Quotes About Behavior

Men, in general, are but great great children.

He was the mildest manner'd man That ever scuttled ship or cut a throat.

They asked Lucman, the fabulist, From whom did you learn manners? He answered: From the unmannerly.

What once were vices are now manners.

Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy, is the best bred in the company.

When we are sick our virtues and our vices are in abeyance.

A gentleman does things no gentleman should do in a way only a gentleman can.

The only things that distinguish us from the rest of the animals, Madam is our habit of drinking when we are not thirsty and making love at any time.

Two things control man's nature: instinct and experience.

Inconsistency is the only thing in which men are consistent.

A man can believe a considerable deal of rubbish, and yet go about his daily work in a rational and cheerful manner.

A modest man never talks of himself.

The only people who should really sin are the people who can sin with a grin.

The so-called new morality has too often the old immorality condoned.

We have two kinds of morality side by side: one which we preach but do not practice, and the other which we practice but seldom preach.

Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.

We talk on principle, but we act on interest.

The virtues and the vices are all put in motion by interest.

Men's actions depend to a great extent upon fear. We do things either because we enjoy doing them or because we are afraid not to do them.

Act well at the moment, and you have performed a good action to all eternity.

The power of a man's virtue should not be measured by his special efforts, but by his ordinary doing.

It is too bad if you have to do everything upon reflection and can't do anything from early habit.

Habits are safer than rules; you don't have to watch them. And you don't have to keep them, either; they keep you.

Quality is not an act. It is a habit.