Quotes About Manners

True power and true politeness are above vanity.

and debris, and her husband and I settled back, sucking on toothpicks like a pair of feudal lords. This may sound sexist and insensitive and politically incorrect—and it is—but I had long since

An English gentleman never shines his shoes, but then nor does a lazy bastard.

Don´t be a dick

The talent of a meat-packer, the morals of a moneychanger and the manners of an undertaker.

Let us be very strange and well-bred: Let us be as strange as if we had been married a great while; and as well-bred as if we were not married at all.

Tis well enough for a servant to be bred at an University. But the education is a little too pedantic for a gentleman.

Fetch me the money box and some punkwood, will you, my boy?" Gannon asked him, licking the honey from his plate. (I fear table manners in the cabin-indeed, all manners-had suffered since Gannon and his son had been left to themselves.)

At Winchester we were discouraged from standing too close, from making, or seeking, personal disclosure. The other day I met a fellow Wykhamist - someone I'd known for forty years - and after the preliminaries, I said: 'Are you happy?'He took a pace back and squinted with surprise: 'Are you pulling my wire?' he said. 'That's none of your business'. At Winchester we were none of us each others business. We cracked on.

The only true source of politeness is consideration.

Even a highwayman, in the way of trade, may blow out your brains, but if he uses foul language at the same time, I should say he was no gentleman.

At any rate, girls are differently situated. Having no need of deep scientific knowledge, their education is confined more to the ordinary things of the world, the study of the fine arts, and of the manners and dispositions of people.

The final test of a gentleman is his respect for those who can be of no possible service to him.

This is the final test of a gentleman: His respect for those who can be of no possible service to him.

Dinner was made for eating, not for talking.

When a man comes up to a woman he doesn't know, he's supposed to say lovely things. Could there ever be a male kamikaze who'd stop a woman and fling at her, "How can you be wearing those shoes? Your toes look like they're in a gulag. It's shameful, you're Stalin when it comes to your feet!" Who would say such a thing? Certainly not François, who'd wisely settled on the complimentary approach.

Gibt es ihn, diesen Kamikaze-Mann, der eine Frau aufhalten würde, um ihr an den Kopf zu werfen: »Wie können Sie nur solche Schuhe tragen? Sie pferchen Ihre Zehen wie in einem Gulag zusammen. Sie sind der Stalin Ihrer Füße, eine Schande ist das!« Wer wäre zu so etwas fähig?

When you ask someone to pass the salt, you are also giving them an order; by attaching the word "please", you are saying that it is not an order. But, in fact, it is.

Often, the only polite thing to do if one has accomplished something significant is to instead make fun of oneself.

He was not what gentlemen usually thought a gentleman was.

Among well bred people a mutual deference is affected, contempt for others is disguised; authority concealed; attention given to each in his turn; and an easy stream of conversation maintained without vehemence, without interruption, without eagerness for victory, and without any airs of superiority.

But where the ideas of morality and decency alter from one age to another, and where vicious manners are described, without being marked with the proper character of blame and disapprobation, this must be allowed to disfigure the poem, and to be a real deformity. I cannot, nor is it proper I should, enter into such sentiments; and however I may excuse the poet, on account of the manners of age, I can never relish the composition.

The worst speculative Sceptic ever I knew, was a much better Man than the best superstitious Devotee & Bigot." "I must inform you, too, that this was the way of thinking of the Antients on this Subject. If a Man made Proffession of Philosophy, whatever his Sect was, they alaways expected to find more Regulaity in his Life and Manners, than in those of ignorant & illiterate.

I quickly discovered three distinct traits about my tablemates: They hit each other a lot. They swore a lot. They belched a lot.