Walter Scott Quotes

There is no society or conversation to be kept up in the world without good-nature, or something which must bear its appearance and supply its place. For this reason mankind have been forced to invent a kind of artificial humanity, which is what we express by the word Good-Breeding.

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.

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

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

I never cheat or steal. Also, I never wear a top-hat with a sack coat or munch bananas in public on the streets, because a gentleman does not do those things either. I would as soon do the one as the other sort of thing--it is all a matter of harmony and good taste.

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.

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

Manners are made up of trivialities of deportment which can be easily learned if one does not happen to know them.

U.K. guys think it is cheesy to be nice.

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.

In life, if you have an enthusiasm for what they call 'good manners,' sometimes people don't quite believe you. I've had that once or twice before, where they assume you can't be for real.

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

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

As manners make laws, so manners likewise repeal them.

The ignorant are afraid to betray surprise or admiration...they think it ill manners.

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

Real good-breeding is independent of the forms and refinements of what has assumed to itself the name of society.

Good manners, to those one does not love, are no more a breach of truth, than "your humble servant," at the bottom of a challengeis; they are universally agreed upon, and understand to be things of course. They are necessary guards of the decency and peace of society.

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 am put on my best behavior, which means the same thing as the most uncomfortable behavior.

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

This laudable quality is commonly known by the name of Manners and Good-breeding, and consists in a Fashionable Habit, acquir'd by Precept and Example, of flattering the Pride and Selfishness of others, and concealing our own with Judgment and Dexterity.

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

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.

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