Good breeding consists in having no particular mark of any profession, but a general elegance of manners.—Johnson.
Men are like wine; not good before the lees of clownishness be settled.—Feltham.
The person who screams, or uses the superlative degree, or converses with heat, puts whole drawing-rooms to flight. If you wish to be loved, love measure. You must have genius or a prodigious usefulness if you will hide the want of measure.—Emerson.
We are to carry it from the hand to the heart, to improve a ceremonial nicety into a substantial duty, and the modes of civility into the realities of religion.—South.
Better were it to be unborn than to be ill-bred.—Sir W. Raleigh.
Simplicity of manner is the last attainment. Men are very long afraid of being natural, from the dread of being taken for ordinary.—Jeffrey.
Kings themselves cannot force the exquisite politeness of distance to capitulate, hid behind its shield of bronze.—Balzac.
Comport thyself in life as at a banquet. If a plate is offered thee, extend thy hand and take it moderately; if it be withdrawn, do not detain it. If it come not to thy side, make not thy desire loudly known, but wait patiently till it be offered thee.—Epictetus.
Good manners and good morals are sworn friends and firm allies.—Bartol.
The "over-formal" often impede, and sometimes frustrate, business by a dilatory, tedious, circuitous, and (what in colloquial language is called) fussy way of conducting the simplest transactions. They have been compared to a dog which cannot lie down till he has made three circuits round the spot.—Whately.