Quotes and Sayings about Manners
"She had a womanly instinct that clothes possess an influence more powerful over many than the worth of character or the magic of manners."
- Louisa May Alcott
(Related: Character, Clothes, Influence, Instinct, Magic, Manners, Worth)
"The show is like an Edwardian play - emotional life gets stepped on for the sake of accepted manners, and that's terrific for actors to play in."
- Jason Alexander
(Related: Life, Actors, Manners, Play)
"We who have been born and nurtured on this soil, we, whose habits, manners, and customs are the same in common with other Americans, can never consent to - be the bearers of the redress offered by that Society to that much afflicted."
- Richard V. Allen
(Related: Society, Americans, Habits, Manners)
"Clothes and manners do not make the man; but when he is made, they greatly improve his appearance."
- Arthur Ashe
(Related: Appearance, Clothes, Man, Manners)
"The hardest job kids face today is learning good manners without seeing any."
- Fred Astaire
(Related: Job, Kids, Learning, Manners, Today)
"In marriage there are no manners to keep up, and beneath the wildest accusations no real criticism. Each is familiar with that ancient child in the other who may erupt again. We are not ridiculous to ourselves. We are ageless. That is the luxury of the wedding ring."
- Enid Bagnold
(Related: Marriage, Wedding, Accusations, Criticism, Luxury, Manners, May)
"Manners are the hypocrisy of a nation."
- Honore de Balzac
(Related: Hypocrisy, Manners, Nation)
"Evil communication corrupts good manners. I hope to live to hear that good communication corrects bad manners."
- Benjamin Banneker
(Related: Hope, Communication, Evil, Manners)
"The people were simpler, more peaceable and friendly in their manners and dispositions; and assassinations, which give the southern provinces so ill a reputation, were almost unknown."
- Henry Walter Bates
(Related: People, Manners, Reputation)
"Taste is more to do with manners than appearances. Taste is both myth and reality; it is not a style."
- Stephen Bayley
(Related: Manners, Myth, Reality, Style, Taste)
"Clothes and manners do not make the man; but, when he is made, they greatly improve his appearance."
- Henry Ward Beecher
(Related: Appearance, Clothes, Man, Manners)
"You can't be truly rude until you understand good manners."
- Rita Mae Brown
(Related: Manners)
"Good manners sometimes means simply putting up with other people's bad manners."
- H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
(Related: People, Manners)
"The most important of all revolutions, a revolution in sentiments, manners and moral opinions."
- Edmund Burke
(Related: Revolution, Manners, Opinions)
"You come before me this morning with clean hands and clean collars. I want you to have clean tongues, clean manners, clean morals and clean characters."
- John Burns
(Related: Manners, Morals, Want)
"Good manners: The noise you don't make when you're eating soup."
- Bennett Cerf
(Related: Eating)
"This man, although he appeared so humble and embarrassed in his air and manners, and passed so unheeded, had inspired me with such a feeling of horror by the unearthly paleness of his countenance, from which I could not avert my eyes, that I was unable longer to endure it."
- Adelbert von Chamisso
(Related: Eyes, Feeling, Horror, Man, Manners)
"Frequent and loud laughter is the characteristic of folly and ill manners."
- Lord Chesterfield
(Related: Folly, Laughter, 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."
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
(Related: Mankind, Manners, Morals)
"Prithee don't screw your wit beyond the compass of good manners."
- Colley Cibber
(Related: Manners, Wit)
"I think sometimes people project things on you, but I'm trying to handle everything that's happened to me with a certain amount of grace, dignity and good manners. You just can't necessarily win all the time."
- Katie Couric
(Related: Time, People, Dignity, Grace, Manners, Project, Trying)
"Manners are love in a cool climate."
- Quentin Crisp
(Related: Love, Climate, Manners)
"Modern morality and manners suppress all natural instincts, keep people ignorant of the facts of nature and make them fighting drunk on bogey tales."
- Aleister Crowley
(Related: Nature, Morality, People, Facts, Fighting, Manners)
"I hope that 9/11 has grouped us as one, and in doing so it has united us. Perhaps as a unit we can help each other get ahead, survive and succeed in this free world. And hey guys, let's not forget out manners!!"
