Manners Quotes - Page 23

• The best manners are stained by haughtiness.

  Claudius Claudianus

  Haughtiness

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• Gravity must be natural and simple; there must be urbanity and tenderness in it. A man must not formalize on everything. He who does so is a fool; and a grave fool is, perhaps, more injurious than a light fool.

  William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley

  Simple, Men, Light

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• A man can buy nothing in the market with gentility.

  William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley

  Men, Gentility

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• Better too much form than too little.

  Richard Whately

  Littles, Too Much, Form

  Francis Bacon, Richard Whately (1861). “Bacon's Essays”, p.522

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• Good manners are a part of good morals.

  Richard Whately

  Good Man, Moral, Good Manners

  Richard Whately (1856). “Thoughts and Apophthegms: From the Writings of Archbishop Whateley”, p.244

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• Some people are all quality; you would think they are made up of nothing but title and genealogy. The stamp of dignity defaces in them the very character of humanity and transports them to such a degree of haughtiness that they reckon it below themselves to exercise either good nature or good manners.

  Roger L'Estrange

  Character, Exercise, Thinking

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• Good manners are the expressions of benevolence in personal intercourse, by which we endeavor to promote the comfort and enjoyment of others, and to avoid all that gives needless uneasiness.

  Catharine Beecher

  Expression, Giving, Good Man

  Catharine Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe (2008). “American Woman's Home”, p.197, Applewood Books

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• There may be an excess of cultivation as well as of anything else, until civilization becomes pathetic. A highly cultivated man,--all whose bones can be bent! whose heaven-born virtues are but good manners!

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Civilization, Heaven

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.39, Xist Publishing

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• Nations are possessed with an insane ambition to perpetuate the memory of themselves by the amount of hammered stone they leave. What if equal pains were taken to smooth and polish their manners?

  Henry David Thoreau

  Pain, Memories, Taken

  Henry David Thoreau (1882). “Walden”, p.92

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• It is gentle manners which prove so irresistible in women.

  Theophile Gautier

  Gentle, Irresistible, Prove

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• Politeness, however, acts the lady's maid to our thoughts; and they are washed, dressed, curled, rouged, and perfumed, before they are presented to the public.

  Letitia Elizabeth Landon

  Maids, Politeness, Our Thoughts

  Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1852). “Romance and reality”, p.266

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• The basis of good manners is self-reliance. Necessity is the law of all who are not self-possessed.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Self, Law, Good Man

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.413

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• It is said that when manners are licentious, a revolution is always near: the virtue of woman being the main girth and bandage ofsociety; because a man will not lay up an estate for children any longer than whilst he believes them to be his own.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Sex, Children, Believe

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Joel Porte (1982). “Emerson in His Journals”, p.373, Harvard University Press

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• Those vices [luxury and neglect of decent manners] are vices of men, not of the times.
  [Lat., Hominum sunt ista [vitia], non temporum.

  Seneca the Younger

  Men, Luxury, Vices

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• A company attitude is rarely anybody's best.

  Catharine Sedgwick

  Attitude, Company

  Catharine Maria Sedgwick (1841). “Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home”, p.93

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• How much we forgive to those who yield us the rare spectacle of heroic manners! We will pardon them the want of books, or arts, and even of gentler virtues. How tenaciously we remember them!

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Book, Hero

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1875). “Culture, Behavior, Beauty”, p.74

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• I don't know what the country's coming to. Everyone trying to be better than their betters--mink coats and no manners. No wonder Germany's arming.

  Arthur Wimperis

  Country, War, Class

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• Republics demanded virtue. Monarchies could rely on coercion and "dazzling splendor" to suppress self-interest or factions; republics relied on the goodness of the people to put aside private interest for public good. The imperatives of virtue attached all sorts of desiderata to the republican citizen: simplicity, frugality, sobriety, simple manners, Christian benevolence, duty to the polity. Republics called on other virtues--spiritedness, courage--to protect the polity from external threats. Tyrants kept standing armies; republics relied on free yeomen, defending their own land.

  James Monroe

  Christian, Army, Simple

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• In relations with people, as in art, if you always stick to style, manners, and what will work, and you're never caught off guard, then some beautiful experiences never happen.

  Helen Frankenthaler

  Beautiful, Art, People

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• The mind must not be forced; artificial and constrained manners fill it with foolish presumption, through unnatural elevation and vain and ridiculous inflation, instead of solid and
  vigorous nutriment.

  Blaise Pascal

  Mind, Ridiculous, Foolish

  Blaise Pascal, Henry Rogers, Victor Cousin, Charles Louandre (1861). “The Thoughts, Letters and Opuscules of Blaise Pascal”, p.513

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• If I should go out of church whenever I hear a false statement I could never stay there five minutes. But why come out? The streetis as false as the church, and when I get to my house, or to my manners, or to my speech, I have not got away from the lie.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Lying, House, Society

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1883). “The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”

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• I could better eat with one who did not respect the truth or the laws, than with a sloven and unpresentable person. Moral qualities rule the world, but at shorter distances, the senses are despotic.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Respect, Distance, Law

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Essays (Annotated Edition)”, p.256, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Manners aim to facilitate life, to get rid of impediments, and bring the man pure to energize. They aid our dealing and conversation, as a railway aids travelling, by getting rid of all avoidable obstructions of the road, and leaving nothing to be conquered but pure space.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Space, Leaving

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1851). “Essays, lectures and orations”, p.222

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• A man is but a little thing in the midst of the objects of nature, yet, by the moral quality radiating from his countenance, he may abolish all considerations of magnitude, and in his manners equal the majesty of the world.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Quality, World

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1851). “Essays, lectures and orations”, p.233

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• My neighbors tell me of their adventures with famous gentlemen and ladies, what notabilities they met at the dinner-table; but I am no more interested in such things than in the contents of the Daily Times. The interest and the conversation are about costume and manners chiefly; but a goose is a goose still, dress it as you will.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Adventure, Gossip, Gentleman

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.333, Penguin

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