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Meat makes, and clothes shapes, but manners makes a man.
-Scottish Proverb
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Better good manners than good looks.
-Proverb
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Good manners and plenty of money will make my son a gentlemen.
-Proverb
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Nothing is more noble than politeness, and nothing more ridiculous than ceremony.
-Proverb
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Civility costs nothing.
-Proverb
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The wolf changes his coat, but not his disposition.
-Proverb
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People who have little to do are excessive talkers.
-Proverb
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Contraries are cured by contraries.
-Proverb
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To speak kindly does not hurt the tongue.
-Proverb
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Treat your superior as a father, your equal as a brother, and your inferior as a son.
-Proverb
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The test of one's behavior pattern; relationship to society, relationship to one's work, relationship to sex.
-Alfred Adler
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Of course, behaviorism works. So does torture. Give me a no-nonsense, down-to-earth behaviorist, a few drugs, and simple electrical appliances, and in six months I will have him reciting the Athanasian Creed in public.
-W. H. Auden
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I can be very polite, but I've found that doesn't always get a result. You have got to bang and thump tables.
-Joy Baluch
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Manners are the hypocrisy of a nation.
-Honore de Balzac
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He who sows courtesy reaps friendship, and he who plants kindness gathers love.
-St. Basil
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Taste is more to do with manners than appearances. Taste is both myth and reality; it is not a style.
-Stephen Bayley, Taste, pt. 1, Taste: The Story of an Idea, 1991
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Our natures are a lot like oil, mix us with anything else, and we strive to swim on top.
-Francis Beaumont
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He who observes etiquette but objects to lying is like someone who dresses fashionably but wears no vest.
-Walter Benjamin
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Everything is worth precisely as much as a belch, the difference being that a belch is more satisfying.
-Ingmar Bergman
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Politeness -- The most acceptable hypocrisy.
-Ambrose Bierce
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With a gentleman I am always a gentleman and a half, and with a fraud I try to be a fraud and a half.
-Otto von Bismarck
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The small courtesies sweeten life; the greater ennoble it.
-Christian Nevell Bovee
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The English are polite by telling lies. The Americans are polite by telling the truth.
-Malcolm Bradbury
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Manners are of more importance than laws. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in.
-Edmund Burke
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You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.
-Albert Camus, La Chute, 1956
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It is the unseen and the spiritual in people that determines the outward and the actual.
-Thomas Carlyle
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It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice.
-John Cassis
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No law reaches it, but all right-minded people observe it.
-Sebastian Roch Nicolas Chamfort
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A man's own good breeding is the best security against other people's ill manners.
-Lord Chesterfield
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Manners must adorn knowledge, and smooth its way through the world.
-Lord Chesterfield
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Prepare yourself for the world, as the athletes used to do for their exercise; oil your mind and your manners, to give them the necessary suppleness and flexibility; strength alone will not do.
-Lord Chesterfield
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Ceremony is necessary as the outwork and defense of manners.
-Lord Chesterfield
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We are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind; but we are not justified in enforcing good manners, for good manners always mean our own manners.
-G. K. Chesterton
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Suppose that humans happen to be so constructed that they desire the opportunity for freely undertaken productive work. Suppose that they want to be free from the meddling of technocrats and commissars, bankers and tycoons, mad bombers who engage in psychological tests of will with peasants defending their homes, behavioral scientists who can't tell a pigeon from a poet, or anyone else who tries to wish freedom and dignity out of existence or beat them into oblivion.
-Noam Chomsky
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A man's own manner and character is what most becomes him.
-Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Courtesies of a small and trivial character are the ones which strike deepest in the grateful and appreciating heart.
-Henry Clay
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When new turns of behavior cease to appear in the life of the individual, its behavior ceases to be intelligent.
-C. E. Coghill
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What is the appropriate behavior for a man or a woman in the midst of this world, where each person is clinging to his piece of debris? What's the proper salutation between people as they pass each other in this flood?
-Leonard Cohen
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It is wise to apply the oil of refined politeness to the mechanism of friendship.
-Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
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Consideration for others is the basic of a good life, a good society.
-Confucius
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Act the way you'd like to be and soon you'll be the way you act.
-George W. Crane
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Nothing more rapidly inclines a person to go into a monastery than reading a book on etiquette. There are so many trivial ways in which it is possible to commit some social sin.
-Quentin Crisp
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Manners are love in a cool climate.
-Quentin Crisp
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Etiquette means behaving yourself a little better than is absolutely essential.
-Will Cuppy
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To know what people really think, pay regard to what they do, rather than what they say.
-Rene Descartes
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Nowadays, manners are easy and life is hard.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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At the time, my grandparents told my mom, Lordy, what is Shannen doing? Now I've calmed down. on her reputation for bad behavior
-Shannen Doherty
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If a man has good manners and is not afraid of other people he will get by, even if he is stupid.
-David Eccles
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Though our conduct seems so very different from that of the higher animals, the primary instincts are much alike in them and in us.
-Albert Einstein
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Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Manners require time, and nothing is more vulgar than haste.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The basis of good manners is self-reliance.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
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There are men whose manners have the same essential splendor as the simple and awful sculpture on the friezes of the Parthenon, and the remains of the earliest Greek art.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Life is short, but there is always time for courtesy.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Courtesy Life be not so short but that there is always time for courtesy.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each one a stroke of genius or of love, now repeated and hardened into usage, they form at last a rich varnish, with which the routine of life is washed, and its details adorned. If they are superficial, so are the dew-drops which give such a depth to the morning meadows.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Conduct of Life
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I have seen manners that make a similar impression with personal beauty; that give the like exhilaration, and refine us like that; and, in memorable experiences, they are suddenly better than beauty, and make that superfluous and ugly. But they must be marked by fine perception, the acquaintance with real beauty. They must always show self-control: you shall not be facile, apologetic, or leaky, but king over your word; and every gesture and action shall indicate power at rest. Then they must be inspired by the good heart. There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us. 'Tis good to give a stranger a meal, or a night's lodging. 'Tis better to be hospitable to his good meaning and thought, and give courage to a companion. We must be as courteous to a man as we are to a picture, which we are willing to give the advantage of a good light.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Behavior from The Conduct of Life, 1860
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Savages we call them because their manners differ from ours.
-Benjamin Franklin
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Teach your child to hold his tongue; he'll learn fast enough to speak.
-Benjamin Franklin
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All doors open to courtesy.
-Thomas Fuller
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A mission could be defined as an image of a desired state that you want to get to. Once fully seen, it will inspire you to act, fuel your imagination and determine your behavior.
-Charles A. Garfield
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Behavior is the mirror in which everyone shows their image
-Johann von Goethe
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There is a courtesy of the heart; it is allied to love. From its springs the purest courtesy in the outward behavior.
-Johann von Goethe
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Ceremonies are different in every country, but true politeness is everywhere the same.
-Oliver Goldsmith
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A traveler of taste will notice that the wise are polite all over the world, but the fool only at home.
-Oliver Goldsmith
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It is better to have too much courtesy than too little, provided you are not equally courteous to all, for that would be injustice.
-Baltasar Gracian
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What ever is the natural propensity of a person is hard to overcome. If a dog were made a king, he would still gnaw at his shoes laces.
-Hitopadesa
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We are all serving a life sentence, and good behavior is our only hope for a pardon.
-Doug Horton
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Live so that you can at least get the benefit of the doubt.
-Kin Hubbard
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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.
-David Hume
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In truth, politeness is artificial good humor, it covers the natural want of it, and ends by rendering habitual a substitute nearly equivalent to the real virtue.
-Thomas Jefferson
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The purpose of polite behavior is never virtuous. Deceit, surrender, and concealment: these are not virtues. The goal of the mannerly is comfort, per se.
-June Jordan
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Politeness is the flower of humanity.
-Joseph Joubert
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No scoundrel is so stupid as to not find a reason for his vile conduct.
-Korner
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Politeness makes one appear outwardly as they should be within.
-Jean De La Bruyere
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Still people are dangerous.
-Jean De La Fontaine
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Politeness is the slow poison of collaboration.
-Edwin H. Land
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It is more comfortable for me, in the long run, to be rude than polite.
-Percy Wynham Lewis
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Intelligence and courtesy not always are combined; Often in a wooden house a golden room we find.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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I have always been of the mind that in a democracy manners are the only effective weapons against the bowie-knife.
-James Russell Lowell
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There can be no defense like elaborate courtesy.
-E. V. Lucas
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If you would win the world, melt it, do not hammer it.
-Alexander Maclaren
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Manners easily and rapidly mature into morals.
-Horace Mann
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A commercial society whose members are essentially ascetic and indifferent in social ritual has to be provided with blueprints and specifications for evoking the right tone for every occasion.
-Marshall McLuhan
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Our humility rest upon a series of learned behaviors, woven together into patterns that are infinitely fragile and never directly inherited.
-Margaret Mead
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Don't overestimate the decency of the human race.
-H. L. Mencken
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Be nice to people on your way up because you'll meet them on your way down.
-Wilson Mizner
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It's no use growing older if you only learn new ways of misbehaving yourself.
-Hector Hugh Munro
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The social dimension of reticence and nonacknowledgment is most developed in forms of politeness and deference. We don't want to tell people what we think of them, and we don't want to hear from them what they think of us, though we are happy to surmise their thoughts and feelings, and to have them surmise ours, at least up to a point. We don't, if we are reasonable, worry too much what they may say about us behind our backs, just as we often say things about a third party that we wouldn't say to his face. Since everyone participates in these practices, they aren't, or shouldn't be, deceptive. Deception is another matter, and sometimes we have reason to object to it, though sometimes we have no business knowing the truth, even about how someone really feels about us.
http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/nagel/papers/exposure.html
-Thomas Nagel, from Philosophy & Public Affairs, vol. 27 no. 1 (winter 1998) pp 3-30. Copyright
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It is almost a definition of a gentleman to say that he is one who never inflicts pain.
-John Henry Newman
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Manners are of such great consequence to the novelist that any kind will do. Bad manners are better than no manners at all, and because we are losing our customary manners, we are probably overly conscious of them; this seems to be a condition that produces writers.
-Flannery O'Connor
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Good manners are a combination of intelligence, education, taste and style mixed together so that you don't need any of those things.
-P. J. O'Rourke, Modern Manners, 1984
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Those who have mastered etiquette, who are entirely, impeccably right, would seem to arrive at a point of exquisite dullness.
-Dorothy Parker
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Perfect behavior is born of complete indifference.
-Cesare Pavese
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True politeness consists in being easy one's self, and in making every one about one as easy as one can.
-Alexander Pope
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Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others. If you have that awareness, you have good manners, no matter what fork you use.
-Emily Post
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Better were it to be unborn than to be ill bred.
-Sir Walter Raleigh
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Men, like bullets, go farthest when they are smoothest.
-Jean Paul Richter
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We are decent 99 percent of the time, when we could easily be vile.
-R. W. Riis
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Decency is the least of all laws, but yet it is the law which is most strictly observed.
-Fran
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We like to see others, but don't like others to see through us.
-Fran
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If we ever do end up acting just like rats or Pavlov's dogs, it will be largely because behaviorism has conditioned us to do so.
-Richard D. Rosen
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Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.
-Arthur Schopenhauer
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What once were vices are manners now.
-Seneca (Seneca the Elder)
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Manhood is melted into courtesies, valor into compliment, and men are only turned into tongue, and trim ones, too.
-William Shakespeare
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The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or any other particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls: in short, behaving as if you were in Heaven, where there are no third-class carriages, and one soul is as good as another.
-George Bernard Shaw
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He is the very pineapple of politeness!
-Richard Brinsley Sheridan
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The only true source of politeness is consideration.
