quotations about manners
There is no outward mark of politeness that does not have a profound moral reason. The right education would be that which taught the outward mark and the moral reason together.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
Elective Affinities
If refinement does not lead directly to purity of manners, it obviates at least their greatest depravation.
SIR J. REYNOLDS
attributed, Day's Collacon
For there is nothing settled in manners, but the laws of behavior yield to the energy of the individual. The maiden at her first ball, the countryman at a city dinner, believes that there is a ritual according to which every act and compliment must be performed, or the failing party must be cast out of this presence. Later, they learn that good sense and character make their own forms every moment, and speak or abstain, to take wine or refuse it, stay or go, sit in a chair or sprawl with children on the floor, or stand on their head, or what else soever, in a new and aboriginal way: and that strong will is always in fashion, let who will be unfashionable.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
"Manners", Essays
As the common forms of good manners were intended for regulating the conduct of those who have weak understandings; so they have been corrupted by the persons for whose use they were contrived.
JONATHAN SWIFT
A Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding
Manners are guideposts for behavior that serve as helpful road signs on the path of human interaction.
JUNE EDING
Manners That Matter Most
Manners are laws in their infancy.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
Observe others manners and correct thy own.
CONRAD II
attributed, Day's Collacon
Manners are what is left when serious issues of human relations are removed from consideration; yet without manners serious human relations are impossible.
MARK CALDWELL
A Short History of Rudeness
Air and manners are more expressive than words.
S. RICHARDSON
attributed, Day's Collacon
Whoever in a state knows how to form wisely the manners and men and to rule them at home and in war, by excellent institutions, him in the first place above all others I should esteem worthy of honor.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Tablets
As the best law is founded upon reason, so are the best manners. And as some lawyers have introduced unreasonable things into common law, so likewise many teachers have introduced absurd things into common good manners.
JONATHAN SWIFT
A Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding
Virtue itself offends when coupled with forbidding manners.
BISHOP MIDDLETON
attributed, Treasury of Thought
That makes the good and bad of manners, namely, what helps or hinders fellowship.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
"Manners", Essays
Manners differ with climates; the northern nations are distinguished for etiquette, the eastern for ceremony, and the southern for courtesy.
LORD ACTON
attributed, Day's Collacon
If we strive to become, then, what we strive to appear, manners may often be rendered useful guides to the performance of our duties.
SYDNEY SMITH
Sermons
For if you suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves and then punish them.
THOMAS MORE
Utopia
Truth, justice, and reason lose all their force and all their lustre when they are not accompanied with agreeable manners.
J. THOMSON
attributed, Day's Collacon
One of the most important rules of the science of manners is an almost absolute silence in regard to yourself.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
La Comédie Humaine
Call a jack a jack. Call a spade a spade. But always call a whore a lady. Their lives are hard enough, and it never hurts to be polite.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS
The Name of the Wind
Good manners do more for a man that good looks.
EDGAR WATSON HOWE
Country Town Sayings