Popular quotes about Manners! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 35
Good manners sometimes means simply putting up with other people's bad manners.
H. Jackson Brown, Jr.Laws are always unstable unless they are founded on the manners of a nation; and manners are the only durable and resisting power in a people.
Alexis de TocquevilleThe '90s were a time when not just the movie business, but every aspect of American life, became a lot more corporate. There's a line in Jonathan Franzen's essay "Perchance to Dream" about how "the rich lateral dramas of local manners have been replaced by a single vertical drama, that of commercial generality." I wanted to examine that great homogenizing force that came in during the '90s, since Hollywood seemed a place where it was particularly active.
Matthew SpecktorI don't like people being rude. Bad manners and arrogance make me cross. People making others feel uncomfortable. And I really don't like it in restaurants when people are rude or patronising to waiters. I feel like saying, 'They're not your slave'. But my knees only shake around once every five years. You're safe, don't worry.
Alan TitchmarshOne musn't overrate the culture of what used to be called "top people" before the wars. They had charming manners, but they were as ignorant as swans.
Kenneth ClarkThe comparative view of the powers of the magistrates, in two remarkable instances, is alone sufficient to represent the whole system of German manners. The disposal of the landed property within their district was absolutely vested in their hands, and they distributed it every year according to a new division. At the same time, they were not authorised to punish with death, to imprison, or even to strike, a private citizen.
Edward GibbonNot a superman who stumbles, but an ape with makeshift manners in whose nickel-plated jungles roam mechanical bananas.
William TennYou come before me this morning with clean hands and clean collars. I want you to have clean tongues, clean manners, clean morals and clean characters.
John BurnsWhat havoc, said I to myself, would these manners make in America! Our governors, our judges, our senators or representatives, and even our ministers, would be appointed by harlots, for money; and their judgments, decrees, and decisions, be sold to repay themselves, or, perhaps, to procure the smiles of profligate females.
John AdamsCustom governs the world; it is the tyrant of our feelings and our manners and rules the world with the hand of a despot.
Bill VaughanBasil Stag Hare tut-tutted severely as he remarked to Ambrose Spike, 'Tch, tch. Dreadful table manners. Just look at those three wallahs, kicking up a hullaballoo like that! Eating's a serious business.
Brian JacquesThe introduction of Christianity, which, under whatever form, always confers such inestimable benefits on mankind, soon made a sensible change in these rude and fierce manners.
Edmund BurkeIn his opinion, working was vastly overrated. Particularly as a way to build character, for everyone who engaged in it was far too snappish and fussy, and seemed to have no manners at all.
Hilari BellYou only had to choose which me to talk to, for, you know, we all change our manners, depending on who has come to chat. One doesnโt behave at all the same way to a grandfather as to a bosom friend, to a professor as to a curious niece.
Catherynne M. ValenteHe only shot one person," Nick remarked. "But the night is young." . . . Forgive him, he has no manners." I get by on good looks," Nick said.
Sarah Rees BrennanI think that - apart from the fields of science and medicine - we live in an age of decline. Look at the world. There is decline in morals, ideals, manners, respect, truthfulness: just about everything, in fact.
Christopher LeeCecily. This is no time for wearing the shallow mask of manners. When I see a spade I call it a spade. Gwendolen. [Satirically.] I am glad to say that I have never seen a spade. It is obvious that our social spheres have been widely different.
Oscar WildeI told them he'd be able to get you to go out." Rianne folded her winnings and tucked the bills into her blazer pocket. "Look at him." "He's right here, Ri," Carla murmured, shooting Keenan an apologetic look. "We've tried to teach her manners, but..." She shrugged. "It's like housebreaking a dog. If we'd had her when she was a puppy, maybe." Rianne smacked her on the arm, but she was grinning. "Woof, woof.
Melissa MarrDefect in manners is usually the defect of fine perceptions. Elegance comes of no breeding, but of birth.
Ralph Waldo EmersonLearning is nothing without cultivated manners, but when the two are combined in a woman, you have one of the most exquisite products of civilization.
Andre MauroisIt is said that when manners are licentious, a revolution is always near: the virtue of woman being the main girth and bandage ofsociety; because a man will not lay up an estate for children any longer than whilst he believes them to be his own.
