This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"To the real artist in humanity, what are called bad manners are often the most picturesque and significant of all." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
"Manners make the Man, not Habits." - William Blake
"For changing peoples’ manners and altering their customs there is nothing better than music." - Shu Ching or Shu Jing or Shujing NULL
"Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment… I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with; because, when once known, we accommodate ourselves to them, and find practical means of correcting their ill effects. But I know also that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors." - Thomas Jefferson
"Culture is but the fine flowering of real education, and it is the training of the feeling, the tastes, and the manners that make it so." - Minnie Kellogg, born Laura Miriam Cornelius
"Men and women must be educated, in great degree, by the opinions and manners of the society they live in. In every age there has been a stream of popular opinion that has carried all before it, and given a family character, as it were, to the century. It may then fairly be inferred, that, until society be differently constituted, much cannot be expected from education." -
"Men's manners have improved markedly since Genghis Khan's day. Harems went out of style centuries ago and even despots now disavow pillage and oppression as ideals. At heart, though, we're the same animals we were 800 years ago. Which is to say we are status seekers. We may talk of equality and fraternity. We may strive for classless societies. But we go right on building hierarchies and jockeying for status within them. Can we abandon the tendency? Probably not. For as scientists are now discovering, status seeking is not just a habit or cultural tradition. It's a design of the male psyche - a biological drive that is rooted in the nervous system and regulated by hormones and brain chemicals." -
"Be sincere. Be simple in words, manners and gestures. Amuse as well as instruct. If you can make a man laugh, you can make him think and make him like and believe you." - Alfred Emmanuel Smith
"Fine manners are the mantle of fair minds." - Amos Bronson Alcott
"Modesty is bred of self-reverence. Find manners are the mantle of fair minds." - Amos Bronson Alcott
"Nor do we accept as genuine the person not characterized by this blushing bashfulness, this youthfulness of heart, this sensibility to the sentiment of suavity, and self-respect. Modesty is bred of self-reverence. Fine manners are the mantle of fair minds. None are truly great without his ornament." - Amos Bronson Alcott
"The wisest and best are repulsive, if they are characterized by repulsive manners. Politeness is an easy virtue, costs little, and has great purchasing power." - Amos Bronson Alcott
"In an age remarkable for good reasoning and bad conduct, for sound rules and corrupt manners, when virtue fills our heads, but vice our hearts; when those who would fain persuade us that they are quite sure of heaven, appear in no greater hurry to go there than other folks, but put on the livery of the best master only to serve the worst; in an age when modesty herself is more ashamed of detection than delinquency; when independence of principle consists in having no principle on which to depend; and free thinking, not in thinking freely, but in being free from thinking; in an age when patriots will hold anything except their tongues; keep anything except their word; and lose nothing patiently except their character; to improve such an age must be difficult; to instruct it dangerous; and he stands no chance of amending it who cannot at the same time amuse it." - Charles Caleb Colton
"Unsociable humors are contracted in solitude, which will, in the end, not fail of corrupting the understanding as well as the manners, and of utterly disqualifying a man for the satisfactions and duties of life. Men must be taken as they are, and we neither make them or ourselves better by flying from or quarreling with them." - Edmund Burke
"It is by imitation, far more than by precept, that we learn everything; and what we learn thus, we acquire not only more efficiently, but more pleasantly. This forms our manners, our opinions, our lives." - Edmund Burke
"It is for the most part in our skill in manners, and in the observation of time and place and of decency in general that what is called taste consists; and which is in reality no other that a more refined judgment. The cause of a wrong taste is a defect of judgment." - Edmund Burke
"Manners are of more importance than laws. Upon them, in a great measure, the laws depend. The law touches us but here and there, and now and then. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in. They give their whole form and color to our lives. According to their quality, they aid morals; they supply them or they totally destroy them." - Edmund Burke
"War suspends the rules of moral obligation, and what is long suspended is in danger of being totally abrogated. Civil wars strike deepest of all into the manners of the people. They vitiate their politics; they corrupt their morals; they pervert their natural taste and relish of equity and justice. By teaching us to consider our fellow-citizens in a hostile light, the whole body of our nation becomes gradually less dear to us. The very nature of affection and kindred, which were the bond of charity, whilst we agreed, become new incentives to hatred and rage, when the communion of our country is dissolved." - Edmund Burke
"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." - Horace Mann
"Manners easily and rapidly mature into morals." - Horace Mann
"The automobile changed our dress, manners, social customs, vacation habits, the shape of our cities, consumer purchasing patterns, common tastes and positions in intercourse." - John Keats
"Differences are likely to lead to... the world's advancement, and add to the charms of social intercourse. Nothing leads to boredom more than uniformity of manners and thoughts." - Joseph Jacobs
"Politeness is to goodness what words are to thought. It tells not only on the manners, but on the mind and the heart; it renders the feelings, the opinions, the words, moderate and gentle." - Joseph Joubert
"Politeness induces morality. Serenity of manners requires serenity of mind." - Julia Ward Howe
"A man's own good breeding is the best security against other people's ill manners." - Lord Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
"Prepare yourself for the world, as the athletes used to do for their exercises; oil your mind and your manners, to give them the necessary suppleness and flexibility; strength alone will not do." - Lord Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