- Doug Davidson
(Related: Hope, Forget, Help, Succeed, United, World)
"Nowadays, manners are easy and life is hard."
- Benjamin Disraeli
(Related: Life, Manners)
"Manners require time, and nothing is more vulgar than haste."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
(Related: Time, Haste, Manners, Nothing)
"Fine manners need the support of fine manners in others."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
(Related: Manners, Support)
"I describe not men, but manners; not an individual, but a species."
- Henry Fielding
(Related: Men, Manners)
"Savages we call them because their manners differ from ours."
- Benjamin Franklin
(Related: Manners)
"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."
- R. Buckminster Fuller
(Related: Art, Knowledge, Virtue, Children, Concern, Manners, Parents)
"The test of good manners is to be patient with the bad ones."
- Solomon Ibn Gabirol
(Related: Manners)
"Arles is certainly one of the most interesting towns I have ever seen, whether viewed as a place remarkable for the objects of antiquity it contains, or for the primitive manners of its inhabitants and its picturesque appearance."
- Marguerite Gardiner
(Related: Appearance, Manners, Remarkable)
"Conventional manners are a kind of literacy test for the alien who comes among us."
- Katharine Fullerton Gerould
(Related: Manners)
"He combines the manners of a Marquis with the morals of a Methodist."
- William Gilbert
(Related: Manners, Morals)
"You can get through life with bad manners, but it's easier with good manners."
- Lillian Gish
(Related: Life, Manners)
"A man's manners are a mirror in which he shows his portrait."
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
(Related: Man, Manners)
"I love everything that's old, - old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine."
- Oliver Goldsmith
(Related: Love, Books, Friends, Manners, Old, Wine)
"I learned everything from that show, so it's just a wonderful memory to me. A lot of people would be embarrassed to admit that they were on 'Barney', but I embrace the fact. I just had such a wonderful time doing that show... I learned what a camera and prop is, and all that. I learned my manners too, so I guess that's a good thing!"
- Selena Gomez
(Related: Time, People, Fact, Manners, Memory)
"Command that no one be received, or kept to be of your household indoors or without, if one has not reasonable belief of them that they are faithful, discreet, and painstaking in the office for which they are received, and withal honest and of good manners."
- Robert Grosseteste
(Related: Belief, Manners, Office)
"Of course poets have morals and manners of their own, and custom is no argument with them."
- Thomas Hardy
(Related: Argument, Custom, Manners, Morals, Poets)
"An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life."
- Robert A. Heinlein
(Related: Life, Society, Manners, May)
"You lose your manners when you are poor."
- Lillian Hellman
(Related: Manners, Poor)
"We were taught manners and we had to do our chores - Katie and I grew up as normal kids."
- Oliver Hudson
(Related: Kids, Manners)
"A man who pretends to understand women is bad manners. For him to really to understand them is bad morals."
- Henry James
(Related: Women, Man, Manners, Morals)
"To Americans, English manners are far more frightening than none at all."
- Randall Jarrell
(Related: Americans, English, Manners)
"Grace is in garments, in movements, in manners; beauty in the nude, and in forms. This is true of bodies; but when we speak of feelings, beauty is in their spirituality, and grace in their moderation."
- Joseph Joubert
(Related: Beauty, Feelings, Grace, Manners, Moderation, Spirituality)
"Persian social manners are well known, and there is no other society that can compete with them."
- Moshe Katsav
(Related: Society, Manners)
"Nations are equal in respect to each other, and entitled to claim equal consideration for their rights, whatever may be their relative dimensions or strength or however greatly they may differ in government, religion or manners."
- James Kent
(Related: Religion, Government, Strength, Consideration, Rights, Manners, May, Nations, Respect)
"There are three subjects on which the knowledge of the medical profession in general is woefully weak; they are manners, morals, and medicine."
- Gerald F. Lieberman
(Related: Medical, Knowledge, Manners, Medicine, Morals, Profession)
"Politeness is only one half good manners and the other half good lying."
- Mary Wilson Little
(Related: Lying, Manners, Politeness)
"Politeness is half good manners and half good lying."
- Mary Wilson Little
(Related: Lying, Manners, Politeness)
"Simplicity in character, in manners, in style; in all things the supreme excellence is simplicity."
