Polite Quotes - Page 19

• 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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• America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards. On the road to tyranny, we've gone so far that polite political action is about as useless as a miniskirt in a convent. ... Something's eventually going to happen. Government will bloat until it chokes us to death, or one more tyrannical power grab will turn out to be one too many. ... Maybe it'll be one more round of "reasonable gun control" or one more episode of burning children to death to save them from "child abuse." Whatever, something will snap.

  Claire Wolfe

  Children, Gun, America

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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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• You need people in a society to have reached a certain standard of living before they can be polite. You learn how to respect others because you don't have to fight as much, you have what you need.

  Cristian Mungiu

  Fighting, People, Needs

  Source: www.indiewire.com

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• For example, in Paris, if one desires to buy something, you enter the store and say "Good morning, sir" or "madam," depending on what is appropriate, you wait until you are greeted, you make polite chitchat about the weather or some such, and when the salesperson asks what they can do for you, then and only then do you bring up the vulgar business of the transaction you require.

  Craig Ferguson

  Morning, Weather, Paris

  Craig Ferguson (2010). “Between the Bridge and the River: A Novel”, p.109, Chronicle Books

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• You lose nothing by being polite. The answer is 'No', but please say it politely and give the reasons. ... Explain to me why 'No'. Don't change 'No' to 'Yes'. Don't be a fool. If there was a good reason why it is 'No', it must remain 'No', but the man must be told politely.

  Mr. Lee

  Men, Giving, Answers

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• You have to hold your audience in writing to the very end-much more than in talking, when people have to be polite and listen to you.

  Brenda Ueland

  Writing, Talking, People

  Brenda Ueland (1987). “If You Want to Write”

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• Women have got to stop being polite. If I ever had children, which I don't, the first thing I'd teach a girl of mine is the words 'f - off.'

  Helen Mirren

  Girl, Children, Firsts

  Source: www.hollywoodreporter.com

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• I like the laid-back, polite, respectful courteous personality cowboys have. Guys almost lay down their life for you if they're your friends. You exist on a handshake rather than a signed contract.

  Jeff Kent

  Cowboy, Personality, Guy

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• Always be polite to a dragon. It's harder than it sounds. Dragon etiquette is incredibly complicated, and if you make a mistake, the dragon eats you.

  Patricia C. Wrede

  Mistake, Dragons, Sound

  Patricia C. Wrede (2015). “Calling on Dragons”, p.251, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The White Palace was pretty impressive. Very impressive, in fact. The day to day running of the set was everybody showed up for work. They are seasoned filmmakers over there. They have an infrastructure for filmmaking, which is very healthy. It's small, but they were tenacious, polite, timely.

  Pierce Brosnan

  Running, White, Healthy

  Source: collider.com

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• Filmmaking, like sex, isn't a polite enterprise. It involves a lot of mess and the bottom line is, if somebody ain't screaming, you're not doing your job.

  James Woods

  Jobs, Sex, Lines

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• Those who have accomplished the greatest results are those...who never grow excited or lose self-control, but are always calm, self-possessed, patient and polite.

  Booker T. Washington

  Self, Patient, Calm

  Booker T. Washington (1972). “Papers: The Autobiographical Writings”, p.311, University of Illinois Press

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