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The longer I live the more I
am
impressed with the importance of manners. When we reflect upon their
persuasive and cheering force, how they recommend, prepare and draw
people together; when we think what keys they are, and to what
secrets; what high and inspiring character they convey and what
divination is required of us for the reading of this fine telegraphy,
we see what range the subject has. —Emerson.
Evil communications corrupt
good manners. —1 Cor. 15:33.
The person who screams, or uses the
superlative degree, or converses
with heat puts whole drawing rooms to flight. If you wish to be loved,
love measure. —Emerson.
Good manners is the art of making those
people easy with whom we
converse. —Swift.
I really think next to the consciousness
of doing a good action,
that of doing a civil one is the most pleasing; and the epithet which I
should covet the most next to that of Aristides, would be that of
well-bred. —Chesterfield.
A man's worth is estimated in this world
according to his conduct. —La Bruyère.
There is certainly something of
exquisite kindness and thoughtful
benevolence in that rarest of gifts,—fine breeding. —Lytton.
In
the society of ladies, want of sense is not so unpardonable as want of
manners. —Lavater.
Good manners are a part of good morals. —Whatley.
One principal part of good breeding is
to suit our behavior to the
three several degrees of men: our superiors, our equals, and those
below us. —Swift.
As a man's salutations, so is the total
of his character; in nothing
do we lay ourselves so open as in our manner of meeting and salutation.
—Lavater.
Grace is to the body what good sense is
to the mind. —La Rochefoucauld.
Manners are the happy ways of doing
things; each one 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 dew-drops which
give such a depth to the morning meadows. —Emerson.
Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt
or purify, exalt or debase,
barbarize or refine, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible
operation, like that of the air we breathe in. They give their whole
form and colors to our lives. According to their quality they aid
morals, they supply them, or they totally destroy them. —Burke.
Good breeding is the result of much good
sense, some good nature,
and a little self-denial for the sake of others, and with a view to
obtain the same indulgence from them. —Chesterfield.
To be good and disagreeable is high
treason against the royalty of
virtue. —Hannah More.
A man's own good breeding is the best
security against other
people's ill manners. —Chesterfield.
The
distinguishing trait of people accustomed to good society is a calm,
imperturbable quiet which pervades all their actions and habits, from
the greatest to the least. They eat in quiet, move in quiet, live in
quiet, and lose their wife, or even their money, in quiet; while low
persons cannot take up either a spoon or an affront without making such
an amazing noise about it. —Lytton.
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 short
range the senses are despotic. —Thoreau
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