Quotes & Sayings About Bad Manners

Keep the personal, personal and do not be guilty of spreading bad feelings. — John Patrick Hickey

All my life I have placed great store in civility and good manners, practices I find scarce among the often hard-edged, badly socialized scientists with whom I associate. Tone of voice means a great deal to me in the course of debate. I despise the arrogance and doting self-regard so frequently found among the very bright. — Edward O. Wilson

Even when I have bad manners... I'm still polite! — Jose N. Harris

I think he is nice and tiresome. I differ from him on almost every point of any importance, and so, I expect - I may say I hope - you will differ. But his is a type one disagrees with rather than deplores. When he first came here he not unnaturally put people's backs up. He has no tact and no manners - I don't mean by that that he has bad manners - and he will not keep his opinions to himself — E. M. Forster

This self-congratulatory notion Americans have that their country is Number One is borne of ignorance and bad manners. — Bryan Cranston

A reader is doubly guilty of bad manners against an author when he praises his second book at the expense of his first (or vice versa) and then expects the author to be grateful for what he has done. — Friedrich Nietzsche

If a friend had a coronary scare and finally started exercising three days a week, who would hound him about the other four days? It's the worst of bad manners - and self-protection, I think, in a nervously cynical society - to ridicule the small gesture. — Barbara Kingsolver

The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or any other particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls: in short, behaving as if you were in Heaven, where there are no thirdclass carriages, and one soul is as good as another. — George Bernard Shaw

The keynote of simple folk is bad manners, familiarity. They intrude on one's private soul. — Patrick Kavanagh

Doing good makes you great. Bad things take away from good ones. Practicing Netiquette is all good. — David Chiles

A Mother's Advice

Manners matter, regardless of your position in society. There is no excuse in this world to practice bad manners, especially at the table. I found that out in high school. I was invited to my boyfriend's house for dinner. His parents were somewhat formal, and I knew the dinner would be "fancy," at least in my mind. My family wasn't upper class (or even middle class), and my mother never had what would be called "social graces."
Before I left, my mother gave me a piece of advice: hold your head high, be quiet, and take the lead from his mother. Even though I was scared to death, I did what my mother advised and got through the experience with flying colors.
To this day, my mother's advice has gotten me through many difficult situations, especially ones that are totally new to me! With my mother's simple advice, I know I could dine with the Queen of England, just by following her lead. Thanks, Mother!

-Deborah Ford — Deborah Ford

It is said that the hallmark of a gentleman is that he is only ever rude intentionally. Arthur Bryant was no gentleman. His rudeness came from an inability to cloak his opinions in even the most cursory civility. He believed in good manners at the meal table and bad manners almost everywhere else. — Christopher Fowler

Alexia had, in part, compensated for a lack of soul through the liberal application of manners. This was rather like donning an outfit consisting entirely of accessories, but Alexia maintained that proper conduct was never a bad thing. — Gail Carriger

Good manners are appreciated as much as bad manners are abhorred. — Bryant McGill

Greatness is so aggressive, so dramatic! Don't you think it is almost bad manners? — Ernesto Sabato

A dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot. — Robert A. Heinlein

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. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

Marketing is bad manners - and I rely on my naturalistic and ecological instincts. Say you run into a person during a boat cruise. What would you do if he started boasting of his accomplishments, telling you how great, rich, tall, impressive, skilled, famous, muscular, well educated, efficient, and good in bed he is, plus other attributes? You would certainly run away (or put him in contact with another talkative bore to get rid of both of them). It is clearly much better if others (preferably someone other than his mother) are the ones saying good things about him, and it would be nice if he acted with some personal humility. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Bad manners does not mean they make bad company. — Kelly R. Michaels

Granny said tardiness was nothing but bad manners, and that people with bad manners lacked character. Erlene — Scott Pratt

Bastard had the bad manners to die before we were through talking to him. — Maya Banks

It sometimes seems to me like we're not supposed to notice that Shug's colored, or that saying anything about it would be bad manners. That puzzles me because Shug's being colored strikes me as real obvious. And usually anybody's difference gets pounced on and picked at. This silence is a lie peculiar to a man's skin color, which makes it extra serious and extra puzzling. Daddy — Mary Karr

Why do you keep looking at your phone?" I ask him. "Shit, is there more bad press? Am I now up for grabs for both sexes?"

"I'd do you," Rolondo puts in with a grin.

