Will Rogers Quotes

Civilization largely consists in hiding human nature. When the barbarian learns to hide it we account him enlightened.

I don't like people's table manners. That really puts you off eating food.

I remember so clearly from when I was five years old, my mom and dad arguing over - not over whether it was better, but whether it was proper or whether it was correct to eat with a fork or to eat with your hands, like we do in Sri Lanka. Proper. Like, what is the correct way to eat?

On the Continent people have good food; in England people have good table manners.

I would suggest that barbarism be considered as a permanent and universal human characteristic which becomes more or less pronounced according to the play of circumstances.

There are few defects in our nature so glaring as not to be veiled from observation by politeness and good-breeding.

Basil Stag Hare tut-tutted severely as he remarked to Ambrose Spike, 'Tch, tch. Dreadful table manners. Just look at those three wallahs, kicking up a hullaballoo like that! Eating's a serious business.

Too much society makes a man frivolous; too little, a savage.

Society cannot exist without etiquette ... It never has, and until our own century, everybody knew that.

Custom determines what is agreeable.

Civilization means conforming to a standard of behavior that may not seem natural to us.

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

Politeness is the chief sign of culture.

They [men and women] have both been, and men especially, have been told that how they naturally are is bad.

We're not savages. We're English.

Don’t lick the guests, darling. Bad manners.

For nature is good, an man is 'by nature' good; it is civilization which ruins him

I like playing the social convention. If you're in a period drama, there's always something dancing underneath the surface as a human - but then you always have to conform to the social conventions around you, and those two things get to be juxtaposed against each other. You're being human, but you're trapped within the social convention of the time.

In society it is etiquette for ladies to have the best chairs and get handed things. In the home the reverse is the case. This is why ladies are more sociable than gentlemen.

The politer the society, the greater the lies it requires.

She only maintains that it is possible, under some circumstances, for a lady to murder her husband; but that a woman who wears ankle-strap shoes and smokes on the street corner, though she may be a joy to all who know her and have devoted her life to charity, could never qualify as a lady.

In civilized communities men's idiosyncrasies are mitigated by the necessity of conforming to certain rules of behavior. Culture is a mask that hides their faces.

Manners are the root, laws only the trunk and branches. Manners are the archetypes of laws. Manners are laws in their infancy; laws are manners fully grown,--or, manners are children, which, when they grow up, become laws.

Dogs act exactly the way we would act if we had no shame.

It is disgusting to pick your teeth; what is vulgar is to use a gold toothpick.