Quotes About Manners

Now of all the cosmic problems yet unsolved, not cancer nor the future of poverty are the flustering questions, but these twain: Which is worse, not to wear evening clothes at a party at which you find every one else dressed, or to come in evening clothes to a house where, it proves, they are never worn? And: Which is worse, not to tip when a tip has been expected; or to tip, when the tip is an insult?

Now, it is well known, that a man may with more impunity be guilty of an actual breach either of real good breeding or of good morals, than appear ignorant of the most minute point of fashionable etiquette.

When I was your age, if a boy behaved badly, one simply scored his name out from one's dance card. (Sadie Lancaster - to Lara Lington)

swivel around wildly and finally spot Minnie. She's balanced on a stone bench, tussling with Suze's son Wilfrid over a red plastic truck. "Pleeease!" she's yelling crossly. "Pleeease!" Now, to my horror, she starts hitting Wilfrid with the truck, yelling with each blow: "Please! Please! Please!" The trouble is, Minnie hasn't really absorbed the spirit of the word "please.

The English are incapable of good grooming, unless it's a horse. - Elinor Sherman

I'm not some plastic dolly bird. This is all me! She gestures over her impressive body. Apart from my boobs. But it's only polite to have your boobs done. It's only manners.

I was re-reading The Gracious Hostess last night, and it says that even if your guest is annoying you, you must behave with charm and decorum. Well, fine. I can be charming. I can be decorative.

He was so excessively polite that Wallendar suspected he had endured many humiliations in his life.

Life in clubs is no paltry sign of the times we live in. Here gentlemen gamble with others whom they would not dream of inviting to their homes.

Civilized life exacts its toll.

In some company it's perfectly all right to prick your finger, but very bad form to finger your prick.

It's not about being educated, it's about being civilised.

My son, Edward, at 4, to a neighbor boy who was being a pain in our backyard: "Oh, don't whine. my mom will throw you right out of here.

In a company of children and grown-ups, the latter are those who should demonstrate good manners and always let the children speak first.

It is better to remain silence than to speak rudely when being provoked.

He will work off his crudities in time. I rather mistrust young men who slip into life gracefully.

Jimmy: I hope you won't make the mistake of thinking for one moment that I am a gentleman.

Who depends on another man's table often dines late.

Shall I show him in or tell him to go find a short and unpleasant route to hell?

He that will give himself to all manner of ways to get money may be rich; so he that lets fly all he knows or thinks may by chance be satirically witty. Honesty sometimes keeps a man from growing rich, and civility from being witty.

Southerners smile more than other Americans.

Maybe we've been brainwashed by 130 years of Yankee history, but Southern identity now has more to do with food, accents, manners, music than the Confederate past. It's something that's open to both races, a variety of ethnic groups and people who move here.

But this dependence, as it exists at present, is not an original institution, taking a fresh start from considerations of justice and social expediency—it is the primitive state of slavery lasting on, through successive mitigations and modifications occasioned by the same causes which have softened the general manners, and brought all human relations more under the control of justice and the influence of humanity.

The only man who really needs a tail coat is a man with a hole in his trousers.