Laurence Sterne Quotes

Vanity, shame, and above all disposition, often make men brave and women chaste.

I'm actually totally the prude of my family.

What used to be called 'good manners' is now regarded as mere affectation. Open a door for a young woman, and she's likely to call security.

No lady is ever a gentleman.

I think feminism's a bit misinterpreted. It was about casting off all gender roles. There's nothing wrong with a man holding a door open for a girl. But we sort of threw away all the rules, so everybody's confused. And dating becomes a sloppy, uncomfortable, unpleasant thing.

A woman comes to a table, and you're supposed to get up. Period. But I don't always do it. In general, you're supposed to do it every time. But sometimes you're seated against the wall, and it's awkward.

If he invited you out, he's got to pay.

Playing the good guy is tough because you know as well as I do, in real life, you have to watch your P's and Q's and conduct yourself in a respectable manner if you expect to have friends.

I'm teaching my daughters to be ladies by showing them how to dress appropriately when they leave the house, and how to be thoughtful and polite.

Women have to be pure and respectful.

If you behave normally, people treat you normally. It's only when you act as if you're someone special that they feel obliged to stand on ceremony.

Surely one will not expect men to be less moral than women, nor less capable of disciplining their desires

For men, to cultivate virtue is knowledge; for women, to renounce knowledge is virtue.

I was raised in a very Middle Eastern household, and modesty was very important, and dressing to not be desirable or provocative was very important.

I believe that if a guy doesn't offer to pay the whole thing when he asks you on a date, he wasn't taught right. But I also believe if a woman on a date allows him to pay for the whole thing without at least offering to pay half, she wasn't taught right.

There's so much judgment geared toward young girls. People just expect so much from girls. Even physically and aesthetically, people expect us to always look right, to have a certain etiquette - to talk a certain way and act a certain way - and to know certain things. It's all different expectations, but there are always expectations.

Like, I just feel like the way a man speaks to a woman - the way that people speak to each other - it's a respect thing.

There's a real intense thing about manners in the South, a real prescribed way to be a woman.

Ceremony is an invention to take off the uneasy feeling which we derive from knowing ourselves to be less the object of love and esteem with a fellow-creature than some other person is. It endeavours to make up, by superior attentions in little points, for that invidious preference which it is forced to deny in the greater.

I read all the books I could find about manners, and the extraordinary thing was, in all books up to the end of the Second World War, most were directed at how to comport yourself in the presence of the ladies.

Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I believe when a woman enters a room, men should stand up - and gay men should stand up at least halfway.

Like language, a code of manners can be used with more or less skill, for laudable or for evil purposes, to express a great variety of ideas and emotions. In itself, it carries no moral value, but ignorance in use of this tool is not a sign of virtue.

When virtue was spoken of in the classical sense, for men, it always meant bravery or protecting others or being an adventurer and going out into the world - whereas a woman's virtue meant keeping her legs closed.

First, I thought we'd already established that I am not a gentleman. That ship sailed long ago. And second, you'd be surprised what gentlemen do...and what ladies enjoy." ~Lord Bourne

We say grace and we say ma'am. If you ain't in to that, we don't give a damn.