Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

You can't open your presents 'til you write your thank-you letters.

Spiritual strength and passion, when accompanied by bad manners, only provoke loathing.

When will conventional good manners become attractive? When will ladies of fashion exhibit their shoulders a little less and their affability and wit a little more?

A reader is doubly guilty of bad manners against an author when he praises his second book at the expense of his first (or vice versa) and then expects the author to be grateful for what he has done.

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

If a man holds a door open for me or pulls back a chair so that this old bag can sit down, I'm delighted. Women who moan and carp about that sort of thing are stupid

Leave out my name from the gift if it be a burden, but keep my song.

If ill thoughts at any time enter into the mind of a good man, he doth not roll them under his tongue as a sweet morsel.

Good manners come, as we say, from good breeding or rather are good breeding; and breeding is acquired by habitual action, in response to habitual stimuli, not by conveying information.

All of us live at the feeling level, and our feelings are in large part a result of the way we perceive things. You observe or are told something, you interpret it, and only then do you have a reaction at the feeling level. The point is that feeling is preceded by perception, and all of us are capable of controlling our interpretation [the associations and assumptions] of what we see. If we can control our interpretation, then it logically follows that we can exercise some control over our feelings as well.

The basis of good manners is self-reliance.

Good manners require space and time.

Good manners are the techniques of expressing consideration for the feelings of others.

Shoulda sent a thank you note, you little hoe Now Imma wrap your coffin wit a bow

Good manners disappear in proportion as the influence of a Court and an exclusive aristocracy lessens; this decrease can be plainly observed from decade to decade by those who have an eye for public behavior, which grows visibly.

A refined soul is distressed to know that someone owes it thanks; a crude soul, to know that it owes someone thanks.

Good manners do more for a man that good looks.

If your cloak was a gift, I appreciate it; if it was a loan, I'm not through with it yet.

When people complain of the decay of manners they have in mind not the impudent abbreviations of the crowd, but the decline in bowing and scraping and in speaking of one's employer as "the master." What the rich mean by the good manners of the poor is usually not civility, but servility.

Good manners consist of doing precisely what everyone thinks should be done, especially when no one knows quite what that is.

The society of women is the element of good manners.

Don't forget where you came from and treat people a certain way.

You know my feelings: every day is a gift. It's just, does it have to be socks?

Naturally Shirley had known, as they slid stock words and phrases back and forth between them like beads on an abacus, that Howard must be as brimful of ecstasy as she was; but to express these feelings out loud, when the news of death was still fresh in the air, would have been tantamount to dancing naked and shrieking obscenities, and Howard and Shirley were clothed, always, in an invisible layer of decorum that they never laid aside.

The Sage was asked to define good manners? to which he replied, To bear patiently the rude ones.