Top 100 Quotes About Politeness
#1. Ye have to be bold, lad. We're told that ladies want cringing politeness from a gentleman, but what they really want is a bit of forwardness, even carnality. It's exciting for them.
Jennifer Ashley
#2. Librarians, Dusty, possess a vast store of politeness. These are people who get asked regularly the dumbest questions on God's green earth. These people tolerate every kind of crank and eccentric and mouth breather there is.
Garrison Keillor
#3. How did that saying go? Alexia wondered. Ah, yes, "Brash as an American." Well, they had won their independence somehow, and it was not with politeness.
Gail Carriger
#5. Politeness is better than logic. You can often persuade when you cannot convince.
Josh Billings
#7. One of the greatest victories you can gain over someone is to beat him at politeness.
Josh Billings
#9. The familiarities of the gaming-table contribute very much to the decay of politeness ... The pouts and quarrels that naturally arise from disputes must put an end to all complaisance, or even good will towards one another.
Mary Wortley Montagu
#11. They [the English] have a special word, "civil," for what is elsewhere merely ordinary politeness.
Edmund Wilson
#12. I don't believe in texting while dining, sending one-word e-mails in lieu of formal thank-you cards, wearing shorts to the theater, or settling for any of the modern trends that favor comfort over politeness, ease over style. Manners are simply about asking yourself, What's the right thing to do?
Tim Gunn
#14. In the media universe we're in, where there are people screaming on one end, there is no problem at all with having a little bit of extra politeness.
Gwen Ifill
#15. Politeness. Obedience. Loyalty. Intelligence. Courtesy. Efficiency.
Arundhati Roy
#16. People are less self-conscious in the intimacy of family life and during the anxiety of a great sorrow. The dazzling varnish of anextreme politeness is then less in evidence, and the true qualities of the heart regain their proper proportions.
Stendhal
#17. Politeness responses you with the cheers of truthfulness.
Jeswant Gembali
#19. Your first reaction is the characteristic one of your contrasuggestible century: to disbelieve, to disprove. I see this very clearly underneath your politeness.
John Fowles
#20. Politeness and consideration for others is like investing pennies and getting dollars back.
Thomas Sowell
#21. Politeness and courtesy are a small price to pay for the goodwill of others.
John Wooden
#22. There is a time for politeness and there is a time when you are obliged to be rude,
Daniel Dennett
#23. Politeness is good nature regulated by good sense.
Sydney Smith
#24. The only option is politeness-remember always that you are dealing with other primates.
Paul Ford
#25. No cook can ignore the opinion of a man who asks for three helpings. One is politeness, two is hunger, but three is a true and cherished compliment.
Kerry Greenwood
#26. The list of my favorite experiences would almost equal the list of plays I've been in. There are a few exceptions, but out of politeness I'm not going to mention them. If you don't have a few stinkers, you can't appreciate the good ones.
T. R. Knight
#27. No use to preach to the working-man courtesy & politeness when at the same time the working-man is not given working conditions under which he can stay polite and soft-mannered.
B. Traven
#28. Politeness is fictitious benevolence. Depend upon it, the want of it never fails to produce something disagreeable to one or other.
Samuel Johnson
#29. When she smiled like she meant it, when it wasn't out of politeness or something forced, she could bring down satellites.
Kelly Moran
#31. In Japan, I was immensely impressed by the politeness, industrious nature and conscientiousness of the Japanese people.
J. Paul Getty
#32. 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.
Fran Lebowitz
#34. I'm absolute attacking my own instinct for politeness, but I think I admire artists who just speak out or who are strong, so it's very hard.
Stephen Fry
#35. You can do a lot more with weapons and politeness than just politeness.
Vladimir Putin
#36. To joke in the face of danger is the supreme politeness, a delicate refusal to cast oneself as a tragic hero; panache is therefore a timid heroism, like the smile with which one excuses one's superiority.
Edmond Rostand
#37. The chief prerequisite for a escort is to have a flexible conscience and an inflexible politeness.
Marguerite Gardiner
#38. The politeness was painful. I wanted to push through it, to return to the glow of the night of the concert, but I was unsure of how to get back there.