"Although there is nothing so bad for conscience as trifling, there is nothing so good for conscience as trifles. Its certain discipline and development are related to the smallest things. Conscience, like gravitation, takes hold of atoms. Nothing is morally indifferent. Conscience must reign in manners as well as morals, in amusements as well as work. He only who is “faithful in that which is least” is dependable in all the world." - Maltbie Babcock, fully Maltbie Davenport Babcock
"The convivium is rest from labours, release from cares and nourishment of genius; it is the demonstration of love and splendour, the food of good will, the seasoning of friendship, the leavening of grace and the solace of life... Everything should be seasoned with the salt of genius and illumined by the rays of mind and manners." - Marsilio Ficino
"Men and women must be educated, in a great degree, by the opinions and manners of the society they live in. In every age there has been a stream of popular opinion that has carried all before it, and given a family character, as it were, to the century. It may then be fairly inferred, that, till society be differently constituted, much cannot be expected from education." - Mary Wollstonecraft
"I love everything that is old; old friends, old manners, old books, old wine." - Oliver Goldsmith
"Let a man use great reverence and manners to himself." - Pythagoras, aka Pythagoras of Samos or Pythagoras the Samian NULL
"Defect in manners is usually the defect of fine perceptions. Men are too coarsely made for the delicacy of beautiful carriage and customs. It is not quite sufficient to good breeding, a union of kindness and independence." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each one a stroke of genius or of love, now repeated and hardened into usage, they form at last a rich varnish, with which the routine of life is washed, and its details adorned. If they are superficial, so are the dew-drops which give such a depth to the morning meadows." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The basis of good manners is self-reliance." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"All things are engaged in writing their history... Every act of the man inscribes itself in the memories of its fellows, and in his own manners and face. The air is full of sounds, the sky of tokens, the ground is all memoranda and signatures, and every object covered over with hints which speak to the intelligent." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then all things are at risk. The very hope of man. The thoughts of his heart, the religion of nations, the manners and morals of mankind are all at the mercy of a new generalization." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Every individual nature has its own beauty. One is truck in every company, at every fireside, with the riches of nature, when he hears so many; new tones, all musical, sees in each person original manners, which have a proper and peculiar charm, and reads new expressions of face. He perceives that nature has laid for each the foundations of a divine building, if the soul will build thereon." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Manners are the happy ways of doing things. If they are superficial, so are the dewdrops which give such a depth to the morning meadows." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Manners require time, and nothing is more vulgar than haste." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"No manners are finer than even the most awkward manifestations of good will to others... Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"When the man is at home, his standing in society is well known and quietly taken; but when he is abroad, it is problematic, and is dependent on the success of his manners." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Manners are stronger than laws." - Thomas Carlyle
"Fine manners are like personal beauty, a letter of credit everywhere. " - Cyrus Augustus Bartol
"While there are manners and compliments we do not meet, we do not teach one another the lessons of honesty and sincerity that the brutes do, or of steadiness and solidity that the rocks do. The fault is commonly mutual, however; for we do not habitually demand any more of each other." - Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
"To cherish peace and friendly intercourse with all nations having correspondent dispositions; to maintain sincere neutrality toward belligerent nations; to prefer in all cases amicable discussion and reasonable accommodation of differences to a decision of them by an appeal to arms; to exclude foreign intrigues and foreign partialities, so degrading to all countries and so baneful to free ones; to foster a spirit of independence too just to invade the rights of others, too proud to surrender our own, too liberal to indulge unworthy prejudices ourselves and too elevated not to look down upon them in others; to hold the union of the States as the basis of their peace and happiness; to support the Constitution, which is the cement of the Union, as well in its limitations as in its authorities; to respect the rights and authorities reserved to the States and to the people as equally incorporated with and essential to the success of the general system; to avoid the slightest interference with the right of conscience or the functions of religion, so wisely exempted from civil jurisdiction; to preserve in their full energy the other salutary provisions in behalf of private and personal rights, and of the freedom of the press; to observe economy in public expenditures; to liberate the public resources by an honorable discharge of the public debts; to keep within the requisite limits a standing military force, always remembering that an armed and trained militia is the firmest bulwark of republics — that without standing armies their liberty can never be in danger, nor with large ones safe; to promote by authorized means improvements friendly to agriculture, to manufactures, and to external as well as internal commerce; to favor in like manner the advancement of science and the diffusion of information as the best aliment to true liberty; to carry on the benevolent plans which have been so meritoriously applied to the conversion of our aboriginal neighbors from the degradation and wretchedness of savage life to a participation of the improvements of which the human mind and manners are susceptible in a civilized state — as far as sentiments and intentions such as these can aid the fulfillment of my duty, they will be a resource which can not fail me." - James Madison
"Our manners and customs go for more in life than our qualities.—The price we pay for our civilization is the fine yet impassible differentiation of these." - Jeremiah Brown Howell
"A man's manners are a mirror in which he shows his portrait. " - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"The dinner table is the center for the teaching and practicing not just of table manners but of conversation, consideration, tolerance, family feeling, and just about all the other accomplishments of polite society except the minuet." - Judith Martin, née Perlman, pen name Miss Manners