Popular quotes about Manners! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 68
To sacrifice the principles of manners, which require compassion and respect, and bat people over the head with their ignorance of etiquette rules they cannot be expected to know is both bad manners and poor etiquette. That social climbers and twits have misused etiquette throughout history should not be used as an argument for doing away with it.
Judith Martinwhat we need in the world is manners ... I think that if, instead of preaching brotherly love, we preached good manners, we might get a little further. It sounds less righteous and more practical.
Eleanor RooseveltManners are made up of trivialities of deportment which can be easily learned if one does not happen to know them; manner is personality - the outward manifestation of one's innate character and attitude toward life.... Etiquette must, if it is to be of more than trifling use, include ethics as well as manners. Certainly what one is, is of far greater importance than what one appears to be.
Emily PostGood company requires only birth, education, and manners, and with regard to education is not very nice. Birth and good manners are essential; but a little learning is by no means a dangerous thing in good company; on the contrary, it will do very well.
Jane AustenManners aim to facilitate life, to get rid of impediments, and bring the man pure to energize. They aid our dealing and conversation, as a railway aids travelling, by getting rid of all avoidable obstructions of the road, and leaving nothing to be conquered but pure space.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThere is always a best way of doing everything, if it be to boil an egg. Manners are the happy ways of doing things.
Ralph Waldo EmersonManners 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 ChesterfieldOne 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.
Kenneth ClarkCustom governs the world; it is the tyrant of our feelings and our manners and rules the world with the hand of a despot.
Bill VaughanMore than a code of manners in war and love, Chivalry was a moral system, governing the whole of noble life.
Barbara TuchmanI know," he said in almost bored contemplation. "My manners suck. I like to chalk it up to a dissatisfying childhood." "I'd chalk it up to that narcissistic personality disorder laces with a smidgen of schizophrenia. Your mother would be proud.
Darynda JonesNo girl who is well bred, 'kind, and modest, is ever offensively plain; all real deformity means want of manners, or of heart.
John RuskinThat survival instinct, that will to live, that need to get back to life again, is more powerful than any consideration of taste, decency, politeness, manners, civility. Anything. It's such a powerful force.
Danny BoyleI think that one not only has to make demands on the established group, but one also has to make demands on the outsider group. One has to make clear: if you want to leave, please do so. But if you want to stay here, a degree of accommodation to the Dutch outlook, Dutch manners, and a degree of identification with the Netherlands will be expected of you. There is no reason why there cannot be Dutch Turks or Dutch Moroccans. But one can expect from them a degree of identification, some change of their own social identity.
Norbert EliasIt is always a practical difficulty with clubs to regulate the laws of election so as to exclude peremptorily every social nuisance. Nobody wishes bad manners. We must have loyalty and character.
Ralph Waldo EmersonTo reject wisdom because the person communicates it is uncouth and his manners are inelegant, what is it but to throw away a pine-apple, and assign for a reason the roughness of its coat?
Thomas Hartwell HorneI 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!
Georgette HeyerSome of the domestic evils of drunkenness are houses without windows, gardens without fences, fields without tillage, barns without roofs, children without clothing, principles, morals or manners.
Benjamin FranklinThe 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.
Pliny the ElderThe progress of the American Revolution has been so rapid and such the alteration of manners, the blending of characters, and the new train of ideas that almost universally prevail, that the principles which animated to the noblest exertions have been nearly annihilated.
Mercy Otis WarrenThere are few pages of history which do not demonstrate that public prayer and ritual never inoculated people against mass-madness and cruelty. What is needed is emphasis on morality and manners.
Steve AllenA 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.
John AdamsSeattle 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.
Jonathan RabanAs a writer and director, I want to know what is behind the good manners and soft voice. Who is inside the silhouette?
Federico FelliniMy heart rushes into the garden, joyfully tasting all the delights. But reason frowns, disapproving of the heart's bad manners.
RumiThere 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 EmersonI have always thought you could take the measure of a man by his sports manners - that is to say, the way in which he conducts himself on the playing field, or even over a game of chess or cards.
Graydon CarterGood manners reflect something from inside-an innate sense of consideration for others and respect for self.
Emily PostThe Indian gods are imposing, the Greek gods are not. Indeed they are not brave, not self-controlled, they have no manners, they are not gentlemen and ladies.
Gerard Manley HopkinsGenial manners are good, and power of accommodation to any circumstance, but the high prize of life, the crowning fortune of a man is to be born with a bias to some pursuit, which finds him in employment and happiness, -- whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statutes, or songs. I doubt not this was the meaning of Socrates, when he pronounced artists the only truly wise, as being actually, not apparently so.
Ralph Waldo EmersonSo if you're not Artemis Fowl, then who are you?" The boy extended a dripping hand straight up. "My name is Orion. I am so pleased to meet you at last. I am, of course, your servant." Holly shook the proferred hand, thinking that manners were lovely, but she really needed someone cunning and ruthless right now, and this kid didn't appear to be very cunning.
Eoin ColferI took the T from Logan airport to Harvard Square. I hate driving in Boston. It's the traffic that drives me spare, and the absolutely terrible manners of the motorists. Other New Englanders refer to Massachusetts drivers as "Massholes.
Geraldine BrooksThere are persons whose only merit consists in saying and doing stupid things at the right time, and who ruin all if they change their manners.
Francois de La RochefoucauldOur manners have been corrupted by communication with the saints. Our hymn-books resound with a melodious cursing of God and enduring Him forever. One would say that even the prophets and redeemers had rather consoled the fears than confirmed the hopes of man. There is nowhere recorded a simple and irrepressible satisfaction with the gift of life, any memorable praise of God.
Henry David ThoreauEvery man depends on the quantity of sense, wit, or good manners he brings into society for the reception he meets with in it.
William HazlittSpeech, tennis, music, skiing, manners, love- you try them waking and perhaps balk at the jump, and then you're over. You've caught the rhythm of them once and for all, in your sleep at night. The city, of course, can wreck it. So much insomnia. So many rhythms collide. The salesgirl, the landlord, the guests, the bystanders, sixteen varieties of social circumstance in a day. Everyone has the power to call your whole life into question here. Too many people have access to your state of mind. Some people are indifferent to dislike, even relish it. Hardly anyone I know.
Renata AdlerHere was an occasion, she thought, for indulging in that deliberate rudeness which only persons with habitually good manners have the right to commit.
Stella Gibbons