Manners are the hypocrisies of nations; the hypocrisies are more or less perfected.--BALZAC.
An earthly father who cannot govern by affection is not fit to be a father.--ROBERT G. INGERSOLL.
It is generally allowed that the forming and the perfecting of the character is difficult.--ANONYMOUS.
Respect your wife. Heap earth around that flower, but never drop any in the chalice.--A. DE MUSSET.
Good manners is the art of making easy the persons with whom we are brought into contact.--ANONYMOUS.
One should choose for a wife only such a woman as one would choose for a friend, were she a man.--JOUBERT.
It is a great misfortune not to have enough wit to speak well, or not enough judgment to keep silent.--LA BRUYÈRE.
Experience and observation in society are the chief means by which one acquires the polish that society demands.--ANONYMOUS.
Let what you say be to the purpose, and let it be so said that if we forget the speech we may recollect the manner of it.--ANONYMOUS.
The art of conversation consists less in showing one’s own wit than in giving opportunity for the display of the wit of others.--LA BRUYÈRE.
There is no surer proof of low origin, or of an innate meanness of disposition, than to be always talking and thinking of being genteel.--HAZLITT.
Were we as eloquent as angels, we should please some men, some women, and some children, much more by listening than by talking.--LACON.
If you speak the sense of an angel in bad words, and with a disagreeable utterance, nobody will hear you twice who can help it.--CHESTERFIELD.
One of the most effectual ways of pleasing and of making one’s self loved is to be cheerful; joy softens more hearts than tears.--MME. DE SARTORY.
To live with our enemies as if they may some time become our friends, and to live with our friends as if they may some time become our enemies, is not a moral but a political maxim.--ANONYMOUS.
There is no flattery so exquisite as the flattery of listening. It may be doubted whether the greatest mind is ever proof against it. Socrates may have loved Plato best of all his disciples because he listened best.--ANONYMOUS.
Though conversation in its better part May be esteemed a gift, and not an art, Yet much depends, as in the tiller’s toil, On culture and the sowing of the soil. --COWPER.