Old Polite Quotes & Sayings

I really have to thank Facebook ... I didn't know what Facebook was, and now that I do know what it is, I have to say, it sounds like a huge waste of time. I would never say the people on it are losers, but that's only because I'm polite. People say 'But Betty, Facebook is a great way to connect with old friends.' Well at my age, if I wanna connect with old friends, I need a Ouija Board. Needless to say, we didn't have Facebook when I was growing up. We had phonebook, but you wouldn't waste an afternoon with it. — Betty White

I know it's common for old people to complain about the modern moment, and lament the passing of a golden age when children were polite and you could buy a kilo of meat for pennies, but in our case, my boy, I think I am not mistaken when I say that something fundamental has changed about the world in which we live. We have reached a state of constant reinvention. Revolutions have moved off the battlefield and on to home computers. — G. Willow Wilson

My mother is old-fashioned; she raised us like girls from a 19th-century book. My sisters and I are known for being the most polite girls in France. My mother wanted us to be like royalty: never ever will you be caught being rude, or superficial or being a star or whatever. — Lou Doillon

I still like to see that a man opens the door. I like those touches of chivalry that are fast disappearing. If I sound old-fashioned, it's because I'm as old as I am! But it's just polite. — Betty White

By some miracle, Charlotte's polite smile never wavered. It was a proud moment for her. After all, it wasn't every day that a little old lady told you right to your face that your bosom was as flat as a flounder. — Olivia Parker

I stepped forward. Call me old-fashioned, but I wanted to keep his focus on me and not Annabeth. I think it's polite for a guy to protect his girlfriend from instant incineration. — Rick Riordan

The kind of a wife I'd like to Have. " 'She must have good manners and get my meals on time and do what I tell her and always be very polite to me. She must be fifteen yers old. She must be good to the poor and keep her house tidy and be good tempered and go to church regularly. She must be very handsome and have curly hair. If I get a wife that is just what I like I'll be an awful good husband to her. I think a woman ought to be awful good to her husband. Some poor women havent any husbands. THE END. — L.M. Montgomery

Most people, when they imagine New England, think about old colonial homes, white houses with black shutters, whales, and sexually morbid WASPs with sensible vehicles and polite political opinions. This is incorrect. If you want to get New England right, just imagine a giant mullet in paint-stained pants and a Red Sox hat being pushed into the back of a cruiser after a bar fight. — Matt Taibbi

Although "making love" may serve as a polite name for an act that has many rude ones, it's misleading. For lovers do not so much make love as they are remade by love
dipped into the fire, melted down, reshaped. If they are devoted to one another, love will transform them, dissolving the shells of their old separate selves and making them anew. — Scott Russell Sanders

...stripped of the polish, gloss, veneer and lacquer that we wear as a polite shell and call civilization, the man of your old new world would but see in us a brother; and...what remote age was that in which he lived, since which slow-growing stone has walled in his bones and crusted the treasures of his handiwork?...Your new world does not extend far beneath the grass roots, sir. — Peter B. McCord

Edwina knew things with Greg had just about run their course. She'd bedded him, and bought him clothes, and now it was time for the polite push out the door. Of course she wished her latest conquest all the best. If he was lucky, Greg would just fall right into some other powerful woman's bed. If not ... well, if not he'd just have to do the old-fashioned thing and look for work. Though darling Greggy-poo didn't really seem the type. Edwina studied him while he slept by the pool, drinking in that tight behind and those bulging muscles for the last time. The trouble with younger men, she thought, was that they were so damned good at sex that they really didn't have to be good at anything else. — Barbara Taylor Bradford

You go in through double swing doors. Inside the double doors there is a combination PBX and information desk at which sits one of those ageless women you see around municipal offices everywhere in the world. They were never young and will never be old. They have no beauty, no charm, no style. They don't have to please anybody. They are safe. They are civil without ever quite being polite and intelligent and knowledgeable without any real interest in anything. They are what human beings turn into when they trade life for existence and ambition for security. — Raymond Chandler

I enjoyed my upbringing, my siblings did, we're polite, we're respectful, but at the end of the day we're young, we like to have fun. But now, more so than ever, the youth has been vilified to the point where it feels like you can't enjoy being young any more, you just have to sit it out and wait until you get old. — Tinie Tempah

Going through the customs dampened them further. Customs inspectors must have a mental twist that makes them suspicious of innocence. Dewy-eyed honeymooners, red-cheeked provincials, and helpless little old ladies lash them into frenzied investigation while slinking Orientals hugging small black bags are passed with scarcely a glance. George and Harriet stood under the letter "R" and watched reproachfully while a muttering little man flung their underclothes and dirty laundry right and left, leaving scattered heaps for them to put back in their suitcases.

"I thought the French were supposed to be so polite," said Harriet indignantly.

