Top 100 Quotes About Manners
#1. Let us not become so intense in our zeal to do good by winning arguments or by our pure intention in disputing doctrine that we go beyond good sense and manners, thereby promoting contention, or say and do imprudent things, invoke cynicism, or ridicule with flippancy.
James E. Faust
#2. Thank you Mr. Carroll. You will have to excuse my cousin; he seems to have lost his mind along with his manners.
KaraLynne Mackrory
#3. The salutory effect of surviving a heart-attack: One felt that nothing mattered beyond kindness, good manners and humour
Hugh Massingberd
#4. Without absolutes revealed from without by God Himself, we are left rudderless in a sea of conflicting ideas about manners, justice and right and wrong, issuing from a multitude of self-opinionated thinkers.
John Owen
#5. God Almighty has set before me two Great Objects: the supression of the Slave Trade and the Reformation of Manners.
William Wilberforce
#6. Honestly, not enough people know how to use good manners as a weapon.
Rachel Hawkins
#7. We're okay." I don't know why I say that. Sometimes good manners are a curse.
Paul Acampora
#9. Nor do we accept, as genuine the person not characterized by this blushing bashfulness, this youthfulness of heart, this sensibility to the sentiment of suavity and self-respect. Modesty is bred of self-reverence. Fine manners are the mantle of fair minds. None are truly great without this ornament.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#10. I'm youth, I'm joy!" Peter sang out. "I'm a little bird that has broken out of the egg."
This, of course, was nonsense; but it was proof to the unhappy Hook that Peter did not know at all who or what he was. This Hook though to be the best of good manners.
J.M. Barrie
#12. Some of the domestic evils of drunkenness are houses without windows, gardens without fences, fields without tillage, barns without roofs, children without clothing, principles, morals or manners.
Benjamin Franklin
#13. A man's own good breeding is the best security against other people's ill manners.
Lord Chesterfield
#14. Miss Manners' meager arsenal consists only of the withering look, the insistent and repeated request, the cold voice, the report up the chain of command and the tilted nose. They generally work.
Judith Martin
#15. Adam and Eve are like imaginary numbers, like the square root of minus one ... If you include it in your equation, you can calculate all manners of things, which cannot be imagined without it.
Philip Pullman
#16. Paris is a sum total. Paris is the ceiling of the human race. All this prodigious city is an epitome of dead and living manners and customs. He who sees Paris, seems to see all history through with the sky and constellations in the intervals.
Victor Hugo
#17. People who confuse social behavior with manners naturally think of it as something that can be donned and doffed, a fashion that can be copied. But social behavior is nerve and bone, not clothes, and is never just a copy, however derivative it may look.
Nick Joaquin
#18. Report of fashions in proud Italy Whose manners still our tardy-apish nation Limps after in base imitation
William Shakespeare
#19. But we know in the South that the real purpose of manners is to make life easier for everyone, easier both to keep to oneself and to avoid the uneasy commerce of offense and even insult. Either one shakes hands with someone or one ignores him or one kills him. What else is there?
Walker Percy
#20. How dangerous it is rashly to adopt the Mosaical institutions [Old Testament teachings of eye for an eye]. Laws might have been proper for a tribe of ardent barbarians wandering through the sands of Arabia which are wholly unfit for an enlightened people of civilized and gentle manners.
Gerald Heaney
#21. Suddenly, she employed those very English weapons: devious good manners and a rapid change of subject.
Patricia Duncker
#22. Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest people uneasy is the best bred in the room.
Jonathan Swift
#23. I don't like it when people don't hold the door. I don't know, that really bugs me ... I guess I like manners.
Taylor Schilling
#24. The cool contemplation of other people's suffering while one exhibits polished manners in a society that is deemed civil is only a shade less immoral than the direct infliction of suffering. Thus, civilization, as it is often practiced today, is really manufactured, inauthentic civilization.
Stjepan G. Mestrovic
#25. If we want to live freely and privately in the interconnected world of the twenty-first century - and surely we do - perhaps above all we need a revival of the small-town civility of the nineteenth century. Manners, not devices: sometimes it's just better not to ask, and better not to look.
James Gleick
#26. We talked about desire and being jealous,
Our conversation a loose single gown
Or a white picnic tablecloth spread out
Like a book of manners in the wilderness.
Seamus Heaney
#27. The English have a wellspring of comedy that will never be exhausted: the combination of bestial urges and excellent manners.
David Edelstein
#28. I always tried to be the perfect little girl. Always tried to have the perfect little manners. Never wanted to displease my parents.
Ann-Margret
#29. Untimely conduct is the discord of manners.
Louise Colet
#30. I think it's most important for children to understand the concept of respect and manners and also work ethic. I have a responsibility to those who came before me.
Andy Garcia
#31. Persian social manners are well known, and there is no other society that can compete with them.
