Quotes & Sayings About Poor Manners

I remember my father, who was 'somebody' in the synagogue, bringing home with him one of the poor men who waited outside to be chosen to share the Passover meal. These patriarchal manners I remember well, although there was about them an air of bourgeois benevolence which was somewhat comic. — Jacob Epstein

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

Poor manners on my part. What is your name?"
"Ria."
"Ria, is that short for Rian?"
"Yes, it is," she smiled.
"Rian, would you please cross your legs?"
The request was made with such an earnest tone that not even a titter escaped the class. Looking puzzled, Rian crossed her legs.
"Now that the gates of hell are closed," Hemme said in his normal rougher tones. "We can begin. — Patrick Rothfuss

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

They dressed for dinner and followed the strict discipline of upper class English families. The next morning they took me with them for the county fox hunt. Since I could not ride, I asked to be excused. But I did get to see the ritual of dress, the hierarchy observed among hunting types, the blowing of horns, the handling of beagles, a poor fox being run to death and having its tail (brush) cut off. Having achieved their object, glasses of sherry were passed round like prasad after a religious service. — Khushwant Singh

You lose your manners when you're poor. — Lillian Hellman

I should be judged as a captain who went from Spain to the Indies to conquer a people numerous and warlike, whose manners and religion are very different from ours, who live in sierras and mountains, without fixed settlements, and where by divine will I have placed under the sovereignty of the King and Queen our Lords, an Other World, whereby Spain, which was reckoned poor, is become the richest of countries. Columbus is coming from the Indies as a prisoner to Cadiz. — Christopher Columbus

Why would I go when everything I love is here?" "Who?" he said gruffly. "Hamlet with his charming manners? My poor unmanned brother upstairs? My mother-henning captain?" She smiled. "No." "Kendrick?" "Not even Kendrick." He was silent for a very long time. Then he looked away. "Whom do you love?" he asked, as if he couldn't have possibly cared less about the answer. "You, of course." He looked back at her then, but said nothing. "You're a wonderful man, Richard. I'm not sorry I had to travel over seven hundred years to find you. And I sincerely hope that betrothal contract was binding, because I have no intention of seeing it broken. — Lynn Kurland

Judging others' intentions is the right of God alone. We don't have this right, and it is poor manners with God. — Habib Ali Al-Jifri

You lose your manners when you are poor. — Lillian Hellman

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

A gentleman doesn't have one set of manners for the house of a poor man and another for the house of someone with an income incomparable to his own. — William Maxwell

And long afterwards, in moments of the greatest merriment, there would rise before him the figure of the little clerk with the balding brow, uttering his penetrating words: "Let me be. Why do you offend me?"
and in these penetrating words rang other words: "I am your brother." And the poor young man would bury his face in his hands, and many a time in his life he shuddered to see how much inhumanity there is in man, how much savege coarseness is concealed in refined, cultivated manners, and God! even in a man the world regards as noble and honorable. — Nikolai Gogol

It would be earth-shatteringly poor manners for you to whip out your sword in my home." And then, oh sublime horror, Jasper winked. "After all, we've only just met. — Melissa Grey

I'm a little overdressed for this, but I think I can compensate by toning down my manners." "Overdressed for what?" said Jean. "Insulting complete strangers," said Locke, loosening his neck-cloth. "Got to mind the delicate social nuances when you inform some poor fellow that he's a dumb motherfucker. — Scott Lynch

I was told, continued Egremont, that an impassable gulf divided the Rich from the Poor; I was told that the Privileged and the People formed Two Nations, governed by different laws, influenced by different manners, with no thoughts or sympathies in common; with an innate inability of mutual comprehension. — Benjamin Disraeli

Plenty is the original cause of many of our needs; and even the poverty, which is so frequent and distressful in civilized nations, proceeds often from that change of manners which opulence has produced. Nature makes us poor only when we want necessaries; but custom gives the name of poverty to the want of superfluities. — Samuel Johnson

When people complain of the decay of manners they have in mind not the impudent abbreviations of the crowd, but the decline in bowing and scraping and in speaking of one's employer as "the master." What the rich mean by the good manners of the poor is usually not civility, but servility. — Robert Wilson Lynd

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

[W]hat is always overlooked is that although the poor want to be rich, it does not follow that they either like the rich or that they in any way want to emulate their characters which, in fact, they despise. Both the poor and the rich have always found precisely the same grounds on which to complain about each other. Each feels the other has no manners, is disloyal, corrupt, insensitive - and has never put in an honest day's work in its life. — Elaine Dundy

It's odd, isn't it? The poor hate the rich for having a life they think is easy and for the fact that they think the rich only got the money by screwing them. The rich think the poor are all rustics lacking manners and grace who are unwilling to work as hard as they do to get the money. Both groups see each other as thieves out to steal everything they've earned. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

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

No, forget love, the best we can hope to mould, given the poor Play-Doh of humankind, is a capacity for tolerance. This is achievable since tolerance is little more than indifference with a Dulux coat of manners. Surely we can manage that? Call me a dreamer but I can see a world where people of all races, creeds and colour will live together in harmony because they don't give a toss about each other. — Ian Pattison

Two nations; between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other's habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws ... THE RICH AND THE POOR. — Benjamin Disraeli

You can always tell a rich New York girl from a poor one. And you can tell a rich Boston girl from a poor one. After all, that's what accents and manners are there for. But to the native New Yorker, the midwestern girls all looked and sounded the same. Sure, the — Amor Towles

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