“Manners are not idle, but the fruit. Of loyal nature and of noble mind.”
“Courtesy is the one coin you can never have too much of or be stingy with.”
“The test of good manners is to be able to put up pleasantly with bad ones.”
“Etiquette means behaving yourself a little better than is absolutely essential.”
“A man's own good breeding is the best security against other people's ill manners.”
“Treat your superior as a father, your equal as a brother, and your inferior as a son.”
“Ceremonies are different in every country, but true politeness is everywhere the same.”
“If a man has good manners and is not afraid of other people he will get by, even if he is stupid.”
“A traveler of taste will notice that the wise are polite all over the world, but the fool only at home.”
“I have always been of the mind that in a democracy manners are the only effective weapons against the bowie-knife.”
“Manhood is melted into courtesies, valor into compliment, and men are only turned into tongue, and trim ones, too.”
“To the real artist in humanity, what are called bad manners are often the most picturesque and significant of all.”
“Good manners have much to do with the emotions. To make them ring true, one must feel them, not merely exhibit them.”
“To be always thinking about your manners is not the way to make them good; the very perfection of manners is not to think about yourself.''”
“Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others. If you have that awareness, you have good manners, no matter what fork you use.”
“The purpose of polite behavior is never virtuous. Deceit, surrender, and concealment: these are not virtues. The goal of the mannerly is comfort, per se.”
“Nothing is so great an example of bad manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none; If you flatter only one or two, you offend the rest.”
“In truth, politeness is artificial good humor, it covers the natural want of it, and ends by rendering habitual a substitute nearly equivalent to the real virtue.”
“There are men whose manners have the same essential splendor as the simple and awful sculpture on the friezes of the Parthenon, and the remains of the earliest Greek art.”
“We are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind; but we are not justified in enforcing good manners, for good manners always mean our own manners.”
“Parents are usually more careful to bestow knowledge on their children rather than virtue, the art of speaking well rather than doing well; but their manners should be of the greatest concern.”
“Prepare yourself for the world, as the athletes used to do for their exercise; oil your mind and your manners, to give them the necessary suppleness and flexibility; strength alone will not do.”
“Manners are of more importance than laws. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in.”
“Manners are of such great consequence to the novelist that any kind will do. Bad manners are better than no manners at all, and because we are losing our customary manners, we are probably overly conscious of them; this seems to be a condition that produces writers.”
“The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or any other particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls: in short, behaving as if you were in Heaven, where there are no third-class carriages, and one soul is as good as another.”
“Among well bred people a mutual deference is affected, contempt for others is disguised; authority concealed; attention given to each in his turn; and an easy stream of conversation maintained without vehemence, without interruption, without eagerness for victory, and without any airs of superiority.”
“Manners are the happy way of doing things; each once a stroke of genius or of love --now repeated and hardened into usage. They form at last a rich varnish, with which the routine of life is washed, and its details adorned. If they are superficial, so are the dewdrops which give such depth to the morning meadows.”
“We cannot always oblige; but we can always speak obligingly.”