Emily Post Quotes - Page 2

Never so long as you live, write a letter to a man - no matter who he is - that you would be ashamed to see in a newspaper above your signature.

Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others.

Children are all more or less little monkeys in that they imitate everything they see. If their mother treats them exactly as she does her visitors they in turn play "visitor" to perfection. Nothing hurts the feelings of children more than not being allowed to behave like grown persons when they think they are able.

Courtesy demands that you, when you are a guest, shall show neither annoyance nor disappointment--no matter what happens.

A lady never asks a gentleman to dance, or to go to supper with her.

Alas! it is true: "Be polite to bores and so shall you have bores always round about you."

Etiquette requires the presumption of good until the contrary is proved.

The most vulgar slang is scarcely worse than the attempted elegance which those unused to good society imagine to be the evidence of cultivation.

Custom is a mutable thing; yet we readily recognize the permanence of certain social values. Graciousness and courtesy are never old-fashioned.

An overdose of praise is like 10 lumps of sugar in coffee; only a very few people can swallow it.

To tell a lie in cowardice, to tell a lie for gain, or to avoid deserved punishment--are all the blackest of black lies.

The joy of joys is the person of light but unmalicious humor. If you know any one who is gay, beguiling and amusing, you will, if you are wise, do everything you can to make him prefer your house and your table to any other; for where he is, the successful party is also.

Never do anything that is unpleasant to others.

To be a good sportsman, one must be a stoic and never show rancor in defeat, or triumph in victory, or irritation, no matter what annoyance is encountered. One who can not help sulking, or explaining, or protesting when the loser, or exulting when the winner, has no right to take part in games or contests.

Golf is a particularly severe strain upon the amiability of the average person's temper, and in no other game, except bridge, is serenity of disposition so essential.

The fact that slang is apt and forceful makes its use irresistibly tempting. Coarse or profane slang is beside the mark, but "flivver," "taxi," the "movies," "deadly" (meaning dull), "feeling fit," "feeling blue," "grafter," a "fake," "grouch," "hunch" and "right o!" are typical of words that it would make our spoken language stilted to exclude.

Never say "Au revoir" unless you have been talking French, or are speaking to a French person.

The letter we all love to receive is one that carries so much of the writer’s personality that she seems to be sitting beside us, looking at us directly and talking just as she really would, could she have come on a magic carpet, instead of sending her proxy in ink-made characters on mere paper.

A little praise is not only merest justice but is beyond the purse of no one.

Training a child is exactly like training a puppy; a little heedless inattention and it is out of hand immediately; the great thing is not to let it acquire bad habits that must afterward be broken.

Elbows are never put on the table while one is eating.

Excepting a religious ceremonial, there is no occasion where greater dignity of manner is required of ladies and gentlemen both, than in occupying a box at the opera. For a gentleman especially no other etiquette is so exacting.

No rule of etiquette is of less importance than which fork we use.

The natural impulses of every thoroughbred include his sense of honor; his love of fair play and courage; his dislike of pretense and of cheapness.

Ideal conversation must be an exchange of thought, and not, as many of those who worry most about their shortcomings believe, an eloquent exhibition of wit or oratory.