quotations about manners
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
Lack of manners is the sign of a hero.
JEAN COCTEAU
Opium
One of the most important rules of the science of manners is an almost absolute silence in regard to yourself.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
La Comédie Humaine
Fine manners are the mantle of fair minds.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Tablets
Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse; whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy is the best bred man in company.
JONATHAN SWIFT
A Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding
Manners are rituals, too. They are repeated actions the culture or society has agreed on to smooth our relations with each other.
ELIZABETH HOFFMAN REED
Gathering at the Table
Nothing, except what flows from the heart, can render even external manners truly pleasing.
HUGH BLAIR
Sermons
Suit your manner to the man.
TERENCE
Adelphi
Many a worthy man sacrifices his peace to formalities of compliments and good manners.
L'ESTRANGE
attributed, Day's Collacon
Call a jack a jack. Call a spade a spade. But always call a whore a lady. Their lives are hard enough, and it never hurts to be polite.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS
The Name of the Wind
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
What once were vices, are now the manners of the day.
SENECA THE YOUNGER
Epistolae Ad Lucilium
Good men ought to let the world see that their manners are more firm than an oath.
SOCRATES
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
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
Manners are tell-tales of men.
THEODORE TILTON
Sanctum Sanctorum
A moral, sensible, and well-bred man
Will not affront me, and no other can.
WILLIAM COWPER
Conversation
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
Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Letters and Social Aims
Manners are primarily codes by which we express relationships, particularly status, and are thus contingent upon power. There is nothing absolute about manners: doing or not doing something does not mean it is good or bad manners, but depends upon the people and the context.
DAVID TRIPP
Critical Incidents in Teaching: Developing Professional Judgement