quotations about manners
Manners are guideposts for behavior that serve as helpful road signs on the path of human interaction.
JUNE EDING
Manners That Matter Most
For there is nothing settled in manners, but the laws of behavior yield to the energy of the individual. The maiden at her first ball, the countryman at a city dinner, believes that there is a ritual according to which every act and compliment must be performed, or the failing party must be cast out of this presence. Later, they learn that good sense and character make their own forms every moment, and speak or abstain, to take wine or refuse it, stay or go, sit in a chair or sprawl with children on the floor, or stand on their head, or what else soever, in a new and aboriginal way: and that strong will is always in fashion, let who will be unfashionable.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
"Manners", Essays
There ought to be system of manners in every nation which a well-formed mind would be disposed to relish. To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.
EDMUND BURKE
Reflections on the Revolution in France
Manners are laws in their infancy.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
Observe others manners and correct thy own.
CONRAD II
attributed, Day's Collacon
As the best law is founded upon reason, so are the best manners. And as some lawyers have introduced unreasonable things into common law, so likewise many teachers have introduced absurd things into common good manners.
JONATHAN SWIFT
A Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding
That makes the good and bad of manners, namely, what helps or hinders fellowship.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
"Manners", Essays
Manners differ with climates; the northern nations are distinguished for etiquette, the eastern for ceremony, and the southern for courtesy.
LORD ACTON
attributed, Day's Collacon
As the common forms of good manners were intended for regulating the conduct of those who have weak understandings; so they have been corrupted by the persons for whose use they were contrived.
JONATHAN SWIFT
A Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding
Manners are what is left when serious issues of human relations are removed from consideration; yet without manners serious human relations are impossible.
MARK CALDWELL
A Short History of Rudeness
Whoever in a state knows how to form wisely the manners and men and to rule them at home and in war, by excellent institutions, him in the first place above all others I should esteem worthy of honor.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Tablets
Virtue itself offends when coupled with forbidding manners.
BISHOP MIDDLETON
attributed, Treasury of Thought
For if you suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves and then punish them.
THOMAS MORE
Utopia
Air and manners are more expressive than words.
S. RICHARDSON
attributed, Day's Collacon
Truth, justice, and reason lose all their force and all their lustre when they are not accompanied with agreeable manners.
J. THOMSON
attributed, Day's Collacon
It's always galling to be taught good manners by an enemy.
K. J. PARKER
Devices and Desires
One of the most important rules of the science of manners is an almost absolute silence in regard to yourself.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
La Comédie Humaine
If we strive to become, then, what we strive to appear, manners may often be rendered useful guides to the performance of our duties.
SYDNEY SMITH
Sermons
Manners are rituals, too. They are repeated actions the culture or society has agreed on to smooth our relations with each other.
ELIZABETH HOFFMAN REED
Gathering at the Table
I don't mind if you don't like my manners. They're pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings.
RAYMOND CHANDLER
The Big Sleep