Manners Quotes - Page 18

• A code of behavior is an inevitable part of life in any community, and if we hadn't inherited ours, we should have had to invent one.

  Millicent Fenwick

  Should Have, Community, Behavior

  Millicent Fenwick (1948). “Vogue's book of etiquette: a complete guide to traditional forms and modern usage”

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• Any change in customs ... takes generations to accomplish, and must come about by general consent. Even a superficial study of sociology shows the futility of past efforts to make a lasting change in manners by an act of will or authority.

  Millicent Fenwick

  Past, Lasting Change, Effort

  Millicent Fenwick (1948). “Vogue's book of etiquette: a complete guide to traditional forms and modern usage”

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• Good manners - the longer I live the more convinced I am of it - are a priceless insurance against failure and loneliness. And anyone can have them.

  Elsa Maxwell

  Loneliness, Good Man, Priceless

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• we have not been impressed with any attribute of the Senate other than its appearance and manners. We have heard the best speakers: they all fire off speeches which deal with the entire subject in general terms and which do not attempt to debate, to answer opponents' arguments or offer new points for discussion. And the speeches are constantly degenerating into empty rhetoric; they abound in quotations from well-known authors or from their own former speeches.

  Beatrice Webb

  Fire, Answers, Speech

  Beatrice Potter Webb (1963). “American diary, 1898”

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• Country manners. Even if somebody phones up to tell you your house is burning down, they ask first how you are.

  Alice Munro

  Country, Phones, House

  Alice Munro (2015). “A Wilderness Station: Selected Stories, 1968-1994”, p.359, Vintage

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• One loses the capacity to grieve as a child grieves, or to rage as a child rages: hotly, despairingly, with tears of passion. One grows up, one becomes civilized, one learns one's manners, and consequently can no longer manage these two functions - sorrow and anger - adequately.

  Anita Brookner

  Children, Growing Up, Passion

  Anita Brookner (2016). “Brief Lives”, p.69, Penguin UK

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• There is a certain physiognomy in manners.

  Joseph Cook

  Certain, Physiognomy

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• it is bad manners to contradict a guest. You must never insult people in your own house - always go to theirs.

  Myrtle Reed

  People, House, Guests

  Myrtle Reed (1904). “The Book of Clever Beasts: Studies in Unnatural History”

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• Forget love. Try good manners.

  Rebecca Wells

  Good Man, Trying, Forget

  Rebecca Wells (2009). “Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood: Novel, A”, p.26, Harper Collins

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• To be polite to everybody except the people they love most is a nervous affectation that afflicts many families ... when they come home, they take off their smiles and soft words, and sit about, spiritually in their underwear. This isn't pretty.

  Margaret Fishback

  Family, Home, People

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• The New York waiter ... knows more than you do about everything. He disapproves of your taste in food and clothing, your gauche manners, your miserliness, and sometimes, it seems, of your very existence, which he tries to ignore.

  Kate Simon

  New York, Trying, Taste

  Kate Simon (1959). “New York Places & Pleasures: An Uncommon Guidebook. Drawings by Bob Gill”

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• To reject wisdom because the person communicates it is uncouth and his manners are inelegant, what is it but to throw away a pine-apple, and assign for a reason the roughness of its coat?

  Thomas Hartwell Horne

  Apples, Coats, Reason

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• My dear father always said that when everybody had a telephone nobody would have any manners, because there wouldn't be time for them. And of course he was perfectly right.

  Patricia Wentworth

  Father, Telephones, Said

  Patricia Wentworth (2005). “The Chinese Shawl”, p.34, Hachette UK

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• A vain man can never be altogether rude. Desirous as he is of pleasing, he fashions his manners after those of others.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Fashion, Men, Vanity

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1853). “Goethe's Opinions on the World, Mankind, Literature, Science, and Art”, p.48

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• Every individual nature has its own beauty. One is struck in every company, at every fireside, with the riches of nature, when he hears so many new tones, all musical, sees in each person original manners, which have a proper and peculiar charm, and reads new expressions of face. He perceives that nature has laid for each the foundations of a divine building, if the soul will build thereon.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Expression, Soul, Individuality

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2447, Delphi Classics

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• 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.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Beautiful, Kindness, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Emerson's Essays: Top Essays”, p.88, 谷月社

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• Custom governs the world; it is the tyrant of our feelings and our manners and rules the world with the hand of a despot.

  Bill Vaughan

  Tyrants, Hands, Feelings

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• I dont like it when people dont hold the door. I dont know, that really bugs me... I guess I like manners.

  Taylor Schilling

  Doors, People, Bugs

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• I don't do plays without jokes anymore. I've retired from those plays. I think it's bad manners to invite people to sit in the dark for two and a half hours and not tell them the joke.

  Bill Nighy

  Dark, Thinking, Two

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• It must always be borne in mind that the assumption of woman's social superiority lies at the root of these rules of conduct.

  Humphry Davy

  Lying, Women, Roots

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• The well-mannered man never puts out his hand in greeting until a lady extends hers. This is a test of good breeding that is constantly applied. ... The first move in the direction of cordiality must come from the lady, the whole code of behaviour being based on the assumption that she is the social superior.

  Humphry Davy

  Moving, Men, Hands

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• Good manners are not bred in moments, but in years.

  Julia McNair Wright

  Years, Good Man, Moments

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• Sometimes one sees people butter their slices of bread with long, slow, admiring strokes in the same way in which Tom Sawyer's friends whitewashed the fence. Never butter an entire slice of bread at one time.

  Mary Elizabeth Clark

  Long, People, Way

  Mary Elizabeth Clark, Margery Closey Quigley (1939). “Etiquette Every Child Should Know”

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• The comparative view of the powers of the magistrates, in two remarkable instances, is alone sufficient to represent the whole system of German manners. The disposal of the landed property within their district was absolutely vested in their hands, and they distributed it every year according to a new division. At the same time, they were not authorised to punish with death, to imprison, or even to strike, a private citizen.

  Edward Gibbon

  Views, Hands, Years

  Edward Gibbon (1998). “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.190, Wordsworth Editions

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• This variety of objects will suspend, for some time, the course of the narrative; but the interruption will be censured only by those readers who are insensible to the importance of laws and manners, while they peruse, with eager curiosity, the transient intrigues of a court, or the accidental event of a battle.

  Edward Gibbon

  Law, History, Curiosity

  Edward Gibbon, Henry Hart Milman, M. Guizot (François), William Smith (1872). “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.197

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