In a world that often races forward at breakneck speed, the simple yet profound impact of politeness and good manners can sometimes feel like a forgotten art. However, these timeless virtues remain powerful tools for fostering respect, building connections, and nurturing a harmonious society. Our curated collection of the top 45 quotes on politeness and manners serves as a gentle reminder of their enduring importance. By delving into the wisdom and insights of thinkers, leaders, and cultural icons, this collection invites you to reflect on how small acts of kindness and courtesy can resonate in profound ways in our daily interactions. Whether you seek inspiration or a return to civility, these quotes offer valuable lessons in the timeless grace and strength of behaving with consideration and respect.
1. “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.” - Robert A. Heinlein
2. “The world was my oyster but I used the wrong fork.” - Oscar Wilde
3. “Life is short, but there is always time enough for courtesy.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
4. “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
5. “The real test of good manners is to be able to put up with bad manners pleasantly.” - Khalil Gibran
6. “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
7. “While our country remains untainted with the principles and manners which are now producing desolation in so many parts of the world; while she continues sincere, and incapable of insidious and impious policy, we shall have the strongest reason to rejoice our local destination. But should the people of America once become capable of that deep simulation towards one another, and towards foreign nations, which assumes the language of justice and moderation, while it is practising iniquity and extravagance, and displays in the most captivating manner the charming pictures of candour, frankness, and sincerity, while it is rioting in rapine and insolence, this country will be the most miserable habitation in the world.” - John Adams
8. “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
9. “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.” - Judith Martin
10. “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
11. “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
12. “Whoever interrupts the conversation of others to make a display of his fund of knowledge, makes notorious his own stock of ignorance.” - Sa'di S. Shaikh Muslihu-D-Din
13. “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
14. “Few things are more agreeable than the spectacle of a man who loses his temper; we should be grateful to such people for providing us with moments of often unsullied delight.” - Harold Nicolson
15. “Fashion is neither moral or immoral, but it is for rebuilding the morale.” - Karl Lagerfeld
16. “You cannot escape that you are a woman,” she began.“I wish I could,” Firekeeper muttered, but Elise continued as if she hadn’t heard.“Since you cannot, you cannot escape the expectations that our society and our class places upon women.”“Why?” Firekeeper said querulously.“...Consider,” she offered, “what you told me about learning to see at night so that you could hunt with the wolves. Learning to wear a gown, to walk gracefully, to eat politely…”“I do that!”“You’re learning,” Elise admitted, “but don’t change the subject. All of these are ways of learning to see in the dark.”“Maybe,” Firekeeper said, her tone unconvinced.“Can you climb a tree?”“Yes.”“Swim?”“Yes!” This second affirmative was almost indignant.“And these skills let you go places that you could not go without them.”Stubborn silence. Elise pressed her point.“Why do you like knowing how to shoot a bow?”“It lets me kill farther,” came the answer, almost in a growl.“And using a sword does the same?”“Yes.”“Let me tell you, Firekeeper, knowing a woman’s arts can keep you alive, let you invade private sanctums, even help you to subdue your enemies. If you don’t know those arts, others who do will always have an advantage over you.”“All this from wearing a gown that tangles your feet?” - Jane Lindskold
17. “Wouldn't he know without being asked?' said Polly. 'I've no doubt he would,' said the Horse (still with his mouth full). 'But I've a sort of an idea he likes to be asked.” - C.S. Lewis
18. “Xingu!" she scoffed. "Why, it was the fact of our knowing so much more about it than she did—unprepared though we were—that made Osric Dane so furious. I should have thought that was plain enough to everybody!” - Edith Wharton
19. “We have rules One-Ear." The man smiled faintly at Mrs. Francis. "Ladies are not to be hacked apart with swords. It reflects badly on pirates in general and on our outfit in particular.” - Sean Cullen
20. “A mans manners are a mirror in which he shows his portrait.” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
21. “Manners, you see, come down to a single principle: talk of nothing that might actually prove interesting.” - Meredith Duran
