Ill Bred Quotes & Sayings

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

There was a coldness, it seemed to me, beyond her years, in her smiling melancholy persistent refusal to afford me the least ray of light. I cannot say we quarreled upon this point, for she would not quarrel upon any. It was, of course, very unfair of me to press her, very ill-bred, but I really could not help it; and I might just as well have let it alone. What she did tell me amounted, in my unconscionable estimation
to nothing. — J. Sheridan Le Fanu

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

One of the first evidences of a real lady, is that she should be modest. By modesty we mean that she shall not say, do, nor wear anything that would cause her to appear gaudy, ill-bred, or unchaste. There should be nothing about her to attract unfavorable attention, nothing in her dress or manner that would give a man an excuse for vulgar comment. When we dress contrary to the rule of modesty we give excuse for unwholesome thoughts in the mind of those who look upon us, and every girl who oversteps these bounds makes herself liable to misunderstanding and insult, though she may be innocent of any such intention. — Margaret Hale

But the people are ungrammatical, untidy, and their sins gaunt and ill-bred. — Walt Whitman

You who are born of the hills/ Hill-bred, lover of hills/ Though the world may not you aright/Though your soul be aweary with ill/This will you know above other men/In the hills you will find your peace again. — Maxwell Struthers Burt

Progeny. We want fewer and better children who can be reared up to their full possibilities in unencumbered homes, and we cannot make the social life and the world-peace we are determined to make, with the ill-bred, ill-trained swarms of inferior citizens that you inflict upon us. — Margaret Sanger

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

Better were it to be unborn than to be ill bred. — Walter Raleigh

-"But you are our equal, if not our superior," the Guermantes seemed, in all their actions, to be saying; and they said it in the nicest way imaginable, in order to be loved and admired, but not to be believed; that one should discern the fictitious character of this affability was what they called being well-bred; to suppose it to be genuine, a sign of ill-breeding. — Marcel Proust

He is not well bred, that cannot bear ill breeding in others. — Benjamin Franklin

In my mind, there is nothing so illiberal, and so ill-bred, as audible laughter. — Lord Chesterfield

I said, Quiet!"
Tiffany was so much startled by this peremptory reminder that she gasped, and stood staring up at the Nonesuch as though she could not believe that he was speaking not to his cousin, but actually to her. She drew in her breath audibly, and clenched her hands. Miss Trent cast a look of entreaty at sir Waldo, but he ignored it. He strolled up to the infuriated beauty, and pushed up her chin.
"Now, you may listen to me, my child!" he said sternly. "You are becoming a dead bore, and I don't tolerate bores. Neither do I tolerate noisy tantrums. Unless you want to be soundly smacked, enact me no ill-bred scenes!"
There was a moment's astonished silence. Laurence broke it, seizing his cousin's hand, and fervently shaking it.
"I knew you was a right one!" he declared. "A great gun, Waldo! Damme, a Trojan! — Georgette Heyer

The chief news is that I have grown a beard! Its colour is very much admired, and it is generally considered extremely effective, though some ill-bred persons have been observed to laugh. It is a red-brown of the most approved tint, and makes me look like a French decadent poet - or something equally distinguished. — Lytton Strachey

What! your wisdom thinks I must love the man I'm going to marry? The most unpleasant thing in the world. I should quarrel with him; I should be jealous of him; our menage would be conducted in a very ill-bred manner. A little quiet contempt contributes greatly to the elegance of life. ("The Lifted Veil") — George Eliot

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. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

You ignorant, ill-bred foreigners! If you don't like the way I'm doing things out there, why don't you just pack up and go back to your own countries! — Albert C. Bender

A great, crude, strong, young people are the Americans - like a boisterous healthy boy among enervated but well bred ladies and gentlemen . . . Picture to yourself the American people as a great lusty youth - who treads on all your sensibilities, perpetrates every possible horror of ill manners - whom neither age nor just tradition inspire with reverence - but who moves about his affairs with a good hearted freshness which may well be the envy of older nations of the earth [Winston S. Churchill to his brother Jack] — Randolph S. Churchill

