Quotes About Manners

Courtesies cannot be borrowed like snow shovels; you must have some of your own.

Ach, wie anständig finden wir uns doch, wenn wir keinen Anlass haben, unanständig zu sein!

We don't seem to be good at integrating novelties with our social lives, do we? The world of the etiquette book fell to pieces at the end of the last century, and there has been no code of manners to tell us how to deal with anything invented since. Not even rules for an individualist to break, which is itself another blow at freedom. Rather a pity, don't you think?

Would you like a cup of tea?" asked Julia, who had enough breeding to know that at all emergencies—birth, death or defeat—cups of tea must at once be offered.

Things became more civilized all of a sudden. Coffee does that. Or maybe it is women who do that.

I'm just saying we can all work on our manners. We can say please and thank you. We can be punctual. We can just be nicer to one another. It's something we have in our power to do. It reminds me of that Margaret Mead quote: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.

Civility, it is said, means obeying the unenforceable.

Oh, no, that would have been rude. I don't believe in that sort of tit for tat, do you? People are too self-centeredly unkind to one another as it is.

Has no one ever taught you it is rude to pry?' 'Would you rather I sneaked about, ferreting things out? Of course not. 'Twould be most distasteful. All in all, I'd rather be thought rude than artful.

A gentleman probably would have risen to help, but James didn't feel like a gentleman. He felt like a bloodthirsty ex-pirate with blue balls.

Good manners and bad breath will get you nowhere.

I believe the death of Bobby Kennedy was in many ways the death of decency in America. I think it was the death of manners and formality, the death of poetry and the death of a dream.

We settled Mama into the wheelchair and loaded her down with both our pocketbooks and a vase of flowers I had picked to present to our host in hopes of softening the effects of any opinions Mama might vent during the evening.

Confidence is one thing, disrespect is quite another.

A bad manner spoils everything, even reason and justice a good one supplies everything, gilds a No, sweetens a truth, and adds a touch of beauty to old age itself.

The word love, when applied to the reproduction of the species, is the most hateful blasphemy which modern manners have taught us to utter. Nature, in raising us above the beasts by the divine gift of thought, had rendered us very sensitive to bodily sensations, emotional sentiment, cravings of appetite and passions. This double nature of ours makes of man both an animal and a lover.

If a man would have the right to make stepping-stones of all the heads which crowd a drawing-room, he must be the lover of some artistic woman of fashion.

One of the most important rules of the science of manners is an almost absolute silence in regard to yourself.

Me es difícil resistirme a estas muestras de buenos modales. Tengo la impresión de que estas personas tan bien educadas jamás podrían hacerle nada malo a nadie. Yendo un poco más lejos, parece que sepan discernir a quién sí pueden hacérselo.

Shintani-kun often brought a book to read while he waited, but he'd close it as soon as his food arrived. I liked that too. As well as the way he always said Itadaki-masu, quietly, before he started eating. Maybe I was already in love.

Eriko raised me that way," he said, laughing. "If I didn't open the door for her, she'd get mad and refuse to get in the car." "Even though she was a man!" I said, laughing. "Right, right, even though she was a man.

It seemed a shame to have you losing a chance to use those good manners you learned from your grandmother.

Cause punishment takes the friendly right out of you.

I hope you don't mind tea in mugs,' she said, coming in with a tray. 'I told you I was a slut.