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SCHOLAR ISLAND |
Manners
"Manners must adorn knowledge and smooth its way through the world."
Lord Chesterfield (letter July 1, 1748)
"The test of good manners is to be able to put up pleasantly with bad ones."
-Wendell Willkie
"Politeness serves a purpose....civility and kindness are moral imperatives."
-Jane Austen
"Hail ye small sweet courtesies of life, for smooth do ye make the road of it! Like grace and beauty which beget inclinations to love at first sight; 'tis ye who open this door and let the stranger in."
Sterne
Sentimental Journey (published in 1768)
"Nothing is ever lost by courtesy. It is the cheapest of the pleasures; costs nothing and conveys much. It pleases him who gives and him who receives and thus, like mercy, is twice blessed."
-Erastus Wiman
"A simple rule in dealing with those who are hard to get along with is to remember that this person is striving to assert his superiority; and you must deal with him from that point of view."
-Alfred Adler
"Nothing is more becoming in a great man than courtesy and forbearance."
-Cicero
"Courtesy is really nothing more than a form of friendliness. It is amazing what a warming influence it can have on an otherwise dreary world. It has been said that a rise of one degree Fahrenheit is the mean annual temperature of the the globe would free both polar regions from their ice. It is thrilling to contemplate what frigidity might be dispelled in the world of human relations if people made just a little better effort to be friendly."
-M. Bartos
"Propriety and logic are different things, and each has its appropriate application.
The proposition "Either it is day or it is night!" works well in a disjunctive argument, but not as well in a friendly conversation. Likewise, at a banquet it may make sense to take the largest share of food if you are really hungry, but it would be bad manners to do so.
When you dine with others, be aware not only how much your body appreciates the delicacies offered, but also how important good manners and personal refinement are."
-Epictetus A.D. 75
".....To the modern American ear, the word "manners" smacks of triviality or of snobbery, evoking an archaic world of ceremony that ill consorts with the easy informality of contemporary social intercourse. What we forget is the ethical dimension of the courtesy toward and the consideration for others that are the prime ingredients of good manners. We also forget the converse, which is the hurt, the rending of trust, and the damage to decent social relations that bad manners and and do cause. Not for nothing did the venerable English public school Winchester (and New College at Oxford) adopt the slogan "Manners Maketh Man."
-Norman Podhoretz
The Prophets
"More tears have been shed over men's lack of manners than their lack of morals."
-Helen Hathaway
"Politeness is not always the sign of wisdom, but the want of it always leaves room for the suspicion of folly."
-Landor
'Politeness is the art of choosing among your thoughts."
-Madame De Stael
""The habit of being uniformly considerate toward others will bring increased happiness to you."
-Grenville Kleiser
"The scholar without good breeding is a pedant; the philosopher, a cynic."
-Earl of Chesterfield
"When you are steadfast in your abstention of thoughts of harm directed toward others, all living creatures will cease to feel enmity in your presence."
-Patanjali
"Deal so plainly with man and woman, as to constrain the utmost sincerity, and destroy all hope of trifling with you. It is the highest compliment you pay."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson The Over-Soul
"Suspicions, offenses, fears, coldness, reserve, hated, and betrayal will constantly lurk beneath this uniform and treacherous veil of politeness, this vaunted urbanity that we owe to the enlightenment of our century."
-Jean-Jacques Rousseau
"Good breeding, a union of kindness and independence."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The test of a man or woman's breeding is how they behave in a quarrel."
-George Bernard Shaw
"Love your neighbor as yourself,
and do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
-Galatians 5:14
"You may not think that living with others is an art, but it is the finest and most difficult of arts. By learning it early in life, you can save yourself many unpleasant experiences."
Sister Mary Mercedes,O.P.
A Book of Courtesy
"If you would have guests merry with cheer, be so yourself, or so at least appear."
-Ben Franklin
Poor Richard's Almanac
"A guest never forgets the host who had treated him kindly."
-Homer
"The greater man the greater courtesy."
Alfred Lord Tennyson (1802-1892)
"Manners are of more importance than laws. Upon them, in a great measure the laws depend. The law touches but here and there, and now and then, Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in."
Edmund Burke
"He is not well bred, that cannot bear Ill-Breeding in others."
-Ben Franklin (Poor Richard's Almanac)
"His school, the Duke used to say (Hotchkiss) had only one rule, and that was "Be a gentleman," How he defined what a gentleman was he did not say, but what a gentleman was usually became clear when you discovered what a gentleman wasn't.
