This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Judith Martin, née Perlman, pen name Miss Manners
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.
Maltbie Babcock, fully Maltbie Davenport Babcock
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.
Amusements | Conscience | Discipline | Good | Manners | Nothing |
Miles Coverdale, also Myles Coverdale
It shall greatly help thee to understand scripture, if thou mark not only what is spoken or written, but of whom, and unto whom, with what words, at what time, where, to what intent, with what circumstance, considering what goeth before, and what followeth after. For there be some things which are done and written, to the intent that we should do likewise: as when Abraham believeth God, is obedient unto his word, and defendeth Lot his kinsman from violent wrong. There be some things also which are written, to the intent that we should eschew such like. As when David lieth with Urias' wife, and causeth him to be slain. Therefore (I say) when thou readest scripture, be wise and circumspect: and when thou commest to such strange manners of speaking and dark sentences, to such parables and similitudes, to such dreams or visions as are hid from thy understanding, commit them unto God or to the gift of his holy spirit in them that are better learned than thou.
Better | Dreams | God | Manners | Parables | Spirit | Wise | God | Understand |
Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon I
A great reserve and severity of manners are necessary for the command of those who are older than ourselves.
Neil Gaiman, fully Neil Richard Gaiman
Words can be worrisome, poeple complex, motives and manners unclear, grant her the wisdom to choose her path right, free from unkindness and fear.
Manners | Motives | Unkindness | Wisdom |
Oswald Spengler, fully Oswald Manuel Arnold Gottfried Spengler
For the Age has itself become vulgar, and most people have no idea to what extent they are themselves tainted. The bad manners of all parliaments, the general tendency to connive at a rather shady business transaction if it promises to bring in money without work, jazz and Negro dances as the spiritual outlet in all circles of society, women painted like prostitutes, the efforts of writers to win popularity by ridiculing in their novels and plays the correctness of well-bred people, and the bad taste shown even by the nobility and old princely families in throwing off every kind of social restraint and time-honored custom: all of these go to prove that it is now the vulgar mob that gives the tone.
Age | Business | Correctness | Manners | Mob | Money | Nobility | Novels | People | Popularity | Restraint | Taste | Business | Old |
Virtue, morality, and religion. This is the armor, my friend, and this alone that renders us invincible. These are the tactics we should study. If we lose these, we are conquered, fallen indeed...so long as our manners and principles remain sound, there is no danger.
Manners | Principles |
Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
The attitude of the manners should adorn knowledge and smooth the path in the association.
Buckminster Fuller, fully Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller
Parents are usually more careful to bestow knowledge on their children rather than virtue, the art of speaking well rather than doing well; but their manners should be of the greatest concern.
We are all guilty in some Measure of the same narrow way of Thinking ... when we fancy the Customs, Dresses, and Manners of other Countries are ridiculous and extravagant, if they do not resemble those of our own.
Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
In their new personal development the girl and the woman will only be for a short time imitations of the good and bad manners of man and reiterations of man's professions. After the uncertainty of this transition it will appear that women have passed through those many, often ridiculous, changes of disguise, only to free themselves from the disturbing influence of the other sex. For women, in whom life tarries and dwells in a more incommunicable, fruitful and confident form, must at bottom have become richer beings, more ideally human beings than fundamentally easy-going man, who is not drawn down beneath the surface of life by the difficulty of bearing bodily fruit, and who arrogantly and hastily undervalues what he means to love. When this humanity of woman, borne to the full in pain and humiliation, has stripped off in the course of the changes of its outward position the old convention of simple feminine weakness, it will come to light, and man, who cannot yet feel it coming, will be surprised and smitten by it. One day
Convention | Difficulty | Good | Humanity | Influence | Life | Life | Man | Manners | Means | Pain | Position | Time | Uncertainty | Will | Woman | Old |
To be always thinking about your manners is not the way to make them good; the very perfection of manners is not to think about yourself.
Manners | Perfection | Thinking | Think |
Robert Bridges, fully Robert Seymour Bridges
There is always a best way of doing everything, if it be only to boil an egg. Manners are the happy ways of doing things.
When a historian enters into metaphysics he has gone to a far country from whose bourne he will never return a historian.
No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and Virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders.
Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron
There are four types of men in this world: (1) The man who knows, and knows that he knows; he is wise, so consult him. (2) The man who knows, but doesn't know that he knows; help him not forget what he knows. (3) The man who knows not, and knows that he knows not; teach him. (4) Finally, there is the man who knows not but pretends that he knows; he is a fool, so avoid him.