Margaret Millar Quotes

People don't know how to behave in public anymore.

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.

I'm just saying we can all work on our manners. We can say please and thank you. We can be punctual. We can just be nicer to one another. It's something we have in our power to do. It reminds me of that Margaret Mead quote: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.

Politeness is the result of good sense and good nature.

Politeness is one of those advantages which we never estimate rightly but by the inconvenience of its loss.

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

Ceremonies are the outworks of manners.

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

A lot of our lives are about being polite.

The basis of good manners is self-reliance.

The way one was brought up isn't an excuse for rude behavior.

The civilities of the great are never thrown away.

Gentleness is the great point to be obtained in the study of manners.

When politeness is used to show up other people, it is reclassified as rudeness. Thus it is technically impossible to be too polite.

It is a very nice world-that is, if you remember that while morals are all-important between the Lord and His creatures, what counts between one creature and another is good manners.

If you cannot conduct yourself with propriety, give place to those who can.

The best way to learn to be a lady is to see how other ladies do it.

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

Mind your P's and Q's.

Good manners can replace morals. It may be years before anyone knows if what you are doing is right. But if what you are doing is nice, it will be immediately evident.

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.

Good manners make any man a pleasure to be with. Ask any woman.

The whole country wants civility. Why don't we have it? It doesn't cost anything. No federal funding, no legislation is involved. One answer is the unwillingness to restrain oneself. Everybody wants other people to be polite to them, but they want the freedom of not having to be polite to others.

Politeness goes far, yet costs nothing.

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