Ralph Waldo EmersonA man is but a little thing in the midst of the objects of nature, yet, by the moral quality radiating from his countenance, he may abolish all considerations of magnitude, and in his manners equal the majesty of the world.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe complaints of contemporary writes, who deplore the increase of luxury and deprevation of manners, are commonly expressive of their peculiar temper and situation. There are few observers who possess a clear and comprehensive view of the revolutions of society, and who are capable of discovering the nice and secret springs of action which impel, in the same uniform direction, the bland and capricious passions of a multitude of individuals.
Edward GibbonThe problem is that it has become politically awkward to draw attention to absolutes of bad and good. In place of manners, we now have doctrines of political correctness, against which one offends at one's peril: by means of a considerable circular logic, such offences mark you as reactionary and therefore a bad person. Therefore if you say people are bad, you are bad.
Lynne TrussGrace is in garments, in movements, in manners; beauty in the nude, and in forms. This is true of bodies; but when we speak of feelings, beauty is in their spirituality, and grace in their moderation.
Joseph JoubertIn the name of motherhood and fatherhood and education and good manners, we threaten and suffocate and bind and ensnare and bribe and trick children into wholesale emulation of our ways.
June JordanTruly good manners are invisible: they ease the way for others, without drawing attention to themselves. It is no accident that the word "punctilious" ("attentive to formality or etiquette") comes from the same original root as punctuation.
Lynne TrussThe most interesting acquaintanceship I have struck up here is that of Colonel Lapinski. He is without doubt the cleverest Pole - besides being an homme d'action [man of action] - that I have ever met. His sympathies are all on the German side, though in manners and speech he is also a Frenchman. He cares nothing for the struggle of nationalities and only knows the racial struggle. He hates all Orientals, among whom he numbers Russians Turks, Greeks, Armenians, etc., with equal impartiality.... His aim now is to raise a German legion in London.
Karl MarxSeattle is a liberal city, its politics not so much blue in the American, not the British, sense as deep ultramarine, and its manners are studiously polite.
Jonathan RabanFor if you suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves and then punish them.
Thomas MoreI believe that there is much less difference between the author and his works than is currently supposed; it is usually in the physical appearance of the writer,--his manners, his mien, his exterior,--that he falls short of the ideal a reasonable man forms of him--rarely in his mind.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron LyttonA lot of people would be embarrassed to admit that they were on 'Barney', but I embrace the fact. I just had such a wonderful time doing that show. I learned what a camera and prop is, and all that. I learned my manners too, so I guess that's a good thing!
Selena GomezThe decline of manners, the cynical pursuit without shame or restraint of personal advantage and of money characterizes our times, not without exceptions, of course, but more than we ought to be comfortable with.
J. Irwin MillerI work in several different groups of pictures which act on and with each other - ranging from several abstracted manners to a form for the surreal. I have been called a preacher - but, in reality, I'm more generally philosophical. I have never made an abstracted photograph without content. An educated background in Zen influences all of my photographs. It has been said that my work resembles, more closely than any photographer, Le Douanier Rousseau - working in a fairly isolated area and feeding mostly on myself - I feel that I am a primitive photographer.
Ralph Eugene MeatyardGood manners come, as we say, from good breeding or rather are good breeding; and breeding is acquired by habitual action, in response to habitual stimuli, not by conveying information.
John DeweyManners are the shadows of virtues; the momentary display of those qualities which our fellow creatures love, and respect.
Sydney SmithMy heart rushes into the garden, joyfully tasting all the delights. But reason frowns, disapproving of the heart's bad manners.
RumiNothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters.
Samuel AdamsThe automobile, practical since 1906, was proceeding to disintegrate and stamp anew the pattern of communication, manners, and city life in the United States, by 1918; before long, men would begin to see that the automobile, and the mass production techniques which made its possible, could alter the national character and morality more thoroughly than could the most absolute of tyrants. As a mechanical Jacobin, it rivaled the dynamo. The productive process which made these vehicles cheap was still more subversive of the old ways than was the gasoline engine itself.
Russell Kirk