Manners Quotes

There may be an excess of cultivation as well as of anything else, until civilization becomes pathetic. A highly cultivated man,--all whose bones can be bent! whose heaven-born virtues are but good manners!

It is a mistake that there is no bath that will cure people's manners, but drowning would help.

A true gentleman is one who is never intentionally rude.

A vain man can never be altogether rude. Desirous as he is of pleasing, he fashions his manners after those of others.

We sometimes meet an original gentleman, who, if manners had not existed, would have invented them.

I have heard that stiff people lose something of their awkwardness under high ceilings, and in spacious halls. I think, sculptureand painting have an effect to teach us manners, and abolish hurry.

Manners are the hypocrisy of a nation.

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.

Good 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.

Manners make the fortune of the ambitious youth.

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

The ignorant are afraid to betray surprise or admiration...they think it ill manners.

My dear fellow, the truth isn’t quite the sort of thing one tells to a nice, sweet, refined girl. What extraordinary ideas you have about the way to behave to a woman!

Good manners disappear in proportion as the influence of a Court and an exclusive aristocracy lessens; this decrease can be plainly observed from decade to decade by those who have an eye for public behavior, which grows visibly.

The highest perfection of politeness is only a beautiful edifice, built, from the base to the dome, of ungraceful and gilded forms of charitable and unselfish lying.

Pride, ill nature, and want of sense, are the three great sources of ill manners.

We hear a great deal about the rudeness of the rising generation. I am an oldster myself and might be expected to take the oldsters' side, but in fact I have been far more impressed by the bad manners of parents to children than by those of children to parents.

Our manners have been corrupted by communication with the saints.

Where there are no women there are no good manners

Nothing is so great an example of bad manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none; If you flatter only one or two, you offend the rest.

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.

Bad manners make a journalist.

Manners form the great charm of women.

Is there no respect of place, persons, nor time in you?

Well-mannered children could be conceived if the parents were well-mannered.

Tis a rule of manners to avoid exaggeration.

Good breeding, a union of kindness and independence.

A gentleman is a man who can play the banjo, but doesn't.

There is one topic peremptorily forbidden to all well-bred, to all rational mortals, namely, their distempers.

There is a politeness of the heart; this is closely allied to love.

The person who screams, or uses the superlative degree, or converses with heat puts whole drawing-rooms to flight. If you wish to be loved, love measure.

Clothes and manners do not make the man; but when he is made, they greatly improve his appearance.

The great secret...is not having bad manners or good manners...but having the same manner for all human souls.

what 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.

We don't bother much about dress and manners in England, because as a nation we don't dress well and we've no manners.

Spiritual strength and passion, when accompanied by bad manners, only provoke loathing.

The most congenial social occasions are those ruled by cheerful deference of each for all.

The maxim of courts is that manner is power.

There is hardly any personal defect... which an agreeable manner might not gradually reconcile one to.

Civilization has taught us to eat with a fork, but even now if nobody is around we use our fingers.

An agreeable manner may set off handsome features, but can never alter plain ones.

Do you mind if I don't smoke?

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.

The society of women is the element of good manners.

How much we forgive to those who yield us the rare spectacle of heroic manners! We will pardon them the want of books, or arts, and even of gentler virtues. How tenaciously we remember them!

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.

Good manners sometimes means simply putting up with other people's bad manners.

When the man is at home, his standing in society is well known and quietly taken; but when he is abroad, it is problematical, and is dependent on the success of his manners.

Society, civilized society at least, is never very ready to believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating. It feels instinctively that manners are of more importance than morals, and, in its opinion, the highest respectability is of much less value than the possession of a good chef.

A gentleman makes no noise; a lady is serene.

Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each once a stroke of genius or of love, now repeated and hardened into usage.

Well, I can't eat muffins in an agitated manner. The butter would probably get on my cuffs.

When a gentlemen is disposed to swear, it is not for any standers-by to curtail his oaths.

No real gentleman will tell the naked truth in the presence of ladies.

There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us. 'Tis good to give a stranger a meal, or a night's lodging. 'Tis better to be hospitable to his good meaning and thought, and give courage to a companion. We must be as courteous to a man as we are to a picture, which we are willing to give the advantage of a good light.

Each religious sect has its own physiognomy. The Methodists have acquired a face; the Quakers, a face; the nuns, a face. An Englishman will pick out a dissenter by his manners.

It is absurd to say that there are neither ruins nor curiosities in America when they have their mothers and their manners.

A man's manners are a mirror in which he shows his portrait.

Manners are very communicable: men catch them from each other.

Their manners are more gentle, kind, than of Our human generation you shall find.