Quotes About Manners

Manners are the root, laws only the trunk and branches. Manners are the archetypes of laws. Manners are laws in their infancy; laws are manners fully grown,--or, manners are children, which, when they grow up, become laws.

What my children appear to be on the surface is no matter to me. I am fooled neither by gracious manners nor by bad manners. I am interested in what is truly beneath each kind of manners...I want my children to be people- each one separate- each one special- each one a pleasant and exciting variation of all the others

I've noticed that the children of other nations always seem precocious. That's because the strange manners of their elders have caught our attention most and the children echo those manners enough to seem like their parents.

Good manners are appreciated as much as bad manners are abhorred.

Ellen Cherry was from the south and had good manners. She didn´t have any panties on, but she had good manners.

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.

The '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a line in Jonathan Franzen's essay "Perchance to Dream" about how "the rich lateral dramas of local manners have been replaced by a single vertical drama, that of commercial generality."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.

It is ill-manners to silence a fool and cruelty to let him go on

You call that evening the odds? You demolished them." Demolished. He liked that. "I left you one." "I noticed." "I promised to share," he told her. "Manners are very important in the Weird. Lying would be quite impolite.

Good manners are a sign of strength.

Beware of a man with manners.

Some people are all quality; you would think they are made up of nothing but title and genealogy. The stamp of dignity defaces in them the very character of humanity and transports them to such a degree of haughtiness that they reckon it below themselves to exercise either good nature or good manners.

The ministers of Christ should possess refinement. All uncouth manners, attitudes and gestures should be discarded, and they should encourage in themselves humble dignity of bearing.

The 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.

God save us from idealists! They dream of a world without injustice, and what crime won't they commit to get it! I swear, Mirella, I'll settle for a world with good manners.

Good manners can render even virtue tolerable.

What seems conceit, bad manners or cynicism is always a sign of things no ear have heard, no eyes have seen. You do not know what wars are going on down there where the spirit meets the bone.

To make a pleasant and friendly impression is not alone good manners, but equally good business.

Custom governs the world; it is the tyrant of our feelings and our manners and rules the world with the hand of a despot.

In relations with people, as in art, if you always stick to style, manners, and what will work, and you're never caught off guard, then some beautiful experiences never happen.

Golf in the interest of good health and good manners. It promotes self-restraint and affords a chance to play the man and act the gentleman.

More than a code of manners in war and love, Chivalry was a moral system, governing the whole of noble life.

Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others.

Good manners: The noise you don't make when you're eating soup.

There are many things that go to make up an education, but there are just two things without which no man can ever hope to have an education and these two things are character and good manners.

Ah, the truth, what a thing it is! I sacrifice so much for it, with people: I forego, for truth's sake, discretion, loyalty, diplomacy, tact, polite manners, elegance, grace, poise, balance, good taste, conformity, image-role, fashionableness, polish, confidences, promises, ambition, consistency, identity, clarity, comprehensibleness, good will, hypocrisy, and lots of other things--amass sacrifice, at truth's altar. God! is truth worth it? I hope it is. It better be, in fact.

Miss Manners herself, while never rude, is given to pulling a fast pinch in the way of a handshake on those who believe in kissing on, not even the first date, but the first sighting.

I think that one not only has to make demands on the established group, but one also has to make demands on the outsider group. One has to make clear: if you want to leave, please do so. But if you want to stay here, a degree of accommodation to the Dutch outlook, Dutch manners, and a degree of identification with the Netherlands will be expected of you. There is no reason why there cannot be Dutch Turks or Dutch Moroccans. But one can expect from them a degree of identification, some change of their own social identity.

One man lies in his words, and gets a bad reputation; another in his manners, and enjoys a good one.

Indeed, Miss Manners has come to believe that the basic political division in this country is not between liberals and conservatives but between those who believe that they should have a say in the love lives of strangers and those who do not.

A parent can give a child no greater gift than beautiful manners.

Good manners make any man a pleasure to be with. Ask any woman.

Honor has to say "please" and "thank you." Manners are really important.

And now, gentlemen, like your manners, I must leave you.

When a man spends his time giving his wife criticism and advice instead of compliments, he forgets that it was not his good judgment, but his charming manners, that won her heart.

As soon as a woman begins to dress "loud," her manners and conversation partake of the same element.

It was a noteworthy lesson, even for someone who'd been fed a daily diet of italicized lessons: that people in high places, luminaries with advanced degrees in Classics and in possession of excellent manners, can disappoint you as profoundly as anyone else.

Defect in manners is usually the defect of fine perceptions. Elegance comes of no breeding, but of birth.

The 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.

It seems to me that the spirit of politeness is a certain attention in causing that, by our words and by our manners, others may be content with us and with themselves.

Good manners without sincerity are like a beautiful dead lady.

The home was a school. Farm and cabin households, though bookless save for the Family Bible and The Sacred Harp, taught the girls to spin, weave, quilt, cook, sew, and mind their manners; the boys to wield gun, ax, hammer and saw, to ride, plow, sow and reap, and to be men. Nobody need ever be bored. Amusement did not have to be bought.

I heartily wish you, in the plain home-spun style, a great number of happy new years, well employed in forming both your mind andyour manners, to be useful and agreeable to yourself, your country, and your friends.

Acceptable rules of conduct were suspended when it came to the spoon shortage. The deficit had gotten so bad that prices were all but unaffordable, and dynastic spoon succession had become a matter of considerable interest. Spoons were even postcode engraved and carried on one's person to eliminate theft, and good table manners, one of the eight pillars upon which the Collective was built, had been relaxed to allow tea to be stirred - shockingly - with the handle of a fork.

Take off all the masks, manners, fancy clothes, all the devices you use, and be the most honest person you can be with yourself. Then, whatever love you get then is real. All the false approaches, like trying to be a player, only bring false results.

For 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.

The detachment of the artist is kind of creepy. It's kind of rude, and yet really it's where art comes from. It's not the same as courage. It's closer to bad manners than to courage. If you're going to be a writer, you basically have to say, 'this is just who I am'. There's a certain indefensibility about it. It's not about loving your community and taking care of it — you're not attached to the chamber of commerce. It's a little unsafe. You have to be willing to have only four friends, not 11.

As a writer and director, I want to know what is behind the good manners and soft voice. Who is inside the silhouette?