Quotes About Civility

Plato's discussants and querents are not polite as students and teachers are polite. They are polite the way only fantasy discussants can be civil inside a fantasy. Were they real, they'd be at each other's throats before eight or nine pages were done.

Feminist consciousness can be thought of as consciousness of the violence and power concealed under the languages of civility, happiness, and love, rather than simply or only consciousness of gender as a site of restriction of possibility. You can venture into the secret places of pain by recalling something. You can cause unhappiness by noticing something. And if you can cause unhappiness by noticing something, you realize that the world you are in is not the world you thought you were in.

Let's all commit ourselves to the basic civility of minding our own business. Failing that, let's go back to a time when we were nasty and judgmental, but only behind one another's backs.

It is good breeding alone that can prepossess people in your favor at first sight, more time being necessary to discover greater talents.

Yes, always avoid violence. In this age of charity and kindliness, the time has gone by for such things. Leave dynamite to the low and unrefined.

It starts when you begin to overlook good manners. Any time you quit hearing Sir and Mam the end is pretty much in sight.

The panzergrenadiers were very nonchalant and 'elegant'. They asked their prisoners what they would like to drink, milk or wine.

He that will give himself to all manner of ways to get money may be rich; so he that lets fly all he knows or thinks may by chance be satirically witty. Honesty sometimes keeps a man from growing rich, and civility from being witty.

October 6, 1774 I met those of our society who had votes in the ensuing election, and advised them 1. To vote, without fee or reward, for the person they judged most worthy 2. To speak no evil of the person they voted against, and 3. To take care their spirits were not sharpened against those that voted on the other side.

Civility, it is said, means obeying the unenforceable.

Oh, no, that would have been rude. I don't believe in that sort of tit for tat, do you? People are too self-centeredly unkind to one another as it is.

Good manners and bad breath will get you nowhere.

So when we came together, the Countess and I, I understood at once the reason of her antipathy for me, disguised though it was by the most gracious forms of politeness and civility. I had been forced to be her confidant, and a woman cannot but hate the man before whom she is compelled to blush. And she on her side knew that if I was the man in whom her husband placed confidence, that husband had not as yet given up his fortune.

Party animosity was concealed under a veil of studied courtesy.

I've slipped on occasion into the realm of irresponsible invective, but I try to avoid it and generally recant when I fall short. Because name-calling does nothing to improve understanding or move the political debate forward.

I think it is important that we rebuild an atmosphere of forgiveness and civility in every aspect of our lives.

I am a pretty level-headed person, but that person, Harry Reid, has been the most destructive entity in Washington when it comes to civility. By far.

I think our Founding Fathers, they would disagree, but they weren't disagreeable. They didn't hate each other; they didn't want to kill each other off.

I hate when people litter.

In some ways, 'decency' is a hazy concept; we know it when we see it.

I know it's sappy, but I bet there's a market for civility and niceness out there that, while probably not as titillating as a junkyard scrap between shirtless adversaries, it'd sure be healthier.

In truth, they were not given to quarrelling. Many couples who love each other more, quarrel more, and with less politeness.

Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.

if you talk any more flummery to me, Frederica, I shall give you one of my—er—icy set-downs!"(Alverstoke)