Quotes About Etiquette

Father told me that if I ever met a lady in a dress like yours, I must look her straight in the eyes.

Be neither too remote nor too familiar.

Do you still throw spears at each other? (to Australian Aborigines during a visit to Queensland)

You look as if you're ready for bed. (to the Nigerian President, who was dressed in traditional robes)

Don't be ever in court or a castle without a woman to make your excuse.

He is not an honest man who has burned his tongue and does not tell the company that the soup is hot.

A gentleman doesn't pounce he glides. If a woman sits on a piece of furniture which permits your sitting beside her, you are free to regard this as an invitation, though not an unequivocal one.

Manners are love in a cool climate.

Nothing more rapidly inclines a person to go into a monastery than reading a book on etiquette. There are so many trivial ways in which it is possible to commit some social sin.

How can one scandalize a maitre d'hotel? Such a man has seen it all before. And if one did succeed in subjecting him to scandal, I don't believe his face would express his condition.

then he offers me his arm. As I take it, I wonder what folly decreed that women cannot walk unassisted.

Chanakya says that a guest is important only if his stay is short. If without hesitation or shamelessly he extends his stay, then it is graceless, as a prostitute leaves a poor man, the subjects leave a defeated king and birds leave a dead tree, similarly, a guest must quickly leave after having and praising the food, offered to him.

To the guests that must go, bid God's speed and brush away all traces of their steps.

if any point of herd-etiquette arose which found him unprepared, he had the sense to write home at once for hints (mother had not had brothers of her own for nothing) and that Lalage and I backed her up and could nearly always be counted on to be brusque and caustic and common sense with him.

Tea without sugar just wasn't done. Or at least not talked about in polite society. Like French kissing your first cousin.

I can't stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action.

Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds exactly the same opinion.

I don't do any vulgar movements.

It is very vulgar to talk about one's business. Only people like stockbrokers do that, and then merely at dinner parties.

One should not promote lyrics that are vulgar.

It's a very thin line between looking sensual and vulgar.

With a woman around, there's a tendency to eliminate vulgarity and profanity and create a more businesslike attitude.

Vulgarity is the garlic in the salad of life.

Expressions of disapproval are on a level of vulgarity that cannot be tolerated. The way to express disapproval is to do without applause.