Muriel Spark Quotes

It would be nice if people said, God bless you not just when you sneezed but also when you farted.

Manners are the hypocrisy of a nation.

Racist people, interestingly, are never as polite as smokers. Have you noticed that? Smokers always go, "Do you mind if I smoke? Oh, you do? Okay, I'll go outside and have a cigarette."

People give out compliments because it's polite.

Americans are incredibly polite as long as they get what they want.

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

If I'm out to dinner with a group of friends, and somebody offers to pay for the check, I immediately reach for my wallet. Inside is a note that says, "Say thanks!"

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

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

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.

He was the soul of politeness to everyone -- to some with a hint of aversion, to others with a hint of respect.

In truth, politeness is artificial good humor, it covers the natural want of it, and ends by rendering habitual a substitute nearly equivalent to the real virtue.

People are pretty respectful for the most part.

If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?

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.

In polite society one laughs at all the jokes, including the ones one has heard before.

Etiquette means behaving yourself a little better than is absolutely essential.

It is possible to have good manners and be funny at the same time. Ronnie Barker and I proved that.

Civility is a choice.

Britons are very respectful - if they want to take a photo, they ask politely.

Politeness is sometimes a great tax upon sincerity.

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

Etiquette can be at the same time a means of approaching people and of staying clear of them.

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 have seen people rude by being over-polite.