"You're too high-maintenance for me."

"This is true." 'Londo nods and looks me over. "I'd most definitely make you shave that beard. I'm not into bears."

I shrug. "We were never meant to be."

Johnson rolls his eyes. "I don't care if I sound like a dick. This whole exchange is bizarre."

"You always sound like a dick," Rolondo says. "So we're used to it."

He ducks a chunk of bread Johnson pings at him. An older couple across the way turns to stare.

"Ladies," I say mildly, "mind your manners. This isn't the college bar. — Kristen Callihan

The great secret ... is not having bad manners or good manners ... but having the same manner for all human souls. — George Bernard Shaw

He had the red serviette tucked into his t-shirt at the neck which made me laugh. He hadn't done this since our third date when I had told him off for his bad manners. — Kate Chisman

If I was to ask you tonight if you were saved? Do you say 'Yes, I am saved'. When? 'Oh so and so preached, I got baptized and ... ' Are you saved? What are you saved from, hell? Are you saved from bitterness? Are you saved from lust? Are you saved from cheating? Are you saved from lying? Are you saved from bad manners? Are you saved from rebellion against your parents? Come on, what are you saved from? — Leonard Ravenhill

A smile spread over Dr. Blockhead's face. 'But where are my manners?' he said. 'What a bad host I am. Let me offer you a little refreshment.'
He picked up a jar, opened it, and held it out to Scully.
'Is that what I think it is?' she asked.
'The finest assortment of living crickets money can buy,' said Dr. Blockhead. 'And all quite recently captured. If you don't believe me, read the expiration date on the label.'
'I believe you,' said Scully, still peering at the contents.
She reached in and picked out her cricket. Then she put it in her mouth and crunched down.
She smiled at Dr. Blockhead. 'Thank you so much for the treat,' she said.
Then she gave him a dazzling smile and walked away.
'That Scully,' said Mulder, shaking his head. 'She's just full of surprises. — Les Martin

A dog has no use for fancy cars or big homes or designer clothes. Status symbol means nothing to him. A waterlogged stick will do just fine. A dog judges others not by their color or creed or class but by who they are inside. A dog doesn't care if you are rich or poor, educated or illiterate, clever or dull. Give him your heart and he will give you his. It was really quite simple, and yet we humans, so much wiser and more sophisticated, have always had trouble figuring out what really counts and what does not. As I wrote that farewell column to Marley, I realized it was all right there in front of us, if only we opened our eyes. Sometimes it took a dog with bad breath, worse manners, and pure intentions to help us see. — John Grogan

New York has always prided itself on its bad manners. That is the real source of our strength. — Gertrude Atherton

It is bad manners to say that you will piss on anyone. Very bad. It is bad manners and very stupid to say that you will piss on anyone when you are unarmed. It is very bad manners and even more stupid to say that you will piss on anyone when you are unarmed, powerless, and not prepared to allow your friends and family or whomever to perish first. — James Clavell

Bad manners make a journalist. — Oscar Wilde

If I might offer any apology for so exaggerated a fiction as the Barnacles and the Circumlocution Office, I would seek it in the common experience of an Englishman, without presuming to mention the unimportant fact of my having done that violence to good manners, in the days of a Russian war, and of a Court of Inquiry at Chelsea. If I might make so bold as to defend that extravagant conception, Mr Merdle, I would hint that it originated after the Railroad-share epoch, in the times of a certain Irish bank, and of one or two other equally laudable enterprises. If I were to plead anything in mitigation of the preposterous fancy that a bad design will sometimes claim to be a good and an expressly religious design, it would be the curious coincidence that it has been brought to its climax in these pages, in the days of the public examination of late Directors of a Royal British Bank. — Charles Dickens

The real test of good manners is to be able to put up with bad manners pleasantly. — Kahlil Gibran

To the real artist in humanity, what are called bad manners are often the most picturesque and significant of all.
— Walt Whitman

In England it is bad manners to be clever, to assert something confidently. It may be your own personal view that two and two make four, but you must not state it in a self-assured way, because this is a democratic country and others may be of a different opinion. — George Mikes

I know you do; and it is that which makes the wonder. With your good sense, to be so honestly blind to the follies and nonsense of others! Affectation of candour is common enough - one meets with it everywhere. But to be candid without ostentation or design - to take the good of everybody's character and make it still better, and say nothing of the bad - belongs to you alone. And so you like this man's sisters, too, do you? Their manners are not equal to his. — Jane Austen

