This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Perhaps the summary of good-breeding may be reduced to this rule. “Behave unto all men as you would they should behave to you.” This will most certainly oblige us to treat all mankind with the utmost civility and respect, there being nothing that we desire more than to be treated so by them.
Character | Civility | Desire | Good | Mankind | Men | Nothing | Respect | Rule | Will |
There can be no high civility without a deep morality.
Most adults would not dream of belittling, humiliating, or bullying (verbally or physically) another adult. But many of the same adults think nothing of treating their adolescent child like a nonperson. . . . Adolescents deserve the same civility their parents routinely extend to total strangers.
P.T. Barnum, fully Phineas Taylor Barnum
Politeness and civility are the best capital ever invested in business. Large stores, gilt signs, flaming advertisements, will all prove unavailing if you or your employees treat your patrons abruptly.
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
The reflection that strikes the heart is not that the evils before us are real evils but that they are evils to which we ourselves may be exposed... The delight of tragedy proceeds from our consciousness of fiction; if we thought murders and treasons real, they would please no more.
Civility |
When he hung over the death-bed of his infant son Ibrahim, resignation to the Will of God was exhibited in his conduct under this keenest of afflictions; and the hope of soon rejoining his child in paradise was his consolation. When he followed him to the grave, he invoked his spirit, in the awful examination of the tomb, to hold fast to the foundations of the faith, the Unity of God, and his own mission as a Prophet.
Books | Civility | Hope | Friendship | Friends |
Parla come magni,' It means, 'Speak the way you eat,' or in my personal translation: 'Say it like you eat it.' It's a reminder - when you're making a big deal out of explaining something, when you're searching for the right words - to keep your language as simple and direct as Roman rood. Don't make a big production out of it. Just lay it on the table.
Civility | Relationship |