22. “I threw an etiquette party and served nothing but beans and sparkling water. The topic of conversation was ‘excuse me’.” - Bauvard
23. “You need a good bedside manner with doctors or you will get nowhere.” - William S. Burroughs
24. “... not talking about things she doesn't understand to people who do or about things she does to people who don't.” - Frank Crowninshield
25. “Vijaya prefers to eat alone. Rob ushered her into the room and held a chair for her, then sat across from her. "Many Indians regard eating as something that should be done in private. Considering the table manners of some of our best people, one can see their point." Patricia Frances Rowell” - Patricia Frances Rowell
26. “E-mail has some magical ability to turn off the politeness gene in a human being.” - Jeff Bezos
27. “The humiliation that Jane had felt turned to something else--grief perhaps, or regret. Regret that she had not known how to act with a boy, regret that she had not been wiser.” - Beverly Cleary
28. “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
29. “A gentleman is someone who does not what he wants to do, but what he should do.” - Haruki Murakami
30. “Sydney tried — sometimes he really tried — but his default mindset didn’t have those kinds of manners. What he really meant was more like “Jacob, get over here or I’ll freeze your underwear.” Something like that.” - Rebecca McKinsey
31. “It is laughable how often good manners interfere with my survival.” - Andrew Levkoff
32. “Please stop,” I said politely—he was that big. One should always mind one’s manners around big things.” - Lish McBride
33. “He then bespattered the youth with abundance of that language which passes between country gentleman who embrace opposite sides of the question; with frequent applications to him to salute that part which is generally introduced into all controversies that arise among the lower orders of the English gentry at horse-races, cock-matches, and other public places. Allusions to this part are likewise often made for the sake of jest. And here, I believe, the wit is generally misunderstood. In reality, it lies in desiring another to kiss you a-- for having just before threatened ti kick his; for I have observed very accurately, that no one ever desires you to kick that which belongs to himself, nor offers to kiss this part in another.It may likewise seem surprizing that in the many thousand kind invitations of this sort, which every one who hath conversed with country gentlemen must have heard, no one, I believe, hath ever seen a single instance where the desire hath been complied with; - a great instance of their want of politeness; for in town nothing can be more common than for the finest gentlemen to perform this ceremony every day to their superiors, without having that favour once requested of them.” - Henry Fielding
34. “Cassandra, when you want to speak to me, you should say 'Excuse me, Mrs. Johnson.' Then wait until you get my attention.""Excuse me, Mrs. Johnson. Do I have your attention now?” - Pseudonymous Bosch
35. “Gli uomini veri impazziscono per le ragazze che sanno dire di no. Gli stupidi si accontentano delle facili.” - Marilyn Monroe
36. “They were almond cookies, although they could have been made of spinach and shoes for all I cared. I ate eleven of them, right in a row. It is rude to take the last cookie.” - Lemony Snicket
37. “Politeness [is] a sign of dignity, not subservience.” - Theodore Roosevelt
38. “A polite enemy is just as difficult to discredit, as a rude friend is to protect.” - Bryant McGill
39. “Courtesy is a silver lining around the dark clouds of civilization; it is the best part of refinement and in many ways, an art of heroic beauty in the vast gallery of man’s cruelty and baseness.” - Bryant McGill
40. “Good manners are appreciated as much as bad manners are abhorred.” - Bryant McGill
41. “No one is more insufferable than he who lacks basic courtesy.” - Bryant McGill
42. “والمتدين الذي يباشر بعض العبادات، ويبقى بعدها بادى الشر، كالح الوجه، قريب العداون كيف يحسب امرءاً تقيّاً؟” - محمد الغزالي
43. “Contrary to popular opinion, manners are not a luxury good that's interesting only to those who can afford to think about them. The essence of good manners is not exclusivity, nor exclusion of any kind, but sensitivity. To practice good manners is to confer upon others not just consideration but esteem; it's to bathe others in a commodity best described by noted speller Aretha Franklin.” - Henry Alford
44. “All my life I have placed great store in civility and good manners, practices I find scarce among the often hard-edged, badly socialized scientists with whom I associate. Tone of voice means a great deal to me in the course of debate. I despise the arrogance and doting self-regard so frequently found among the very bright.” - Edward O. Wilson
45. “I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners. They’re pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings.” - Raymond Chandler
