A Quote by Harold Monro
To the acquisition of the rare quality of politeness, so much of the enlightened understanding is necessary that I cannot but consider every book in every science, which tends to make us wiser, and of course better men, as a treatise on a more enlarged system of politeness.
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There is a certain amount of politeness here in America, which is probably more than just politeness.
Politeness only teaches us to save others from unnecessary pain.... You are not bound by politeness to tell any falsehoods.
You can do a lot more with weapons and politeness than just politeness.
The only true source of politeness is consideration,--that vigilant moral sense which never loses sight of the rights, the claims, and the sensibilities of others. This is the one quality, over all others, necessary to make a gentleman.
Politeness has been defined to be artificial good-nature; but we may affirm, with much greater propriety, that good-nature is natural politeness.
In one period the grossest ignorance and barbarism prevailed in the world; and afterwards, in a more enlightened age, the most daring infidelity, and contempt of God; so that the world which was once over-run with ignorance, now by wisdom knew not God, but changed the glory of the incorruptible God as much as in the most barbarous ages, into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. Nay, as they increased in science and politeness, they ran into more abundant and extravagant idolatries.
The increasing technicality of the terminology employed is also a serious difficulty. It has become necessary to learn an extensive vocabulary before a book in even a limited department of science can be consulted with much profit. This change, of course, has its advantages for the initiated, in securing precision and concisement of statement; but it tends to narrow the field in which an investigator can labour, and it cannot fail to become, in the future, a serious impediment to wide inductive generalisations.
Science is not a body of knowledge nor a system of belief; it is just a term which describes humankind’s incremental acquisition of understanding through observation. Science is awesome.
That politeness which we put on, in order to keep the assuming and the presumptuous at a proper distance will generally succeed. But it sometimes happens that these obtrusive characters are on such excellent terms with themselves that they put down this very politeness to the score of their own great merits and high pretensions, meeting the coldness of our reserve with a ridiculous condescension of familiarity, in order to set us at ease with ourselves.
The amount of force and violence necessary to board the train, for example was no less and no more than the amoount of politeness and consideration necessary to ensure that the cramped journey was as pleasant as possible afterwards. What is necessary? That was the unspoken but implied, and unavoidable question everywhere in India.
Politeness is better than logic. You can often persuade when you cannot convince.
Curious how Love destroys every vestige of that politeness which the human race, in its years of evolution, has so painfully acquired.
It is because gold is rare that gilding has been invented, which, without having its solidity, has all its brilliancy. Thus, to replace the kindness we lack, we have devised politeness which has all its appearance.
I ask and wish not to appear
More beauteous, rich or gay:
Lord, make me wiser every year,
And better every day.
True politeness is to social life what oil is to machinery, a thing to oil the ruts and grooves of existence. False politeness can shine without warming and glitter without vivifying.
You cannot ask which system is the better because you cannot standardize one system for the whole of the world. You cannot have one stereotyped code of morality for every country. One system may work very well in one country and very badly in another. You cannot grow a tropical flower in a cold climate.
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