"I find it almost natural that we should see many faults in visitors, and that directly they are gone we should judge them not in the most amiable manner. For we have, so to say, a right to measure them by our own standard. Even cautious, sensible men can scarcely keep themselves in such cases from being sharp censors.
"When, on the contrary, we are staying at the houses of others, when we have seen them in the midst of all their habits and environments among those necessary conditions from which they cannot escape, when we have seen how they affect those about them, and how they adapt themselves to their circumstances, it is ignorance nay, worse, it is ill-will, to find ridiculous what in more than one sense has a claim on our respect.
"That which we call politeness and good breeding effects what otherwise can only be obtained by violence, or not even by that.
"Intercourse with women is the element of good manners.
"How can the character, the individuality, of a man co-exist with polish of manner?
"The individuality can only be properly made prominent through good manners. Every one likes what has something in it, only it not be a disagreeable something.
"In life generally, and in society, no one has such high advantages as a well-cultivated soldier.
"The rudest fighting people at least do not go out of their character, and generally behind the roughness there is a certain latent good humor, so that in difficulties it is possible to get on, even with them.
"No one is more intolerable than an underbred civilian. From him one has a right to look for a delicacy, as he has no rough work to do.
"When we are living with people who have a delicate sense of propriety, we are in misery on their account when anything unbecoming is committed. So I always feel for and with Charlotte, when a person is tipping his chair. She cannot endure it.