Horace Mann Quotes

As laws are necessary that good manners may be preserved, so good manners are necessary that laws may be maintained.

As manners make laws, so manners likewise repeal them.

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

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

Good manners require space and time.

Politeness has been defined to be artificial good-nature; but we may affirm, with much greater propriety, that good-nature is natural politeness.

Respect for ourselves guides our morals, respect for others guides our manners.

Manners are the hypocrisy of a nation.

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.

Manners are the basic building blocks of civil society.

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

Manners are more important than laws. Upon them, in great measure, the laws depend.

The etiquette question has become of so much importance as to be an object of state.

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

It's one of these things that I've been struck by for so long about America. You know, this amazing politeness of American life that's not at all class specific. It's not like people get more polite as ascend the hierarchy of society. Just incredible good manners. It's always been something that I've noticed.

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.

Politeness is good nature regulated by good sense.

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.

All children in the '50s were taught manners, they were taught to say please and thank you, they were taught not to be rude. And I'm seeing some problems today where somebody's losing a job because they made fun of a fat lady that couldn't fit in the elevator. I mean that was the sort of thing that, when I was eight years old, my mother made it very clear to me that that was not okay to say that kind of stuff.

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

Politeness is the chief sign of culture.

Most conduct is guided by norms rather than by laws. Norms are voluntary and are effective because they are enforced by peer pressure.

Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each once a stroke of genius or of love, now repeated and hardened into usage.

Ceremonies are the outworks of manners.