say that nothing is apolitical, that politics, the bedrock of life, is something from which you cannot depart. I say, fuck them. — Mark Helprin

Well, besides, I've arranged with the computer that anyone who doesn't look and sound like one of us will be killed if he - or she - tries to board the ship. I've taken the liberty of explaining that to the Port Commander. I told him very politely that I would love to turn off that particular facility out of deference to the reputation that the Sayshell City Spaceport holds for absolute integrity and security - throughout the Galaxy, I said - but the ship is a new model and I didn't know how to turn it off."
"He didn't believe that, surely."
"Of course not! But he had to pretend he did, as otherwise he would have had no choice but to be insulted. And since there would be nothing he could do about that, being insulted would only lead to humiliation. And since he didn't want that, the simplest path to follow was to believe what I said."
"And that's another example of how people are?"
"Yes. You'll get used to this. — Isaac Asimov

The best thing to give to your enemy is forgiveness; to an opponent, tolerance; to a friend, your heart; to your child, a good example; to a father, deference; to your mother, conduct that will make her proud of you; to yourself, respect; to all others, charity. — Benjamin Franklin

The individual psychotherapy patient comes to the therapist with an almost automatic deference, a sense of dependence and compliance. The role pattern is old and established: the dependent child seeking guidance from a parent figure. There is no such traditional image for the family, no established pattern in which an entire family submits to the guidance of an individual. And the family structure is simply too powerful and too crucial for the members to go trustingly into an experience that threatens to change the entire matrix of their relationships. If the family therapist is to acquire that initial "authority figure" or "parent" role that is so necessary if therapy is to be more powerful than an ordinary social experience, he has to earn it. — Augustus Y. Napier

For 350 years we have been taught that reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man and writing an exact man. Football's place is to add a patina of character, a deference to the rules and a respect for authority. — Red Smith

The kowtow was symbolically voluntary: it was the representative deference of a people that had been not so much conquered as awed. The tribute presented to China on such occasions was often exceeded in value by the Emperor's return gifts. — Henry Kissinger

President Cuyler made a speech this evening about the modern generation being flippant and superficial. He says that we are losing the old ideals of earnest endeavour and true scholarship; and particularly is this falling-off noticeable in our disrespectful attitude towards organized authority. We no longer pay a seemly deference to our superiors. — Anonymous

Withers received these directions with becoming deference, and gave his guarantee for their execution; but when he withdrew a pace or two behind her, it appeared as if he couldn't help looking strangely at the Major, who couldn't help looking strangely at Mr. Dombey, who couldn't help looking strangely at Cleopatra, who couldn't help nodding her bonnet over one eye, and rattling her knife and fork upon her plate in using them, as if she were playing castanets. — Charles Dickens

There would not be any absolute necessity for reserve if the world were honest; yet even then it would prove expedient. For, in order to attain any degree of deference, it seems necessary that people should imagine you have more accomplishments than you discover. — William Shenstone

There is the vanity training, the obedience training, the self-effacement training, the deference training, the dependency training, the passivity training, the rivalry training, the stupidity training, the placation training. How am I to put this together with my human life, my intellectual life, my solitude, my transcendence, my brains, and my fearful, fearful ambition? I failed miserably and thought it was my own fault. You can't unite woman and human any more than you can unite matter and anti-matter; they are designed to not to be stable together and they make just as big an explosion inside the head of the unfortunate girl who believes in both. — Joanna Russ

To sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its colour, in deference to some Headmaster with a silver pot in his hand or to some professor with a measuring-rod up his sleeve, is the most abject treach ery, and the sacrifice of wealth and chastity which used to be said to be the greatest of human disasters, a mere flea-bite in comparison. — Virginia Woolf

There is a silent deference for one another, a distance that is kept, and lines that aren't crossed, but in their sharing, they each try to pay tribute to the bond in their own way. As often as possible, they open up a little and give what they can. — Dan Groat

In 1970, Women's Lib preached universal sisterhood and resistance to "patriarchy" anywhere and in any form; today, Women's Studies, like contemporary establishment feminism generally, is meekly multicultural, treating non-Western social practices with deference even when they involve the brutal subjection of females. — Bruce Bawer

Among well bred people a mutual deference is affected, contempt for others is disguised; authority concealed; attention given to each in his turn; and an easy stream of conversation maintained without vehemence, without interruption, without eagerness for victory, and without any airs of superiority. — David Hume

It would have been easy to shut her eyes and let him kiss her. To have the choice taken from her in one heated, passive moment, with nothing for her to do but comply. But he was asking for more than her artless submission. Not deference, not docility, but ... defiance.
'I want you to choose me,' he said, 'well and truly choose me of your own accord. I don't want you to wait at the crossroads in the hopes that I will force the choice upon you. — Courtney Milan