A Quote by Henry David Thoreau

The finest manners in the world are awkwardness and fatuity when contrasted with a finer intelligence. They appear but as the fashions of past days,--mere courtliness, knee-buckles and small- clothes, out of date.

Henry David Thoreau

Quote Topics

Appear Awkwardness Buckles Clothes Date Days Fashions Finer Finest Intelligence Knee Manners Mere Out Past Small World

Quote Author

Henry David Thoreau
American - Author
July 12, 1817 - May 6, 1862

When seen in retrospect, fashions seem to express their era. Although it is more difficult to draw conclusions from contemporary clothes, the same principles which hold for the clothes of the past must hold for clothes of the present and the future.

James Laver

Chronological snobbery is the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited. You must find why it went out of date. Was it ever refuted (and if so by whom, where, and how conclusively), or did it merely die away as fashions do? If the latter, this tells us nothing about its truth or falsehood.

C. S. Lewis

I think that Ingersoll had all the attributes of a perfect man, and, in my opinion, no finer personality ever existed. Judging from the past, I cannot help thinking that the intention of the Supreme Intelligence that rules the world is to ultimately make such a type of man universal.

Thomas A. Edison

I think the thing I miss most in our age is our manners. It sounds so old-fashioned in a way. But even bad people had good manners in the old days, and manners hold a community together, and manners hold a family together; in a way, they hold the world together.

Nancy Friday

In this age, the mere example of nonconformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service.

John Stuart Mill

Through tattered clothes, small vices do appear. Robes and furred gowns hide all.

Merle Shain

To have properly studied the liberal sciences gives a polish to our manners, and removes all awkwardness.

Ovid

Mere bashfulness without merit is awkwardness.

Joseph Addison

There are fashions in building. Behind the fashions lie economic and technological reasons, and these fashions exclude all but a few genuinely different possibilities in city dwelling construction at any one time.

Jane Jacobs

What my children appear to be on the surface is no matter to me. I am fooled neither by gracious manners nor by bad manners. I am interested in what is truly beneath each kind of manners...I want my children to be people- each one separate- each one special- each one a pleasant and exciting variation of all the others

William Saroyan

In the past when I'd made my 33 lbs weight cut there would always be some small injury, my back, my knee or something else.

Alexander Gustafsson

But there was no hiding from Conscience. Not in new homes and new cars. In travel. In meditation or frantic activity. In children, in good works. On tiptoes or bended knee. In a big career. Or a small cabin. It would find you. The past always did. Which was why... it was vital to be aware of actions in the present. Because the present became the past, and the past grew. And got up, and followed you. And found you... Who wouldn't be afraid of this?

Louise Penny

A vain man can never be altogether rude. Desirous as he is of pleasing, he fashions his manners after those of others.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The world will see many fashions of art and most of the world will follow the fashions and make none. These cults - these 'movements' - are absolutely necessary, or at any rate their causes are, for somewhere in their centres are the ones who bear the Idea, the ones who have questioned, 'But what do I think?' and 'How shall I say it best?