Marcus Tullius Cicero Quotes

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

When people accept breaking the law as normal, something happens to the whole society.

I was brought up in a community, in a family that valued such things as good manners, and I still do.

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.

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

Sleep not when others speak, sit not when others stand, speak not when you should hold your peace, walk not when others stop.

Civilization is going down the drain, and the sooner it does, the better.

When the Quaker Penn kept his hat on in the royal presence, Charles (King Charles II) politely removed his, explaining that it was the custom in that place for only one person at a time to remain covered.

Society will pardon much to genius and special gifts; but, being in its nature conventional, it loves what is conventional, or what belongs to coming together.

All children in the '50s were taught manners, they were taught to say please and thank you, they were taught not to be rude. And I'm seeing some problems today where somebody's losing a job because they made fun of a fat lady that couldn't fit in the elevator. I mean that was the sort of thing that, when I was eight years old, my mother made it very clear to me that that was not okay to say that kind of stuff.

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

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

Basil Stag Hare tut-tutted severely as he remarked to Ambrose Spike, 'Tch, tch. Dreadful table manners. Just look at those three wallahs, kicking up a hullaballoo like that! Eating's a serious business.

This piece of rudeness was more than Alice could bear: she got up in great disgust, and walked off; the Dormouse fell asleep instantly, and neither of the others took the least notice of her going, though she looked back once or twice, half hoping that they would call after her: the last time she saw them, they were trying to put the Dormouse into the teapot. At any rate I'll never go THERE again!' said Alice as she picked her way through the wood. "It's the stupidest tea-party I ever was at in all my life!

"Sorry," she said, "I got out as fast as I could, but I had to stay and socialize. Protocol, you know." "Explain protocol," Nell said. This was how she always talked to the Primer. "At the place we’re going, you need to watch your manners. Don’t say 'explain this' or 'explain that.'" "Would it impose on your time unduly to provide me with a concise explanation of the term protocol?" Nell said. Again Rita made that nervous laugh and looked at Nell with an expression that looked like poorly concealed alarm.

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

Manners are very communicable: men catch them from each other.

Custom is a mutable thing; yet we readily recognize the permanence of certain social values. Graciousness and courtesy are never old-fashioned.

Decorum -- that bug-bear which deters so many from bliss until the opportunity for bliss has forever gone by.

When I was your age, if a boy behaved badly, one simply scored his name out from one's dance card. (Sadie Lancaster - to Lara Lington)

Just because I tread heavily on propriety's toes doesn't mean I can't play the game when it's of use to me.

It starts when you begin to overlook good manners. Any time you quit hearing Sir and Mam the end is pretty much in sight.

Manners are the root, laws only the trunk and branches. Manners are the archetypes of laws. Manners are laws in their infancy; laws are manners fully grown,--or, manners are children, which, when they grow up, become laws.

One reason that the task of inventing manners is so difficult is that etiquette is folk custom, and people have emotional ties to the forms of their youth. That is why there is such hostility between generations in times of rapid change; their manners being different, each feels affronted by the other, taking even the most surface choices for challenges.

In my day, there were things that were done, and things that were not done, and there was even a way of doing things that were not done.