quotations about manners
Manners 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 traveling, by getting rid of all avoidable obstructions of the road, and leaving nothing to be conquered but pure space.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
"Manners", Essays
Art polishes man, and manners distinguish him from the brute creation.
OVID
attributed, Day's Collacon
In our manners, tranquility is the supreme power.
MME. DE MAINTENON
attributed, Day's Collacon
Good manners do more for a man that good looks.
EDGAR WATSON HOWE
Country Town Sayings
It's always galling to be taught good manners by an enemy.
K. J. PARKER
Devices and Desires
It was growing late, and though one might stand on the brink of a deep chasm of disaster, one was still obliged to dress for dinner.
GEORGETTE HEYER
April Lady
Bad manners are the fruits of a coarse nature and unwise training.
CLARA JESSUP MOORE
Sensible Etiquette of the Best Society
I don't mind if you don't like my manners. They're pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings.
RAYMOND CHANDLER
The Big Sleep
Air and manners are more expressive than words.
S. RICHARDSON
attributed, Day's Collacon
That makes the good and bad of manners, namely, what helps or hinders fellowship.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
"Manners", Essays
Emperors and rich men are by no means the most skillful masters of good manners. No rent roll nor army-list can dignify skulking and dissimulations: and the first point of courtesy must always be truth, as really all forms of good-breeding point that way.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
"Manners", Essays
Should we distrust [a] man because his manners are not our manners?
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER
The Last of the Mohicans
All Politeness is owing to Liberty. We polish one another, and rub off our Corners and rough Sides by a sort of amicable Collision. To restrain this, is inevitably to bring a Rust upon Mens Understandings.
ANTHONY ASHLEY-COOPER
"Sensus Communis", Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times
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
Manners are laws in their infancy.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
Perhaps instead of teaching manners, parents should teach the statistical probability that the person you are speaking to is just as good as you are.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Mortals and Others
The importance of manners, my mother always said, is inversely related to how inclined one is to use them.
NICOLE KRAUSS
Great House
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
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
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