Good Breeding Quotes

• Good-breeding shows itself most where to an ordinary eye it appears the least.

  Joseph Addison

  Eye, Ordinary, Breeding

  Joseph Addison, Richard Hurd, Henry George Bohn (1873). “The Works of the Right Honourable Joseph Addison”, p.455

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• A man's own good breeding is the best security against other people's ill manners.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Inspirational, Men, People

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• Good breeding is the result of good sense, some good nature, and a little self-denial for the sake of others.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Self, Denial, Littles

  Lord Chesterfield, David Roberts (2008). “Lord Chesterfield's Letters”, p.170, Oxford University Press

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• Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.

  Mark Twain

  Life, Thinking, Littles

  Notebook, 1899

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• Simplicity is a great element of good breeding.

  Fanny Kemble

  Simplicity, Elements, Breeding

  Fanny Kemble (1890). “Further Records, 1848-1883: A Series of Letters, Forming a Sequel to Record of a Girlhood, and Records of Later Life”

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• One principal object of good-breeding is to suit our behaviour to the three several degrees of men, our superiors, our equals, and those below us.

  Jonathan Swift

  Men, Suits, Degrees

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• Stillness of person and steadiness of features are signal marks of good breeding.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

  Ancestry, Signals, Breeding

  Oliver Wendell Holmes (2007). “Professor At The Breakfast Table”, p.139, Reprint Services Corporation

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• It is a mistake that there is no bath that will cure people's manners, but drowning would help.

  Mark Twain

  Mistake, People, Baths

  Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.19, Courier Corporation

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• People of small calibre are always carping. How affected so-and-so is! Don't you think he is silly? He was certainly quite mistaken about this or that. They are bent on showing their own superiority, their knowledge or their prowess or good breeding.

  Van Wyck Brooks

  People, Bent, Prowess

  "Opinions of Oliver Allston".

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• Good breeding in cattle depends on physical health, but in men on a well-formed character.

  Democritus

  Character, Men, Breeding

  "Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers: A Complete Translation of the Fragments in Diels Fragmente Der Vorsokratiker", translated by Kathleen Freeman, Harvard University Press, (p. 151), 1948.

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• If ever a man and his wife, or a man and his mistress, who pass nights as well as days together, absolutely lay aside all good breeding, their intimacy will soon degenerate into a coarse familiarity, infallibly productive of contempt or disgust.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Night, Men, Wife

  Lord Chesterfield, David Roberts (2008). “Lord Chesterfield's Letters”, p.174, Oxford University Press

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• The chief ingredients in the composition of those qualities that gain esteem and praise, are good nature, truth, good sense, and good breeding.

  Joseph Addison

  Quality, Literature, Gains

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• Good breeding differs, if at all, from high breeding only as it gracefully remembers the rights of others, rather than gracefully insists on its own rights.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Rights, Remember, Breeding

  Thomas Carlyle (1833). “Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Zenfelsdröck in Three Books”, p.165

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• Perhaps the summary of good-breeding may be reduced to this rule. "Behave unto all men as you would they should behave unto you." This will most certainly oblige us to treat all mankind with the utmost civility and respect, there being nothing that we desire more than to be treated so by them.

  Henry Fielding

  Men, Desire, May

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• Candor is a proof of both a just frame of mind, and of a good tone of breeding. It is a quality that belongs equally to the honest man and to the gentleman.

  James F. Cooper

  Inspirational, Men, Gentleman

  "The American Democrat". Book by James Fenimore Cooper, p. 115, 1838.

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• I was raised in Chicago and I guess that was one of the special breeding grounds for gangsters of all colors. That was the Detroit of the gangster world. The car industry was thugs.

  Quincy Jones

  Thug, Color, Car

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• Good breeding and good nature do incline us rather to help and raise people up to ourselves, than to mortify and depress them, and, in truth, our own private interest concurs in it, as it is making ourselves so many friends, instead of so many enemies.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Friends, Depressing, People

  Lord Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope Earl of Chesterfield (1855). “The Works of Lord Chesterfield: Including His Letters to His Son, Etc : to which is Prefixed, an Original Life of the Author”, p.199

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• Good manners come, as we say, from good breeding or rather are good breeding; and breeding is acquired by habitual action, in response to habitual stimuli, not by conveying information.

  John Dewey

  Good Man, Information, Action

  John Dewey (2012). “Democracy and Education”, p.23, Courier Corporation

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• Good breeding consists in having no particular mark of any profession, but a general elegance of manners.

  Samuel Johnson

  Elegance, Manners, Mark

  Samuel Johnson (1807). “Dr. Johnson's Table-talk: Containing Aphorisms on Literature, Life, and Manners, with Anecdotes of Distinguished Persons, Selected and Arranged from Mr. Boswell's Life of Johnson”, p.105

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• Good-breeding is the art of showing men, by external signs, the internal regard we have for them. It arises from good sense, improved by conversing with good company.

  Cato the Younger

  Art, Men, Good Company

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• Real good-breeding is independent of the forms and refinements of what has assumed to itself the name of society.

  George MacDonald

  Real, Independent, Names

  George MacDonald (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of George MacDonald (Illustrated)”, p.202, Delphi Classics

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• How delightful is the company of generous people, who overlook trifles and keep their minds instinctively fixed on whatever is good and positive in the world about them. People of small caliber are always carping. They are bent on showing their own superiority, their knowledge or prowess or good breeding. But magnanimous people have no vanity, they have no jealousy, and they feed on the true and the solid wherever they find it. And what is more, they find it everywhere.

  Van Wyck Brooks

  Motivational, Vanity, People

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• Good-breeding is not confined to externals, much less to any particular dress or attitude of the body; it is the art of pleasing, or contributing as much as possible to the ease and happiness of those with whom you converse.

  Henry Fielding

  Art, Attitude, Dresses

  Henry Fielding, Arthur Murphy (1816). “The Works of Henry Fielding, Esq: With an Essay on His Life and Genius”, p.196

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• If proportion is the good breeding of architecture, symmetry, or the answering of one part to another, may be defined as the sanity of decoration.

  Edith Wharton

  May, Architecture, Sanity

  Edith Wharton, Ogden Codman (2015). “The Decoration of Houses”, p.33, Courier Dover Publications

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• The intelligence of affection is carried on by the eye only; good-breeding has made the tongue falsify the heart, and act a part of continued restraint, while nature has preserved the eyes to herself, that she may not be disguised or misrepresented.

  Joseph Addison

  Heart, Eye, May

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