Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield Quotes

The etiquette question that troubles so many fastidious people New Year's Day is: How am I ever going to face those people again?

I was woefully ignorant in the social graces. I was being raised, after all, by Pellinore Warthrop.

I'm a terrible dancer! Oh, I'm an awful dancer!

The Japanese have perfected good manners and made them indistinguishable from rudeness.

Don't ever take a seven-year-old with you to a campaign dinner - they will embarrass you no end.

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

For the canons of good society are, or should be, the same as the canons of art. Form is absolutely essential to it.

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

There is reason in the distinction of civil and uncivil. The manners are sometimes so rough a rind that we doubt whether they cover any core or sap-wood at all.

Manners, really good ones, make it possible to live with almost anyone, gracefully and pleasantly.

It is helpful to know the proper way to behave, so one can decide whether or not to be proper.

I was raised right — I talk about people behind their backs. It's called manners.

A lady never asks a gentleman to dance, or to go to supper with her.

The man who thrusts his manners upon me does as if he were to insist on introducing me to his cabinet of curiosities, when I wished to see himself.

A certain degree of ceremony is a necessary outwork of manners, as well as of religion; it keeps the forward and petulant at a proper distance, and is a very small restraint to the sensible and to the well-bred part of the world.

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 the first sight.

Familiarity is a suspension of almost all the laws of civility, which libertinism has introduced into society under the notion of ease.

That bad manners are so prevalent in the world is the fault of good manners.

Manners are very communicable: men catch them from each other.

There is no excuse for bad manners, except fast reflexes.

Politeness is an inexpensive way to make friends.

In the 50s and 60s, kids were taught how to shake hands. They were taught how to have manners. There needs to be a lot more of that kind of stuff because the autistic mind doesn't pick up social things and subtle cues.

Decorum -- that bug-bear which deters so many from bliss until the opportunity for bliss has forever gone by.

When I was your age, if a boy behaved badly, one simply scored his name out from one's dance card. (Sadie Lancaster - to Lara Lington)

What a rare gift, by the by, is that of manners! how difficult to define, how much more difficult to impart! Better for a man to possess them than wealth, beauty, or talent; they will more than supply all.