Manners Quotes - Page 19

• The complaints of contemporary writes, who deplore the increase of luxury and deprevation of manners, are commonly expressive of their peculiar temper and situation. There are few observers who possess a clear and comprehensive view of the revolutions of society, and who are capable of discovering the nice and secret springs of action which impel, in the same uniform direction, the bland and capricious passions of a multitude of individuals.

  Edward Gibbon

  Spring, Nice, Passion

  Edward Gibbon (1828). “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.501

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• We hear a great deal about the rudeness of the rising generation. I am an oldster myself and might be expected to take the oldsters' side, but in fact I have been far more impressed by the bad manners of parents to children than by those of children to parents.

  C. S. Lewis

  Children, Parent, Generations

  C. S. Lewis (1971). “The Four Loves”, p.54, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• As is the case with all good things in life - love, good manners, language, cooking - personal creativity is required only rarely.

  Leon Krier

  Love Life, Creativity, Things In Life

  Léon Krier (1998). “Architecture: Choice Or Fate”, p.24, Papadakis Publisher

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• My concern today is with the painting of manners of the present. The past is interesting not only by reason of the beauty which could be distilled from it by those artists for whom it was the present, but also precisely because it is the past, for its historical value. It is the same with the present. The pleasure which we derive from the representation of the present is due not only to the beauty with which it can be invested, but also to its essential quality of being present

  Charles Baudelaire

  Artist, Past, Historical Value

  Charles Baudelaire (1995). “The Painters of Modern Life”, Phaidon Incorporated Limited

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• I love cabdrivers. I love their unpredictable manners. I love the pictures of their families on the visors. I love the fact that most of them think I'm Martha Stewart.

  Diane Sawyer

  Thinking, Facts, Unpredictable

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• If I was to ask you tonight if you were saved? Do you say 'Yes, I am saved'. When? 'Oh so and so preached, I got baptized and...' Are you saved? What are you saved from, hell? Are you saved from bitterness? Are you saved from lust? Are you saved from cheating? Are you saved from lying? Are you saved from bad manners? Are you saved from rebellion against your parents? Come on, what are you saved from?

  Leonard Ravenhill

  Cheating, Lying, Parent

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• The education of youth belongs to the priests, yet they do not take so much care of instructing them in letters, as in forming their minds and manners aright; they use all possible methods to infuse, very early, into the tender and flexible minds of children, such opinions as are both good in themselves and will be useful to their country, for when deep impressions of these things are made at that age, they follow men through the whole course of their lives, and conduce much to preserve the peace of the government, which suffers by nothing more than by vices that rise out of ill opinions.

  Thomas More

  Country, Children, Men

  Thomas More (2010). “Utopia”, p.121, Bibliolis Books

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• This is another thing which I really like investigating in my novels: what is it that makes an intimate society, that makes a society in which moral concern for others will be possible? Part of that I think are manners and ritual. We tried to get rid of manners, we tried to abolish manners in the '60s. Manners were very, very old-fashioned and un-cool. And of course we didn't realise that manners are the building blocks of proper moral relationships between people.

  Alexander McCall Smith

  Block, Thinking, Concern For Others

  Source: www.abc.net.au

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• It's interesting to observe that almost all truly worthy men have simple manners, and that simple manners are almost always taken as a sign of little worth

  Giacomo Leopardi

  Taken, Simple, Men

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• Increasingly I think of myself as some strange and solitary conductor, introduced to a group of very dynamic musicians who happen to be my characters, and I have no idea how they are going to play together, and I have certainly no idea how I am going to put manners on them.

  Colum McCann

  Character, Thinking, Ideas

  "This Week in Fiction: Colum McCann" by Deborah Treisman, www.newyorker.com. April 04, 2012.

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• Would we codify the laws that should reign in households, and whose daily transgression annoys and mortifies us, and degrades our household life, we must adorn every day with sacrifices. Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Sacrifice, Law, Good Man

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2581, Delphi Classics

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• I make a distinction between manners and etiquette - manners as the principles, which are eternal and universal, etiquette as the particular rules which are arbitrary and different in different times, different situations, different cultures.

  Judith Martin

  Principles, Different, Culture

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• Whamming someone smaller than oneself in order to teach that person civilized behavior is not within Miss Manners' concept of propriety, much less logic.

  Judith Martin

  Order, Missing, Logic

  Judith Martin (2002). “Miss Manners' Guide to Rearing Perfect Children”, p.41, Simon and Schuster

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• The tone and tendency of liberalism...is to attack the institutions of the country under the name of reform and to make war on the manners and customs of the people under the pretext of progress.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Country, War, Names

  Benjamin Disraeli (Earl of Beaconsfield) (1886). “Wit and Wisdom of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield: Collected from His Writings and Speeches”

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• My constitution was destroyed long ago; now I am living under the bylaws.

  Clarence Darrow

  Long Ago, Bylaws, Moral

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• A philosopher is a fool who torments himself while he is alive, to be talked of after he is dead.

  Jean le Rond d'Alembert

  Alive, Fool, Philosopher

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• The only perfect climate is bed.

  Frank Crowninshield

  Perfect, Bed, Climate

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• I don't think pornography is harmful, but it is terribly, terribly boring.

  Noel Coward

  Thinking, Moral, Boring

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• I found out water can be drunk straight.

  Billy Carter

  Drunk, Water, Moral

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• Drinking more often brings out the best in the good than the worst in the bad.

  Malcolm Forbes

  Drinking, Moral, Worst

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• There are a million boys growing up in the United States who have never seen a saloon, and who will never know the handicap of liquor and this excellent condition will go on spreading over the country when the wet press and the paid propogandists of booze are forgotten. The abolition of the commercialized liquor trade in this country is as final as the abolition of slavery.

  Henry Ford

  Country, Growing Up, Boys

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• Thirteen states with a population less than that of New York State alone can prevent repeal [of prohibition] until Halley's comet returns. One might as well talk about a summer vacation on Mars.

  Clarence Darrow

  Summer, New York, Vacation

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• I would define morality as enlightened self-interest...That old Platonic ideal that there are certain pure moral forms just isn't where we are.

  Andrew Young

  Self, Morality, Enlightened

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• I don't approve of censorship. I like the French theatre idea. Put on the play, and if the audience doesn't care for it, or feels offended by it, they rip up the seats.

  John Huston

  Rip, Play, Ideas

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• The reason adultery is immoral is that it might lead to marriage.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Might, Moral, Adultery

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