51 Quotes Tagged: manners

The unnamed should not be mistaken for the nonexistent.

"I am always saying "Glad to've met you" to somebody I'm not at all glad I met. If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff, though."

Life is short, but there is always time enough for courtesy.

Just as I prepared to stand and bow, a woman appeared with a miniature coffee cup in her hand.
She offered it to me.
As I took it, I noticed two things:
Bugs crawling on the ground and the men approving of me by snapping their fingers.
I bowed and took a sip of the coffee and almost fainted.
I had a cockroach on my tongue.
I looked at the peoples' faces and I could not spit it out.
My grandmother would have pushed away the grave's dirt and traveled by willpower to show me her face of abject disappointment.
I could not bear that.
I opened my throat and drank the cup dry.
I counted four cockroaches.

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.

Gli uomini veri impazziscono per le ragazze che sanno dire di no. Gli stupidi si accontentano delle facili.

Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.

The world was my oyster but I used the wrong fork.

He wouldn't write a letter because he couldn't without beginning it 'Dear Sylvia' and ending it 'Yours sincerely' or 'truly' or 'affectionately.' He's that sort of precise imbecile. I tell you he's so formal he can't do without all the conventions there are and so truthful he can't use half of them.

The real test of good manners is to be able to put up with bad manners pleasantly.

Everyone wants to know why customer service has gone to hell in a handbasket. I want to know why customer behavior has gone to hell in a handbasket.

I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners. They’re pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings.

Respect for ourselves guides our morals; respect for others guides our manners

One reason that the task of inventing manners is so difficult is that etiquette is folk custom, and people have emotional ties to the forms of their youth. That is why there is such hostility between generations in times of rapid change; their manners being different, each feels affronted by the other, taking even the most surface choices for challenges.

HIGGINS [*snatching a chocolate cream from the piano, his eyes suddenly beginning to twinkle with mischief*] Have some chocolates, Eliza.

LIZA [*halting, tempted*] How do I know what might be in them? I've heard of girls being drugged by the like of you.

*Higgins whips out his penknife; cuts a chocolate in two; puts one half into his mouth and bolts it; and offers her the other half.*

HIGGINS. Pledge of good faith, Eliza. I eat one half: you eat the other. [*Liza opens her mouth to retort: he pops the half chocolate into it*]. You shall have boxes of them, barrels of them, every day. You shall live on them. Eh?

LIZA [*who has disposed of the chocolate after being nearly choked by it*] I wouldn't have ate it, only I'm too ladylike to take it out of my mouth.

(Act 2, Scene 1).