Gayle Forman
#39. Kindly politeness is the slow fruit of advanced reflection; it is a sort of humanity and kindliness applied to small acts and every day discourse: it bids man soften towards others, and forget himself for the sake of others: it constrains genuine nature, which is selfish and gross.
Hippolyte Taine
#40. 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
#41. 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
#42. Kate said, her eyes very large, 'I find your rudeness abominable and your politeness obnoxious but my goodness, Francis Crawford, what terrifies me more than a jungle of tigers is the moment when you look worried.
Dorothy Dunnett
#43. Politeness, however, acts the lady's maid to our thoughts; and they are washed, dressed, curled, rouged, and perfumed, before they are presented to the public ...
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
#44. Adrian's face was the picture of perfect politeness and restraint, meaning something disastrous was about to happen.
Richelle Mead
#45. Great men show politeness in a particular way; a smile suffices to assure you that you are welcome, and keep about their avocations as if you were a member of the family.
John James Audubon
#46. She always tried to be a fair person, so she made an effort not to judge him for it. But the fact remained that she was instinctively suspicious of a fit body. So often, they seemed to be entirely incompatible with other qualities--like intelligence or kindness or even basic politeness.
Katarina Bivald
#47. With ceremony, with forms of politeness and reassurance, they borrowed the waters of the River and its little confluents to drink and be clean and irrigate with, using water mindfully, carefully. They lived in a land that answers greed with drought and death. A difficult land: aloof yet sensitive.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#49. His smile was instinctive. A little bit apology, a little bit politeness. And a little bit of charm because, of all the things he'd expected to come from his trip to the market, meeting a cute girl with messy hair and dirty work gloves had definitely not been one of them.
Marissa Meyer
#50. Don't you bully me with your politeness!
Yann Martel
#51. Francis Bacon somewhere remarks that politeness veils vice just as dress masks wrinkles.
John Doran
#53. The exquisite code of politeness of the Woosters prevented me clipping her one on the ear-hole, but I would have given a shilling to be able to do it. There seemed to me something deliberately fat-headed in the way she persisted in missing the gist.
P.G. Wodehouse
#54. Nothing patronizing, nothing sexist--just a slightly outdated politeness, and the general regard it might suggest.
Nickolas Butler
#55. A.J. nods out of politeness, but he doesn't believe in random acts. He is a reader, and what he believes in is narrative construction. If a gun appears in act one, that gun had better go off by act three.
Gabrielle Zevin
#56. Cinderella studied the colonel. "Haven't you tired of history, or my voice?" she asked, her tone closer to sincerity than the stiff politeness she usually used. "Not yet," he smirked. Cinderella
K.M. Shea
#57. You know, the kind who know Jesus by His first name, but out of politeness never use it even to His face.
Toni Morrison
#58. Curious how Love destroys every vestige of that politeness which the human race, in its years of evolution, has so painfully acquired.
Stella Gibbons
#59. Such is the effect of true politeness, that it banishes all restraint and embarassment.
Fanny Burney
#60. Treat your enemies with courtesy, and you'll see how valuable it really is. It costs little but pays a nice dividend: those who honor are honored. Politeness and a sense of honor have this advantage: we bestow them on others without losing a thing.
Baltasar Gracian
#61. We seem to have lost our capacity for politeness and for genuine concern about the quality of our interactions in this hectic century.
James G. Stavridis
#62. He also had a kind of helpless politeness, which I took advantage of. He was quite incapable of refusing a direct request, and so, because I asked him to, he invited me to several parties during the month I stayed in Hemgogn.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#63. Politeness never was one of your strong points"
"Bitch was always one of yours though
R.S. Burnett
#64. Politeness has been defined to be artificial good-nature; but we may affirm, with much greater propriety, that good-nature is natural politeness.
Stanislaw Leszczynski
#65. I still do find it very difficult in the West to connect to this politeness of smiling, not saying how you're thinking or not saying how you really feel.
Waris Dirie
#66. There are few defects in our nature so glaring as not to be veiled from observation by politeness and good-breeding.
