John Lancaster Spalding Quotes

Yes, but also one of the problems for a novelist in Ireland is the fact that there are no formal manners. I mean some people have beautiful manners but there's no kind of agreed form of manners.

Etiquette is all human social behavior. If you're a hermit on a mountain, you don't have to worry about etiquette; if somebody comes up the mountain, then you've got a problem. It matters because we want to live in reasonably harmonious communities.

If you behave normally, people treat you normally. It's only when you act as if you're someone special that they feel obliged to stand on ceremony.

Though shyness per se was unacceptable, reserve was a mark of good breeding.

Let a man behave in his own house as a guest.

Only a great fool or a great genius is likely to flout all social grace with impunity, and neither one, doing so, makes the most comfortable companion.

Propriety of manners, and consideration for others, are the two main characteristics of a gentleman.

You lose your manners when you are poor.

Manners are the hypocrisy of a nation.

The more you act like a lady, the more he'll act like a gentleman.

A gentleman never talks about his tailor.

We must watch over our modesty in the presence of those who cannot understand its grounds.

No gentleman ever discusses any relationship with a lady.

The bed is now as public as the dinner table and governed by the same rules of formal confrontation.

Never be haughty to the humble; never be humble to the haughty.

Gentlemen don't do that.

Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split.

As manners make laws, so manners likewise repeal them.

Perhaps the summary of good-breeding may be reduced to this rule. "Behave unto all men as you would they should behave unto you." This will most certainly oblige us to treat all mankind with the utmost civility and respect, there being nothing that we desire more than to be treated so by them.

There are few things that so touch us with instinctive revulsion as a breach of decorum.

We acknowledge that we should not talk of our wives; but we seem not to know that we should talk still less of ourselves.

A gentleman doesn't pounce he glides. If a woman sits on a piece of furniture which permits your sitting beside her, you are free to regard this as an invitation, though not an unequivocal one.

Don't be so concerned with your rights that you forget your manners.

My mother always said 'Don't bother other people.' I think that's good advice.

Manners are just a formal expression of how you treat people.