Popular quotes about Manners! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 60
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.
Gilbert K. ChestertonIt 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.
Mary WollstonecraftThe great secret...is not having bad manners or good manners...but having the same manner for all human souls.
George Bernard ShawArchitecture, like dress, is an exercise in good manners, and good manners involve the habit of skillful insincerity - the habit of saying "good morning" to those whose mornings you would rather blight, and of passing the butter to those you would rather starve.
Roger ScrutonTo be always thinking about your manners is not the way to make them good; the very perfection of manners is not to think about yourself.
Richard WhatelyThe mobs of the great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body. It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution.
Thomas JeffersonClothes and manners do not make the man; but when he is made, they greatly improve his appearance.
Henry Ward BeecherManners 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.
Lord ChesterfieldThe 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.
Edward GibbonNot a superman who stumbles, but an ape with makeshift manners in whose nickel-plated jungles roam mechanical bananas.
William TennPublic 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.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThere 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.
Nicholas Murray ButlerThe 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.
Sergey Nechayev-Mikhail?...Try making suggestions next time, or just plain asking. You go do whatever it is you're doing, and I'll go search you extensive library for a book on manners. -You will not find it. -Why am I not surprised?
Christine FeehanThe English love for privacy is proverbial, and has not been exaggerated. A stranger who strikes up a conversation is looked upon with suspicion - unless he happens to be an American, when his ignorance of good manners is indulged.
Henry Steele CommagerThe New York waiter ... knows more than you do about everything. He disapproves of your taste in food and clothing, your gauche manners, your miserliness, and sometimes, it seems, of your very existence, which he tries to ignore.
Kate SimonThe 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.
Rodolfo LlinasI am glad that I am not raising kids today. And Iโm rather pessimistic that my grandchildren will enjoy the great society that Iโve enjoyed in my lifetime. I really think itโs coarsened. Itโs coarsened in so many ways. One of the things that upsets me about modern society is the coarseness of manners. You canโt go to a movie โ or watch a television show for that matter โ without hearing the constant use of the F-word โ including, you know, ladies using it. People that I know donโt talk like that!
Antonin ScaliaSavages we call them, because their manners differ from ours, which we think the perfection of civility; they think the same of theirs.
Benjamin FranklinGood manners can replace morals. It may be years before anyone knows if what you are doing is right. But if what you are doing is nice, it will be immediately evident.
P. J. O'RourkeBad art was as good as good art. Grammar and spelling were no longer important. To be clean was no better than to be filthy. Good manners were no better than bad. Family life was derided as an outdated bourgeois concept. Criminals deserved as much sympathy as their victims. Many homes and classrooms became disorderly - if there was neither right nor wrong there could be no basis for punishment or reward. Violence and soft pornography became accepted in the media. Thus was sown the wind, and we are now reaping the whirlwind.
Norman TebbitMoney doesn't mean that you are educated, have manners, class or even have good hygiene. All it means is . . . you have money!
Tina LouiseIt is said that when manners are licentious, a revolution is always near: the virtue of woman being the main girth and bandage ofsociety; because a man will not lay up an estate for children any longer than whilst he believes them to be his own.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe 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.
Edward GibbonIn 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.
Ralph Waldo EmersonWhat? Was he raised in a barn? Didnโt he ever learn how to close a door? Amateur shape-shiftersโฆNo manners whatsoever.โ โ Sasha โDo we need to get you a Midol before we go?โ โ Sundown โIโm not that easy to soothe, cowboy. My peeves are on a cellular level.โ โ Sasha
Sherrilyn KenyonI find it upsetting to see the erosion of manners. It's very scary. Where are the 'pleases' and 'thank yous?'
Julian LennonThe basis of good manners is self-reliance. Necessity is the law of all who are not self-possessed.
Ralph Waldo EmersonTV directors just aren't sexy for some reason, Although, you know, Rob and Kim [Manners] are very sexy in my eyes.
David DuchovnyThere is some reason to believe that when a man does not write his poetry it escapes by other vents through him, instead of the one vent of writing; clings to his form and manners, whilst poets have often nothing poetical about them except their verses.
Ralph Waldo EmersonNo 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.
Hannah ArendtShe had a womanly instinct that clothes possess an influence more powerful over many than the worth of character or the magic of manners.
Louisa May AlcottIn any regime there is always something that one should agree with, and in Shades there are quite a few notions that, on the face of it, seem like a good thing - the strict adherence to good manners, the fact that learning a musical instrument is compulsory, as is dancing, performing musicals and an hour's Useful Work every day in order to properly discharge your duty to society. But a cage is still a cage, irrespective of the nature of its bars.
Jasper FfordeMiss Manners does not mind explaining the finer points of gracious living, but she feels that anyone without the sense to pick up a potato chip and stuff it in their face should probably not be running around loose on the streets.
Judith Martin