Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Manners
He was the mildest manner’d man
That ever scuttled ship or cut a throat.
Byron—Don Juan. Canto III. St. 41.
Now as to politeness … I would venture to call it benevolence in trifles.
Lord Chatham—Correspondence. I. 79.
Manners must adorn knowledge, and smooth its way through the world. Like a great rough diamond, it may do very well in a closet by way of curiosity, and also for its intrinsic value; but it will never be worn, nor shine, if it is not polished.
Chesterfield—Letters. July 1, 1748.
A moral, sensible, and well-bred man
Will not affront me, and no other can.
Cowper—Conversation. L. 193.
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.
Dickens—Martin Chuzzlewit. Vol. II. Ch. XIV.
Fine manners need the support of fine manners in others.
Emerson—The Conduct of Life. Behavior.
Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices.
Emerson—Letters and Social Aims.
Das Betragen ist ein Spiegel in welchem jeder sein Bild zeigt.
Behavior is a mirror in which every one shows his image.
Goethe—Die Wahlverwandtschaften. II. 5. Aus Ottiliens Tagebuche.
The mildest manners with the bravest mind.
Homer—Iliad. Bk. XXIV. L. 963. Pope’s trans.
He was so generally civil, that nobody thanked him for it.
Samuel Johnson—Boswell’s Life of Johnson. (1777).
Ah, ah Sir Thomas, Honores mutant Mores.
Manners (Lord Rutland). To Sir Thos. More.
Not so, in faith, but have a care lest we translate the proverb and say, ‘Honours change Manners.’
Answer of Sir Thos. More to Manners.
Margaret More—Diary. October, 1524.
My lords, we are vertebrate animals, we are mammalia! My learned friend’s manner would be intolerable in Almighty God to a black beetle.
Maule. To the Court. On the Authority of Lord Coleridge.
We call it only pretty Fanny’s way.
Thomas Parnell—An Elegy to an Old Beauty. Compare Leigh Hunt Trans. of Dulces Amaryllidis Iræ.
Eye nature’s walks, shoot folly as it flies,
And catch the manners, living as they rise;
Laugh where we must, be candid where we can,
But vindicate the ways of God to man.
Pope—Essay on Man. Ep. I. L. 13.
“What sort of a doctor is he?” “Well, I don’t know much about his ability; but he’s got a very good bedside manner.”
Punch, March 15, 1884, accompanying a drawing by G. Du Maurier.
Quæ fuerant vitia mores sunt.
What once were vices, are now the manners of the day.
Seneca—Epistolæ Ad Lucilium. XXXIX.
Men’s evil manners live in brass; their virtues
We write in water.
Henry VIII. Act IV. Sc. 2. L. 46.
Ecrivez les injures sur le sable,
Mais les bienfaits sur le marbre.
Write injuries in dust,
But kindnesses in marble.
French saying.
Fit for the mountains and the barb’rous caves,
Where manners ne’er were preach’d.
Twelfth Night. Act IV. Sc. 1. L. 52.
Her manners had not that repose
Which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere.
Tennyson—Lady Clara Vere de Vere. St. 5.
Ut homo est, ita morem geras.
Suit your manner to the man.
Terence—Adelphi. III. 3. 78.
Obsequium amicos, veritas odium parit.
Obsequiousness begets friends; truth, hatred.
Terence—Andria. I. 1. 41.