Nothing seems at first sight less important than the outward form of human actions, yet there is nothing upon which men set more store: they grow used to everything except to living in a society which has not their own manners.

Fine manners need the support of fine manners in others.

Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each once a stroke of genius or of love, now repeated and hardened into usage.

Manners make the fortune of the ambitious youth.

Manners require time, as nothing is more vulgar than haste.

There is nothing settled in manners, but the laws of behavior yield to the energy of the individual.

A man without ceremony had need of great merit in its place.

Etiquette is what you are doing and saying when people are looking and listening. What you are thinking is your business.

People who put slipcovers, doilies, plastic protectors, and cellophane on everything good that they own rarely live to see an occasion so good that all these covers are removed.

Fashionably amusing table manners are a matter of breaking the right rule at the right time.