quotations about manners
Good manners are buffers between egos; they are the ways of civilized people.
JOHN B. STEWART
Opinion and Reform in Hume's Political Philosophy
Manners are of more importance than laws. The law can touch us here and there, now and then. 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
Letters On a Regicide Peace
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
Emperors and rich men are by no means the most skillful masters of good manners. No rent roll nor army-list can dignify skulking and dissimulations: and the first point of courtesy must always be truth, as really all forms of good-breeding point that way.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
"Manners", Essays
It's always galling to be taught good manners by an enemy.
K. J. PARKER
Devices and Desires
If refinement does not lead directly to purity of manners, it obviates at least their greatest depravation.
SIR J. REYNOLDS
attributed, Day's Collacon
Manners are laws in their infancy.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
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
Bad manners are the fruits of a coarse nature and unwise training.
CLARA JESSUP MOORE
Sensible Etiquette of the Best Society
Manners are guideposts for behavior that serve as helpful road signs on the path of human interaction.
JUNE EDING
Manners That Matter Most
There is no outward mark of politeness that does not have a profound moral reason. The right education would be that which taught the outward mark and the moral reason together.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
Elective Affinities
Should we distrust [a] man because his manners are not our manners?
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER
The Last of the Mohicans
You only had to choose which me to talk to, for, you know, we all change our manners, depending on who has come to chat.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There
Art polishes man, and manners distinguish him from the brute creation.
OVID
attributed, Day's Collacon
The importance of manners, my mother always said, is inversely related to how inclined one is to use them.
NICOLE KRAUSS
Great House
That makes the good and bad of manners, namely, what helps or hinders fellowship.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
"Manners", Essays
Air and manners are more expressive than words.
S. RICHARDSON
attributed, Day's Collacon
Good manners do more for a man that good looks.
EDGAR WATSON HOWE
Country Town Sayings
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
A man's own manner and character is what best becomes him.
CICERO
attributed, Day's Collacon