Manners are the hypocrisy of a nation.
The English are polite by telling lies. The Americans are polite by telling the truth.
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.
It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice.
A man's own good breeding is the best security against other people's ill manners.
Manners must adorn knowledge, and smooth its way through the world.
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.
Ceremony is necessary as the outwork and defense of manners.
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.
A man's own manner and character is what most becomes him.
Consideration for others is the basic of a good life, a good society.
Manners are love in a cool climate.
Etiquette means behaving yourself a little better than is absolutely essential.
Nowadays, manners are easy and life is hard.
If a man has good manners and is not afraid of other people he will get by, even if he is stupid.
Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices.
Manners are the happy way of doing things; each once 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 dewdrops which give such depth to the morning meadows.
Manners require time, and nothing is more vulgar than haste.
The basis of good manners is self-reliance.
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.
Savages we call them because their manners differ from ours.
Teach your child to hold his tongue; he'll learn fast enough to speak.
Parents are usually more careful to bestow knowledge on their children rather than virtue, the art of speaking well rather than doing well; but their manners should be of the greatest concern.
Ceremonies are different in every country, but true politeness is everywhere the same.
A traveler of taste will notice that the wise are polite all over the world, but the fool only at home.
Rudeness is a weak imitation of strength.
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.
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.
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.
Politeness is the flower of humanity.
Politeness makes one appear outwardly as they should be within.
It is more comfortable for me, in the long run, to be rude than polite.
I have always been of the mind that in a democracy manners are the only effective weapons against the bowie-knife.
If you would win the world, melt it, do not hammer it.
Manners easily and rapidly mature into morals.
Manners make the person.
— Motto
It is almost a definition of a gentleman to say that he is one who never inflicts pain.
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.
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.
Nothing is more noble than politeness, and nothing more ridiculous than ceremony.
— Proverb
Civility costs nothing.
— Proverb
Treat your superior as a father, your equal as a brother, and your inferior as a son.
Better were it to be unborn than to be ill bred.
What once were vices are manners now.
— Seneca
Manhood is melted into courtesies, valor into compliment, and men are only turned into tongue, and trim ones, too.
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.
He is the very pineapple of politeness!
The only true source of politeness is consideration.
Manners are like the shadows of virtues, they are the momentary display of those qualities which our fellow creatures love and respect.
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.
Manners are not idle, but the fruit. Of loyal nature and of noble mind.
The greater person is one of courtesy.
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.
To be a successful hostess, when guest arrive say, At last! and when they leave say, So soon!
Politeness is benevolence in small things.
Manners are happy ways of doing things.
Anyone can be polite to a king. It takes a gentleman to be polite to a beggar.
Good manners have much to do with the emotions. To make them ring true, one must feel them, not merely exhibit them.
We cannot always oblige; but we can always speak obligingly.
— Voltaire
Courtesy is the one coin you can never have too much of or be stingy with.
Manners are especially the need of the plain. The pretty can get away with anything.
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.
To the real artist in humanity, what are called bad manners are often the most picturesque and significant of all.
The test of good manners is to be able to put up pleasantly with bad ones.