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
(Related: Character, Excellence, Manners, Simplicity, Style)
"I have always been of the mind that in a democracy manners are the only effective weapons against the bowie-knife."
- James Russell Lowell
(Related: Democracy, Manners, Mind, Weapons)
"You learn, just as you learn good manners, how to approach things with a certain amount of diplomacy."
- Robert MacNeil
(Related: Diplomacy, Manners)
"In a state therefore of great equality and virtue, where pure and simple manners prevailed, the increase of the human species would evidently be much greater than any increase that has been hitherto known."
- Thomas Malthus
(Related: Equality, Virtue, Manners, State)
"I seek constantly to improve my manners and graces, for they are the sugar to which all are attracted."
- Og Mandino
(Related: Manners)
"Manners easily and rapidly mature into morals."
- Horace Mann
(Related: Manners, Morals)
"Indeed, Miss Manners has come to believe that the basic political division in this country is not between liberals and conservatives but between those who believe that they should have a say in the love lives of strangers and those who do not."
- Judith Martin
(Related: Love, Country, Liberals, Manners, Strangers)
"Yes, but also one of the problems for a novelist in Ireland is the fact that there are no formal manners. I mean some people have beautiful manners but there's no kind of agreed form of manners."
- John McGahern
(Related: People, Fact, Ireland, Manners, Problems)
"Good manners are appreciated as much as bad manners are abhorred."
- Bryant H. McGill
(Related: Manners)
"A car is useless in New York, essential everywhere else. The same with good manners."
- Mignon McLaughlin
(Related: Car, Manners)
"I have a respect for manners as such, they are a way of dealing with people you don't agree with or like."
- Margaret Mead
(Related: People, Manners, Respect)
"On the Continent people have good food; in England people have good table manners."
- George Mikes
(Related: Food, People, England, Manners)
"The decline of manners, the cynical pursuit without shame or restraint of personal advantage and of money characterizes our times, not without exceptions, of course, but more than we ought to be comfortable with."
- J. Irwin Miller
(Related: Money, Manners, Pursuit, Restraint, Shame)
"Writers of novels and romance in general bring a double loss to their readers; robbing them of their time and money; representing men, manners, and things, that never have been, or are likely to be."
- Mary Wortley Montagu
(Related: Time, Men, Romance, Money, Loss, Manners, Writers)
"Teach love, generosity, good manners and some of that will drift from the classroom to the home and who knows, the children will be educating the parents."
- Roger Moore
(Related: Home, Love, Children, Classroom, Generosity, Manners, Parents, Will)
"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
(Related: Losing, Manners, Will, Writers)
"It strikes me as bad manners for a magazine to accept one of my advertisements and then attack it editorially - like inviting a man to dinner then spitting in his eye."
- David Ogilvy
(Related: Eye, Man, Manners)
"No advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimeter nearer."
- George Orwell
(Related: Equality, Wealth, Revolution, Manners, Reform)
"I differ materially from Capt. Lewis, in my account of the numbers, manners, and morals of the Sioux."
- Zebulon Pike
(Related: Manners, Morals, Numbers)
"Of Manners gentle, of Affections mild; In Wit a man; Simplicity, a child."
- Alexander Pope
(Related: Man, Manners, Simplicity, Wit)
"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
(Related: Feelings, Awareness, Manners)
"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
(Related: Manners, Numbers)
"For the standard of Christian life was to be strained to a higher pitch; more fasting was required, and more careful separation from the manners and enjoyments of the world; celibacy and martyrdom had great value set upon them, and second marriages were prohibited."
- Robert Rainy
(Related: Life, Christian, Celibacy, Manners, Separation, Value, World)
"When a man spends his time giving his wife criticism and advice instead of compliments, he forgets that it was not his good judgment, but his charming manners, that won her heart."
- Helen Rowland
(Related: Time, Wife, Heart, Advice, Compliments, Criticism, Giving, Judgment, Man, Manners)
"No person who is well bred, kind and modest is ever offensively plain; all real deformity means want for manners or of heart."
- John Ruskin
(Related: Heart, Manners, Want)
"The transition state of manners and language cannot be too often insisted upon: for this affected the process at both ends, giving the artist in fictitious life an uncertain model to copy and unstable materials to work in."
