Kathy Griffin 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?

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

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

He who reflects on another man's want of breeding, shows he wants it as much himself

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.

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

Insofar as he'd formed any opinion of her, it was that she suffered from misplaced gentility and the mistaken belief that etiquette meant good breeding. She mistook mannerisms for manners.

Howard and Shirley were clothed, always, in an invisible layer of decorum that they never laid aside.

Good general-purpose manners nowadays may be said to consist in knowing how much you can get away with.

Yes, etiquette is hypocritical. Yes, it does inhibit children - if you're lucky. But the idea that it's elitist and irrelevant is like saying language is elitist and irrelevant.

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.

A commercial society whose members are essentially ascetic and indifferent in social ritual has to be provided with blueprints and specifications for evoking the right tone for every occasion.

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

Custom has made dancing sometimes necessary for a young man; therefore mind it while you learn it, that you may learn to do it well, and not be ridiculous, though in a ridiculous act.

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

Tis a rule of manners to avoid exaggeration.

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.

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

Without an acquaintance with the rules of propriety, it is impossible for the character to be established

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

Now, it is well known, that a man may with more impunity be guilty of an actual breach either of real good breeding or of good morals, than appear ignorant of the most minute point of fashionable etiquette.

People say that you always have to tell the truth. But they do not mean this because you are not allowed to tell old people that they are old and you are not allowed to tell people if they smell funny or if a grown-up has made a fart. And you are not allowed to say, 'I don't like you,' unless that person has been horrible to you.

Let's all commit ourselves to the basic civility of minding our own business. Failing that, let's go back to a time when we were nasty and judgmental, but only behind one another's backs.