Polite Quotes - Page 16

• Swedes are such a civilised, perfect society - at least on the surface. There's a great safety net, a huge middle class, free education, free health care. People are very polite, they wait their turn. They're not too loud, they're not too quiet, but sometimes it's a little too perfect.

  Alexander Skarsgard

  Class, Free Education, People

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• Baltimore is warm but pleasant... I belong here, where everything is civilized and gay and rotted and polite.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Gay, Baltimore, Pleasant

  F. Scott Fitzgerald, Matthew Joseph Bruccoli, Judith Baughman (1994). “A Life in Letters”, p.291, Simon and Schuster

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• I'll have pot in my home for guests - I'm polite! - but I don't sit around and smoke by myself, ever. Not like I did when I was young.

  John Waters

  Home, Guests, Pot

  Source: www.timeout.com

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• Women are sort of like motorcycle gangs with me. They get really shy and polite. I don't know why.

  Jack Nicholson

  Motorcycle Gangs, Shy, Get Real

  Source: the-talks.com

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• Always be polite to a dragon. It's harder than it sounds. Dragon etiquette is incredibly complicated, and if you make a mistake, the dragon eats you.

  Patricia C. Wrede

  Mistake, Dragons, Sound

  Patricia C. Wrede (2015). “Calling on Dragons”, p.251, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I grew up in a family where the women were just nuts. They didn't stand around in cardigans making polite conversation while they chopped tomatoes.

  Nadia Giosia

  Nuts, Tomatoes, Grew Up

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• I am a star in the firmament that observe the world, despises the world and consumed in its heat. I am the sea by night in a storm the sea shouting that accumulates new sins and to the ancient makes recompense. I am exiled from your world of pride polite, by pride defrauded, I am the king without crown. I am the passion without words without stones of the hearth, without weapons in the war, is my same force that make me sick

  Hermann Hesse

  Stars, Kings, War

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• The trouble is, if you go too far towards being polite, the label that applies is "doormat".

  Charles Stross

  Labels, Trouble, Doormat

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• We hold back our true feelings and beliefs, whether it's from a sense of being polite or fear of hurting someone's feelings. But what I have seen on 'The Oprah Winfrey Show' is that no one benefits from holding back and keeping things bottled up inside. So I pride myself on speaking my mind and not being afraid to give honest feedback.

  Nate Berkus

  Hurt, Pride, Speaking My Mind

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• You lose nothing by being polite. The answer is 'No', but please say it politely and give the reasons. ... Explain to me why 'No'. Don't change 'No' to 'Yes'. Don't be a fool. If there was a good reason why it is 'No', it must remain 'No', but the man must be told politely.

  Mr. Lee

  Men, Giving, Answers

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• For example, in Paris, if one desires to buy something, you enter the store and say "Good morning, sir" or "madam," depending on what is appropriate, you wait until you are greeted, you make polite chitchat about the weather or some such, and when the salesperson asks what they can do for you, then and only then do you bring up the vulgar business of the transaction you require.

  Craig Ferguson

  Morning, Weather, Paris

  Craig Ferguson (2010). “Between the Bridge and the River: A Novel”, p.109, Chronicle Books

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• In Japan, you have no idea what they are saying, and they can't help you either. Nothing makes any sense. They're very polite, but you feel like a joke is being played on you the entire time you're there.

  Bill Murray

  Japan, Ideas, Helping

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• Genteel women suppose that those things do not really exist about which it is impossible to talk in polite company.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Impossible, Company

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• In the first place you can be so absolutely honest and so absolutely wrong at the same time that I think it is better to be a combination of cautious and polite

  Flannery O'Connor

  Thinking, Firsts, Honest

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “Collected Works”, New York, NY : Library of America : Distributed to the trade in the U.S. and Canada by Viking Press

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• There are things that are not spoken about in polite society. Very quickly in most conversations you'll reach a moment where someone goes, 'Oh, that's a bit heavy,' or 'Eew, disgusting.' And literature is a place where that stuff goes; where people whisper to each other across books, the writer to the reader. I think that stops you feeling lonely – in the deeper sense, lonely.

  Alain de Botton

  Lonely, Book, Thinking

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• You need people in a society to have reached a certain standard of living before they can be polite. You learn how to respect others because you don't have to fight as much, you have what you need.

  Cristian Mungiu

  Fighting, People, Needs

  Source: www.indiewire.com

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• Comedy isn't polite and it isn't correct and it isn't accurate, even. It's just a mess. So that's the way that I approach it.

  Louis C. K.

  Way, Comedy, Accurate

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• My immune system has always been overly welcoming of germs. It's far too polite, the biological equivalent of a southern hostess inviting y'all nice microbes to stay awhile and have some artichoke dip.

  A. J. Jacobs

  Nice, Health, Southern

  A. J. Jacobs (2012). “Drop Dead Healthy: One Man's Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection”, p.72, Simon and Schuster

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• It is not polite for a Russian to interfere in British politics.

  Alexander Lebedev

  British Politics, British, Interfere

  "Alexander Lebedev profile: ex-KGB agent says he will champion a free press". Interview with Luke Harding, www.theguardian.com. January, 14, 2009.

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• Jazz was formerly a crude term for indulging in an action which in polite society is referred to, if at all, only with such vague Latin terms as intercourse and cohabitation.

  Charlton Laird

  Latin, Cohabitation, Jazz

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• Scholarship is polite argument.

  Philip Rieff

  Knowledge, Argument, Scholarship

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• If a Democrat took Republicans on rudely, they wouldn't be elevated in the Democratic Party. There's a different standard. We're supposed to be polite to people.

  Dannel Malloy

  Party, People, Different

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• I felt that even when they were polite they hardly saw me, that they would have begged the pardon of Jack the Bear, never glancing his way if the bear happened to be walking along minding his business. It was confusing. I did not know if it was desirable or undesirable.

  Ralph Ellison

  Business, Confusing, Saws

  Ralph Ellison (2010). “Invisible Man”, p.193, Vintage

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• With the movies, people are not going to wait around. The deadline is a deadline. In publishing it's more a polite suggestion.

  David Benioff

  People, Waiting, Suggestions

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• Sometimes when you start losing detail, whether it's in music or in life, something as small as failing to be polite, you start to lose substance.

  Benny Goodman

  Details, Substance, Losing

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