A Quote by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The society of women is the element of good manners.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Quote Topics

Element Good Good Man Good Manners Manners Society Women

Quote Author

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
German - Novelist
August 28, 1749 - March 22, 1832

This is another thing which I really like investigating in my novels: what is it that makes an intimate society, that makes a society in which moral concern for others will be possible? Part of that I think are manners and ritual. We tried to get rid of manners, we tried to abolish manners in the '60s. Manners were very, very old-fashioned and un-cool. And of course we didn't realise that manners are the building blocks of proper moral relationships between people.

Alexander McCall Smith

There are two qualities that make fiction. One is the sense of mystery and the other is the sense of manners. You get the manners from the texture of existence that surrounds you. The great advantage of being a Southern writer is that we don't have to go anywhere to look for manners; bad or good, we've got them in abundance. We in the South live in a society that is rich in contradiction, rich in irony, rich in contrast, and particularly rich in its speech

Flannery O'Connor

When people talk about political correctness, the only element of any value is good manners.

Paul Johnson

The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or any other particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls: in short, behaving as if you were in Heaven, where there are no thirdclass carriages, and one soul is as good as another.

George Bernard Shaw

We are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind; but we are not justified in enforcing good manners, for good manners always mean our own manners.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Men and women must be educated, in a great degree, by the opinions and manners of the society they live in.

Mary Wollstonecraft

An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.

Robert A. Heinlein

Where there are no women there are no good manners

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Women in Africa are really the pillar of the society, are the most productive segment of society, actually. Women do kids. Women do cooking. Women doing everything. And yet, their position in society is totally unacceptable. And the way African men treat African women is total unacceptable.

Mo Ibrahim

For as laws are necessary that good manners be preserved, so there is need of good manners that law may be maintained.

Niccolo Machiavelli

Men and women must be educated, in a great degree, by the opinions and manners of the society they live in. In every age there has been a stream of popular opinion that has carried all before it, and given a family character, as it were, to the century. It may then fairly be inferred, that, till society be differently constituted, much cannot be expected from education.

Mary Wollstonecraft

Association with women is the basis of good manners.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Manners are the root, laws only the trunk and branches. Manners are the archetypes of laws. Manners are laws in their infancy; laws are manners fully grown,--or, manners are children, which, when they grow up, become laws.

Horace Mann

Manners are of such great consequence to the novelist that any kind will do. Bad manners are better than no manners at all, and because we are losing our customary manners, we are probably overly conscious of them; this seems to be a condition that produces writers.

Flannery O'Connor

Most women find a man with good manners sexy.