There are plenty of people who say, “We don’t care about etiquette, but we can’t stand the way so-and-so behaves, and we don’t want him around!” Etiquette doesn’t have the great sanctions that the law has. But the main sanction we do have is in not dealing with these people and isolating them because their behavior is unbearable.
Judith Martin (b. 1938) American author, journalist, etiquette expert [a.k.a. Miss Manners]
Interview (1995-03-06) by Virginia Shea, “Miss Mannners’ Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Internet Behavior,” Computerworld, Vol. 29, No. 10
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Quotations about:
ostracization
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“If Mr. Darcy is neither by honour nor inclination confined to his cousin, why is not he to make another choice? And if I am that choice, why may not I accept him?”
“Because honour, decorum, prudence, nay, interest, forbid it. Yes, Miss Bennet, interest; for do not expect to be noticed by his family or friends, if you wilfully act against the inclinations of all. You will be censured, slighted, and despised, by everyone connected with him. Your alliance will be a disgrace; your name will never even be mentioned by any of us.”
“These are heavy misfortunes,” replied Elizabeth. “But the wife of Mr. Darcy must have such extraordinary sources of happiness necessarily attached to her situation, that she could, upon the whole, have no cause to repine.”Jane Austen (1775-1817) English author
Pride and Prejudice, ch. 56 [Elizabeth and Lady Catherine] (1813)
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