Social Politeness Quotes

When one is polite in German, one lies.

Everything you've heard about Canadians apologizing profusely for things they shouldn't be sorry about is absolutely true. It is both sweet, endearing and worrisome at the same time. Having someone apologize for no reason actually makes me feel as though I should apologize for their need to apologize.

Not all lies are harmful. Sometimes we're willing participants in deception for the sake of social dignity, maybe to keep a secret that should be kept secret, secret. We say, 'Nice song.' 'Honey, you don't look fat in that, no.'

Swedes are such a civilised, perfect society - at least on the surface. There's a great safety net, a huge middle class, free education, free health care. People are very polite, they wait their turn. They're not too loud, they're not too quiet, but sometimes it's a little too perfect.

Few enjoy noisy overcrowded functions. But they are a gesture of goodwill on the part of host or hostess, and also on the part of guests who submit to them.

I can't tell you the number of times I've been in the middle of a perfunctory conversation, and someone will say, 'Tell us what you really think.' Or 'Maybe you should switch to decaf.

Courtesy is the politic witchery of great personages.

There is a British assumption that you mustn't speak evil of anyone's garden because it is rude - it is like criticising their home, their children or their pets.

I still do find it very difficult in the West to connect to this politeness of smiling, not saying how you're thinking or not saying how you really feel.

Manhood is melted into courtesies, valor into compliment, and men are only turned into tongue, and trim ones, too.

Vanity is as advantageous to a government as pride is dangerous. To be convinced of this we need only represent, on the one hand,the numberless benefits which result from vanity, as industry, the arts, fashions, politeness, and taste; and on the other, the infinite evils which spring from the pride of certain nations, a laziness, poverty, a total neglect of everything.

No man gains credit for his cowardly courtesies.

If a man didn't make sense, the Scotch felt it was misplaced politeness to try to keep him from knowing it. Better that he be aware of his reputation, for this would encourage reticence which goes well with stupidity.

When I'm at home and I'm preparing my own food, it's all gluten-free, or fish and it's healthy, but when I go to someone else's house, I'll eat what they put in front of me because I don't want to be an asshole.

The almost Oriental politeness of the West Coast is one of its distinctive regional features, in marked contrast to the contentiousness of the East Coast.... So few human contacts in Los Angeles go unmediated by glass (either a TV screen or an automobile windshield), that the direct confrontation renders the participants docile, stunned, sweet.

If you did go to high school and then college, there's definitely a solidarity with someone that is from your hometown and knows your mom, and all that stuff. There's this weird politeness that we have, as a society. You don't want to make it hard for anybody.

I just have to work on the apologetic side because I'm Canadian. We apologize for everything.

I've been an audience member for friends in plays that I don't enjoy and I have to lie to their faces. It's just part of that lifestyle unfortunately, especially in New York.

We tend to assume that we have a baseline of speech that's going to be normal in all contexts, but the truth is, we all change our ways of speaking depending on who we're talking to. And so I think it's kind of a gesture of politeness to the people you're speaking to to try to say something in their own idiom.

There are many times when a woman will ask another girl friend how she likes her new hat. She will reply, 'Fine,' but slap her hand to her forehead the minute the girl leaves to yipe, 'What a horror!'

The American insanity for Loving Everybody is ruining my good temper and delivering my stomach to enormous bouts with acidity.

The aim is to burn through to first thoughts, to the place where energy is unobstructed by social politeness or the internal censor, to the place where you are writing what you mind actually sees and feels, not what it thinks it should see or feel.