A Quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Defect in manners is usually the defect of fine perceptions. Men are too coarsely made for the delicacy of beautiful carriage and customs. It is not quite sufficient to good breeding, a union of kindness and independence.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Quote Topics

Beautiful Breeding Carriage Customs Defect Delicacy Fine Good Good Breeding Independence Kindness Made Manners Men Perceptions Quite Sufficient Too Union

Quote Author

Ralph Waldo Emerson
American - Philosopher
May 25, 1803 - April 27, 1882

Defect in manners is usually the defect of fine perceptions. Elegance comes of no breeding, but of birth.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Good breeding, a union of kindness and independence.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

General, your tank is a powerful vehicle It smashes down forests and crushes a hundred men. But it has one defect: It needs a driver. General, your bomber is powerful. It flies faster than a storm and carries more than an elephant. But it has one defect: It needs a mechanic. General, man is very useful. He can fly and he can kill. But he has one defect: He can think.

Bertolt Brecht

Ten men have failed from defect in morals, where one has failed from defect in intellect.

Horace Mann

Idiocy is the female defect ... It is no worse than the male defect, which is lunacy.

Rebecca West

The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies.

Noam Chomsky

What we want, above all things on earth in our public men, is independence. It is one great defect in the character of the public men of America that there is that real want of independence; and, in this respect, a most marked contrast exists between public men in this country and in Great Britain.

John C. Calhoun

If a lack of empirical foundations is a defect of the theory of logical probability, it is also a defect of deductive logic.

David Stove

I think when you're an adult you start to like the very things that make you different. If you obsess about some defect, you make it obvious to everyone, and suddenly everyone is staring at just that defect. It's always like that. The more you hide something, the more it shows. But when you accept your defect, suddenly no one on earth sees it anymore.

Audrey Tautou

There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil, a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome." "And your defect is a propensity to hate everybody." "And yours," he replied with a smile, "is wilfully to misunderstand them.

Jane Austen

When I was in Kansas City everything was going well for me. My marriage was good and I was very successful in baseball but something was missing in my life. That something was Christ. Every human being is born with a little defect in his heart. That defect is a hole in the heart that can only be filled by Jesus Christ.

Carlos Beltran

Good manners come, as we say, from good breeding or rather are good breeding; and breeding is acquired by habitual action, in response to habitual stimuli, not by conveying information.

John Dewey

The word 'idiot' comes from a Greek root meaning private person. Idiocy is the female defect: intent on their private lives, women follow their fate through a darkness deep as that cast by malformed cells in the brain. It is no worse than the male defect, which is lunacy: men are so obsessed by public affairs that they see the world as by moonlight, which shows the outlines of every object but not the details indicative of their nature.

Rebecca West

But Thee, but Thee, O sovereign Seer of time, But Thee, O poets' Poet, Wisdom's Tongue, But Thee, O man's best Man, O love's best Love, O perfect life in perfect labor writ, O all men's Comrade, Servant, King, or Priest, -- What IF or YET, what mole, what flaw, what lapse, What least defect or shadow of defect, What rumor, tattled by an enemy, Of inference loose, what lack of grace Even in torture's grasp, or sleep's, or death's -- Oh, what amiss may I forgive in Thee, Jesus, good Paragon, Thou Crystal Christ?