Civilities Quotes & Sayings

I am not here to pass civilities or compliments with you, but on other business. I have stood your meanness as long as I intend to. You have played the part of a damned scoundrel, and are a coward, and if you were any part of a man I would slap your jaws and force you to resent it. You may as well not issue any more orders to me, for I will not obey them ... and as I say to you that if you ever again try to interfere with me or cross my path it will be at the peril of your life. — Nathan Bedford Forrest

Such is the common process of marriage. A youth and maiden exchange meeting by chance, or brought together by artifice, exchange glances, reciprocate civilities, go home, and dream of one another. Having little to divert attention, or diversify thought, they find themselves uneasy when they are apart, and therefore conclude that they shall be happy together. They marry, and discover what nothing but voluntary blindness had before concealed; they wear out life in altercations, and charge nature with cruelty. — Samuel Johnson

In Western Australia, minerals are being dug up from Aboriginal land and shipped to China for a profit of a billion dollars a week. In this, the richest, 'booming' state, the prisons bulge with stricken Aboriginal people, including juveniles whose mothers stand at the prison gates, pleading for their release. The incarceration of black Australians here is eight times that of black South Africans during the last decade of apartheid. — John Pilger

This perpetual round of constrained civilities to persons quite indifferent to us, is the most provoking and tiresome thing in theworld, but it is unavoidable in a country town, where everybody is known ... 'Tis a most shocking and unworthy way of spending our precious irrecoverable time, to those who know not its value. — Fanny Burney

I make the best pancakes you'll ever have! And I claim that title gladly. On Saturdays I make them for everybody. — Gloria Estefan

How much wit, good-nature, indulgences, how many good offices and civilities, are required among friends to accomplish in some years what a lovely face or a fine hand does in a minute! — Jean De La Bruyere

Not keep a journal! How are your absent cousins to understand the tenor of your life in Bath without one? How are the civilities and compliments of every day to be related as they ought to be, unless noted down every evening in a journal? How are your various dresses to be remembered, and the particular state of your complexion, and curl of your hair to be described in all their diversities, without having constant recourse to a journal? — Jane Austen

Government subsidies to elite private universities take the form of tax deductions for people who make charitable contributions to them. — Robert Reich

I must have seen the separation coming for weeks, but simply chose not to acknowledge it. However, there was no indifference. Just pure, fraught alienation. My idea is to live virtually unafraid. We're never told of forces equally unabashed. It's a concoction for thrills, sure, but it's also a formula for heartbreak. The kind of heartbreak that congeals around the flesh; slows a person down to the freezing point, and cheats them of the most significant civilities left in this world. — Jason Daniel Chaplin

Images of an ancient race of beautiful but savage immortals danced through my head. It was hard to believe such a world of make-believe actually existed. — Kelley R. Martin

There are people who balk at small civilities on account of their manifest insincerity ... It is better and more logical to accept all the polite phraseology which facilitates intercourse, and contributes to the sweetness of life. If we discarded the formal falsehoods which are the currency of conversation, we should not be one step nearer the vital things of truth. — Agnes Repplier

If you're looking for the bad things in life, then you will find it. If you search for the good things then it is what you find. — Ann Marie Aguilar

The intellectual's struggle to deny the obvious is never more desperate than when reality is unpleasant and at variance with his preconceptions and when full acknowledgment of it would undermine the foundations of his intellectual worldview. — Anthony Daniels

Love taught him shame, and shame with love at strife
Soon taught the sweet civilities of life. — John Dryden

Somebody, it seemed, gave it out that I loved ladies; and then everybody presented me their ladies (or the ladies presented themselves) to be embraced, that is to have their necks kissed ... The French ladies had a thousand other ways of rendering themselves agreeable by their various attentions and civilities, and their sensible conversation. Tis a delightful people to live with. — Benjamin Franklin

... Miss Marjoribanks was of the numerous class of religionists who keep up civilities with heaven, and pay all the proper attentions, and show their respect for the divine government in a manner befitting persons who know the value of their own approbation. — Mrs. Oliphant

There is nothing I detest so much as the contortions of these great time-and-lip servers, these affable dispensers of meaningless embraces, these obliging utterers of empty words, who view every one in civilities — Moliere

The arabs are a backward people who eat nothing but camel dung. — Winston Churchill

It was like everyone suddenly knew what mattered. Money didn't matter. Politics didn't matter. Tabloid news didn't matter. No-compassion mattered. Calm mattered. Respect mattered. Did it really take something of this magnitude to make us realize this? — David Levithan

Ho Chi Minh and Vietnam were perfect for Lyndon Johnson: 220 million against 18 million, water buffalo and all. No risk, really. — David Douglas Duncan

Technology and production can be great benefactors of man, but they are mindless instruments, and if undirected they careen along with a momentum of their own. In our country, they pulverize everything in their path - the landscape, the natural environment, history and tradition, the amenities and civilities, the privacy and spaciousness of life, much beauty, and the fragile, slow-growing social structures that bind us together. — Charles A. Reich

Being in the CBC Studios in Edmonton and Calgary was like peeking into the little room where the bishop gets to eat his lunch. You know? It's the Canadian church. It's the common element that unites every kitchen, every batch of cookies, every afternoon with the crowbar or the mower, every road trip. I walked through the halls feeling like I should tiptoe and whisper, peeking everywhere I could peek - at rooms full of blinking lights, at people in headsets, wishing I could hug and thank them all. They work hard, and we need them so much. We need them to be valued, not only hugged and thanked. — Kate Inglis

The civilities of the great are never thrown away. — Samuel Johnson

A thousand little civilities create tenderness in time. — E. M. Forster

Bowing, ceremonious, formal compliments, stiff civilities, will never be politeness; that must be easy, natural, unstudied; and what will give this but a mind benevolent and attentive to exert that amiable disposition in trifles to all you converse and live with? — William Pitt, 1st Earl Of Chatham

Civility is a desire to receive civilities, and to be accounted well-bred. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

The people of England are never so happy as when you tell them they are ruined. — Arthur Murphy