Letitia Baldrige Quotes

Manners are the hypocrisy of a nation.

Persian social manners are well known, and there is no other society that can compete with them.

Etiquette is all human social behavior. If you're a hermit on a mountain, you don't have to worry about etiquette; if somebody comes up the mountain, then you've got a problem. It matters because we want to live in reasonably harmonious communities.

Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split.

We are trying to learn from the consequences of one's peers' actions.

It's one of these things that I've been struck by for so long about America. You know, this amazing politeness of American life that's not at all class specific. It's not like people get more polite as ascend the hierarchy of society. Just incredible good manners. It's always been something that I've noticed.

Manners easily and rapidly mature into morals.

People are pretty respectful for the most part.

Manners are the basic building blocks of civil society.

Civility is not simply about manners.

Politeness is a desire to be treated politely, and to be esteemed polite oneself.

Playing the good guy is tough because you know as well as I do, in real life, you have to watch your P's and Q's and conduct yourself in a respectable manner if you expect to have friends.

Martha Stewart contributes more to our civility than the Baptist church.

Etiquette means behaving yourself a little better than is absolutely essential.

We must learn which ceremonies may be breached occasionally at our convenience and which ones may never be if we are to live pleasantly with our fellow man.

Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.

The Japanese have perfected good manners and made them indistinguishable from rudeness.

Manners are especially the need of the plain. The pretty can get away with anything.

Manners are one of the greatest engines of influence ever given to man.

The etiquette question has become of so much importance as to be an object of state.

One of the things that hold together a human society is the existence of basic politeness among its members.

Manners are really very important to me.

Fortunately, most human behavior is learned observationally through modeling from others.

American life is based on a reassurance that we like one another but won't violate one another's privacies. This makes it a land of small talk.

In the contemporary world, we think of politeness as surface behavior, like frosting - it's sweet and attractive and finishes off the cake. But 19th century nobility and the enlightened thinkers and stoics before them viewed manners in a very different way. To them, manners are an outward expression of an inward struggle.