Private problems don't constitute an excuse for bad manners. — Margaret Millar

Nothing is so great an example of bad manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none; If you flatter only one or two, you offend the rest. — Jonathan Swift

Nessy had never believed that fear and respect were the same thing. Nor did she believe that the castle's manners were beyond redemption, for although her accursed home was mostly bad it was at least a little bit good. She hoped it would be good enough. — A. Lee Martinez

That is my conviction of forty years. I am forty years old now, and you know forty years is a whole lifetime; you know it is extreme old age. To live longer than forty years is bad manners, is vulgar, immoral. Who does live beyond forty? Answer that, sincerely and honestly I will tell you who do: fools and worthless fellows. I tell all old men that to their face, all these venerable old men, all these silver-haired and reverend seniors! I tell the whole world that to its face! I have a right to say so, for I shall go on living to sixty myself. To seventy! To eighty! ... Stay, let me take breath ... — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Have compassion for everyone you meet, even if they don't want it. What seems conceit, bad manners, or cynicism is always a sign of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen.
You do not know what wars are going on down there where the spirit meets the bone. — Miller Williams

I have a feeling that we've seen the dismantling of civilisation, brick by brick, and now we're looking into the void. We thought that we were liberating people from oppressive cultural circumstances, but we were, in fact, taking something away from them. We were killing off civility and concern. We were undermining all those little ties of loyalty and consideration and affection that are necessary for human flourishing. We thought that tradition was bad, that it created hidebound societies, that it held people down. But, in fact, what tradition was doing all along was affirming community and the sense that we are members of one another. Do we really love and respect one another more in the absence of tradition and manners and all the rest? Or have we merely converted one another into moral strangers - making our countries nothing more than hotels for the convenience of guests who are required only to avoid stepping on the toes of other guests? — Alexander McCall Smith

I am single because I am allergic for cursing words and bad table manners — Hiroko Sakai

Being a parent does not give you an excuse for bad manners. — Rosalind Wiseman

Manners are of such great consequence to the novelist that any kind will do. Bad manners are better than no manners at all, and because we are losing our customary manners, we are probably overly conscious of them; this seems to be a condition that produces writers. — Flannery O'Connor

The challenge of manners is not so much to be nice to someone whose favor and/or person you covet (although more people need to be reminded of that necessity than one would suppose) as to be exposed to the bad manners of others without imitating them. — Judith Martin

Drinking more often brings out the best in the good than the worst in the bad. — Malcolm Forbes

There is so much bad manners and oafishness in large corporations. — Letitia Baldrige

Bad art was as good as good art. Grammar and spelling were no longer important. To be clean was no better than to be filthy. Good manners were no better than bad. Family life was derided as an outdated bourgeois concept. Criminals deserved as much sympathy as their victims. Many homes and classrooms became disorderly - if there was neither right nor wrong there could be no basis for punishment or reward. Violence and soft pornography became accepted in the media. Thus was sown the wind, and we are now reaping the whirlwind. — Norman Tebbit

Alexander Fuller said in Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness about being English: "In this way, the English part of our identity registers as a void, something lacking that manifests in inherited, stereotypical characteristics: an allergy to sentimentality, a casual ease with profanity, a horror of bad manners, a deep mistrust of humorlessness. — Alexander Fuller

Nature never hurries: atom by atom, little by little, she achieves her work. The lesson one learns from yachting or planting is the manners of Nature; patience with the delays of wind and sun, delays of the seasons, bad weather, excess or lack of water. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

You don't get to be the president of anything if you have bad manners. — Daven Anderson

I think the thing I miss most in our age is our manners. It sounds so old-fashioned in a way. But even bad people had good manners in the old days, and manners hold a community together, and manners hold a family together; in a way, they hold the world together. — Nancy Friday

Human manners are wildly inconsistent; plenty of people have said so. But this one takes the cake: the manner in which we're allowed to steal from future generations, while commanding them not to do that to us, and rolling our eyes at anyone who is tediously PC enough to point that out. The conspicious consumption of limited resources has yet to be accepted widely as a spirtual error, or even bad manners. — Barbara Kingsolver

Good manners open the closed doors; bad manners close the open doors! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Jean Laffite was a sexy bad boy with a gentleman's manners and an air of barely suppressed danger. Every girl's secret dreamboat in other words. We always say we want a nice, hardworking, decent guy but we're lying to ourselves. - DJ Jaco — Suzanne Johnson