- George Saintsbury
(Related: Life, Work, Artist, Giving, Language, Manners, State)
"Liberty cannot be preserved, if the manners of the people are corrupted."
- Algernon Sidney
(Related: People, Liberty, Manners)
"Promptitude is not only a duty, but is also a part of good manners; it is favorable to fortune, reputation, influence, and usefulness; a little attention and energy will form the habit, so as to make it easy and delightful."
- Charles Simmons
(Related: Habit, Attention, Duty, Energy, Fortune, Influence, Manners, Reputation, Usefulness, Will)
"Bedside manners are no substitute for the right diagnosis."
- Alfred P. Sloan
(Related: Manners, Right)
"Be simple in words, manners, and gestures. Amuse as well as instruct. If you can make a man laugh, you can make him think and make him like and believe you."
- Alfred E. Smith
(Related: Man, Manners, Words)
"Manners are like the shadows of virtues, they are the momentary display of those qualities which our fellow creatures love and respect."
- Sydney Smith
(Related: Love, Manners, Respect, Shadows)
"Respect for ourselves guides our morals, respect for others guides our manners."
- Laurence Sterne
(Related: Manners, Morals, Respect)
"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
(Related: Art, People, Manners)
"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
(Related: Company, Example, Flattery, Manners, Nothing, Rest)
"The Japanese have perfected good manners and made them indistinguishable from rudeness."
- Paul Theroux
(Related: Manners, Rudeness)
"Good manners will open doors that the best education cannot."
- Clarence Thomas
(Related: Education, Manners, Open, Will)
"Nothing seems at first sight less important than the outward form of human actions, yet there is nothing upon which men set more store: they grow used to everything except to living in a society which has not their own manners."
- Alexis de Tocqueville
(Related: Men, Society, Actions, First, Living, Manners, Nothing, Sight)
"High rank and soft manners may not always belong to a true heart."
- Anthony Trollope
(Related: Heart, Manners, May, Rank)
"Good manners have much to do with the emotions. To make them ring true, one must feel them, not merely exhibit them."
- Amy Vanderbilt
(Related: Emotions, Manners)
"Friends and good manners will carry you where money won't go."
- Margaret Walker
(Related: Money, Friends, Manners, Will)
"The progress of the American Revolution has been so rapid and such the alteration of manners, the blending of characters, and the new train of ideas that almost universally prevail, that the principles which animated to the noblest exertions have been nearly annihilated."
- Mercy Otis Warren
(Related: Progress, Ideas, American, Revolution, Manners, Principles)
"Manners are especially the need of the plain. The pretty can get away with anything."
- Evelyn Waugh
(Related: Manners, Pretty)
"I think to be oversensitive about cliches is like being oversensitive about table manners."
- Evelyn Waugh
(Related: Being, Cliches, Manners)
"Equality is the public recognition, effectively expressed in institutions and manners, of the principle that an equal degree of attention is due to the needs of all human beings."
- Simone Weil
(Related: Equality, Attention, Manners, Needs, Public)
"Beware of a man with manners."
- Eudora Welty
(Related: Man, Manners)
"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
(Related: Manners, Perfection, Thinking)
"Manners are one of the greatest engines of influence ever given to man."
- Richard Whately
(Related: Influence, Man, Manners)
"To the real artist in humanity, what are called bad manners are often the most picturesque and significant of all."
- Walt Whitman
(Related: Artist, Humanity, Manners)
"The test of good manners is to be able to put up pleasantly with bad ones."
- Wendell Willkie
(Related: Manners)
"At any rate, girls are differently situated. Having no need of deep scientific knowledge, their education is confined more to the ordinary things of the world, the study of the fine arts, and of the manners and dispositions of people."
- William John Wills
(Related: Education, People, Knowledge, Deep, Girls, Manners, Study, World)
"It is time to effect a revolution in female manners - time to restore to them their lost dignity. It is time to separate unchangeable morals from local manners."
- Mary Wollstonecraft
(Related: Time, Dignity, Effect, Revolution, Manners, Morals)
"Men and women must be educated, in a great degree, by the opinions and manners of the society they live in."
- Mary Wollstonecraft
(Related: Men, Society, Women, Manners, Opinions)
"Wearing the correct dress for any occasion is a matter of good manners."
- Loretta Young
(Related: Dress, Manners)