A gentleman didn't cheat. he didn't lie. A gentleman wasn't petty. A gentleman wasn't intolerant of others' shortcomings. A gentleman wasn't a whiner, wasn't a gossip, wasn't a boor, wasn't inconsiderate of others' feelings..."-Stephen Birmingham
America's Secret Aristocracy
"Forbid that I should refuse to my own household the courtesy and politeness which I think proper to show to strangers."
-John Baille
"You've got to have something to eat and a little love in your life before you can hold still for any damn body's sermon on how to behave."
-Billie Holiday
Four thousand years ago, a Babylonian book of advice on how to behave said:
Do not do evil to one who has a dispute with you;
Return good to one who does evil to you;
Maintain justice to one who is bad to you;
Be pleasant to your enemy,
Do not utter slander; speak well of people;
Do not say nasty things; speak favorably.
"Three things in Human Life are important: The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind."
-Henry James
"Then (good manners) must be inspired by the good heart. There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength."
-Eric Hoffer
"I believe in aristocracy....if that is the right word, and if a democrat may use it. Not an aristocracy of power, based upon rank and influence, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to be found in all nations and all classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when meet. They represent the true human tradition, the one permanent victory of our queer race over cruelty and chaos. Thousands of them perish in obscurity, a few are great names. They are sensitive for others, as for themselves, they are considerate without being fussy, their pluck is not swankiness but the power to endure, and they can take a joke."
-E.M. Forster (What I Believe)
"Associate with well-mannered persons and your manners will improve. Run around with decent folk and your own decent instincts will be strengthened. Keep the company of bums and you will become a bum. Hang around with rich people and you will end by picking up the check and dying broke."
-Stanley Walker
"Hospitality shares what it has. It does not attempt to give what it has not. The finest hospitality is that which welcomes you to the fireside and permits you to look upon the picture of a home life so little disturbed by your coming that you are at once made to feel yourself a part of the little symphony....When people assume to entertain socially they should not give a false showing of themselves or of their means."
Agnes H. Morton
Etiquette: Good Manners for all People, Especially for Those Within the Broad Zone of the Average (1911)
"However trifling a genteel manner may sound, it is of very great consequence towards pleasing in private life, especially the women; which, one time or other, you will think worth pleasing; and I have known many a man, from his awkwardness, give people such a dislike of him at first, that all his merit could not get the better of it afterwards....Attention is absolutely necessary for this, as indeed it is for everything else; and a man without attention is not fit to live in the world."
Earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773) letters to his son
"Miss Manners has also observed that when children are truly allowed to express their preferences, uninfluenced by the dreary adult expectation that they must all be artistic and original little noble savages, they come out resoundingly in favor of rigid traditionalism. The devotion to ritual exhibited by the average toddler in regard to his bedtime routine would make a nineteenth-century English butler look like a free spirit."
Judith Marin
"Fine manners need the support of fine manners in others."
Emerson
The conduct of life (1860)
"Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person."
Mark Twain
See ye not, courtesy
Is the true alchemy,
Turning to gold all it touches and tries?"
George Meredith (1828-1909)
"It is curious that Americans , who with each passing year become less concerned about good manners and etiquette, become ever more concerned with sensitivity in speech. It is okay to be a slob at the dinner table. It is okay to go out in public half dressed. It is even okay-some would have us believe-to use four-letter words in mixed company. But never, never say something political that will hurt the feelings of another human being."
William b. Irvine (The "Freeman" Sept 91)
"Every action done in company, ought to be with some sign of respect to those that are present."
-George Washington
"We must be as courteous to a man as we are to a picture, which we are willing to give the advantage of a good light."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Manners are the happy way of doing things; each once a stroke of genius or of love, now repeated and hardened into usage."
Emerson
"No father hath given his child anything better than good manners."
Muhammed
The Sayings of Muhammed
"Courtesy is the politic witchery of great personages."
Baltasar Gracian
The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1647)
"The knowledge of courtesy and good manners is a very necessary study, it is, like grace and beauty, that which begets liking and an inclination to love one another at first sight."
Montaigne
The Ceremony of the Interview of Princes (1580)
"Even in a declaration of war one observes the rules of politeness."
Bismarck
"I have always been of the mind that in a democracy manners are the only effective weapons against the bowie-knife."
-James Russell Lowell
"Manners are just a formal expression of how your treat people."
