Social Norms Quotes

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

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

It is as commendable to think well of oneself when alone, as it is ridiculous to speak well of oneself among others.

You were disgusted with the women who were always speaking and looking, and thinking for your approbation alone. I roused, and interested you, because I was so unlike them.

As an adult, I'm not supposed to go down slides. So if I'm at the top of a slide, I have to pretend that I got there accidentally. "How the hell did I get up here? I guess I have to slide down. Whee!" That's what you say when you're having fun. You refer to yourself and some other people.

When you open the elevator on the top floor of a building and the other guy doesn't get out, something is seriously wrong.

Civility is a desire to receive civilities, and to be accounted well-bred.

Who decides when the applause should die down? It seems like it's a group decision; everyone begins to say to themselves at the same time, "Well, okay, that's enough of that."

Pray don't talk to me about the weather, Mr. Worthing. Whenever people talk to me about the weather, I always feel quite certain that they mean something else. And that makes me quite nervous.

Eat what you like, but dress for other people.

Though laughter is allowable, a horse-laugh is abominable.

No sane man will dance.

One should never listen. To listen is a sign of indifference to one's hearers.

Come, dear, [Gwendolen rises] we have already missed five, if not six, trains. To miss any more might expose us to comment on the platform.

Once when I had remarked on the affection quite often found between cat and dog, my friend replied, "Yes. But I bet no dog would ever confess it to the other dogs.

Drink is not a fashion in India, as it is in the West.

I well recall my horror when I heard for the first time, of a journalist who had laid in a pair of what were then called bicycle pants and taken to golf; it was as if I had encountered a studhorse with his hair done up in frizzes, and pink bowknots peeking out of them. It seemed, in some vague way, ignominious, and even a bit indelicate.

A gentleman is someone who knows how to play the banjo and doesn't.

I would have everybody marry if they can do it properly: I do not like to have people throw themselves away; but everybody should marry as soon as they can do it to advantage.

Let's tell the truth to people. When people ask, 'How are you?' have the nerve sometimes to answer truthfully. You must know, however, that people will start avaoiding you because, they, too, have knees that pain them and heads that hurt and they don't want to know about yours. But think of it this way: If people avoid you, you will have more time to meditate and do fine research on a cure for whatever truly afflicts you.

Always remember this: If you don't attend the funerals of your friends, they will certainly not attend yours.

The minute we get reconciled to a person, how willing we are to throw aside little needless punctilios and pronounce his name right.

One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that would tell one anything.

I pissed on the man who called me a dog. Why was he so surprised?

My dear Algy, you talk exactly as if you were a dentist. It is very vulgar to talk like a dentist when one isn't a dentist. It produces false impression

I have very poor and unhappy brains for drinking: I could well wish courtesy would invent some other custom of entertainment.

As far as I can tell, dumping soda on people is the equivalent of ‘Hi, it’s nice to meet you’ in this part of the world. Frankly, I think standard greetings work better, but what do I know?

You know when you go into a restaurant, and it gets busy and they start a waiting list, and they start calling out names, "DuFresnes, party of two." They say again, "DuFresnes, party of two." But then if no one answers, they'll just go to the next name, "Bush, party of three." Yeah, but what happened to the DuFresnes? No one seems to care. Who can eat at a time like this? People are missing! And they're hungry! That's a double whammy! "Bush, search party of three!" You can eat once you find the DuFresnes!

Custom is, to think a handsome thing in private but tame it down in the utterance.

"Why is it that at a bachelor's establishment the servants invariably drink the champagne? I ask merely for information." "I attribute it to the superior quality of the wine, sir. I have often observed that in married households the champagne is rarely of a first-rate brand." "Good Heavens! Is marriage so demoralizing as that?" "I believe it is a very pleasant state, sir. I have had very little experience of it myself up to the present. I have only been married once. That was in consequence of a misunderstanding between myself and a young person."

Don't give a woman advice; one should never give a woman anything she can't wear in the evening.

The point I was making was not that Grandmother harbors any racial animosity. She doesn't. But she is a typical white person.

I like to reminisce with people I don't know.

People always tell me "Have a nice day." Well what if I don't want to? What if I want to have a crappy day?

We acknowledge that we should not talk of our wives; but we seem not to know that we should talk still less of ourselves.

I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.

If you're embarrassed because you have some notion about how men are supposed to behave, and it doesn't include weeping, then you have some personal work to do.

Keep up appearances whatever you do.

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

The government can't make people love me, but it can keep them from lynching me.

No man in his senses will dance.

Those who are easily shocked should be shocked more often.

We should not be too familiar with the lower orders or with women.

Lady Bracknell. Good afternoon, dear Algernon, I hope you are behaving very well. Algernon. I’m feeling very well, Aunt Augusta. Lady Bracknell. That’s not quite the same thing. In fact the two things rarely go together.

Let lovers be crazy, disgraceful and wild Those who fret about such things Aren’t in love.

No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.

Those that are good manners at the court are as ridiculous in the country, as the behavior of the country is most mockable at the court.

Black people can be the most conservative, the most discriminating. Especially among ourselves. It wasn't white people who said all black men have to wear baggy jeans.

... Take another glass of wine, and excuse my mentioning that society as a body does not expect one to be so strictly conscientious in emptying one's glass, as to turn it bottom upwards with the rim on one's nose.