Manners Quotes

The basis of good manners is self-reliance.

If thou wouldst hear what seemly is and fit, inquire of noble woman; they can tell, who in life's common usage hold their place by graceful deed and aptly chosen word.

Be as polite to the custodian as you are to the chairman of the board.

The whole of heraldry and of chivalry is in courtesy. A man of fine manners shall pronounce your name with all the ornament that titles of nobility could ever add.

Polite Conversation Why, everyone one as they like; as the good woman said when she kissed her cow.

Politeness [is] a sign of dignity, not subservience.

Defect in manners is usually the defect of fine perceptions. Men are too coarsely made for the delicacy of beautiful carriage and customs. It is not quite sufficient to good breeding, a union of kindness and independence.

Fine manners need the support of fine manners in others.

As youngsters, my mother taught her children that while we might not be the smartest people around, we could be courteous, polite and considerate of others.

Young people nowadays love luxury; they have bad manners and contempt for authority. They show disrespect for old people... contradict their parents, talk constantly in front of company, gobble their food and tyrannize their teachers.

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

A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally.

Pride, ill nature, and want of sense are the three great sources of ill manners; without some one of these defects, no man will behave himself ill for want of experience, or what, in the language of fools, is called knowing the world.

Manners have been somewhat cynically defined to be a contrivance of wise men to keep fools at a distance. Fashion is shrewd to detect those who do not belong to her train, and seldom wastes her attentions. Society is very swift in its instincts, and if you do not belong to it, resists and sneers at you, or quietly drops you.

Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.

A yawn may not be polite, but at least it is an honest opinion.

Usually speaking, the worst-bred person in company is a young traveller just returned from abroad.

Sculpture and painting have the effect of teaching us manners and abolishing hurry.

To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered.

Manners require time, and nothing is more vulgar than haste.

The first point of courtesy must always be truth.

A man can suffocate on courtesy.

Don't be so concerned with your rights that you forget your manners.

Let a man behave in his own house as a guest.

The basis of good manners is self-reliance. Necessity is the law of all who are not self-possessed.

Fit for the mountains and the barbarous caves, where manners ne'er were preached.

Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest people uneasy is the best bred in the room.

Manners are the happy ways of doing things.

it is a shocking trick for a young person to be always lolling upon a sofa.

To the real artist in humanity, what are called bad manners are often the most picturesque and significant of all.

There is nothing settled in manners, but the laws of behavior yield to the energy of the individual.

There is always a best way of doing everything, if it be to boil an egg. Manners are the happy ways of doing things.

Am I to understand,' said Reepicheep to Lucy after a long stare at Eustace, 'That this singularly discourteous person is under your Majesty's protection? Because, if not--

Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy, is the best bred man in company.

What times! What manners!

Good heavens, I suppose a man may eat his own muffins in his own garden." "But you have just said it was perfectly heartless to eat muffins!" "I said it was perfectly heartless of YOU under the circumstances. That is a very different thing." "That may be, but the muffins are the same!

I have no pretensions whatever to that kind of elegance which consists in tormenting a respectable man.

Mind your P's and Q's.

There is a courtesy of the heart; it is allied to love. From its springs the purest courtesy in the outward behavior.

A man is but a little thing in the midst of the objects of nature, yet, by the moral quality radiating from his countenance, he may abolish all considerations of magnitude, and in his manners equal the majesty of the world.

It 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.

You treat a lady like a dame, and a dame like a lady.

A gentleman is a man who is only rude when he intends to be.

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

Manners or etiquette ('accessibility, affability, politeness, refinement, propriety, courtesy, and ingratiating and captivating behavior') call for no large measure of moral determination and cannot, therefore, be reckoned as virtues. Even though manners are no virtues, they are a means of developing virtue.... The more we refine the crude elements in our nature, the more we improve our humanity and the more capable it grows of feeling the driving force of virtuous principles.

The finest manners in the world are awkwardness and fatuity when contrasted with a finer intelligence. They appear but as the fashions of past days,--mere courtliness, knee-buckles and small- clothes, out of date.

A gentleman never offends unintentionally

To beguile the time, look like the time. Bear welcome in your eye, your hand, your tongue.

There are men whose manners have the same essential splendor as the simple and awful sculpture on the friezes of the Parthenon, and the remains of the earliest Greek art.