On this matter I'm inclined to agree with the French, who gaze upon any personal dietary prohibition as bad manners. — Charles Dickens

To sacrifice the principles of manners, which require compassion and respect, and bat people over the head with their ignorance of etiquette rules they cannot be expected to know is both bad manners and poor etiquette. That social climbers and twits have misused etiquette throughout history should not be used as an argument for doing away with it. — Judith Martin

I don't mind if you don't like my manners. They're pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings. — Raymond Chandler

Evil communication corrupts good manners. I hope to live to hear that good communication corrects bad manners. — Benjamin Banneker

It's the worst of bad manners to ridicule the small gesture ... Small, stepwise changes in personal habits aren't trivial. Ultimately they will, or won't, add up to having been the thing that mattered. — Barbara Kingsolver

The problem is that it has become politically awkward to draw attention to absolutes of bad and good. In place of manners, we now have doctrines of political correctness, against which one offends at one's peril: by means of a considerable circular logic, such offences mark you as reactionary and therefore a bad person. Therefore if you say people are bad, you are bad. — Lynne Truss

Am forty years old now, and you know forty years is a whole lifetime; you know it is extreme old age. To live longer than forty years is bad manners, is vulgar, immoral. Who does live beyond forty? Answer that, sincerely and honestly I will tell you who do: fools and worthless fellows. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Jilly looked at it with a sinking heart. It was difficult enough when the exotic, undeniably gorgeous creature of her fantasies had turned out to be an obnoxious bully. Of course he had to have a Harley, as well, completing the perfect bad-boy image. With the tattooed teardrops on his high cheekbones and spiky, waist-length, flame-colored hair and his long, leather-clad legs and pointy-toed cowboy boots, he was almost irresistible, despite his manners.
A Harley sealed the deal. He was all her adolescent fantasies come true.
And it was time to grow up. — Anne Stuart

I flick my turn signal on out of dumb habit, and because the end of the world's no excuse for bad driving manners. — Alexandra Bracken

Most families would be healthier and happier if their members treated one another with the respect they would give to a perfect stranger. C. S. Lewis's discussion of storge, familial love, is endlessly instructive on this point and is required reading for all who intend to have a decent family life.1 He notes that he has been far more impressed by the bad manners of parents to children than by those of children to parent. — Dallas Willard

I don't like people being rude. Bad manners and arrogance make me cross. People making others feel uncomfortable. And I really don't like it in restaurants when people are rude or patronising to waiters. I feel like saying, 'They're not your slave'. But my knees only shake around once every five years. You're safe, don't worry. — Alan Titchmarsh

You can get through life with bad manners, but it's easier with good manners. — Lillian Gish

As a child, I was taught that it was bad manners to bring attention to yourself, and to never, ever make a spectacle of yourself ... all of which I've earned a living doing. — Audrey Hepburn

A man who pretends to understand women is bad manners. For him to really to understand them is bad morals. — Henry James

He remembered that his mother had a strong distaste for suicide, feeling that it combined three things of which she strongly disapproved - bad manners, cowardice, and sin. — John Steinbeck

By no means do I think that playing games online is wrong or rude. However, constantly sending requests is an act of bad manners as well as being very annoying to the one receiving them. — John Patrick Hickey

War is a form of really bad manners, in a strange way. Invading a country I think is just the worst possible manners. 'You're not invited!' Gate crashing on a large scale! — Graydon Carter

I've never turned blue in someone else's
bathroom. I consider that the height of bad
manners. — Keith Richards

But bad manners or vulgar gestures can sometimes have a touch of poetry about them, just enough not to arouse one's indignation. — Tahar Ben Jelloun

It strikes me as bad manners for a magazine to accept one of my advertisements and then attack it editorially - like inviting a man to dinner then spitting in his eye. — David Ogilvy

Here's a bit of advice... When a woman invites you into her home... and you don't seduce her... don't seduce another woman, darling, certainly not under the same roof. It's bad manners - ungallant to say the least, — Donald Margulies

One man lies in his words, and gets a bad reputation; another in his manners, and enjoys a good one. — Henry David Thoreau

The test of good manners is to be able to put up pleasantly with bad ones. — Wendell Willkie

