Quotes About Manners

This is another thing which I really like investigating in my novels: what is it that makes an intimate society, that makes a society in which moral concern for others will be possible? Part of that I think are manners and ritual. We tried to get rid of manners, we tried to abolish manners in the '60s. Manners were very, very old-fashioned and un-cool. And of course we didn't realise that manners are the building blocks of proper moral relationships between people.

It's interesting to observe that almost all truly worthy men have simple manners, and that simple manners are almost always taken as a sign of little worth

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.

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.

One reason that the task of inventing manners is so difficult is that etiquette is folk custom, and people have emotional ties to the forms of their youth. That is why there is such hostility between generations in times of rapid change; their manners being different, each feels affronted by the other, taking even the most surface choices for challenges.

Let not men then in the pride of power, use the same arguments that tyrannic kings and venal ministers have used, and fallaciously assert that women ought to be subjected because she has always been so.... It is time to effect a revolution in female manners - time to restore to them their lost dignity.... It is time to separate unchangeable morals from local manners.

Evil communication corrupts good manners. I hope to live to hear that good communication corrects bad manners.

There is a nobility in the world of manners.

If an armed nation were a polite nation, America would be paradise. We have more than 200 million guns in private owernship here. But our manners are not getting better.

We evolved the ability to communicate disappointment to teach those around us good manners

Tobacco smoke is the one element in which, by our European manners, men can sit silent together without embarrassment, and where no man is bound to speak one word more than he has actually and veritably got to say. Nay, rather every man is admonished and enjoined by the laws of honor, and even of personal ease, to stop short of that point; and at all events to hold his peace and take to his pipe again the instant he has spoken his meaning, if he chance to have any.

Manners must adorn knowledge and smooth its way in the world, without them it is like a great rough diamond, very well in a closet by way of curiosity, and also for its intrinsic value; but most prized when polished.

It is good manners, not rank, wealth, or beauty, that constitute the real lay.

Associate with well-mannered persons and your manners will improve. Run around with decent folk and your own decent instincts will be strengthened.

I was brought up in a way that when you're at a dinner party, you don't grab a chip unless it's been offered to everyone else. It's the manners of being brought up by English parents.

But my father was also the one who told me I needed to clean up my mouth or I'd never find a man. What's very important to him is manners. Show up on time. Always send thank-you letters. He is one of the more thoughtful humans I've ever met. He's a great man and a very good dad.

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

The 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.

How much we forgive to those who yield us the rare spectacle of heroic manners! We will pardon them the want of books, or arts, and even of gentler virtues. How tenaciously we remember them!

The mountebank told them that God was surely trying to kill them, possibly because He was through with them, and that they should have the good manners to die. This, as you can see, they did.

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.

There are still to be found visionary or designing men, who stand ready to advocate the paradox of perpetual peace between the states, though dismembered and alienated from each other.... The genius of republics, say they, is pacific; the spirit of commerce has a tendency to soften the manners of men, and to extinguish those inflammable humours which have so often kindled into wars. Commercial republics, like ours, will never be disposed to waste themselves in ruinous contentions with each other. They will be governed by mutual interest, and will cultivate a spirit of mutual amity and concord.

I always use my clients' products. This is not toady-ism, but elementary good manners.

It is a mistake that there is no bath that will cure people's manners, but drowning would help.

The different political systems, religions and social habits demonstrate that the same brain can be tuned in different manners. But the tuning capacity is limited. We can never feel as a jaguar, for example. We can imagine a man who believes or who intends to be a jaguar, but to intend is not the same as to be. We can have other ideologies, but we will continue restricted by the nature of our brain and of our body.

I liked that young man, did not you? There was something particularly pleasing about his manners, which I thought very easy and frank. He has an air of honest manliness, too, which, in these days of fribbles and counter-coxcombs, I own I find refreshing!

The best manners are stained by haughtiness.

I was raised right — I talk about people behind their backs. It's called manners.

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

The great business of man is to improve his mind, and govern his manners; all other projects and pursuits, whether in our power to compass or not, are only amusements.

I 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.

Cottages have them (falsehood and dissimulation) as well as courts, only with worse manners.

Shame is the proper reaction when one has purposefully violated the accepted behavior of society. Inflicting it is etiquette's response when its rules are disobeyed. The law has all kinds of nasty ways of retaliating when it is disregarded, but etiquette has only a sense of social shame to deter people from treating others in ways they know are wrong. So naturally Miss Manners wants to maintain the sense of shame. Some forms of discomfort are fully justified, and the person who feels shame ought to be dealing with removing its causes rather than seeking to relieve the symptoms.

What once were vices are manners now.

We should ask God to help us toward manners. Inner gifts do not find their way to creatures without just respect.

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

Scientists have odious manners, except when you prop up their theory; then you can borrow money off them.

I was always fond of visiting new scenes, and observing strange characters and manners. Even when a mere child I began my travels, and made many tours of discovery into foreign parts and unknown regions of my native city, to the frequent alarm of my parents, and the emolument of the town-crier.

I am as fond of colorful language as anyone, but I try not to inflict it upon strangers. I suspect many people sense they should have better manners, and need only a nudge. In high school, I was addressed for the first time in my life as "Mister Ebert" by Stanley Hynes, an English teacher, and his formality transformed his classroom into a place where a certain courtliness prevailed.

There is no rest for the person who has envy, and there is no love for the person who has bad manners.

Good manners and bad breath will get you nowhere.

My family would soon tell me if I was getting above my station. I love what I do, I love my job, but I also like to go home and lead a normal life. ... I like to go to the gym, go shopping and do normal things, and it's totally unnecessary to not value people working around you. It's down to good manners, really.

A constitution founded on these principles introduces knowledge among the people, and inspires them with a conscious dignity becoming freemen; a general emulation takes place, which causes good humor, sociability, good manners, and good morals to be general. That elevation of sentiment inspired by such a government, makes the common people brave and enterprising. That ambition which is inspired by it makes them sober, industrious, and frugal.

I believe the Bible to be the written Word of God and to contain in it the whole rule of faith and manners.

The difference of language, dress, and manners . . . severs and alienates the nations of the globe.

Heroes come in all sizes, and you don't have to be a giant hero. You can be a very small hero. It's just as important to understand that accepting self-responsibi lity for the things you do, having good manners, caring about other people-these are heroic acts. Everybody has the choice of being a hero or not being a hero every day of their lives.

The conduct and manners of women, in fact, evidently prove that their minds are not in a healthy state; for, like the flowers which are planted in too rich a soil, strenght state; usefulness are sacrificed to beauty; and the flaunting leaves, after having pleased a fastidious eye, fade, disregarded on the stalk, long before the season when they ought to have arrived at maturity.

Spiritual strength and passion, when accompanied by bad manners, only provoke loathing.