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| Quotations about manners | |
For this is my maxim. I hold that the party receiving an obligation should ever remember it, the party conferring should forget it immediately, if the one is to act with honesty, the other without meanness. To remind and speak of your own bounties is next door to reproaching.
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Manners are of more importance than laws. Upon them in a great measure, the Laws depend. The Law touches us but here and there, and now and then. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in. They give their whole form and color to our lives. According to their quality, they aid morals, they supply them, or they totally destroy them.
Among well-bred people a mutual deference is affected, contempt of others is disguised; authority concealed; attention given to each in his turn; and an easy stream of conversation maintained without vehemence, without interruption, without eagerness for victory, and without any airs of superiority.Top 100 Topics