top of page
.png){kind=small}
"To cease to admire is a proof of deterioration."
Standard
Customized
Exlpore more Etiquette quotes
"Victorian rigidities were such that ladies were not even allowed to blow out candles in mixed company, as that required them to pucker their lips suggestively. They could not say that they were going "to bed"--that planted too stimulating an image--but merely that they were "retiring." It became effectively impossible to discuss clothing in even a clinical sense without resort to euphemisms. Trousers became "nether integuments" or simply "inexpressibles" and underwear was "linen." Women could refer among themselves to petticoats or, in hushed tones, stockings, but could mention almost nothing else that brushed bare flesh."
"Sometimes you must agree with someones opinion for the sake of being polite and modest, but within you, you know that you are not foolish and crazy."
"It is better to be polite than rude."
"It's not bad to cough. But cover your mouth when coughing. It's not bad to complain. But cover your mouth when complaining, else you'll spread infections of complains on us!"
"When you have told anyone you have left him a legacy the only decent thing to do is to die at once."
"He looks around at his guests. All are prepared. A Latin grace; English would be his choice, but he will suit his company. Who cross themselves ostentatiously, in papist style. Who look at him, expectant. He shouts for the waiters. The doors burst open. Sweating men heave the platters to the table. It seems the meat is fresh, in fact not slaughtered yet. It is just a minor breach of etiquette. The company must sit and salivate. The Boleyns are laid at his hand to be carved."
"Considerations & Exceptions for Impressive Handshakes Be mindful of a person's age; be tender with arthritic hands. In that case, a loose and gentler handshake is a gesture of sensitivity and compassion. Show interest; even if your right hand is full, offer your left hand. Demonstrate respect when you are caught in an introduction while seated; try to stand. Be instinctive about when to allow the length of your handshake to linger to express unity, connection, or sympathy."
"A spirit of candor and frankness, when wholly unaccompanied with coarseness, headmired in others, but he could not acquire it himself."
"You must be more gentle, dear, more sedate,' Ellen told her daughter. 'You must not interrupt gentlemen when they are speaking, even if you do think you know more about matters than they do. Gentlemen do not like forward girls."
Explore more quotes by Charles Horton Cooley
"The need to exert power, when thwarted in the open fields of life, is the more likely to assert itself in trifles."
"Institutions - government, churches, industries, and the like - have properly no other function than to contribute to human freedom; and in so far as they fail, on the whole, to perform this function, they are wrong and need reconstruction."
"We have no higher life that is really apart from other people. It is by imagining them that our personality is built up; to be without the power of imagining them is to be a low-grade idiot."
"There is hardly any one so insignificant that he does not seem imposing to some one at some time."
"The idea that seeing life means going from place to place and doing a great variety of obvious things is an illusion natural to dull minds."
"Unless a capacity for thinking be accompanied by a capacity for action, a superior mind exists in torture."
"One should never criticize his own work except in a fresh and hopeful mood. The self-criticism of a tired mind is suicide."
"As social beings we live with our eyes upon our reflection, but have no assurance of the tranquillity of the waters in which we see it."
"There is no way to penetrate the surface of life but by attacking it earnestly at a particular point."
bottom of page