Conventional manners are a kind of literacy test for the alien who comes among us.

Conventional manners are a kind of literacy test for the alien who comes among us.

Originality usually amounts only to plagiarizing something unfamiliar.

Ignorance of what real learning is, and a consequent suspicion of it; materialism, and a consequent intellectual laxity, both of these have done destructive work in the colleges.

Educational legislation nowadays is largely in the hands of illiterate people, and the illiterate will take good care that their illiteracy is not made a reproach on them.

All violations of essential privacy are brutalizing.

One of the reasons, surely, why women have been credited with less perfect veracity than men is that the burden of conventional falsehood falls chiefly on them.

Civilization is merely an advance in taste: accepting, all the time, nicer things, and rejecting nasty ones.

Simplicity is an acquired taste. Mankind, left free, instinctively complicates life.

The real drawback to the simple life is that it is not simple. If you are living it, you positively can do nothing else. There is not time.

There is no morality by instinct. There is no social salvation in the end without taking thought; without mastery of logic and application of logic to human experience.

Social distinctions concern themselves ultimately with whom you may and may not marry.

Many of us do not believe in capital punishment because thus society takes from a man what society cannot give.

No advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimeter nearer.

Indeed, Miss Manners has come to believe that the basic political division in this country is not between liberals and conservatives but between those who believe that they should have a say in the love lives of strangers and those who do not.

Be simple in words, manners, and gestures. Amuse as well as instruct. If you can make a man laugh, you can make him think and make him like and believe you.

You come before me this morning with clean hands and clean collars. I want you to have clean tongues, clean manners, clean morals and clean characters.

To the real artist in humanity, what are called bad manners are often the most picturesque and significant of all.

An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.

Equality is the public recognition, effectively expressed in institutions and manners, of the principle that an equal degree of attention is due to the needs of all human beings.

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.

Manners are love in a cool climate.

Friends and good manners will carry you where money won't go.

The progress of the American Revolution has been so rapid and such the alteration of manners, the blending of characters, and the new train of ideas that almost universally prevail, that the principles which animated to the noblest exertions have been nearly annihilated.

Simplicity in character, in manners, in style; in all things the supreme excellence is simplicity.

I differ materially from Capt. Lewis, in my account of the numbers, manners, and morals of the Sioux.

Writers of novels and romance in general bring a double loss to their readers; robbing them of their time and money; representing men, manners, and things, that never have been, or are likely to be.

To Americans, English manners are far more frightening than none at all.

Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral laws are written on the table of eternity.

Persian social manners are well known, and there is no other society that can compete with them.

In marriage there are no manners to keep up, and beneath the wildest accusations no real criticism. Each is familiar with that ancient child in the other who may erupt again. We are not ridiculous to ourselves. We are ageless. That is the luxury of the wedding ring.

Good manners sometimes means simply putting up with other people's bad manners.

Respect for ourselves guides our morals, respect for others guides our manners.

Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest people uneasy is the best bred in the room.

I think to be oversensitive about cliches is like being oversensitive about table manners.

Manners are one of the greatest engines of influence ever given to man.

A man who pretends to understand women is bad manners. For him to really to understand them is bad morals.

He combines the manners of a Marquis with the morals of a Methodist.

You learn, just as you learn good manners, how to approach things with a certain amount of diplomacy.

Conventional manners are a kind of literacy test for the alien who comes among us.

When a man spends his time giving his wife criticism and advice instead of compliments, he forgets that it was not his good judgment, but his charming manners, that won her heart.

I think sometimes people project things on you, but I'm trying to handle everything that's happened to me with a certain amount of grace, dignity and good manners. You just can't necessarily win all the time.

High rank and soft manners may not always belong to a true heart.

I seek constantly to improve my manners and graces, for they are the sugar to which all are attracted.

Politeness is half good manners and half good lying.

I learned everything from that show, so it's just a wonderful memory to me. A lot of people would be embarrassed to admit that they were on 'Barney', but I embrace the fact. I just had such a wonderful time doing that show... I learned what a camera and prop is, and all that. I learned my manners too, so I guess that's a good thing!

The most important of all revolutions, a revolution in sentiments, manners and moral opinions.

Taste is more to do with manners than appearances. Taste is both myth and reality; it is not a style.

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.