Quotes About Manners

Laws are always unstable unless they are founded upon the manners of the nation; manners are the only durable and resisting power in a people.

In aristocracies the master often exercises, even without being aware of it, an amazing sway over the opinions, the habits, and the manners of those who obey him, and his influence extends even further than his authority.

In the United States religion exercises but little influence upon the laws and upon the details of public opinion, but it directs the manners of the community, and by regulating domestic life it regulates the state.

Gee, I'm sorry I didn't hear you in all this rain. Go ahead in, please. Anthony Perkin's Norman Bates Talking To Janet Leigh's Marion Crane.

When people related by blood were so careful with each other, when they were so very polite, there was soon nothing left to say. Only niceties that meant so little they might as well have been spoken to a complete stranger. Pass the butter, open the door, see you after school, there's rain again, it's sunny, it's cold. Has the dog eaten? Has the window been shut? Where are you going? Why is it I don't know you at all? Such statements did not add up to anything like a family...

Our mother is too well bred to hate,' Franny said. 'She disapproves.

there was the sort of civility that was far worse than yelling and screaming. It was a cold curtain of mistrust. When people related by blood were so careful with each other, when they were so very polite, there was soon nothing left to say. Only niceties that meant so little they might as well have been spoken to a complete stranger. Pass the butter, open the door, see you after school, there's rain again

Midwest childhood, a kidney condition that kept him out of the service, a stint at the Navy Yard before the job at the brewery. She merely nodded, trying to look attentive but actually studying his face, which was pleasant enough, studying his table manners, which were passable but in need of certain refinements—he buttered the back of his entire roll and put the half-bitten piece on the edge of his dinner plate.

Not to take one's own suffering seriously, to make light of it or even to laugh at it, is considered good manners in our culture.

Like the children in fairy stories who have seen their parents make pacts with terrifying strangers, who have discovered that our fears are based on nothing but the truth, but who come back fresh from marvellous escapes and take up their knives and forks, with humility and good manners, prepared to live happily ever after -- like them, dazed and powerful with secrets, I never said a word

That was her way. She carried not noticing to an extreme. Not noticing, not intruding, not suggesting.

Some people think politeness is an invitation to invade.

She was not so forbearing when it came to bad breath. After receiving one French envoy, she exclaimed, 'Good God! What shall I do if this man stay here, for I smell him an hour after he has gone!' Her words were reported back to the envoy, who at once betook himself back to France in shame.

BLACKGUARD, n. A man whose qualities, prepared for display like a box of berries in a market—the fine ones on top—have been opened on the wrong side. An inverted gentleman.

It is one of the important uses of civility to signify resentment.

POLITENESS, n. The most acceptable hypocrisy.

being asked to dinner is not always the same thing as being asked to dine.

While it might be fashionable for a lady to attend a publuc lecture on the afterlife, or participate in a seance from time to time, claiming to have seen a ghost yourself does not go down well in polite circles.

Nothing to it. You treat folk the way you'd want to be treated, and you can't go far wrong.

Just keep your mouth shut and smile. That's always good advice.' Jezal

Who asked your opinion?' 'A man who doesn't want opinions should keep his own mouth shut.

He's still young enough to think that rudeness wins respect.

The most civilized place in the world," murmured Father Yarvi. "Though that mostly means folk prefer to stab each other in the back than in the front.

In polite society what you say to an attractive woman who is dressed in a way that makes you understand the power of biology is, "You look nice.