Stanislaw Leszczynski
#67. Would you like a drink?" Politeness wins out over everything else I'd like to say.
"No, thank you, Anastasia." He smiles a dazzling, crooked smile, his head cocked slightly to one side.
Well, I might need one.
E.L. James
#68. When affection fell on its ass, politeness could step up.
Lorrie Moore
#69. Politeness is the poison of collaboration.
Edwin Land
#70. ACCEPT PRAISE FOR ITS WORTH - POLITENESS. BE BRUTALLY FRANK WITH YOURSELF. IT'S SAFER.
Nellie Bly
#71. Even a wolf knows how to be polite when animalistic humans have no clue about politeness
Munia Khan
#73. We stared at each other. The level of politeness had risen to dangerous levels.
Ilona Andrews
#74. Ironic. I'm here because of my inherent dangerousness, but it's my inherent politeness that makes me put up with this. With him.
Sophie Jordan
#76. Callousness and insolence bring to bare unanimous social condemnation, while the simple efforts of politeness are admired; even in those who are otherwise despised.
Bryant H. McGill
#77. Art requires neither complaisance nor politeness; nothing but faith, faith and freedom.
Gustave Flaubert
#78. Avoid contact with all people in whom there is no possible resonance with what touches you most deeply and toward whom you have obligations of "kindness," of politeness.
Laure
#79. Lively, intelligent, and quite immature, [Emily] usually burst out with exactly the comment that summed up the situation beautifully and therefore could never in politeness be said.
Clare B. Dunkle
#80. My generation of radicals and breakers-down never found anything to take the place of the old virtues of work and courage and the old graces of courtesy and politeness.
F Scott Fitzgerald
#81. When suave politeness, tempering bigot zeal, corrected 'I believe' to 'one does feel'.
Ronald Knox
#82. He opened the first letter, No "Dear Mr. Woods." It was a page full of profanities. There was something oddly refreshing about honest, to-the-point hate mail. No hypocrisy and forced politeness. Too many letters ripped you to shreds, then closed off 'Sincerely yours.
Randy Alcorn
#84. I am not a Jew for Jesus but I am definitely a Jew for Christmas. Christmas is one of the best things you Christians have given us, along with mac and cheese, Bono, croquet and politeness.
David Brooks
#86. It is impossible to practice parliamentary politics without having patience, decency, politeness and courtesy.
Khaleda Zia
#87. Politeness and diplomacy are responsible for more suffering and death than all the crimes of passion in history. Fuck politeness. Fuck diplomacy. Tell the truth.
Brad Blanton
#88. Politeness is not always a sign of wisdom; but the want of it always leaves room for a suspicion of folly, if folly and imprudence are the same.
Walter Savage Landor
#89. I'm sitting in my home office wearing a bathrobe. The same way I'm not going to start wearing ties, I'm also not going to buy into the fake politeness, the lying, the office politics and backstabbing, the passive aggressiveness, and the buzzwords.
Linus Torvalds
#90. Clarity is the politeness of the man of letters.
Jules Renard
#91. Our morality seems to be only a check on the ultimate domination of force, just as our politeness is a check on the impulse of every pig to put his feet in the trough.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
#93. Yes, madam," he said, with the exceeding politeness of a man who has just imagined raping you.
Karan Mahajan
#94. Politeness is the art of choosing among your thoughts.
Madame De Stael
#96. I hate being moved. I hate that man who came in. So self-righteous, so cruel. He made fun of me, that's why I cried. You never did that. You led me into temptation by your - politeness.
Peter Ustinov
#97. I don't think you should have to try to be nice, I think most people are nice. I think being cheerful and nice is just a politeness.
Graham Norton
#98. Since the average person's small supply of politeness must last him all his life, he can't afford to waste it on bridge partners.
Alfred Sheinwold
#99. I realized that you don't try on a pair of pants, fart in them, and then put them back on the shelf, and the same rough politeness applied here, too. Plain and simple, I bled on it, I bought it.
Laurie Notaro
#100. Old men when they begin to hear the last trumpet, on the morning breeze, often have a kind of absent-minded smile; like people listening. And their smiles are just politeness.
Joyce Cary
