Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes About Manners

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

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Pain, Teaching

• Life is not so short but that there is always time enough for courtesy.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Life, Time, Kindness

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume VIII: Letters and Social Aims”, p.46, Harvard University Press

• Society is infected with rude, cynical, restless, and frivolous persons who prey upon the rest, and whom no public opinion concentrated into good manners, forms accepted by the sense of all, can reach; the contradictors and railers at public and private tables, who are like terriers, who conceive it the duty of a dog of honor to growl at any passer-by, and do the honors of the house by barking him out of sight.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Dog, Sight, Cynical

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.407

• Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Happiness, Sacrifice, Good Man

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2581, Delphi Classics

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

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Time, Cynical, Haste

• The first point of courtesy must always be truth.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Firsts, Courtesy, Manners

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays: First and Second Series”, p.330, Library of America

• Fine manners need the support of fine manners in others.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Support, Needs, Manners

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Barbara L. Packer, Joseph Slater, Douglas Emory Wilson (2003). “The Conduct of Life”, p.97, Harvard University Press

• Nature never hurries: atom by atom, little by little, she achieves her work. The lesson one learns from yachting or planting is the manners of Nature; patience with the delays of wind and sun, delays of the seasons, bad weather, excess or lack of water.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Nature, Wind, Weather

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Society and solitude”, p.70, Harvard University Press

• 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.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Names, Titles

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.147, Harvard University Press

• 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.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Relationship, Money, Taken

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1960). “The Journals”

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

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Happiness, Eggs, Way

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.380

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

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Perception, Birth, Elegance

• Manners make the fortune of the ambitious youth.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Ambitious, Youth, Courtesy

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume II”, p.406

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

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Yield, Law, Energy

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Emerson's Essays: Top Essays”, p.85, 谷月社

• Good breeding, a union of kindness and independence.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Kindness, Independence, Unions

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.350, Modern Library

• 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.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Simple, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Self-Reliance and Other Essays”, p.6, Courier Corporation

• The basis of good manners is self-reliance.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Self, Good Man, Manners

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.413

• Public opinion, I am sorry to say, will bear a great deal of nonsense. There is scarcely any absurdity so gross, whether in religion, politics, science or manners, which it will not bear.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Im Sorry, Public Opinion, I Am Sorry

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

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Gentleman, Sometimes, Manners

• 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.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Morning, Giving, Lasts

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Barbara L. Packer, Joseph Slater, Douglas Emory Wilson (2003). “The Conduct of Life”, p.90, Harvard University Press

• Genial manners are good, and power of accommodation to any circumstance, but the high prize of life, the crowning fortune of a man is to be born with a bias to some pursuit, which finds him in employment and happiness, -- whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statutes, or songs. I doubt not this was the meaning of Socrates, when he pronounced artists the only truly wise, as being actually, not apparently so.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wise, Song, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.1090, Library of America

• Would we codify the laws that should reign in households, and whose daily transgression annoys and mortifies us, and degrades our household life, we must adorn every day with sacrifices. Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Sacrifice, Law, Good Man

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2581, Delphi Classics

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

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Manners

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.405

• 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!

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Book, Hero

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1875). “Culture, Behavior, Beauty”, p.74

• Manners are the happy ways of doing things.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Way, Manners, Hardened

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.380

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