Quotes About Manners

He was insulting her sex but complimenting her personally. Was she supposed to simper with gratitude?

I do not understand dalliance, Lord Ponsonby." "But you are d-drawn to it, Mrs. Keeping.

Sit down, please. It makes me tired to see you stand there.

With the unreasonable petulance of mankind I rang the bell and gave a curt intimation that I was ready.

Y qué va usted a hacer? ––pregunté. ––Fumar ––respondió––. Es un problema de tres pipas, así que le ruego que no me dirija la palabra durante cincuenta minutos.

Is this how you act toward your honored guest? You must take him out onto the street and walk him around a bit to wake him up. The cold will do him good. He's lying in the snow. Isn't that cold enough?

Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.

Inspira tal horror el egoísmo que inventamos la cortesía para ocultarlo como una parte vergonzosa de nosotros mismos.

to the girl. "Ha'penny," he muttered. To me, he said, "I know why your nose is so long, Cap'n. You use it to poke into business 'tisn't yours." "True." I touched the

You felt the need to say hello. Indeed, it seemed impolite not to do so.

Give that mint Milano back, you bitch. If you can't at least be polite, you don't get a treat.

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.

Here was an occasion, she thought, for indulging in that deliberate rudeness which only persons with habitually good manners have the right to commit...

Curious how Love destroys every vestige of that politeness which the human race, in its years of evolution, has so painfully acquired.

Tom Hearst is altogether a scapegrace, a rake, and possibly a dangerous fellow, with his likeable face, his vigourous dancing, and his easy manners; a man who might do with a woman as he liked, having once won her heart.

I am always late. If I arrived early, my hostess would faint.

We should not allow ourselves to be deceived by our outward show of 'civilized' manners and 'cultured' social behavior into believing that self-concern, desirous attachment, aversion, and indifference are steadily losing their hold over us.

It is important to say sir at these moments. And if they ever call you by your first-middle-last name, you better watch out. I'm telling you.

She said I was the most sensitive boy she'd ever met, which I didn't understand because really all I did was not interrupt her.

She was being like those bratty girls in movies from the 1980s, and my mom kept saying Young Lady after every sentence.

She even told me how to treat a girl on a date, which was very interesting. She said that with a girl like Mary Elizabeth, you shouldn't tell her she looks pretty. You should tell her how nice her outfit is because her outfit is her choice whereas her face isn't.

The trick of being a good guest is never to ask any questions about the composition of the household. Hosts, even the grandest, are nervous creatures and interpret curiosity as evidence of dissatisfaction.

I'd been raised by my parents to believe barfing your feelings on other people was the height of impoliteness...

Reading at meals is considered rude in polite society, but if you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second-to-the-least of your concerns. The least of all should be polite society and what it expects. If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered anyway.