The second beating seemed to me a just and reasonable punishment. To get one beating, and then to get another and far fiercer one on top of it, for being so unwise as to show that the first had not hurt - that was quite natural. The gods are jealous, and when you have good fortune you should conceal it. The other is that I accepted the broken riding crop as my own crime. I can still recall my feeling as I saw the handle lying on the carpet - the feeling of having done an ill-bred clumsy thing, and ruined an expensive object. I had broken it: so Sim told me, and so I believed. This acceptance of guilt lay unnoticed in my memory for twenty or thirty years. — George Orwell

Of all noxious animals, the most noxious is a tourist. And of all tourists the most vulgar, ill-bred, offensive and loathsome is the British tourist. — Francis Kilvert

It was the old New York way of taking life "without effusion of blood": the way of people who dreaded scandal more than disease, who placed decency above courage, and who considered that nothing was more ill-bred than "scenes," except the behaviour of those who gave rise to them. — Edith Wharton

Pain and grief have been kept buried for ages, bred in secrecy and shame, wrapped by an ongoing conspiracy of smiles and well-being. Pain and grief are most healing and ecstatic emotions. Yes, sure, they can be hard, yet what makes them most devastating is the perverted idea that they are wrong, that they need to be hidden and fixed. The greatest perversion I can conceive is the idea that illness and pain are a sign that there is something wrong in our life, that we have unresolved issues, that we have made mistakes. In this world everyone is bound to get ill, experience pain and die. The greatest gift I can give to myself and the world is the joyful acceptance of this. Today I want to be real, I will not hide my pain as well as my happiness. I will not care if my gloomy face or desperate words cause concern or embarrassment in others. I do not need be fed with reassuring words about the beauty of life. The beauty of life resides in the full acceptance of All That Is. — Franco Santoro

It is now obvious to us all that he has every objection," said Randall. "You know, you had very much better withdraw, my dear aunt. I feel sure that Uncle Henry's double life is going to be exposed. My own conviction is that he has been keeping a mistress for years."
[ ... ]
Mrs. Lupton flushed. "You forget yourself, Randall. I am not going to stand here and see my husband insulted by your ill-bred notions of what is funny."
"Oh, I wasn't insulting him," said Randall. "Why shouldn't he have a mistress? I am inclined to think that in his place -as your spouse, my dear Aunt Gertrude- I should have several. — Georgette Heyer

The choir always tittered and whispered all through service. There was once a church choir that was not ill-bred, but I have forgotten where it was, now. It was a great many years ago, and I can scarcely remember anything about it, but I think it was in some foreign country. — Mark Twain

To use words and phrases in an easygoing manner without scrutinizing them too curiously is not in general a mark of ill-breeding. On the contrary, there is something low-bred in being too precise. But sometimes there is no help for it — Socrates

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

It is ill-bred to put on an air of weariness during a long speech from another person, and quite as rude to look at a watch, read a letter, flirt the leaves of a book, or in any other action show that you are tired of the speaker or his subject. In — Cecil B. Hartley

You and I, Sir John," said Mrs. Jennings, "should never stand upon such ceremony."
"Then you would be very ill-bred," cried Mr. Palmer.
"My love, you contradict every body," - said his wife with her usual laugh. "Do you know that you are quite rude?"
"I did not know I contradicted any body in calling your mother ill-bred. — Jane Austen

Oh, this age! How tasteless and ill-bred it is. — Catullus

The liar was the hottest to defend his veracity, the coward his courage, the ill-bred his gentlemanliness, and the cad his honor — Margaret Mitchell

Accepting Uncle Tom's Cabin as revelation second only to the Bible, the Yankee women all wanted to know about the bloodhounds which every Southerner kept to track down runaway slaves. And they never believed her when she told them she had only seen one bloodhound in all her life and it was a small mild dog and not a huge ferocious mastiff. They wanted to know about the dreadful branding irons which planters used to mark the faces of their slaves and the cat-o'-nine-tails with which they beat them to death, and they evidenced what Scarlett felt was a very nasty and ill-bred interest in slave concubinage.
Especially did she resent this in view of the enormous increase in mulatto babies in Atlanta since the Yankee soldiers had settled in the town. — Margaret Mitchell

Not because they were servants were we so reserved, for many noble persons are forced to serve through necessity, but by reason the vulgar sort of servants are as ill bred as meanly born, giving children ill examples and worse counsel. — Margaret Cavendish

It was the old New York way ... the way people who dreaded scandal more than disease, who placed decency above courage, and who considered that nothing was more ill-bred than "scenes", except those who gave rise to them. — Edith Wharton

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

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 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

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