May 13

“Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse.”

SWIFT

“Manners are of more importance than laws. Upon them, in a great measure, the laws depend. The law touches us but here and there, now and then. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarise or refine as by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in. They give their whole form and colour to our lives. According to their quality they aid morals, they supply them, or they totally destroy them.”

BURKE

“Manners are the shadows of virtues; the momentary display of those qualities which our fellow-creatures love and respect. If we strive to become, then, what we strive to appear, manners may often be rendered useful guides to the performance of our duties.”

SIDNEY SMITH

May 12

“Manners are often too much neglected; they are most important to men no less than to women. . . . Life is too short to get over a bad manner; besides, ‘manners are the shadows of virtues.’”

“In character, in manners, in style, in all things the supreme excellence is simplicity.”

LONGFELLOW

“If anyone asks me where he is to go to learn good manners, I say at once that he must go to the school of Christ. I believe from my heart that no one lives near to Christ, no one follows him in ‘lowliness, patience, and charity,’ who will ever be really an ill-behaved man. He may be ignorant of many of the customs of what is called ‘good society’, he may not be what the world calls ‘refined’, but he will never be coarse, vulgar, offensive.
I am aware that many people do not know of this basis of conduct, and that some will hardly be made to believe in it, but I am sure it is true for all that.”

W. R. CLARK