C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Etiquette
Etiquette is the invention of wise men to keep fools at a distance.
What are these wondrous civilizing arts, this Roman polish, and this smooth behavior that render man thus tractable and tame?
Trifles themselves are elegant in him.
Etiquette has no regard for moral qualities.
Starch makes the gentleman, etiquette the lady.
Etiquette is the ceremonial code of polite life, more voluminous and minute in each portion of society according to its rank.
O form! how oft dost thou with thy case, thy habit, wrench awe from fools, and tie the wiser souls to thy false seeming!
We show wisdom by a decent conformity to social etiquette; it is excess of neatness or display that creates dandyism in men, and coquetry in women.
A man may with more impunity be guilty of an actual breach, either of real good breeding or good morals, than appear ignorant of the most minute points of fashionable etiquette.