quotations about manners
Good manners without sincerity are like a beautiful dead lady.
YUKTESWAR GIRI
Autobiography of a Yogi
Manners are incidental to moral choices because they are benign expressions of character, and irrelevant to the particulars of a given choice. The fact that manners so readily dissociate from character suggests that, as far as virtue is concerned, they are not ingredients but accoutrements.
JASON W. BROWN
Process and the Authentic Life
Manners must adorn knowledge, and smooth its way through the world. Like a great rough diamond, it may do very well in a closet by way of curiosity, and also for its intrinsic value; but it will never be worn, nor shine, if it is not polished.
PHILIP STANHOPE
letter to his son, July 1, 1748
The point that should be stressed here is that manners are not a coerced and external set of rules: manners are internalized rules, and the process of internalization creates a new kind of subject.
TED OWNBY
Manners and Southern History
Good manners set off a lowly garb.
PLAUTUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
Manners differ with climates; the northern nations are distinguished for etiquette, the eastern for ceremony, and the southern for courtesy.
LORD ACTON
attributed, Day's Collacon
Good manners are buffers between egos; they are the ways of civilized people.
JOHN B. STEWART
Opinion and Reform in Hume's Political Philosophy
For if you suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves and then punish them.
THOMAS MORE
Utopia
Truth, justice, and reason lose all their force and all their lustre when they are not accompanied with agreeable manners.
J. THOMSON
attributed, Day's Collacon
If refinement does not lead directly to purity of manners, it obviates at least their greatest depravation.
SIR J. REYNOLDS
attributed, Day's Collacon
We ought to esteem him alone an agreeable and good-natured man, who, in his daily intercourse with others, behaves in such a manner as friends usually behave to each other. For as a person of that rustic character appears, wherever he comes, like a mere stranger: so, on the contrary, a polite man, wherever he goes, seems as easy as if he were amongst his intimate friends and acquaintance.
GIOVANNI DELLA CASA
Galateo: Or, A Treatise on Politeness and Delicacy of Manners
There ought to be system of manners in every nation which a well-formed mind would be disposed to relish. To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.
EDMUND BURKE
Reflections on the Revolution in France
Manners are not the be-all and end-all of human relationships, but they are certainly a good lubricant, a social WD40.
PAUL KROPP
I'll Be the Parent, You Be the Child
Manners are guideposts for behavior that serve as helpful road signs on the path of human interaction.
JUNE EDING
Manners That Matter Most
A robot could be programmed to show good manners. A pleasant demeanor can disguise evil, courtesy can be a window of opportunism, gracious conduct may conceal disdain.
JASON W. BROWN
Process and the Authentic Life
If we strive to become, then, what we strive to appear, manners may often be rendered useful guides to the performance of our duties.
SYDNEY SMITH
Sermons
Manners are of more importance than laws. The law can touch us here and there, now and then. 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.
EDMUND BURKE
Letters On a Regicide Peace
Eye nature's walks, shoot folly as it flies,
And catch the manners, living as they rise;
Laugh where we must, be candid where we can,
But vindicate the ways of God to man.
ALEXANDER POPE
An Essay on Man
Good manners do more for a man that good looks.
EDGAR WATSON HOWE
Country Town Sayings
In our manners, tranquility is the supreme power.
MME. DE MAINTENON
attributed, Day's Collacon