quotations about manners
Truth, justice, and reason lose all their force and all their lustre when they are not accompanied with agreeable manners.
J. THOMSON
attributed, Day's Collacon
Manners differ with climates; the northern nations are distinguished for etiquette, the eastern for ceremony, and the southern for courtesy.
LORD ACTON
attributed, Day's Collacon
If we strive to become, then, what we strive to appear, manners may often be rendered useful guides to the performance of our duties.
SYDNEY SMITH
Sermons
For if you suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves and then punish them.
THOMAS MORE
Utopia
It's always galling to be taught good manners by an enemy.
K. J. PARKER
Devices and Desires
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
If refinement does not lead directly to purity of manners, it obviates at least their greatest depravation.
SIR J. REYNOLDS
attributed, Day's Collacon
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 guideposts for behavior that serve as helpful road signs on the path of human interaction.
JUNE EDING
Manners That Matter Most
Air and manners are more expressive than words.
S. RICHARDSON
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
Should we distrust [a] man because his manners are not our manners?
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER
The Last of the Mohicans
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
Art polishes man, and manners distinguish him from the brute creation.
OVID
attributed, Day's Collacon
Bad manners are the fruits of a coarse nature and unwise training.
CLARA JESSUP MOORE
Sensible Etiquette of the Best Society
That makes the good and bad of manners, namely, what helps or hinders fellowship.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
"Manners", Essays
The importance of manners, my mother always said, is inversely related to how inclined one is to use them.
NICOLE KRAUSS
Great House
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
Good manners do more for a man that good looks.
EDGAR WATSON HOWE
Country Town Sayings
A man's own manner and character is what best becomes him.
CICERO
attributed, Day's Collacon