Judith Martin Quotes

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

Now, it is well known, that a man may with more impunity be guilty of an actual breach either of real good breeding or of good morals, than appear ignorant of the most minute point of fashionable etiquette.

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

Yes, but also one of the problems for a novelist in Ireland is the fact that there are no formal manners. I mean some people have beautiful manners but there's no kind of agreed form of manners.

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

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

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

Insofar as he'd formed any opinion of her, it was that she suffered from misplaced gentility and the mistaken belief that etiquette meant good breeding. She mistook mannerisms for manners.

Good manners disappear in proportion as the influence of a Court and an exclusive aristocracy lessens; this decrease can be plainly observed from decade to decade by those who have an eye for public behavior, which grows visibly.

Howard and Shirley were clothed, always, in an invisible layer of decorum that they never laid aside.

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

Good-breeding carries along with it a dignity that is respected by the most petulant. Ill-breeding invites and authorizes the familiarity of the most timid.

Most disquieting reflection of all, was it not bad form to think about good form?

Good manners are the settled medium of social, as specie is of commercial, life; returns are equally expected for both.

Manners are the hypocrisy of a nation.

Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split.

For the canons of good society are, or should be, the same as the canons of art. Form is absolutely essential to it.

He who reflects on another man's want of breeding, shows he wants it as much himself

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

Manners have been somewhat cynically defined to be a contrivance of wise men to keep fools at a distance. Fashion is shrewd to detect those who do not belong to her train, and seldom wastes her attentions. Society is very swift in its instincts, and if you do not belong to it, resists and sneers at you, or quietly drops you.

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.

Manners, really good ones, make it possible to live with almost anyone, gracefully and pleasantly.

We often laughed at others in our house, and I picked up the craft of being polite while people were present and laughing later if there was anything to laugh about.

Without an acquaintance with the rules of propriety, it is impossible for the character to be established

Manners form the great charm of women.