Molly Ivins
"Let us treat men and women well; treat them as if they were real; perhaps they are."
Emerson
"Whatever people may say, the fastidious formal manner of the upper classes is preferable to the slovenly easy going behavior of the common middle class. In moments of crisis, the former know how to act, the latter become uncouth brutes."
Pavese
"There are bad manners everywhere, but an aristocracy is bad manners organized."
Henry James
"Good sense and good nature suggest civility in general, but in good breeding there are a thousand little delicacies which are established only by custom."
Lord Chesterfield
"The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or any other particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls; in short, behaving as if you were in heaven, where there are no third-class carriages, and one soul is as good as another."
-George Bernard Shaw
"When we reflect how manners recommend, prepare and draw people together: how, in all clubs, manners make the members; how manners make the fortune of the ambitious youth; that, for the most part, his manners, marry him, and for the most part, he marries manners; when we think what keys they are, and to what secrets; what high lessons and inspiring tokens of character they convey; and what divination is required in us for the reading of this fine telegraph,-we see what range the subject has, and what relations to convenience, form and beauty. The maxim of courts is power. A calm and resolute bearing, a polished speech, an embellishment of trifles and the art of hiding all uncomfortable feelings are essential to the courtier…..Manners impress, as they indicate real power. A man who is sure of his point carries a broad and contented expression, which everybody reads; and you cannot rightly train to an air and manners except by making him the kind of man of whom that manner is the natural expression. Nature forever puts a premium on reality."
Emerson
"There is one word which may serve as a rule of practice for all one’s life-reciprocity."
Confucius
"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
Only Gentlemen
Can use all things in
Common and yet not
Abuse this privilege.
"If people are rude to you, pay no attention, they simply don’t know any better…..Why argue with rude and aggressive people? It simply weakens and eats away at the spirit…..as a child. I was made to feel that I should create an atmosphere of goodwill around me. It is….in a strange way, a defense. It is a moat of still and deep water , that keeps one in tranquil isolation without appearing to."
Brooke Astor
"Perhaps it sounds stuffy, but manners are just as important as morals. Manners have little to do with a man’s outer attributes-birth, rank, education-but, rather, involve his inner qualities of character and behavior"
ibid
"Miss Manners of course denies that, etiquette is a frill. Rather, it is the society’s voluntary (as opposed to legal) system for maintaining a crucial modicum of civilized behavior among all people."
"Rudeness has accelerated to the point where no one can stand it anymore. If we’d all just take control of ourselves, life would be much improved."
Miss Manners
"In its highest form, politeness almost approaches love."
Inazo Nitobe
Bushido The Soul of Japan
"Is lofty spiritual attainment really possible through etiquette? Why not? –all roads lead to Rome!"
Inazo Nitobe
Ibid
"For we knew only too well:
Even the hatred of squalor
Makes the brow grow stern.
Even anger against injustice
Makes the voice grow harsh. Alas, we
Who wished to lay the foundations of kindness
Could not ourselves be kind."
Bertolt Brecht
"True politeness is perfect ease and freedom. It simply consists in treating others just as you love to be treated yourself."
Lord Chesterfield
"Small kindnesses, small courtesies, small considerations, habitually practiced in our social intercourse, give a greater charm to the character than the display of great talents and accomplishments."
Mary ann Kelty
"When saluted with a salutation, salute the person with a better salutation, or at least return the same, for God taketh account of all things."
Koran
"courtesy is a science of the highest importance. It is, like grace and beauty in the body, which charm at first sight, and lead on to further intimacy and friendship, opening a door that we may derive instruction from the example of others, and at the same time enabling us to benefit them by our example, if there be anything in our character worthy of imitation."
Montaigne
To be a gentleman
is to be honest,
To be gentle,
To be generous
To be brave,
to be wise
and possessing all
those qualities
to exercise them
in the most graceful manner.
-William Makepeace Thackeray
"Barbarism and rusticity may perhaps be instructed, but false refinement is incorrigible."
Hazlitt
"Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices."
"Certainly it is untrue that three is no company. Three is splendid company. But if you reject the proverb altogether; if you say that two and three are the same sort of company, then you shall have no company either of two or three, but shall be alone in a howling desert till you die."
