Adam Rickitt Quotes

Gentlemen can now only behave as such, or be tolerated as such, in circumstances that are manifestly contrived or unreal.

U.K. guys think it is cheesy to be nice.

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.

Only a great fool or a great genius is likely to flout all social grace with impunity, and neither one, doing so, makes the most comfortable companion.

Comedies of manners swiftly become obsolete when there are no longer any manners.

Politeness is deception in pretty packaging.

They yell at me to be dignified. But what are the dignified people like? The people who are held up as examples of me? They are snobs. Frightful snobs I'm a curiosity in Hollywood. I'm a big freak, because I'm myself!

Fairy tales are about money, marriage, and men. They are the maps and manuals that are passed down from mothers and grandmothers to help them survive.

Respectability is joining chastity in the museum of dead issues.

It is not enough to be wrong, one must also be polite.

The civilities of the great are never thrown away.

When we were growing up, our mother taught us never to have your belly button exposed.

No person of quality ever remembers social restrictions save when considering how most piquantly to break them.

Tradition implies authority, conformity, imitation, following.

A woman, even a married woman, cannot float without proper escort. It is simply not done.

To seem sorrowful is not in good taste: You're supposed to seem bored.

A party is a slightly artificial event where one learns the rudiments of human behavior at its most admirable: speaking when spoken to, looking somebody in the eye, shaking hands and being friendly under duress.

There is no policy like politeness; and a good manner is the best thing in the world either to get a good name, or to supply the want of it.

It is a widespread and firm belief among guests that their departure is always a matter of distress to their hosts, and that in order to indicate that they have been pleasantly entertained, they must demonstrate an extreme unwillingness to allow the entertainment to conclude. This is not necessarily true.

As to the family, I have never understood how that fits in with the other ideals --or, indeed, why it should be an ideal at all. A group of closely related persons living under one roof; it is a convenience, often a necessity, sometimes a pleasure, sometimes the reverse; but who first exalted it as admirable, an almost religious ideal?

There is no society or conversation to be kept up in the world without good-nature, or something which must bear its appearance and supply its place. For this reason mankind have been forced to invent a kind of artificial humanity, which is what we express by the word Good-Breeding.

I am accounted by some people as a good man. How cheap that character is acquired! Pay your debts, don't borrow money, nor twist your kitten's neck off, nor disturb a congregation, etc., your business is done. I know things of myself, which would make every friend I have fly me as a plague patient.

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

I don't think that women ought to sit down at table with men. It ruins conversation and I'm sure it's very bad for them. It puts ideas in their heads, and women are never at ease with themselves when they have ideas.

It is one of Miss Manners's great discoveries that one needn't contradict others in order to set them straight.