Manners Quotes - Page 17

• Any change in customs ... takes generations to accomplish, and must come about by general consent. Even a superficial study of sociology shows the futility of past efforts to make a lasting change in manners by an act of will or authority.

  Millicent Fenwick

  Past, Lasting Change, Effort

  Millicent Fenwick (1948). “Vogue's book of etiquette: a complete guide to traditional forms and modern usage”

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• Only a great fool or a great genius is likely to flout all social grace with impunity, and neither one, doing so, makes the most comfortable companion.

  Amy Vanderbilt

  Grace, Genius, Fool

  Amy Vanderbilt, Letitia Baldrige (1978). “The Amy Vanderbilt complete book of etiquette: a guide to contemporary living”, Doubleday Books

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• Good manners - the longer I live the more convinced I am of it - are a priceless insurance against failure and loneliness. And anyone can have them.

  Elsa Maxwell

  Loneliness, Good Man, Priceless

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• Good manners spring from just one thing - kind impulses.

  Elsa Maxwell

  Spring, Good Man, Kind

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• In the old days, ptomaine poisoning was a cover-all. If you missed a show and you were young, it meant you were having an abortion. If you were old, it meant you were having a face lift.

  Ruth Gordon

  Abortion, Faces, Moral

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• we have not been impressed with any attribute of the Senate other than its appearance and manners. We have heard the best speakers: they all fire off speeches which deal with the entire subject in general terms and which do not attempt to debate, to answer opponents' arguments or offer new points for discussion. And the speeches are constantly degenerating into empty rhetoric; they abound in quotations from well-known authors or from their own former speeches.

  Beatrice Webb

  Fire, Answers, Speech

  Beatrice Potter Webb (1963). “American diary, 1898”

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• Country manners. Even if somebody phones up to tell you your house is burning down, they ask first how you are.

  Alice Munro

  Country, Phones, House

  Alice Munro (2015). “A Wilderness Station: Selected Stories, 1968-1994”, p.359, Vintage

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• The aristocrat, when he wants to, has very good manners. The Scottish upper classes, in particular, have that shell-shocked look that probably comes from banging their heads on low beams leaping to their feet whenever a woman comes into the room. Aristocrats are also deeply male chauvinist, and ... on the whole they tend to be reactionary.

  Jilly Cooper

  Upper Class, Feet, Good Man

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• One loses the capacity to grieve as a child grieves, or to rage as a child rages: hotly, despairingly, with tears of passion. One grows up, one becomes civilized, one learns one's manners, and consequently can no longer manage these two functions - sorrow and anger - adequately.

  Anita Brookner

  Children, Growing Up, Passion

  Anita Brookner (2016). “Brief Lives”, p.69, Penguin UK

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• There is a certain physiognomy in manners.

  Joseph Cook

  Certain, Physiognomy

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• I don't approve the informality in the world today, Mr. James. It's made strangers of us all.

  Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  World, Today, Stranger

  Dorothy Salisbury Davis (2014). “Death of an Old Sinner”, p.245, Open Road Media

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• When there's friction in the house, the only answer is good manners.

  Patti Page

  House, Good Man, Answers

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• it is bad manners to contradict a guest. You must never insult people in your own house - always go to theirs.

  Myrtle Reed

  People, House, Guests

  Myrtle Reed (1904). “The Book of Clever Beasts: Studies in Unnatural History”

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• Forget love. Try good manners.

  Rebecca Wells

  Good Man, Trying, Forget

  Rebecca Wells (2009). “Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood: Novel, A”, p.26, Harper Collins

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• To be polite to everybody except the people they love most is a nervous affectation that afflicts many families ... when they come home, they take off their smiles and soft words, and sit about, spiritually in their underwear. This isn't pretty.

  Margaret Fishback

  Family, Home, People

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• Good manners are very important, particularly in the morning.

  Louise Fitzhugh

  Morning, Good Man, Important

  Louise Fitzhugh (2009). “Harriet the Spy”, p.26, Yearling

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• When you see persons slip down on the ice, do not laugh at them. ... It is more feminine on witnessing such a sight, to utter an involuntary scream than a shout of laughter.

  Eliza Leslie

  Laughter, Sight, Ice

  Eliza Leslie (2016). “The Ladies' Guide to True Politeness and Perfect Manners”, p.25, Summersdale Publishers LTD - ROW

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• The New York waiter ... knows more than you do about everything. He disapproves of your taste in food and clothing, your gauche manners, your miserliness, and sometimes, it seems, of your very existence, which he tries to ignore.

  Kate Simon

  New York, Trying, Taste

  Kate Simon (1959). “New York Places & Pleasures: An Uncommon Guidebook. Drawings by Bob Gill”

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• To reject wisdom because the person communicates it is uncouth and his manners are inelegant, what is it but to throw away a pine-apple, and assign for a reason the roughness of its coat?

  Thomas Hartwell Horne

  Apples, Coats, Reason

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• New York has always prided itself on its bad manners. That is the real source of our strength.

  Gertrude Atherton

  New York, Real, Source

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• You talk to people who serve you the food the same way you talk to the people you eat the food with. You talk to people who work for you the same way you talk to the people you work for. It's a one-size-fits-all proposition.

  Claudia Shear

  People, Way, Size

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• Untimely conduct is the discord of manners.

  Louise Colet

  Discord

  "Tools Of Speech" by Maturin M. Ballou, (p. 108), 1886.

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• All Politeness is owing to Liberty. We polish one another, and rub off our Corners and rough Sides by a sort of amicable Collision. To restrain this, is inevitably to bring a Rust upon Mens Understandings.

  Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 10th Earl of Shaftesbury

  Understanding, Liberty, Rust

  "Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times". Book by Anthony Ashley-Cooper; Edition by Philip Ayres (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999) Vol. 1, pp. 39-40; "Sensus Communis", 1711.

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• My dear father always said that when everybody had a telephone nobody would have any manners, because there wouldn't be time for them. And of course he was perfectly right.

  Patricia Wentworth

  Father, Telephones, Said

  Patricia Wentworth (2005). “The Chinese Shawl”, p.34, Hachette UK

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• A vain man can never be altogether rude. Desirous as he is of pleasing, he fashions his manners after those of others.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Fashion, Men, Vanity

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1853). “Goethe's Opinions on the World, Mankind, Literature, Science, and Art”, p.48

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