Moshe Katsav
#32. One loses the capacity to grieve as a child grieves, or to rage as a child rages: hotly, despairingly, with tears of passion. One grows up, one becomes civilized, one learns one's manners, and consequently can no longer manage these two functions - sorrow and anger - adequately.
Anita Brookner
#33. Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters.
Samuel Adams
#34. Country manners. Even if somebody phones up to tell you your house is burning down, they ask first how you are.
Alice Munro
#36. I sincerely wish you may find it convenient to come here. the pleasure of the trip will be less than you expect, but the utility greater. it will make you adore your own country, it's soil, it's climate, it's equality, liberty, laws, people & manners. my god! how little do my countrymen know ...
Thomas Jefferson
#37. I sent my Christmas wishes to him, but he didn't answer. He's the world's best coach, but as a man he still has to learn manners and respect.
Mario Balotelli
#38. She showed a natural aptitude for little domestic refinements, so far as related to things and manners; but in what is called culture she
Thomas Hardy
#39. Vampire politics make the very complicated dance of manners that is werewolf protocol look like the Hokey Pokey.
Patricia Briggs
#40. Amazing what the application of a knitting needle could do for one's manners.
Lauren Willig
#41. Nature never hurries: atom by atom, little by little, she achieves her work. The lesson one learns from yachting or planting is the manners of Nature; patience with the delays of wind and sun, delays of the seasons, bad weather, excess or lack of water.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#42. Simpler manners, purer lives; more self-denial; more earnest sympathy with the classes that lie below us, nothing short of that can lay the foundations of the Christianity which is to be hereafter, deep and broad.
Frederick William Robertson
#43. Jean Laffite was a sexy bad boy with a gentleman's manners and an air of barely suppressed danger. Every girl's secret dreamboat in other words. We always say we want a nice, hardworking, decent guy but we're lying to ourselves. - DJ Jaco
Suzanne Johnson
#44. Am forty years old now, and you know forty years is a whole lifetime; you know it is extreme old age. To live longer than forty years is bad manners, is vulgar, immoral. Who does live beyond forty? Answer that, sincerely and honestly I will tell you who do: fools and worthless fellows.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#45. Scarlett, when you are forty-five, perhaps you will know what I'm talking about and then perhaps you, too, will be tired of imitation gentry and shoddy manners and cheap emotions. But I doubt it. I think you'll always be more attracted by glister than by gold.
Margaret Mitchell
#46. Manners easily and rapidly mature into morals.
Horace Mann
#47. It was a noteworthy lesson, even for someone who'd been fed a daily diet of italicized lessons: that people in high places, luminaries with advanced degrees in Classics and in possession of excellent manners, can disappoint you as profoundly as anyone else.
Elinor Lipman
#48. He had shrewd, on the spot judgement about human nature. Good sense with good manners and the practice of contentment made up in his view a large part of wisdom.
Theresa Whistler
#49. Much like the French (or like ourselves, their apes),Who with strange habit do disguise their shapes;Who loving novels, full of affectation,Receive the manners of each other nation.
Guillaume De Salluste Du Bartas
#50. I don't think there'll be a next time, my lady." Saint smiled. "But thank you for the offer."
Her eyebrows lifted in surprise. "You're welcome. My, my, manners. Where have you been - church?
Suzanne Enoch
#51. Men rarely if ever dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.
Robert A. Heinlein
#52. To live longer than forty years is bad manners, is vulgar, immoral. Who does live beyond forty? Answer that, sincerely and honestly I will tell you who do: fools and worthless fellows. I
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#53. You give people a little money and they lose all their manners, even the ones who had manners to begin with.
Ted Dekker
#54. One man lies in his words, and gets a bad reputation; another in his manners, and enjoys a good one.
Henry David Thoreau
#56. A dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot.
Robert A. Heinlein
#57. Political correctness is just tyranny with manners. I wish for you the courage to be unpopular. Popularity is history's pocket change. Courage is history's true currency.
Charlton Heston
#58. A reader is doubly guilty of bad manners against an author when he praises his second book at the expense of his first (or vice versa) and then expects the author to be grateful for what he has done.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#59. We all need good manners, like our friends from the zoo!
Lorraine Loria
#60. The difference of language, dress, and manners ... severs and alienates the nations of the globe.
Edward Gibbon
#61. Don't know the manners of good society, eh? Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal - you sockdologizing old man-trap.
Tom Taylor
#62. Miss Manners does not mind explaining the finer points of gracious living, but she feels that anyone without the sense to pick up a potato chip and stuff it in their face should probably not be running around loose on the streets.
Judith Martin
#63. 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.
Emilio Estevez
#64. James Salter is a consummate storyteller. His manners are precise and elegant; he has a splendid New York accent; he runs his hands through his gray hair and laughs boyishly.
Edward Hirsch
#65. Out of the fictitious book I get the expression of the life, of the times, of the manners, of the merriment, of the dress, the pleasure, the laughter, the ridicules of society. The old times live again. Can the heaviest historian do more for me?
