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.

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

Our manners, our civilization, and all the good things connected with manners and civilization, have, in this European world of ours, depended for ages upon two principles: I mean the spirit of a gentleman, and the spirit of religion.

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.

Good manners are appreciated as much as bad manners are abhorred.

Morals refine manners, as manners refine morals.

Manners are made up of trivialities of deportment which can be easily learned if one does not happen to know them.

There is a nobility in the world of manners.

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.

Human beings everywhere in the world are affected by the global media now. Still, what I have noticed in the east Asia, in the indigenous world, Alaska in particular, and in back country farm and ranch country, is a higher sense of etiquette, and more respectful manners. Urban middle class cosmopolitan world peoples of all races have become speedy and rude. This is a pretty big generalization though.

Good manners can render even virtue tolerable.

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

Golf in the interest of good health and good manners. It promotes self-restraint and affords a chance to play the man and act the gentleman.

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.

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.

The etiquette of intimacy is very different from the etiquette of formality, but manners are not just something to show off to the outside world. If you offend the head waiter, you can always go to another restaurant. If you offend the person you live with, it's very cumbersome to switch to a different family.

I had TB as a child. So I was put to doing things like drawing and reading. And I was raised in a family where manners were important. Maybe that's why I seem so refined.

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.

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.

Manners are the basic building blocks of civil society.

We're living in what I like to call the 'Thank You Economy,' because only the companies that can figure out how to mind their manners in a very old-fashioned way - and do it authentically - are going to have a prayer of competing.

Let a man use great reverence and manners to himself.

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.

A close family member once offered his opinion that I exhibit the phone manners of a goat, then promptly withdrew the charge - out of fairness to goats.

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.

The aristocrat, when he wants to, has very good manners. The Scottish upper classes, in particular, have that shell-shocked look that probably comes from banging their heads on low beams leaping to their feet whenever a woman comes into the room. Aristocrats are also deeply male chauvinist, and ... on the whole they tend to be reactionary.

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

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

Respect for ourselves guides our morals, respect for others guides our manners.

Men rarely if ever dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.

[Magnus] reminded himself of his manners, and bowed. "Charmed," he said. "Or whatever effect would please you best, I'm sure.

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.

Grace is in garments, in movements, in manners; beauty in the nude, and in forms. This is true of bodies; but when we speak of feelings, beauty is in their spirituality, and grace in their moderation.

Teach a child good manners during babyhood.

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

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.

Manners are the hypocrisy of a nation.

Good manners - the longer I live the more convinced I am of it - are a priceless insurance against failure and loneliness. And anyone can have them.

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.

Good manners are never passé.

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.

Manners are the ornament of action.

Out of the fictitious book I get the expression of the life, of the times, of the manners, of the merriment, of the dress, the pleasure, the laughter, the ridicules of society. The old times live again. Can the heaviest historian do more for me?

Increasingly I think of myself as some strange and solitary conductor, introduced to a group of very dynamic musicians who happen to be my characters, and I have no idea how they are going to play together, and I have certainly no idea how I am going to put manners on them.

It is perfectly right for a gentleman to say "ladies and gentlemen," but a lady should say, "gentlemen and ladies." You mention your friend's name before you do your own. I always feel like rebuking any woman who says, "ladies and gentlemen." It is a lack of good manners.

Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters.