Quotes About Manners

I make a distinction between manners and etiquette - manners as the principles, which are eternal and universal, etiquette as the particular rules which are arbitrary and different in different times, different situations, different cultures.

Working- and Middle-class families sat down at the dinner table every night - the shared meal was the touchstone of good manners. Indeed, that dinner table was the one time when we were all together, every day: parents, grandparents, children, siblings. Rudeness between siblings, or a failure to observe the etiquette of passing dishes to one another, accompanied by "please" and "thank you," was the training ground of behavior, the place where manners began.

Well, that’s just a little hard, since I can’t even talk her into sparing your life, huh? You haven’t exactly endeared yourself to her. (Kat) Oh, excuse my utter lack of manners there. Should we call Mommy dearest and invite her over for tea? I promise to be on my best manners when I choke the life out of her. (Sin)

Comedies of manners swiftly become obsolete when there are no longer any manners.

We don't bother much about dress and manners in England, because as a nation we don't dress well and we've no manners.

Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others. If you have that awareness, you have good manners, no matter what fork you use.

Society is the stage on which manners are shown; novels are the literature. Novels are the journal or record of manners; and the new importance of these books derives from the fact, that the novelist begins to penetrate the surface, and treat this part of life more worthily.

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

... so long as woman labors to second man's endeavors and exalt his sex above her own, her virtues pass unquestioned; but when shedares to demand rights and privileges for herself, her motives, manners, dress, personal appearance, and character are subjects for ridicule and detraction.

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a line in Jonathan Franzen's essay "Perchance to Dream" about how "the rich lateral dramas of local manners have been replaced by a single vertical drama, that of commercial generality."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

In a state therefore of great equality and virtue, where pure and simple manners prevailed, the increase of the human species would evidently be much greater than any increase that has been hitherto known.

A gentleman doesn't have one set of manners for the house of a poor man and another for the house of someone with an income incomparable to his own.

Manners aim to facilitate life, to get rid of impediments, and bring the man pure to energize. They aid our dealing and conversation, as a railway aids travelling, by getting rid of all avoidable obstructions of the road, and leaving nothing to be conquered but pure space.

Manners are one of the greatest engines of influence ever given to man.

Nothing is so great an example of bad manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none; If you flatter only one or two, you offend the rest.

The Greeks put us to shame not only by their simplicity, which is foreign to our age; they are at the same time our rivals, nay, frequently our models, in those very points of superiority from which we seek comfort when regretting the unnatural character of our manners. We see that remarkable people uniting at once fullness of form and fullness of substance, both philosophising and creating, both tender and energetic, uniting a youthful fancy to the virility of reason in a glorious humanity.

The company of women of fashion will improve your manners, though not your understanding; and that complaisance and politeness, which are so useful in men's company, can only be acquired in women's.

Not a superman who stumbles, but an ape with makeshift manners in whose nickel-plated jungles roam mechanical bananas.

Good manners can render even virtue tolerable.

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

Oh Tigger, where are your manners?" "I don’t know, but I bet they’re having more fun than I am.

Public opinion, I am sorry to say, will bear a great deal of nonsense. There is scarcely any absurdity so gross, whether in religion, politics, science or manners, which it will not bear.

In my limited experience, shows are like children. You can teach them manners and dress them in little sailor suits, but in the end, they're going to be who they're going to be.

When one wants to change manners and customs, one should not do so by changing the laws.

Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others.

When Jennie, mother of Winston Churchill invited playwright George Bernard Shaw to lunch, he telegraphed: "Certainly not. What have I done to provoke such an attack on my well-known habits?" She replied, "Know nothing of your habits; hope they are better than your manners."

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

In 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.

In a culture, manners are the lubrication that ease the frictions of social contacts.

The talent of a meat packer, the morals of a money changer, and the manners of an undertaker.

In comparing these two writers, he [Samuel Johnson] used this expression: "that there was as great a difference between them as between a man who knew how a watch was made, and a man who could tell the hour by looking on the dial-plate." This was a short and a figurative statement of his distinction between drawing characters of nature and characters only of manners, but I cannot help being of opinion, that the neat watches of Fielding are as well constructed as the large clocks of Richardson, and that his dial plates are brighter.

Modesty is bred of self-reverence. Fine manners are the mantle of fair minds.

My manners also came from when I was in college and began participating in critiques. You have to speak with someone respectfully about their work and be honest and open, without hurting them.

Find, if you can, in what you cannot change. Manners with fortunes, humours turn with climes, Tenets with books, and principles with times.

There is reason in the distinction of civil and uncivil. The manners are sometimes so rough a rind that we doubt whether they cover any core or sap-wood at all.

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

I sincerely wish you may find it convenient to come here. the pleasure of the trip will be less than you expect, but the utility greater. it will make you adore your own country, it's soil, it's climate, it's equality, liberty, laws, people & manners. my god! how little do my countrymen know.

Learning is nothing without cultivated manners, but when the two are combined in a woman, you have one of the most exquisite products of civilization.

Saying thank you is more than good manners. It is good spirituality.

A 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.

I read the paper every day. There are certain subjects that will catch my attention. I have an entire file of articles. Of course I make up the story, especially since most criminals are not very smart and fictional crime must be clever. I have to make sure the story I am telling is interesting and realistic. In this book I went on line and found out the manners of codes. I thought it interesting to use them as a jumping off point.

Words can be worrisome, poeple complex, motives and manners unclear, grant her the wisdom to choose her path right, free from unkindness and fear.

Teach a child good manners during babyhood.

Political correctness is just tyranny with manners. I wish for you the courage to be unpopular. Popularity is history's pocket change. Courage is history's true currency.

You lose your manners when you're poor.

Some are able and humane men and some are low-grade individuals with the morals of a goat, the artistic integrity of a slot machine, and the manners of a floorwalker with delusions of grandeur.

I find it upsetting to see the erosion of manners. It's very scary. Where are the 'pleases' and 'thank yous?'

History is about life. It's awful when the life is squeezed out of it and there's no flavor left, no uncertainties, no horsing around. It always disturbed me how many biographers never gave their subjects a chance to eat. You can tell a lot about people by how they eat, what they eat, and what kind of table manners they have.