William Makepeace Thackeray
#66. In America, writers are afforded the freedom to express themselves in unlimited manners. Creative liberty is a privilege.
Michael Graves
#67. Good manners - the longer I live the more convinced I am of it - are a priceless insurance against failure and loneliness. And anyone can have them.
Elsa Maxwell
#68. The great thing about being always among people of noble manners was the inevitable elevation of one's own.
Geraldine Brooks
#69. As new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times.
Thomas Jefferson
#70. Let's say you need a perfectly obedient servant who never gets tired, never needs to be paid, and is virtually indestructible. If you're in a galaxy a long time ago and far, far away, you'll just fly off to the local droid auction and pick up one of those shiny gold models with lovely manners.
Kage Baker
#71. Foreign, for sure. But we all bleed the same color red. No doubt about that. The truth of that statement was plain to see. Reacher put the guy out of misery. A single shot, close range, behind the ear. An unnecessary round expended, but good manners had a price
Lee Child
#72. He thought it probable that Miss Brooke liked him, and manners must be very marked indeed before they cease to be interpreted by preconceptions either confident or distrustful.
George Eliot
#74. I have always been of the mind that in a democracy manners are the only effective weapons against the bowie-knife.
James Russell Lowell
#75. Good manners reflect something from inside-an innate sense of consideration for others and respect for self.
Emily Post
#77. Truly good manners are invisible: they ease the way for others, without drawing attention to themselves. It is no accident that the word "punctilious" ("attentive to formality or etiquette") comes from the same original root as punctuation.
Lynne Truss
#78. There was good in him. Raw, molten goodness, bubbling deep in his core. But he didn't possess the charm or manners to control it. It just erupted periodically in volcano fashion, startling anyone who happened to be nearby.
Tessa Dare
#79. Good manners have much to do with the emotions. To make them ring true, one must feel them, not merely exhibit them.
Amy Vanderbilt
#80. Stick that bumbershoot
in elephant's foot
brolly stand behind
the big door. Mind
your manners at High tea.
Tim Dlugos
#81. Party Manners IT WAS the Easter holiday. Barney and Lou were doing some painting in the dining-room
Clive King
#82. As Michael (Chekhov)'s pupil, I learned more about acting. I learned psychology, history, and the good manners of art - taste.
Marilyn Monroe
#83. High rank and soft manners may not always belong to a true heart.
Anthony Trollope
#84. No advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimeter nearer.
George Orwell
#85. The influence of woman is the same everywhere. Her condition influences the morals, manners, and character of the people of all countries. Where she is debased, society is debased; where she is morally pure and enlightened, society will be proportionately elevated.
Samuel Smiles
#86. She won't know how to fulfill the duties of a noblewoman.'
'She is quite bright. And one could find no fault with her manners. She has received a gentle education. I am certain she will make an excellent countess.' Robert's expression softened. 'Her very nature will bring honor to our name.
Julia Quinn
#87. Isn't beer the holy libation of sincerity? the potion that dispels all hypocrisy, any charade of fine manners? the drink that does nothing worse than incite its fans to urinate in all innocence, to gain weight in all frankness?
Milan Kundera
#89. Once I said to my mother: 'You would be happy if I just kept well-dressed and had good manners,' and she said: 'What else is there?'
Cy Twombly
#90. Oh, the things she would say if she could--but it's a minefield of courtesies and manners, this dying business.
Jess Walter
#91. Good manners without sincerity are like a beautiful dead lady," he remarked on suitable occasion. "Straightforwardness without civility is like a surgeon's knife, effective but unpleasant. Candor with courtesy is helpful and admirable.
Paramahansa Yogananda
#92. Insincerity had never come easily to her, but good manners required it on occasion, even if a superhuman effort was needed.
Alexander McCall Smith
#93. Legendary manners there, Karim," she commented, her voice calm. "Your mother teach you?"
"I was taught the advantage of surprise," he responded as he walked over to her massive desk.
Katherine McIntyre
#94. 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
#95. Oh, I'm sorry. My mama died when I was seventeen. She must have forgotten to teach me some manners.' ~ Chris Chambers
Destiny Booze
#96. Not until he acquires European manners does the American anarchist become the gentleman who assures you that people cannot be mademoral by Act of Parliament (the truth being that it is only by Acts of Parliament that men in large communities can be made moral, even when they want to).
George Bernard Shaw
#97. I could start a war in 30 seconds. But some countries spend 100 years trying to find peace. Just like good manners, peace has to be learned.
Sylvester Stallone
#98. Wealth held by a class and used ambitiously becomes as despotic as an absolute monarchy, and has in its hands manners, customs, laws, institutions, and governments themselves.
Henry Ward Beecher
#99. Good manners are the settled medium of social, as specie is of commercial, life; returns are equally expected for both.
Lord Chesterfield
#100. It is ill-manners to silence a fool and cruelty to let him go on
Benjamin Franklin
