Top 1200 Table Manners Quotes & Sayings

Laws are always unstable unless they are founded on the manners of a nation; and manners are the only durable and resisting power in a people.

Eating is aggressive by nature, and the implements required for it could quickly become weapons; table manners are, most basically, a system of taboos designed to ensure that violence remains out of the question.

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.

Good manners sometimes means simply putting up with other people's bad manners.

Teaching creativity to your child isn't like teaching good manners. No one can paint a masterpiece by bowing to another person's precepts about elbows on the table.

The dinner table is the center for the teaching and practicing not just of table manners but of conversation, consideration, tolerance, family feeling, and just about all the other accomplishments of polite society except the minuet.

That bad manners are so prevalent in the world is the fault of good manners.

What was created by the era of the proper gentleman was excellent table manners and genocide over most of the surface of the planet.

A man or woman can be known and respected for good taste, regardless of job or income level, if they make good choices in clothes, have good table manners, are kind and organize their home to look warm, welcoming, clean, and appropriate to their station in life.

God calls all of his children to the table. We can disagree and even say a lot of hateful things, but what we can't do in good conscience is leave the table. Or demand that someone else not be at the table.

Manners. Manners will get you through anything.

Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral laws are written on the table of eternity.

Sitting down for dinner not only helps you learn, but also teaches you how to listen - which I feel is the most important skill to have. I remember as a kid going around the table listening to everyone's day. It was hard to have the manners not to interrupt back then.

A dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot.

When I was growing up, my family was serious about manners. I always wanted to put my elbow on the table to prop my head up. I didn't understand how other people looked awake. My head felt so heavy after the whole day.

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.

The things that make you a functional citizen in society - manners, discretion, cordiality - don't necessarily make you a good writer. Writing needs raw truth, wants your suffering and darkness on the table, revels in a cutting mind that takes no prisoners.

All I needed was a steady table and a typewriter...a marble-topped bedroom washstand table made a good place; the dining-room table between meals was also suitable.

Should we distrust the man because his manners are not our manners, and that his skin is dark?

I am single because I am allergic for cursing words and bad table manners

On the Continent people have good food; in England people have good table manners.

I grew up with 'Life' magazine on the coffee table, Life cereal on the breakfast table, and the game of Life on the card table. People were just so happy to be alive, I guess.

We separated like oil and water. In the cafeteria, you'd see a table of black jocks, table of white jocks, table of rich white kids, table of Hispanic kids, table of Chinese kids, table of druggies, table of chatterboxes, and so on. Wait! There's a diverse table over there! With a few kids of different tenacities and economic status! Oh, that's the nerds. That's where I sat. We weren't cool enough for the other tables, so we didn't discriminate against anybody.

Yes, but also one of the problems for a novelist in Ireland is the fact that there are no formal manners. I mean some people have beautiful manners but there's no kind of agreed form of manners.

I don't like people's table manners. That really puts you off eating food.

GENTLE READER: You, sir, are an anarchist, and Miss Manners is frightened to have anything to do with you. It is true that questioning the table manners of others is rude. But to overthrow the accepted conventions of society, on the flimsy grounds that you have found them silly, inefficient and discomforting, is a dangerous step toward destroying civilization.

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

Barbarism? That's ironic coming from a woman helping to prepare us for slaughter. And what's she basing our success on? Our table manners?

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.

Manners are of more importance than laws. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe.

I'm a child of the 50s. I was expected to have table manners. There needs to be some expectations for behavior. I'm seeing some children today, they don't push them enough.

What we need to question is bricks, concrete, glass, our table manners, our utensils, our tools, the way we spend our time, our rhythms. To question that which seems to have ceased forever to astonish us. We live, true, we breathe, true; we walk, we go downstairs, we sit at a table in order to eat, we lie down on a bed on order to sleep. How? Where? When? Why? Describe your street. Describe another. Compare.

Basil Stag Hare tut-tutted severely as he remarked to Ambrose Spike, 'Tch, tch. Dreadful table manners. Just look at those three wallahs, kicking up a hullaballoo like that! Eating's a serious business.

Comedies of manners swiftly become obsolete when there are no longer any manners.

I don't know why people would want to have lunch with writers. I've eaten with writers. We have appalling table manners, and rarely say anything other than 'Pass the salt' or 'If you're not going to eat that, can I have it?'

We don't bother much about dress and manners in England, because as a nation we don't dress well and we've no manners.

American manners are different than British manners.

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.

My neighbors tell me of their adventures with famous gentlemen and ladies, what notabilities they met at the dinner-table; but I am no more interested in such things than in the contents of the Daily Times. The interest and the conversation are about costume and manners chiefly; but a goose is a goose still, dress it as you will.

To use bad taste, you have to know the rules of good taste. I've always thanked my mother for that. She taught how to eat with proper table manners and all that stuff, to the point of rebellion. But I couldn't have rebelled from it if I didn't know it.

Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others. If you have that awareness, you have good manners, no matter what fork you use.

EDUCATION, n. The bringing up, as of a child; instruction; formation of manners. Education comprehends all that series of instruction and discipline which is intended to enlighten the understanding, correct the temper, and form the manners and habits of youth, and fit them for usefulness in their future stations. To give children a good education in manners, arts and science, is important; to give them a religious education is indispensable; and an immense responsibility rests on parents and guardians who neglect these duties.

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

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.

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.

There used to be an art form called the 'comedy of manners.' Why aren't comedies of manners made now in this country? The answer is simple. We no longer have manners to speak of.

You can get through life with bad manners, but it's easier with good manners.

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

what we need in the world is manners ... I think that if, instead of preaching brotherly love, we preached good manners, we might get a little further. It sounds less righteous and more practical.

I think the sort of person you want at a party is someone who is self-aware, polite and has a basic knowledge of table manners. And that goes for both men and women.

The great secret...is not having bad manners or good manners...but having the same manner for all human souls.

we middle-aged folk have the education of life, truly; we know the multiplication table of anxieties and sorrows, the subtraction table of loss, the division table of responsibility.

Good manners are appreciated as much as bad manners are abhorred.

I think to be oversensitive about cliches is like being oversensitive about table manners.

To be always thinking about your manners is not the way to make them good; the very perfection of manners is not to think about yourself.

Working- and Middle-class families sat down at the dinner table every night - the shared meal was the touchstone of good manners. Indeed, that dinner table was the one time when we were all together, every day: parents, grandparents, children, siblings. Rudeness between siblings, or a failure to observe the etiquette of passing dishes to one another, accompanied by "please" and "thank you," was the training ground of behavior, the place where manners began.

Fashionably amusing table manners are a matter of breaking the right rule at the right time.

When people complain of the decay of manners they have in mind not the impudent abbreviations of the crowd, but the decline in bowing and scraping and in speaking of one's employer as "the master." What the rich mean by the good manners of the poor is usually not civility, but servility.

The only way to have a funeral is to invite everyone who ever knew the person and just wait for the accident to happen-somebody who comes in out of the blue and says the truth. Everything else is table manners.

War is a form of really bad manners, in a strange way. Invading a country I think is just the worst possible manners. 'You're not invited!' Gate crashing on a large scale!