G.K. Chesterton
"What is Etiquette? According to Webster, the word etiquette means: "The forms required by good breeding, social conventions, or prescribed by authority, to be observed in social or official life; the rules of decorum." Good manners are the rules of the game of life-the rules which you observe in your daily living with your fellow men. Good manners are more than a way of holding your fork, the proper words spoken in an introduction, or the correct form for going through a receiving line. These tools of etiquette are important, but there is more to being a well-bred person than the mechanics of good manners.
Good manners also mean kindness to others, respect for the other person's feelings, an acknowledgment of right and wrong, an awareness of someone-anyone-whom you meet in a hallway, on the street, or at a party. Good manners mean the consideration you grant someone as a person-not because he is important or of high rank, but because he is a human being. George Bernard Shaw expressed it his way, "The great secret....is not having bad manners or good manners or any other particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls...."
Oretha D. Swartz
Service Etiquette
WASHINGTON’S MAXIMS*
1. Every action in company ought to be with some sign of respect to those present.
2. In the presence of others sing not to yourself with a humming voice, nor drum with your fingers or feet.
3. Speak not when others speak, sit not when others stand and walk not when others stop.
4. Turn not your back to others, especially in speaking; jog not the table or desk on which another reads or writes; lean not on anyone.
5. Be no flatterer, neither play with any one that delights not be played with
6. Read no letters, books or papers in company; but when there is a necessity for doing it, you must not leave. Come not near the books or writings of any one so as to read them unasked; also look not nigh when another is writing a letter.
7. Let your countenance be pleasant, but in serious matters somewhat grave.
8. Show not yourself glad at the misfortune of another, though he were your enemy
9. They that are in dignity or office have in all places precedencey, but whilst they are young, they ought to respect those that are their equals in birth or other qualities, though they have no public charge.
10. It is good manners to prefer them to whom we speak before ourselves, especially if they be above us, with whom in no sort we ought to begin.
11. Let your discourse with men of business be short and comprehensive
12. In visiting the sick do not presently play the physician if you be not knowing therein.
13. In writing or speaking give to every person his due title according to his degree and custom of the place.
14. Strive not with your superiors in argument, but always submit your judgment to others with modesty.
15. Undertake not to teach your equal in the art he himself professes; it savors of arrogancy
16. When a man does all he can, though it succeeds not well, blame not him that did it.
17. Being to advise or reprehend any one, consider whether it ought to be in public or in private, presently or at some other time, also in what terms to do it; and in reproving show no signs of choler, but do it with sweetness and mildness.
18. Mock not nor jest at anything of importance; break o jests that are sharp or biting; and if you deliver anything witty or pleasant, abstain from laughing thereat yourself.
19. Wherein you reprove another be unblamable yourself, for example is more prevalent than precept.
20. Use no reproachful language against any one, neither curses nor reviling.
21. Be not hasty to believe flying reports to the disparagement of any one.
22. In your apparel be modest, and endeavor to accommodate nature rather than procure admiration. Keep to the fashion of your equals, such as are civil and orderly with respect to time and place.
23. Play not the peacock, looking everywhere about you to see if you be well decked, if your shoes fit well, if your stockings set neatly and clothes handsomely.
24. Associate yourself with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation, for it is better to be alone than in bad company.
25. Let your conversation be without malice or envy, for it is a sign of tractable and commendable nature; and in all causes of passion admit reason to govern.
26. Be not immodest in urging your friend to discover a secret.
27. Utter not base and frivolous things amongst grown and learned men, nor very difficult questions or subjects amongst the ignorant, nor things hard to be believed.
28. Speak not of doleful things in time of mirth nor at the table; speak not of melancholy things, as death and wounds; and if others mention them, change, if you can the discourse. Tell not your dreams but to your intimate friends.
29. Break not a jest when none take pleasure in mirth. Laugh not aloud, nor at all without occasion. Deride no man’s misfortunes, though there seem to be some cause.
30. Speak not injurious words, neither in jest nor earnest. Scoff at none, although they give occasion.
31. Be not forward, but friendly and courteous, the first to salute, hear and answer, and be not pensive when it is time to converse.
32. Detract not from others. But neither be excessive in commending.
33. Go not thither where you know not whether you shall be welcome or not. Give not advice without being asked; and when desired, do it briefly.
34. If two contend together, take not the part of either unconstrained, and be not obstinate in your opinion; in things indifferent be of the major side.
35. Reprehend not the imperfection of others, for that belongs to parents, masters and superiors.
36. Gaze not on the marks or blemishes of others, and ask not how they came. What you may speak in secret to your friend deliver not before others.
