Manners are the ornament of action.--SMILES.
Manners are the lesser morals of life.--ARISTOTLE.
Little minds are vexed with trifles.--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.
It is always easy to say a rude thing, but never wise.--STACY.
Marriage is the true road to Paradise.--DE LA FERRIÈRE.
Guard the manners if you would protect the morals.--DAVIDSON.
Anger blows out the lamp of the mind.--ROBERT G. INGERSOLL.
Good temper is the essence of good manners.--ANONYMOUS.
Politeness is the expression or imitation of social
virtues.--DUCLOS.
Some people get into the bad habit of being unhappy.--GEORGE
ELIOT.
He that has no character is not a man: he is only a
thing.--CHAMFORT.
Contempt should be the best concealed of our
sentiments.--ANONYMOUS.
Sow good services; sweet remembrances will grow from them.--MME.
DE STAËL.
Good manners are the shadows of virtues, if not virtues
themselves.--ANONYMOUS.
Consideration for woman is the measure of a nation’s progress in
social life.--GRÉGOIRE.
In all professions and occupations, good manners are necessary to
success.--MRS. WARD.
Self-love is a balloon filled with wind, from which tempests
emerge when pricked.--VOLTAIRE.
Manners are the hypocrisies of nations; the hypocrisies are more
or less perfected.--BALZAC.
An earthly father who cannot govern by affection is not fit to be
a father.--ROBERT G. INGERSOLL.
It is generally allowed that the forming and the perfecting of
the character is difficult.--ANONYMOUS.
Respect your wife. Heap earth around that flower, but never drop
any in the chalice.--A. DE MUSSET.
Good manners is the art of making easy the persons with whom we
are brought into contact.--ANONYMOUS.
One should choose for a wife only such a woman as one would
choose for a friend, were she a man.--JOUBERT.
It is a great misfortune not to have enough wit to speak well, or
not enough judgment to keep silent.--LA BRUYÈRE.
Experience and observation in society are the chief means by
which one acquires the polish that society demands.--ANONYMOUS.
Let what you say be to the purpose, and let it be so said
that if we forget the speech we may recollect the manner of
it.--ANONYMOUS.
The art of conversation consists less in showing one’s own
wit than in giving opportunity for the display of the wit of
others.--LA BRUYÈRE.
There is no surer proof of low origin, or of an innate meanness
of disposition, than to be always talking and thinking of being
genteel.--HAZLITT.
Were we as eloquent as angels, we should please some men,
some women, and some children, much more by listening than by
talking.--LACON.
If you speak the sense of an angel in bad words, and with a
disagreeable utterance, nobody will hear you twice who can help
it.--CHESTERFIELD.
One of the most effectual ways of pleasing and of making one’s
self loved is to be cheerful; joy softens more hearts than
tears.--MME. DE SARTORY.
To live with our enemies as if they may some time become
our friends, and to live with our friends as if they may
some time become our enemies, is not a moral but a political
maxim.--ANONYMOUS.
There is no flattery so exquisite as the flattery of listening.
It may be doubted whether the greatest mind is ever proof against
it. Socrates may have loved Plato best of all his disciples
because he listened best.--ANONYMOUS.
Though conversation in its better part
May be esteemed a gift, and not an art,
Yet much depends, as in the tiller’s toil,
On culture and the sowing of the soil.
--COWPER.