The detachment of the artist is kind of creepy. It's kind of rude, and yet really it's where art comes from. It's not the same as courage. It's closer to bad manners than to courage. [ ... ] if you're going to be a writer, you basically have to say, 'this is just who I am [ ... ]'. There's a certain indefensibility about it. It's not about loving your community and taking care of it - you're not attached to the chamber of commerce. It's a little unsafe. You have to be willing to have only four friends, not 11. — Lorrie Moore

There are two qualities that make fiction. One is the sense of mystery and the other is the sense of manners. You get the manners from the texture of existence that surrounds you. The great advantage of being a Southern writer is that we don't have to go anywhere to look for manners; bad or good, we've got them in abundance. We in the South live in a society that is rich in contradiction, rich in irony, rich in contrast, and particularly rich in its speech — Flannery O'Connor

On the other hand it was bad manners to look a gift horse in the mouth. Even if you're getting it from an overweight cracker in a fringe shirt. — Ilona Andrews

Which makes his good manners the more valuable. The older a person grows, Harriet, the more important it is that their manners should not be bad - the more glaring and disgusting any loudness, or coarseness, or awkwardness becomes. What is passable in youth, is detestable in later age. Mr. Martin is now awkward and abrupt; what will he be at Mr. Weston's time of life? — Jane Austen

Not to be purple, but I've never been a 'bad boy' kind of girl. I like manners. — Toks Olagundoye

Good manners and bad breath will get you nowhere. — Elvis Costello

Better marry a maiden, so you can teach her good manners, and in particular marry one who lives close by you. Look her well over first. Don't marry what will make your neighbors laugh at you, for while there's nothing better a man can win him than a good wife, there's nothing more dismal than a bad one. — Hesiod

The conspicuous consumption of limited resources has yet to be accepted widely as a spiritual error, or even bad manners — Barbara Kingsolver

Don't lick the guests, darling. Bad manners. — Patricia Briggs

Now, a corpse, poor thing, is an untouchable and the process of decay is, of all pieces of bad manners, the vulgarest imaginable. For a corpse is, by definition, a person absolutely devoid of savoir vivre. — Aldous Huxley

That was vampires for you: always going for the jugular, both literally and metaphorically. They were messing up his love life as well as being inconsiderate party guests who had got blood in Magnus's stereo system at his last party and turned Clary's idiot friend Stanley into a rat, which was just bad manners. — Cassandra Clare

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-honoured custom: all of these go to prove that it is now the vulgar mob that gives the tone. — Oswald Spengler

It is bad manners to contradict a guest. You must never insult people in your own house - always go to theirs. — Myrtle Reed

Dragons were notoriously finicky about whom they ate, and thought it the height of bad manners to be kept waiting by their selected fare. — Sully Tarnish

Men sometimes have to leave their ladies alone, and ladies are not responsible for the bad manners of fools. — Charlaine Harris

I don't do plays without jokes anymore. I've retired from those plays. I think it's bad manners to invite people to sit in the dark for two and a half hours and not tell them the joke. — Bill Nighy

Oxford was as drenched in Dixie as we were, just about as Southern a town as you would ever hope to find, which generally was a good thing, because that meant that the weather was nice, except when it was hot enough to fry pork chops on the pavement, and the food was delicious, though it would thicken the walls of your arteries and kill you deader than Stonewall Jackson, and the people were big hearted and friendly, though it was not the hardest place in the world to get murdered for having bad manners. Even our main crop could kill you. — Timothy B. Tyson

I don't mind your showing me your legs. They're very swell legs and it's a pleasure to make their acquaintace. I don't mind if you don't like my manners. They're pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter nights. — Raymond Chandler

You go to Hawaii alone, buy the way?"
"Who goes to Hawaii alone? I went with a girl. She's only thirteen, though."
"You slept with a thirteen-year-old girl?"
"What Do you think I am? The kid doesn't even wear a bra yet."
"Then why'd you go with her?"
"To teach her table manners, interpret the mysteries of the sex-drive, bad-mouth Boy George, go see E.T. You know, the usual."
"Gotanda gave me a long look. Then he skewed his lips into a smile. "You really are a little odd, you know?"
Now everyone seemed to think so. Motion passed by unanimous vote. — Haruki Murakami

It's the height of bad manners to sleep with somebody less than three times. — Mark Boxer

To live longer than forty years is bad manners, is vulgar, immoral. Who does live beyond forty? Answer that, sincerely and honestly I will tell you who do: fools and worthless fellows. I — Fyodor Dostoyevsky