Quotes About Manners

Yes, but also one of the problems for a novelist in Ireland is the fact that there are no formal manners. I mean some people have beautiful manners but there's no kind of agreed form of manners.

The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or any other particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls: in short, behaving as if you were in Heaven, where there are no thirdclass carriages, and one soul is as good as another.

GENTLE READER: You, sir, are an anarchist, and Miss Manners is frightened to have anything to do with you. It is true that questioning the table manners of others is rude. But to overthrow the accepted conventions of society, on the flimsy grounds that you have found them silly, inefficient and discomforting, is a dangerous step toward destroying civilization.

Manners are manners. Jimmy Connors and Ilie Nastase have no respect. I don't want my kid seeing Nastase play. The demeanor you show on the court is important to tennis.... Maybe we (yesterday's stars) were too stereotyped. But we were told to behave or they'd take our racket away.

Morals refine manners, as manners refine morals.

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.

A great reserve and severity of manners are necessary for the command of those who are older than ourselves.

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.

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.

I admire people with gentle manners who treat other people as human beings.

When every benefit received is a right, there is no place for good manners, let alone for gratitude.

We are citizens of an age, as well as of a State; and if it is held to be unseemly, or even inadmissible, for a man to cut himself off from the customs and manners of the circle in which he lives, why should it be less of a duty, in the choice of his activity, to submit his decision to the needs and the taste of his century?

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.

If I say to my daughter, "Go say `hi' to Aunt Gertrude," there is a reason there. I'm teaching her manners. I think the idea that she'll say `hi' to Aunt Gertrude only if she wants to is the biggest crock of silliness I've ever heard. Yet I meet people everyday who were clearly brought up to think that if they didn't want to say "hi" to Aunt Gertrude, that was fine.

The simple circumstantial narrative (did such a narrative exist) of the ruin of a single town, of the misfortunes of a single family, might exhibit an interesting and instructive picture of human manners; but the tedious repetition of vague and declamatory complaints would fatigue the attention of the most patient reader.

Bonnie and Clyde became not just a big hit, but a movie that went through young audiences like a first slug of Scotch. It affected clothes, talk, manners. Though set in the thirties it had the feeling of 1966, the most dangerous moment in American young people remembered.

One 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.

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.

There is no excuse for bad manners, except fast reflexes.

Good manners can render even virtue tolerable.

You 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.

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

Air and manners are more expressive than words.

The Revolutionist is a doomed man. He has no private interests, no affairs, sentiments, ties, property nor even a name of his own. His entire being is devoured by one purpose, one thought, one passion - the revolution. Heart and soul, not merely by word but by deed, he has severed every link with the social order and with the entire civilized world; with the laws, good manners, conventions, and morality of that world. He is its merciless enemy and continues to inhabit it with only one purpose - to destroy it.

Writers of novels and romance in general bring a double loss to their readers; robbing them of their time and money; representing men, manners, and things, that never have been, or are likely to be.

They didn't know why these things were funny. Sometimes you laugh because you've got no more room for crying. Sometimes you laugh because table manners on a beach are funny. And sometimes you laugh because you're alive, when you really shouldn't be.

It is better not to try people, not to force them to desperation. Make them prosper; out of superfluidity, they will be generous. Full bellies breed gentle manners. The pinch of famine makes monsters.

Hollywood wants to make women so perfect. Perfect hair. Perfect job. Perfect manners... I know some of the most beautiful women, and they are so weird. That's what makes them funny and captivating.

Faithfulness to the truth of history involves far more than a research, however patient and scrupulous, into special facts. Such facts may be detailed with the most minute exactness, and yet the narrative, taken as a whole, may be unmeaning or untrue. The narrator must seek to imbue himself with the life and spirit of the time. He must study events in their bearings near and remote; in the character, habits, and manners of those who took part in them. He must himself be, as it were, a sharer or a spectator of the action he describes.

Manners, really good ones, make it possible to live with almost anyone, gracefully and pleasantly.

I seek constantly to improve my manners and graces, for they are the sugar to which all are attracted.

When Jo's conservative sister Meg says she must turn up her hair now that she is a "young lady," Jo shouts, "I'm not! and if turning up my hair makes me one, I'll wear it in two tails till I'm twenty.... I hate to think I've got to grow up, and be Miss March, and wear long gowns, and look as prim as a China aster! It's bad enough to be a girl anyway, when I like boys' games and work and manners! I can't get over my disappointment in not being a boy; and it's worse than ever now, for I'm dying to go and fight with Papa, and I can only stay at home and knit, like a poky old woman.

Propriety of manners, and consideration for others, are the two main characteristics of a gentleman.

If short hair and good manners won football games, Army and Navy would play for the national championship every year.

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

I believe very firmly that dash cams and body cams should be instituted for every single police officer in this country. Admit it, isn't it true that you behave differently when people are watching you? You chew with your mouth closed and you mind your table manners because people are watching. Cops are no different. Dash cams and body cams should be standard operating procedure.

Justice is a moral virtue, merely because it has that tendency to the good of mankind, and indeed is nothing but an artificial invention to that purpose. The same may be said of allegiance, of the laws of nations, of modesty, and of good manners. All these are mere human contrivances for the interest of society.

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.

The American war is over; but this far from being the case with the American revolution. On the contrary, nothing but the first act of the drama is closed. It remains yet to establish and perfect our new forms of government, and to prepare the principles, morals, and manners of our citizens for these forms of government after they are established and brought to perfection.

Of Manners gentle, of Affections mild; In Wit a man; Simplicity, a child.

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.

Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt.

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.

Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each one a stroke of genius or of love, now repeated and hardened into usage, they form at last a rich varnish, with which the routine of life is washed, and its details adorned. If they are superficial, so are the dew-drops which give such a depth to the morning meadows.

In dreams we are true poets; we create the persons of the drama; we give them appropriate figures faces, costumes; they are perfect in their organs, attitudes, manners; moreover they speak after their own characters, not ours; and we listen with surprise to what they say.

Promptitude is not only a duty, but is also a part of good manners; it is favorable to fortune, reputation, influence, and usefulness; a little attention and energy will form the habit, so as to make it easy and delightful.

Seattle 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.

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