Politeness Quotes - Page 2

Often people that tell others they are "extremely polite" when the situation calls for tact and bluntness are not actually polite people. Instead, they hide behind the word “polite” because they have low self esteem or hidden agendas. Sadly, they impolitely confuse the hell out of everyone, send mixed signals, which then makes people question their sanity and motives.

(A gentleman) is any man who wouldn't hit a woman with his hat on.

Infants never learn to soothe themselves to sleep. They learn, abandoned in seclusion, that no matter the volume of their despondence, no matter the force of their tears, when they are alone and frightened, no-one will ever come to their rescue. Infants do not soothe themselves. They merely surrender. And it is caged in their cribs where the infants learn, in the face of their demons, to remain silent and submitting.

Charming people live up to the very edge of their charm and behave as outrageously as the world will let them.

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.

Reading at meals is considered rude in polite society, but if you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second-to-least of your concerns. The least of all should be polite society and what it expects.

Have you shat, my child, I said gently.

Nay, but prithee, with sprinkles 'pon it instead," I said solemnly, "and frosting of white.

Be not intimidated...nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberties by any pretense of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery and cowardice.

Adversity sure does gives you trouble, but it keeps you humble.

The author relates George Bernard Shaw's sentiments that polite conversation excludes the only two subjects that matter, religion and politics.

Time is no one's friend--time has no social niceties and holds the door for nobody nowhere. But I hold the door for time, with my one good paw.

Politeness is the first thing people lose once they get the power.

As a Texan, I say ma'm and sir to my age contemporaries and open doors for anyone that I can. This goes for men, too, though it is appreciated when they beat me to it and disappointing when they don't.

The natural flow of discourse must be calm and serene; if wit, whim, fun and fire are present, they will not fail to flash brightly along its surface; but they can never constitute the main body of the stream itself.

He knew very well that the great majority of human conversation is meaningless. A man can get through most of his days on stock answers to stock questions, he thought. Once he catches onto the game, he can manage with an assortment of grunts. This would not be so if people listened to each other, but they don't. They know that no one is going to say anything moving and important to them at that very moment. Anything important will be announced in the newspapers and reprinted for those who missed it. No one really wants to know how his neighbor is feeling, but he asks him anyway, because it is polite, and because he knows that his neighbor certainly will not tell him how he feels. What this woman and I say to each other is not important. It is the simple making of sounds that pleases us.

As the head of an expedition, you can't pussyfoot around being polite to everyone. You have to show your teeth once in a while; a little growling goes a long way.

The crime rates would go right down, I think, if Americans stopped saying: 'Have a nice day,' to one another. At least it would stop me from contemplating violence; when people in shops & so on order me to have a nice day in this authoritarian way, I want to kill, kill, kill. When I mutter 'sod off' under my breath, they think it is a Russian Orthodox benediction.

Sometimes you must agree with someones opinion for the sake of being polite and modest, but within you, you know that you are not foolish and crazy.

When the Starbursts cost a cent apiece, the average number of candies per customer was 3.5, but when the price went down to zero, the average went down to 1.1 per customer. The students limited themselves to a large degree when the candy was free. In fact, almost all the students applied a very simple social-norm rule in this situation—they politely took one and only one Starburst. ... What these results mean is that when price is not a part of the exchange, we become less selfish maximizers and start caring more about the welfare of others. We saw this demonstrated by the fact that when the price decreased to zero, customers restrained themselves and took far fewer units.

There is always a best way of doing everything if it be only to boil an egg. Manners are the happy ways of doing things.

In nothing do we fail more, as a Mission, than in lack of tact and politeness.

It doesn't matter what you do in the bedroom as long as you don't do it in the streets and frighten the horses.

Spark the dreams you have with integrity and honesty. It’s gonna catch up with excellence if you make it revive in truthfulness in the midst of this world of falsehood!

In England I am always madam; I arrived too late to ever be a miss. In New York I have only been madamed once, by the doorman at the Carlyle Hotel.

Politeness is good nature regulated by good sense.

Oppressors specialise in rasing wolves from amonst the sheep then together with the wolves devour the sheep

I suggest he starts introducing himself as "Lessman"; he is classless, tactless, and mannerless.

Rudeness, abruptness, gory tales of blood and thunder, and coarse language usually show up the greenhorn or counterfeit, and certainly the ill-bred. "The bravest are the tenderest; the gentlest are the daring.

Chivalry is a poor substitute for justice if one cannot have both. Chivalry is something like the icing on cake sweet but not nourishing.

Principles in a poor is admirable as politeness in a prince.

(Politeness is) a tacit agreement that people's miserable defects whether moral or intellectual shall on either side be ignored and not be made the subject of reproach.