Quotes About Manners

We are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind; but we are not justified in enforcing good manners, for good manners always mean our own 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.

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.

A dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot.

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.

Those that are good manners at the court are as ridiculous in the country, as the behavior of the country is most mockable at the court.

I would advise him who wishes to imitate well, to look closely into life and manners, and thereby to learn to express them with truth.

Good manners are a sign of strength.

Plenty is the original cause of many of our needs; and even the poverty, which is so frequent and distressful in civilized nations, proceeds often from that change of manners which opulence has produced. Nature makes us poor only when we want necessaries; but custom gives the name of poverty to the want of superfluities.

Beware of a man with 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.

Manners are like primary colors, there are certain rules and once you have these you merely mix, i.e., adapt, them to meet changing situations.

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.

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

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.

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.

Nothing is so great an instance of ill-manners as flattery.

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.

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.

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.

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.

That alone can be called true refinement which elevates the soul of man, purifying the manners by improving the intellect.

Insofar as he'd formed any opinion of her, it was that she suffered from misplaced gentility and the mistaken belief that etiquette meant good breeding. She mistook mannerisms for manners.

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.

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.

Private problems don't constitute an excuse for bad manners.

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

In marriage there are no manners to keep up, and beneath the wildest accusations no real criticism. Each is familiar with that ancient child in the other who may erupt again. We are not ridiculous to ourselves. We are ageless. That is the luxury of the wedding ring.

The 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.

It was good, too, to remember how hard a lot of people had to work to keep a kingdom running well, and that it was simply good manners to let them know, from time to time, how valued they were.

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.

The larger the German body, the smaller the German bathing suit and the louder the German voice issuing German demands and German orders to everybody who doesn't speak German. For this, and several other reasons, Germany is known as 'the land where Israelis learned their manners'.

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.

Without modesty, woman is devoid of beauty and culture. Humility, purity of thought and manners, meekness, surrender to high ideals, sensitivity, sweetness of temper - the peculiar blend of all these qualities is modesty. It is the most invaluable of all jewels for women.

The usual sniggering examples of animal behaviour were brought in to explain cheating. Funny how the behaviour of shrews and gibbons is never used to explain table manners or road safety or gardening, only sex. Anyway, it was bad Darwinism. Taking the example of a monkey and applying it to yourself misses the point that animal behaviour is made for the benefit of the species, not as an excuse for the individual. Being incapable of sustaining a stable pair and supporting children is really not in the interests of our species. Neither is it really in the best interests of the philanderer.

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.

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.

If we expect to inherit the blessings of our Fathers, we should return a little more to their primitive Simplicity of Manners.

Good 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.

No civilization would ever have been possible without a framework of stability, to provide the wherein for the flux of change. Foremost among the stabilizing factors, more enduring than customs, manners and traditions, are the legal systems that regulate our life in the world and our daily affairs with each other.

The expressive word "quiet" defines the dress, manners, bow, and even physiognomy of every true denizen of St. James and Bond street.

A farce is that in poetry which grotesque (caricature) is in painting. The persons and actions of a farce are all unnatural, and the manners false, that is, inconsistent with the characters of mankind; and grotesque painting is the just resemblance of this.

Solitude is an excellent laboratory in which to observe the extent to which manners and habits are conditioned by others.

Men sometimes have to leave their ladies alone, and ladies are not responsible for the bad manners of fools.