Good Breeding Quotes

Good-breeding is benevolence in trifles, or the preference of others to ourselves in the daily occurrences of life.

Lord Chatham.

Good-breeding is surface Christianity.

O.W. Holmes.

Good-breeding is the art of showing men, by external signs, the internal regard we have for them. It arises from good sense, improved by conversing with good company.

Cato.

One principal point of good breeding is to suit our behavior to the three several degrees of men our superiors, our equals, and those below us.

Swift.

Nothing can constitute good-breeding which has not good nature for its foundation.

Bulwer.

Good-Breeding is the result of much good sense, some good nature, and a little self-denial for the sake of others, and with a view to obtain the same indulgence from them.

Chesterfield.

A man endowed with great perfections, without good-breeding, is like one who has his pockets full of gold, but always wants change for his ordinary occasions.

Steele.

Good-breeding is not confined to externals, much less to any particular dress or attitude of the body; it is the art of pleasing or contributing as much as possible to the ease and happiness of those with whom you converse.

Fielding.

Good qualities are the substantial riches of the mind; but it is good-breeding that sets them off to advantage.

Locke.

The scholar, without good-breeding, is a pedant; the philosopher, a cynic; the soldier, a brute; and every man disagreeable.

Chesterfield.

A man’s own good breeding is the best security against other people’s ill-manners. It carries along with it a dignity that is respected by the most petulant. Ill-breeding invited and authorizes the familiarity of the most timid. No man ever said a pert thing to the Duck of Marlborough. No man ever said a civil one to Sir Robert Walpole.

Chesterfield.

Among well-bred people, a mutual deference is affected; contempt of others disguised; authority concealed; attention given to each in his turn; and an easy stream of conversation maintained, without vehemence, without interruption, without eagerness for victory, and without any airs of superiority.

Hume.

Good-breeding shows itself most, where to an ordinary eye it appears the least.

Addison.

Virtue itself often offends, when coupled with bad manners.

Middleton.

The summary of good-breeding may be reduced to this rule: “Behave to all others as you would they should behave to you”.

Fielding.

There are few defects in our nature so glaring as not to be veiled from observation by politeness and good breeding.

Stanislaus.

The highest point of good-breeding is to show a very nice regard to your own dignity, and with that in your own heart, to express your value for the man above you.

Steele.

One may know a man that never conversed in the world, by his excess of good-breeding.

Addison.

As ceremony is the invention of wise men to keep fools at a distance, so good-breeding is an expedient to make fools and wise men equal.

Steele.

Wisdom, Valor, justice and learning cannot keep a man in countenance that is possessed with these excellencies, if he wants that inferior art of life and behavior, called good breeding.

Steele.