-William Gilmore Simms
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Physics does not change the nature of the world it studies, and no science of behavior can change the essential nature of man, even though both sciences yield technologies with a vast power to manipulate the subject matters.
-B. F. Skinner
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Manners are like the shadows of virtues, they are the momentary display of those qualities which our fellow creatures love and respect.
-Sydney Smith
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When man learns to understand and control his own behavior as well as he is learning to understand and control the behavior of crop plants and domestic animals, he may be justified in believing that he has become civilized.
-E. G. Stakman
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Many people love in themselves what they hate in others.
-Benzel Sternan
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Politeness is the art of choosing among one's real thoughts.
-Abel Stevens
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We Barbie dolls are not supposed to behave the way I do.
-Sharon Stone
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Nothing is so great an example of bad manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none; If you flatter only one or two, you offend the rest.
-Jonathan Swift
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People don't change their behavior unless it makes a difference for them to do so.
-Fran Tarkenton
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Manners are not idle, but the fruit. Of loyal nature and of noble mind.
-Alfred Lord Tennyson
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The greater person is one of courtesy.
-Alfred Lord Tennyson
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I place a high moral value on the way people behave. I find it repellent to have a lot, and to behave with anything other than courtesy in the old sense of the word -- politeness of the heart, a gentleness of the spirit.
-Emma Thompson
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If I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Behave so the aroma of your actions may enhance the general sweetness of the atmosphere.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Our manners have been corrupted by communication with the saints.
-Henry David Thoreau, Walden Economy, 1854
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The highest perfection of politeness is only a beautiful edifice, built, from the base to the dome, of ungraceful and gilded forms of charitable and unselfish lying.
-Mark Twain
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To be a successful hostess, when guest arrive say, At last! and when they leave say, So soon!
-Source Unknown
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Politeness is benevolence in small things.
-Source Unknown
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Manners are happy ways of doing things.
-Source Unknown
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Anyone can be polite to a king. It takes a gentleman to be polite to a beggar.
-Source Unknown
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To find out what others are feeling, don't prod or poke. If you want play with a turtle, you can't get it to come out of its shell by prodding and poking it with a stick, you might kill it. Be gentle not harsh, hard or forceful.
-Source Unknown
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Behavior is what a man does, not what he thinks, feels, or believes
-Source Unknown
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What we are doing at the moment is more that just one thing added to the rest; it is a memoir.
-Source Unknown
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Courtesy should be a continuous action, not something to be turned on and off like a faucet.
-Source Unknown
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The measure of a truly great man is the courtesy with which he treats lesser men.
-Source Unknown
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Good manners have much to do with the emotions. To make them ring true, one must feel them, not merely exhibit them.
-Amy Vanderbilt
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We cannot always oblige; but we can always speak obligingly.
-Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet)
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To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered.
-Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet)
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Courtesy is the one coin you can never have too much of or be stingy with.
-John Wanamaker
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Really big people are, above everything else, courteous, considerate and generous -- not just to some people in some circumstances -- but to everyone all the time.
-Thomas J. Watson
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His courtesy was somewhat extravagant. He would write and thank people who wrote to thank him for wedding presents and when he encountered anyone as punctilious as himself the correspondence ended only with death.
-Evelyn Waugh
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Manners are especially the need of the plain. The pretty can get away with anything.
-Evelyn Waugh, "The Observer", April 15, 1962
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I don't say we all ought to misbehave, but we ought to look as if we could.
-Orson Welles
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To be always thinking about your manners is not the way to make them good; the very perfection of manners is not to think about yourself.
-Richard Whately
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To the real artist in humanity, what are called bad manners are often the most picturesque and significant of all.
-Walt Whitman
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The test of good manners is to be able to put up pleasantly with bad ones.
-Wendell L. Willkie
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Nothing is ever lost by courtesy. It is the cheapest of the pleasures; costs nothing and conveys much. It pleases him who gives and ;him who receives, and thus, like mercy, it is twice blessed.
-Erastus Wiman
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Books about Manners