37. Speak not in an unknown tongue in company but in your own language; and that as those of quality do, and not as the vulgar. Sublime matters treat seriously.
38. Think before you speak; pronounce not imperfectly, nor bring out your words too hastily, but orderly and distinctly.
39. When another speaks , be attentive yourself, and disturb not the audience. If any hesitate in his words, help him not, nor prompt him without being desired; interrupt him not, nor answer him till his speech be ended.
40. Treat with men at fit times about business , and whisper not in the company of others.
41. make no comparisons; and if any of the company be commended for any brave act of virtue commend not another for the same
42. Be not apt to relate news if you know not the truth thereof. In discoursing of things you have heard, name not your author always. A secret discover not.
43. Be not curious to know the affairs of others, neither approach to those that speak in private.
44. Undertake not what you cannot perform; but be careful to keep your promise.
45. When you deliver a matter, do it without passion and indiscretion, however mean the person may be you do it to.
46. When your superiors talk to anybody, hear them; neither speak nor laugh.
47. In disputes be not so desirous to overcome as not to give liberty to each one to deliver his opinion, and submit to the judgment of the major part, especially if they are judges of the dispute
George Washington
* These were copied from a book: Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation composed by a Jesuit priest in 1595 to instruct French aristocrats
"Strive not with your superiors in argument, but always submit your judgment to others with modesty."
-George Washington
"One of the hardest things in this world to do is to admit you are wrong. and nothing is more helpful in resolving a situation that its frank admission."
-Benjamin Disraeli
"I made it a rule, to forbear, all direct contradiction to the sentiments of others, and all positive assertion of my own. I even forbade myself the use of every word or expression in the language that imported a fix'd opinion, such as "certainly," "undoubtedly," etc, and I adopted, instead of them, "I conceive," I apprehend," or "I imagine" a thing to be so or so; or "it so appears to me at present," When another asserted something that I thought an error, I deny'd myself the pleasure of contradicting him abruptly, and of showing immediately some absurdity in his proposition; and in answering I began by observing that in certain cases or circumstances his opinion would be right, but in the present case there appear'd or seem'd to me some difference, etc. I soon found the advantage of this change in my manner; the conversations I engag'd in went on more pleasantly. The modest way in which I propos'd my opinions procur'd them a readier reception and less contradiction; I had less mortification when I was found to be in the wrong, and I more easily prevail'd with others to give up their mistakes and join with me when I happened to be in the right.
And this mode, which I at first put on with some violence to natural inclination, became at length so easy, and so habitual to me, that perhaps for these fifty years past no one has ever heard a dogmatical expression escape me. and to this habit (after my character of integrity) I think it principally owing that I had early so much weight with my fellow citizens when I proposed new institutions, or alterations in the old, and so much influence in public councils when I became a member; for I was but a bad speaker, never eloquent, subject to much hesitation in my choice of words, hardly correct in language, and yet i generally carried my points."
-Benjamin Franklin
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Book: "A Short History of Rudeness" by Mark Caldwell
Book: "To The Manner Born: A Most Proper Guide To Modern Civility" by Thomas Blaikie
Book: "Talk To The Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door." By Lynne Truss
Book: "Mind Your Manners! written and illustrated by Diane Goode (from 1802 Primer that was meant to teach early Americans "the advantages of good manners.")
Book: "Eating Your Auntie Is Wrong: The World's Strangest Customs" by Stephen Arnott
Book: "The Civilizing Process: The Development of Manners" by Norbert Elias
Book: "Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in business by Danny Meyer
Book: "The Benevolence of Manners" by Linda S. Lichter
Book: "A Book of Courtesy" by Sister Mary Mercedes O.P.
Book: "Miss Manners Guide To Domestic Tranquility" by Judith Marin
Book: "Choosing Civility" by P.M. Forni (Cofounder of the Johns Hopkins Civility Project)
Book: "The Importance of Civility" by T.S. Bogorad, Esq.
Book: "The Duchess Who Wouldn't Sit Down: An Informal History of Hospitality" by Jesse Browner
Book: "Wicked Etiquette" by Sarah Kortum
Book: "A Guide to the Manners, Etiquette, and Deportment of the Most Refined Society, Revised" ed John H. Young
Book: "Essential Manners For Men: What to Do, When to Do It, and Why" by Peter Post
Book: "Etiquette For Men: A Book of Modern Manners and Customs" by G.R.M. Devereux (a charming reprint of a 1929 book)
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