Careful Words

society (n.)

Among unequals what society

Can sort, what harmony, or true delight?

John Milton (1608-1674): Paradise Lost. Book viii. Line 383.

I love tranquil solitude

And such society

As is quiet, wise, and good.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822): Rarely, rarely comest Thou.

  Society in shipwreck is a comfort to all.

Publius Syrus (42 b c): Maxim 144.

Society is now one polish'd horde,

Formed of two mighty tribes, the Bores and Bored.

Lord Byron 1788-1824: Don Juan. Canto xiii. Stanza 95.

  The very mudsills of society. . . . We call them slaves. . . .  But I will not characterize that class at the North with that term; but you have it. It is there, it is everywhere; it is eternal.

James H. Hammond (1807-1864): Speech in the U. S. Senate, March, 1858.

Society became my glittering bride,

And airy hopes my children.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): The Excursion. Book iii.

There is

One great society alone on earth:

The noble living and the noble dead.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): The Prelude. Book xi.

  He might have proved a useful adjunct, if not an ornament to society.

Charles Lamb (1775-1834): Captain Starkey.

Friendship! mysterious cement of the soul!

Sweetener of life! and solder of society!

Robert Blair (1699-1747): The Grave. Part i. Line 88.

For solitude sometimes is best society,

And short retirement urges sweet return.

John Milton (1608-1674): Paradise Lost. Book ix. Line 249.

  Ah, you flavour everything; you are the vanilla of society.

Sydney Smith (1769-1845): Lady Holland's Memoir. Vol. i. p. 262.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods;

There is a rapture on the lonely shore;

There is society, where none intrudes,

By the deep sea, and music in its roar:

I love not man the less, but Nature more.

Lord Byron 1788-1824: Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Canto iv. Stanza 178.

  Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.

James Russell Lowell (1819-1891): Among my Books. First Series. Dryden.