156 Quotes About Politeness

The natural flow of discourse must be calm and serene; if wit, whim, fun and fire are present, they will not fail to flash brightly along its surface; but they can never constitute the main body of the stream itself.

Display politeness and frankness always both in action and conversation. Don’t keep engaging in useless arguments. It scares your dreams away. Talk sensibly.

Oppressors specialise in rasing wolves from amonst the sheep then together with the wolves devour the sheep

Ever feel you're on the cusp of something, and it keeps spinning out in your head? (...) Whilst a lot of people today can be polite to most people, but not gain their respect...I respect people by default. It's not something earned, it's automatic until you give me a reason to revoke it. Odd little culture difference, I am guessing.

Why is it that those who are the most concerned with manners rarely have any themselves?

Piety is a discipline of the will through respect. It admits the right to exist of things larger than the ego, of things different from the ego.

My generation of radicals and breakers-down never found anything to take the place of the old virtues of work and courage and the old graces of courtesy and politeness.

In England I am always madam; I arrived too late to ever be a miss. In New York I have only been madamed once, by the doorman at the Carlyle Hotel.

Sick cultures show a complex of symptoms such as you have named...but 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.