George Carlin - Robert Heinlein - Thomas More - Robert Louis Stevenson - State of Grace 1990 - Star Trek: Deep Space Nine TV - Proverbs - Honore de Balzac - John Ruskin - Cicero - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - Claire Clairmont - Lord Byron - Edmund Spenser - William Shakespeare - Penn & Teller TV - Oliver Goldsmith TV - Steven Mince - Usain Bolt - Wendell Willkie - Charles Dickens - Homer
Political correctness is fascism pretending to be manners. George Carlin
A dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot. Robert A Heinlein, Friday
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
A child should always say what’s true,
And speak when he is spoken to,
And behave mannerly at table:
At least as far as he is able. Robert Louis Stevenson, A Child’s Garden of Verses
The most important thing in business is good manners. State of Grace 1990 starring Sean Penn & Ed Harris & Gary Oldman & Robin Wright & John Turturro & R D Call & John C Reilly & Joe Viterelli & Burgess Meredith & Marco St John & Mo Gaffney & Deirdre O’Connell & Thomas G Waites et al, director Phil Joanou, Borelli to Frankie
Bad manners are the fault of the parent not the child. My weakness is I’m too generous, too forgiving, my heart is too big. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine s5e8: Things Past
Manners maketh man. Mid-14th century proverb
Manners are the hypocrisy of a nation. Honore de Balzac
All real deformity means want for manners or of heart. John Ruskin
O tempora, O mores! [O the times, O the manners!] Cicero, 106-43 B.C.
A man’s manners are a mirror in which he shows his portrait. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I shall ever remember the gentleness of your manners and the wild originality of your countenance. Claire Clairmont, 1798-1879, lover of Byron
He was the mildest manner’d man
That ever scuttled ship or cut a throat. Lord Byron, Don Juan III:41
The gentle mind by gentle deeds is known.
For a man by nothing is so well bewrayed,
As by his manners. Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queen
Will it be ever thus? Ungracious wretch,
Fit for the mountains and the barbarous caves,
Where manners ne’er were preached. William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night IV I 46-48, Olivia
Some self-appointed manners experts ... Those type of manners are bullshit! Penn & Teller, Bullshit! s4e8: Manners, Showtime 2006
People are saying Americans are the rudest bastards in the history of rude bastardom. ibid.
In a recent poll eight out of ten people said rudeness was a bad problem. The other two in ten told the pollster to fuck off! ibid.
Manners are big business. ibid.
There are people who are willing to tell you for a fee what an asshole you are. ibid.
It’s not just Delta Airlines who are trying to control people’s manners off the job. ibid.
I wonder why London cannot keep its fools at home. Oliver Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer starring Polly Hemingway & Ian Redford & Miles Jupp & Susannah Fielding & Holly Gilbert & Mark Dexter et al, director Tony Britten, opening scene, Mr Hardcastle, Sky Arts 2012
I can’t abide to disappoint myself. ibid. son to mother
Isn’t the whole age in a combination to drive sense and discretion out of doors? ibid. Mr Hardcastle
So no more. He’s mine. I’ll have him. ibid. Kate
I have been threatened with a lover. ibid. Kate
My life has been chiefly spent in a college. Or an inn. ibid. Marlow
What if we should postpone the happiness till tomorrow? ibid.
There’s nothing I like so much as grave conversation myself. ibid. Kate
This house is mine! And I command you to leave it directly! ibid. Hardcastle to Marlow
He shall not go if I have power or art to detain him. I’ll still preserve a character in which I stoop to conquer. ibid. Kate
We don’t need endless formalities. Professor Steven P Mince
The average American has much better manners than Americans have ever had at any other time in our history. Professor Steven P Mince
Manners is the key thing. Say for instance when you’re growing up, you’re walking down the street, you’ve got to tell everybody good morning. Everybody. You can’t pass one person. Usain Bolt
The test of good manners is to be able to put up pleasantly with bad ones. Wendell Willkie
The essence of good manners consists in making it clear that one has no wish to hurt. When it is clearly necessary to hurt, it must be done in such a way as to make it evident that the necessity is felt to be regrettable. Bertrand Russell, Mortals and Others
Manners consist in pretending that we think as well of others as of ourselves. Manners are necessary because, as a rule, there is a pretence; when our good opinion of others is genuine, manners look after themselves.
Perhaps instead of teaching manners, parents should teach the statistical probability that the person you are speaking to is just as good as you are. It is difficult to believe this; very few of us do, in our instincts, believe it. One’s own ego seems so incomparably more sensitive, more perceptive, wiser and more profound than other people’s. Yet there must be very few of whom this is true, and it is not likely that oneself is one of those few. There is nothing like viewing oneself statistically as a means both to good manners and to good morals. ibid.
Nobody ought to have been able to resist her coaxing manner; and nobody had any business to try. Yet she never seemed to know it was her manner at all. That was the best of it. Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit
The mildest manners with the bravest mind. Homer, The Iliad XXIV:963