Quotes About Etiquette

Courtesy is only a thin veneer on the general selfishness.

My desire to curtail undue freedom of speech extends only to such public areas as restaurants, airports, streets, hotel lobbies, parks, and department stores. Verbal exchanges between consenting adults in private are as of little interest to me as they probably are to them.

Getting yelled at by a furious woman should be a semi-formal occasion.

getting yelled at by a furious woman should be treated as a semiformal occasion.

And in any case, it was embarrassing, something you didn't really want to see, like watching somebody clean their nostrils with a fingertip. I cleared my throat as I came in to my chair, but he didn't look up.

I stood up, too. I felt like I should say something polite to the two feds, but nothing came to me that didn't make me sound like a puerile lick-spittle, so I just nodded and turned for the door.

Jackie smiled graciously and did her part, the noblesse oblige she had talked about. I almost wished she'd been rude to them, since I had to hold the elevator door open for a long minute while she signed one of the briefcases with a Magic Marker. There were distant chimes, indicating that somebody else wanted the elevator, and the door kept thumping me as it tried to close and answer the call.

She will open the conversation with a subject of her choice, to which you can respond appropriately. It is not considered courteous for you to ask her any questions, and you should address her as ma'am, which rhymes with jam, not harm.

The Japanese always arrive bearing a gift,' whispered Anna, 'but under no circumstances should you open it in their presence.

Who had known they talked so much, held so many opinions, jabbed at the world's sights with so many fingers? Between our sporadic glimpses of the girls they had been continously living developing in ways we couldn't imagine, reading every book on the bowdlerized family bookshelf. Somehow, too, they'd kept up dating etiquette, through television or observation at school, so that they knew how to keep the conversation flowing or fill awkward siliences.

When did the cell phone become a license to be rude? And why must I be subjected to your personal conversations?

If I had a family crest, it would read Please Don't Make Me Be an Asshole.

What is it about people casually eating apples that's so infuriating? There's nothing inherently aggravating about someone eating grapes or an orange, but an apple?

A handwritten letter is a treat for me now—quaint!—and you couldn't pay me to pick up your phone call. God help you if you leave a voice mail.

When clans of yore went out for a meal in my day, there were no crayons, no sippy cups, no serving little Jennifer's unsauced spaghetti early. Generation X kids conducted themselves like tiny civilized sophisticates, because if we misbehaved, we'd enjoy a spanking for dessert instead of the triple-layer chocolate cake

Every species has a dinner date as part of courting ritual. A woman who won't let you pay for dinner is rejecting your courtship. She may think she's playing fair, or that she's being a feminist, but a very deep level, she knows that she's crossing you off her list of possibilities.

I was raised to be charming, not sincere.

Swearing relieves the feelings - that is what swearing does. I explained this to my aunt on one occasion, but it didn't answer with her. She said I had no business to have such feelings.

We had just commenced the third course—the bread and jam—when a gentleman in shirt-sleeves and a short pipe came along, and wanted to know if we knew that we were trespassing. We said we hadn't given the matter sufficient consideration as yet to enable us to arrive at a definite conclusion on that point, but that, if he assured us on his word as a gentleman that we were trespassing, we would, without further hesitation, believe it.

Oh, please could you spare us a little water?" "Certainly," replied the old gentleman; "take as much as you want, and leave the rest." "Thank you so much," murmured George, looking about him.  "Where—where do you keep it?" "It's always in the same place my boy," was the stolid reply: "just behind you.

nothing excuses violence of language and coarseness of expression, especially in a man who has been carefully brought up

The most annoying thing about the couple of times that I worked in office is that when you show up in the morning you say hi to everyone and then for some reason, you have to continue to greet these people all day every time you see them.

Early on, Zinkoff's mother impressed upon her son the etiquette of throwing up: That is, do not throw up at random, but throw up into something, preferably a toilet or bucket. Since toilets or buckets are not always handy, Zinkoff has learned to reach for the nearest container. Thus, at one time or another he has thrown up into soup bowls, flowerpots, wastebaskets, trash bins, shopping bags, winter boots, kitchen sinks and, once, a clown's hat. But never his father's mailbag.

Oh, the things she would say if she could--but it's a minefield of courtesies and manners, this dying business.