Polite Quotes - Page 18

• The whole country wants civility. Why don't we have it? It doesn't cost anything. No federal funding, no legislation is involved. One answer is the unwillingness to restrain oneself. Everybody wants other people to be polite to them, but they want the freedom of not having to be polite to others.

  Judith Martin

  Country, Freedom, Equality

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• When politeness is used to show up other people, it is reclassified as rudeness. Thus it is technically impossible to be too polite.

  Judith Martin

  People, Impossible, Rudeness

  Judith Martin (1996). “Miss Manners Rescues Civilization: From Sexual Harassment, Frivolous Lawsuits, Dissing, and Other Lapses in Civility”, Crown

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• Presumably a movement is more polite than a revolution, and a lot slower.

  Linda Ellerbee

  Movement, Revolution

  Linda Ellerbee (1993). “Move On”

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• But are they all horrid, are you sure they are all horrid? [Referring to Gothic novels, fashionable in England at the beginning of the 19th century, but frowned upon in polite society.]

  Jane Austen

  England, Gothic, Century

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• There are people who balk at small civilities on account of their manifest insincerity. ... It is better and more logical to accept all the polite phraseology which facilitates intercourse, and contributes to the sweetness of life. If we discarded the formal falsehoods which are the currency of conversation, we should not be one step nearer the vital things of truth.

  Agnes Repplier

  Sweetness Of Life, People, Steps

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• What I expect from my male friends is that they are polite and clean. What I expect from my female friends is unconditional love, the ability to finish my sentences for me when I am sobbing, a complete and total willingness to pour their hearts out to me, and the ability to tell me why the meat thermometer isn't supposed to touch the bone.

  Anna Quindlen

  Friendship, Women, Heart

  Anna Quindlen (2010). “Living Out Loud”, p.32, Ballantine Books

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• I come from people who have always been polite enough to feel that nothing has ever happened to them.

  Patricia Hampl

  People, Enough, Politeness

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• the habit of generalizing from one particular, that mainstay of the cheap and obvious essayist, has rooted many fictions in the public eye. Nothing, for example can blot from my memory the profound, searching, and exhaustive analysis of a great nation which I learned in my small geography when I was a child, namely, 'The French are a gay and polite people fond of dancing and light wines.

  Kate Douglas Wiggin

  Children, Memories, Wine

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• Spin' is a polite word for deception. Spinners mislead by means that range from subtle omissions to outright lies. Spin paints a false picture of reality by bending facts, mischaracterizing the words of others, ignoring or denying crucial evidence, or just 'spinning a yarn' - by making things up.

  Kathleen Hall Jamieson

  Lying, Mean, Reality

  Brooks Jackson, Kathleen Hall Jamieson (2007). “unSpun: Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation”, p.7, Random House

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• Successful leaders develop effective strategies for maintaining their boundaries. ... Most time bandits don't know any better. And being a time bandit is a matter of context. One person's time bandit is another person's pleasant diversion. ... Instead of gritting our teeth to be polite and resenting the time bandit for holding us up, the best choice is to be honest. We cannot expect another person to honor our needs unless we affirm them ourselves.

  Diane Dreher

  Leadership, Time, Successful

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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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• murder is not polite.

  Mignon G. Eberhart

  Murder

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• It's a dirty little secret that most New Yorkers are pleasant, thoughtful, patient, and polite. The Chamber of Commerce must work overtime to maintain the surly, off-putting image that is widely believed to define the city. In truth, niceness is nearly epidemic in this town.

  Judith Kelman

  Dirty, Thoughtful, Cities

  Judith Kelman (2004). “Every Step You Take”, Jove Publications

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• If you silence yourself, if you try to be good, if you try to be polite, or toe a party line, you end up paying for that in the long run. You pay for it... with your homeland, or with your soul, or with your artistic vision.

  Diana Abu-Jaber

  Running, Party, Long

  "Diana Abu-Jaber: The Only Response to Silencing is to Keep Speaking". Interview with Andrea Shalal-Esa, www.aljadid.com. 2002.

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• Ninety percent of the people in any group are nice, raised to be polite, and have more in common than not.

  Susan RoAne

  Nice, People, Groups

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• Telling a lie is called wrong. Telling the truth is called right. Except when telling the truth is called bad manners and telling a lie is called polite.

  Judith Viorst

  Lying, Telling The Truth, Truth Is

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• ...Baltimore. It's imperfect. Boy, is it imperfect. And there are parts of its past that make you wince. It's not all marble steps and waitresses calling you 'hon,' you know. Racial strife in the sixties, the riots during the Civil War. F. Scott Fitzgerald said it was civilized and gay, rotted and polite. The terms are slightly anachronistic now, but I think he was essentially right.

  Laura Lippman

  War, Gay, Boys

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• If a person feels terrible, it usually should not be shown or acknowledged during a greeting exchange. Instead, the unhappy person is expected to conceal negative feelings, putting on a polite smile to accompany the “Just fine, thank you, and how are you?” reply to the “How are you today?” The true feelings will probably go undetected, not because the smile is such a good mask but because in polite exchanges people rarely care how the other person actually feels.

  Paul Ekman

  Unhappy Person, People, Feelings

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• The Irish are hearty, the Scotch plausible, the French polite, the Germans good-natured, the Italians courtly, the Spaniards reserved and decorous - the English alone seem to exist in taking and giving offense.

  William Hazlitt

  Country, Scotch, Giving

  William Hazlitt, James Thornton (1967). “Miscellaneous writings”

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• The Japanese are, to the highest degree, both aggressive and unaggressive, both militaristic and aesthetic, both insolent and polite, rigid and adaptable, submissive and resentful of being pushed around, loyal and treacherous, brave and timid, conservative and hospitable to new ways.

  Ruth Benedict

  Brave, Degrees, Loyal

  Ruth Benedict (1967). “The chrysanthemum and the sword: patterns of Japanese culture”

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• Girls have long been evaluated on the basis of appearance and caught in myriad double binds: achieve, but not too much, be polite,but be yourself, be feminine and adult; be aware of our cultural heritage, but don't comment on the sexism. . . . Girls are trained to be less than who they really are. They are trained to be what the culture wants of its young women, not what they themselves want to become.

  Mary Pipher

  Girl, Being Yourself, Long

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• Women are sort of like motorcycle gangs with me. They get really shy and polite. I don't know why.

  Jack Nicholson

  Motorcycle Gangs, Shy, Get Real

  Source: the-talks.com

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• I'll have pot in my home for guests - I'm polite! - but I don't sit around and smoke by myself, ever. Not like I did when I was young.

  John Waters

  Home, Guests, Pot

  Source: www.timeout.com

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• Baltimore is warm but pleasant... I belong here, where everything is civilized and gay and rotted and polite.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Gay, Baltimore, Pleasant

  F. Scott Fitzgerald, Matthew Joseph Bruccoli, Judith Baughman (1994). “A Life in Letters”, p.291, Simon and Schuster

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• The trouble is, if you go too far towards being polite, the label that applies is "doormat".

  Charles Stross

  Labels, Trouble, Doormat

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