Repression is a seamless garment; a society which is authoritarian in its social and sexual codes, which crushes its women beneath the intolerable burdens of honour and propriety, breeds repressions of other kinds as well.

But my way of writing is rather to think aloud, and follow my own humours, than much to consider who is listening to me; and, if I stop to consider what is proper to be said to this or that person, I shall soon come to doubt whether any part at all is proper.

Politeness requires this thing; decorum that; ceremony has its forms, and fashion its laws, and these we must always follow, never the promptings of our own nature.

Ceremony forbids us to express by words things that are lawful and natural, and we obey it; reason forbids us to do things unlawful and ill, and nobody obeys it.

Propriety is the least of all laws, and the most observed.

Blue laws once frowned on Sunday labor, also loud recreation, unseemly dress, and any deportment inconsistent with proper reverence, and those laws still frown but do it in private, in the book of old ordinances, in a section unread for many years.

A prig always finds a last refuge in responsibility.