Maybe it can't be proven statistically, but it's a safe bet that any given American on his or her first trip to France will at some point remark with indignation that he or she had thought the French were supposed to be so polite. — Jack Iams

The old adage that polite conversation should not include talk of politics or religion is understandable because both subjects are so heavily laden with emotion that discussion can quickly turn to shouting. Blood is shed over politics, religion and the two in combination. — John C. Danforth

It's the time when brides-to-be argue with their mothers about what colours and cuts will work for the many wedding functions. Young couples try to find polite ways to tell their parents that the invites are old-fashioned and hunt for photographers who — Anonymous

So, cool as a lord, the old Galahad walking out to the road, with plastic raincoat hanging on the arm, and the eyes not missing one sharp craft that pass, bowing his head in a polite 'Good evening' and not giving a blast if they answer or not. This is London, this is life oh lord, to walk like a king with money in your pocket, not a worry in the world. — Samuel Selvon

We need a language that lets us scribble and smudge and smear, not a language where you have to sit with a teacup of types balanced on your knee and make polite conversation with a strict old aunt of a compiler. — Paul Graham

Create your own job. Become the master of what you do. Fully imerse yourself in your culter. Be humble. You are never above having to pack boxes. Never forget where you came from. And always be polite. Good old-fashioned manners can get you very far. -Jenne Lomardo — Sophia Amoruso

Honor students
black, white, or Asia Minor
tended to be nicer. Maybe they were just as mean on the inside, but they were scared of getting in trouble. Or maybe they were just as mean on the inside, but they'd been trained to be polite
to give up their seats for old people and girls. — Rainbow Rowell

It is not at all polite to point out a crusty old pessimist's dark inner secret. — Brandon Sanderson

Don't anybody mention ice skating; Grandmaw is too old and frail and it wouldn't be polite. Hilda, you suggest dominoes and we'll all chime in - Grandmaw likes dominoes. We'll go skating some other time. Okay, kids?" Jubal — Robert A. Heinlein

Tim Berners-Lee, the 44-year-old English physicist who created the World Wide Web, is precisely the kind of hero that a relatively simple invention with profound social and economic consequences should lay claim to. He is not just creative but democratic, diplomatic, polite and generous with credit and praise. — Katie Hafner

I felt rather exhausted, and wondered, rather shocked at my callous thought, why old people were sometimes such a strain. Worse than young children or puppies because one had to be polite. — Daphne Du Maurier

Recently a young mother asked for advice. What, she wanted to know, was she to do with a 7-year-old who was obstreperous, outspoken, and inconveniently willful? "Keep her," I replied ... The suffragettes refused to be polite in demanding what they wanted or grateful for getting what they deserved. Works for me. — Anna Quindlen

The heroes from the legends weren't necessarily the polite types. Killing people and fancy talking didn't always go together, old Jarel had once told him. — Brandon Sanderson

I don't bite Marcus. You can come sit on the comfy old couch with me. That chair is incredibly uncomfortable." Just the opening I needed. I jumped up and sat down on the end of the couch and stretched my legs out in front of me.
"You don't have to tell me twice. I was just being polite." Will ow chuckled and brought a blanket over to the sofa with her. — Abbi Glines

She dealt her pretty words like Blades
How glittering they shone
And every One unbared a Nerve
Or wantoned with a Bone
She never deemed
she hurt
That
is not Steel's Affair
A vulgar grimace in the Flesh
How ill the Creatures bear
To Ache is human
not polite
The Film upon the eye
Mortality's old Custom
Just locking up
to Die. — Emily Dickinson

Your Imperial Highness, will you do me the honor of this dance?" I turned to see Miechen's twelve-year-old son, Boris Vladimirovich, looking at me solemnly.
"Of course," I said with a polite curtsy. Angels and ministers of grace, defend me. — Robin Bridges

Emmy and I are still Habte Sadek's favorite foreigners, and it is all because I wanted to look at his feet when I was eleven years old! But it never hurts to be polite to people. — Elizabeth Wein

And he was such a polite, mannerly old boy; simple and kind as a child. I used to wonder how anybody so innocent and defenceless had managed to get along at all, to keep alive for nearly seventy years in as hard a world as this. Anybody could take advantage of him. He held no grudge against any of the people who had misused him. — Willa Cather

Gregory is a good boy, though all the Latin he has learned, all the sonorous periods of the great authors, have rolled through his head and out again, like stones. Still, you think of Thomas More's boy: offspring of a scholar all Europe admired, and poor young John can barely stumble through his Pater Noster. Gregory is a fine archer, a fine horseman, a shining star in the tilt yard, and his manners cannot be faulted. He speaks reverently to his superiors, not scuffling his feet or standing on one leg, and he is mild and polite with those below him. He knows how to bow to foreign diplomats in the manner of their own countries, sits at table without fidgeting or feeding spaniels, can neatly carve and joint any fowl if requested to serve his elders. He doesn't slouch around with his jacket off one shoulder, or look in windows to admire himself, or stare around in church, or interrupt old men, or finish their stories for them. If anyone sneezes, he says, 'Christ help you! — Hilary Mantel