H. Brown > H.'s Quotes

“The world was my oyster but I used the wrong fork.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Oh Tigger, where are your manners?"

"I don’t know, but I bet they’re having more fun than I am.”
― A.A. Milne

“Call a jack a jack. Call a spade a spade. But always call a whore a lady. Their lives are hard enough, and it never hurts to be polite.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“Life is short, but there is always time enough for courtesy.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“It is a wise thing to be polite; consequently, it is a stupid thing to be rude. To make enemies by unnecessary and willful incivility, is just as insane a proceeding as to set your house on fire. For politeness is like a counter--an avowedly false coin, with which it is foolish to be stingy.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, The Wisdom of Life and Counsels and Maxims

“The real test of good manners is to be able to put up with bad manners pleasantly.”
― Khalil Gibran

“Handsome is as handsome does”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“Be pretty if you can, be witty if you must, but be gracious if it kills you.”
― Elsie de Wolfe

“And now, gentlemen, like your manners, I must leave you.”
― Dylan Thomas, Rebecca's Daughters

“I believe that treating other people well is a lost art.”
― Tim Gunn, Gunn's Golden Rules: Life's Little Lessons for Making It Work

“Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others. If you have that awareness, you have good manners, no matter what fork you use.”
― Emily Post

“I smiled back, the importance of manners, my mother always said, is inversely related to how inclined one is to use them, or, in other words, sometimes politeness is all that stands between oneself and madness.”
― Nicole Krauss, Great House

“Good manners have much to do with the emotions. To make them ring true, one must feel them, not merely exhibit them.”
― Amy Vanderbilt

“I’ll wait until your mouth is full of food before I ask you a question. That’s just the kind of gentleman I am.”
― Jarod Kintz, 99 Cents For Some Nonsense

“It's the height of bad manners to sleep with somebody less than three times.”
― Mark Boxer

“A mans manners are a mirror in which he shows his portrait.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“A hat should be taken off when greeting a lady, and left off the rest of your life. Nothing looks more stupid than a hat.”
― P.J. O'Rourke, Modern Manners: An Etiquette Book for Rude People

“The line between the public life and the private life has been erased, due to the rapid decline of manners and courtesy. There is a certain crudeness and crassness that has suddenly become accepted behavior, even desirable.”
― Fannie Flagg, Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!

“She felt so lost and lonely. One last chile in walnut sauce left on the platter after a fancy dinner couldn't feel any worse than she did. How many times had she eaten one of those treats, standing by herself in the kitchen, rather than let it be thrown away. When nobody eats the last chile on the plate, it's usually because none of them wants to look like a glutton, so even though they'd really like to devour it, they don't have the nerve to take it. It was as if they were rejecting that stuffed pepper, which contains every imaginable flavor; sweet as candied citron, juicy as pomegranate, with the bit of pepper and the subtlety of walnuts, that marvelous chile in the walnut sauce. Within it lies the secret of love, but it will never be penetrated, and all because it wouldn't feel proper.”
― Laura Esquivel, Like Water for Chocolate

“Being considerate of others will take your children further in life than any college degree.”
― Marian Wright Edelman

“Charming villains have always had a decided social advantage over well-meaning people who chew with their mouths open.
”
― Judith Martin

“I happen to find ceilings much lovelier than the night sky myself. Sometimes I just stare at them for hours and wonder what could be up there.”
― Bauvard, The Prince Of Plungers

“How very kind of her, ' I said. 'I must remember to send her a card.'

I'd send her a card alright. It would be the Ace of Spades, and I'd mail it anonymously from somewhere other than Bishop's Lacey.”
― Alan Bradley, A Red Herring Without Mustard

“Manners are the ability to put someone else at their ease...by turning any answer into another question.”
― Tina Brown

“Nowadays, we never allow ourselves the convenience of being temporarily unavailable, even to strangers. With telephone and beeper, people subject themselves to being instantly accessible to everyone at all times, and it is the person who refuses to be on call, rather than the importunate caller, who is considered rude.”
― Judith Martin, Common Courtesy: In Which Miss Manners Solves the Problem That Baffled Mr. Jefferson

“As a Texan, I say ma'm and sir to my age contemporaries and open doors for anyone that I can. This goes for men, too, though it is appreciated when they beat me to it and disappointing when they don't.”
― Tiffany Madison

“Could I tell them I was sorry their loved one was dead, when he’d tried to kill me? There was no rule of etiquette for this; even my grandmother would have been stymied.”
― Charlaine Harris, Dead as a Doornail

“Passion and courtesy are two polar opposite traits that serve to balance each other into a full-blooded whole.

Without socialization, passion is a crude barbarian, and without passion, the elegant and polite are dead.

Allow both passion and courtesy into your life in equal measure, and be complete.”
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

“A gentleman is someone who does not what he wants to do, but what he should do.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“Politeness [is] a sign of dignity, not subservience.”
― Theodore Roosevelt