James Thurber Quotes

If a ballet dancer falls over, it's knowing how to get out looking clumsy that counts.

Grace under pressure.

I'm not nervous standing with anyone.

Poise is a word that seems to have slipped out of the lexicon. There's no emoji for it.

Most people think of poise as calm, self-assured dignity; but I call it “just being you”.

Class is an aura of confidence that is being sure without being cocky. Class has nothing to do with money. Class never runs scared. It is self-discipline and self-knowledge. It's the sure-footedness that comes with having proved you can meet life.

Avoid all haste; calmness is an essential ingredient of politeness.

Their unselfishness, the way they play and their poise factor. When you never panic, that's a great sign.

I will not get upset over men, but instead be poised and cool ice-queen.

The distinguishing trait of people accustomed to good society is a calm, imperturbable quiet which pervades all their actions and habits, from the greatest to the least. They eat in quiet, move in quiet, live in quiet, and lose their wife, or even their money, in quiet; while low persons cannot take up either a spoon or an affront without making such an amazing noise about it.

Calmness is great advantage; he that lets Another chafe, may warm him at his fire.

Nothing annoys people so much as not receiving invitations.

Being cultured is the least expensive form of respectability.

I have very poor and unhappy brains for drinking: I could well wish courtesy would invent some other custom of entertainment.

I'm the worst at teasing. I don't really know how much I can and can't say.

Let your countenance be pleasant, but in serious matters let it be somewhat grave.

a great man always knows better than to explain unless an explanation is demanded. To rush into explanations and excuses is always a sign of weakness.

Fear and impatience demagnetize. Poise magnetizes.

Because you want to keep an air of calm and cool.

Style is about surviving, about having been through a lot and making it look easy.

You may be desperate, but never let anyone see you as anything less than a cultivated woman.

It takes that je ne sais quoi which we call sophistication for a woman to be magnificent in a drawing-room when her faculties have departed but she herself has not yet gone home.

I am one of those irritating people, who hang on to the door-knob after they say good-bye, and will neither come back nor go, always remembering something else which must be said.

I remember manners, that's when people are scared to make other persons mad.