The philosophers whose names are recorded in history, although they were, Reflect upon your present blessings—of which every man has many—not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.—Dickens. themselves, seldom distinguished for fine manners, did not fail to teach the importance of them to others. Socrates and Aristotle have left behind them a code of ethics that might easily be turned into a "Guide to the Complete Gentleman;" and Lord Bacon has written an essay on manners in which he reminds If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs—is more elastic, more starry, more immortal—that is your success.—Thoreau. us that a stone must be of very high value to do without a setting.
The motive in cultivating good manners should not be shallow and superficial. Lord Chesterfield says that the motive that makes one wish to be polite is a desire to shine among his fellows and to raise one’s self into a society supposed to be better than his own. It is unnecessary to state that Lord Chesterfield’s good manners, fine as they appear, do not bear the true Blessings ever wait on virtuous deeds.—Congreve. stamp of genuineness. There is not the living person back of them possessing heart and character. They seem to him, in a measure, what a fine gown does to the wax figure in the dressmaker’s window. True manners mean more than The microscope gives us a world, a universe, a single drop of dew. So also there is a world in a single profound, earnest meditation.—Madame Swetchine. mannerisms. They cannot be taught entirely from a book in which there are sets of rules to be observed on any and every occasion. They are rather a cultivated method of thinking and feeling and the forming of a character that knows, intuitively, the nice and kind and appropriate thing to do without reference to what a printed rule of conduct may set forth.
Better is it to have a small portion of good sense, with humility and a slender understanding, than great treasures of science, with vain self-complacency.—Thomas à Kempis. It is generally agreed that our best and only right motive in the cultivation of good manners should be to make ourselves better than we otherwise would be, to render ourselves agreeable to every one whom we may meet, and to improve, it may be, the society in which we are placed. With these objects in view, it is plainly as much a moral duty to cultivate one’s manners as it is to cultivate one’s mind, and no one can deny that we are better citizens when we observe the nicer amenities of society than we are when we pay no heed to them.
Lord Bacon says: "Many examples may be put of the force of custom, both upon There is one road to peace and that is truth.—Shelley. mind and body. Therefore, since custom is the principle magistrate of man’s life, let men by all means endeavor to obtain good customs. Certainly custom is most perfect when it beginneth in young years; this we call education, which is, in effect, but an early custom."
He hath from his childhood conversed with books and bookmen; and always being where the frankincense of the temple was offered, there must be some perfume remaining about him.—Thomas Fuller. So we see that our true characters are but the expression of our habits and of our manners. And we see that only those habits that are formed in the early years of life seem to fit us perfectly and naturally throughout all the years.
It is an old saying and a homely one, but none the less true, that "it is hard to teach an old dog new tricks." So it is hard to acquire in later life the manners and graces that escape us in youth.
Fortunate is the young girl who finds her lot is cast among the good Everything great is not always good, but all good things are great.—Demosthenes. influences of a cultured home. She has at hand the material from which to select all that she may need to build the fine character the world shall observe and admire. Such felicitous surroundings should teach her, first of all, to be very charitable and lenient toward others whose early years are lived among less The turmoil of the world will always die, if we set our faces to climb heavenward.—Hawthorne. advantageous surroundings. For if her culture does not in some ways influence and soften and modify her heart as well as her mind, its true purpose has been lost.
Those whose earlier years are spent amid surroundings not so favorable for the forming of golden habits, must strive all the harder for the prize of gentility If I can put one touch of a rosy sunset into the life of any man or woman, I shall feel that I have worked with God.—George MacDonald. which they would obtain. And in this very struggle against adverse circumstances will be engendered a strength and a spirit of self-reliance that will be likely to prove a worthy equivalent for the loss of a more kindly and propitious environment.
It is experience that develops character, and character is the one thing that distinguishes a life and makes it a definite and individual thing of supreme beauty. Our business in life is not to get ahead of other people but to get ahead of ourselves.—Maltbie D. Babcock.
The character that is the most laboriously built is the most enduring. Golden habits that have been hammered out of our life experiences are to be implicitly relied upon. They have been tested at every point. They have been shaped out of the very necessity of one’s surroundings. They are worth every effort that The narrow kingdom of to-day is better worth ruling over than the widest past or future.—Edith Wharton. they have cost. The world will never know how much of its integrity, how much of its stability, how much of its beauty it owes to that which we are all so prone to call