A gentleman is never rude except on purpose – I can honestly be nasty sober, believe you me.

We awaken in others the same attitude of mind we hold toward them.

Man seems to be the only animal whose food soils him, making necessary much washing and shield-like bibs and napkins. Moles living in the earth and eating slimy worms are yet as clean as seals or fishes, whose lives are one perpetual wash.

The notion that before you even set out to go to Thailand, you say, ‚I’m not interested,‘ or you’re unwilling to try things that people take so personally and are so proud of and so generous with, I don’t understand that, and I think it’s rude. You’re at Grandma’s house, you eat what Grandma serves you.

A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone’s feelings unintentionally.

First and foremost, we need to be the adults we want our children to be. We should watch our own gossiping and anger. We should model the kindness we want to see.

The savage in man is never quite eradicated.

Some people feel affronted when something they thought to be true doesn’t happen. If that’s the case, then your sense of risk is much higher, and that leads to risk aversion. You need to be able to be comfortable in uncertainty.

Every act you have ever performed since the day you were born was performed because you wanted something.

Please think of me like an endangered species and just observe me quietly from far away. If you try to talk to me or touch me casually, I may get intimidated and bite you. So please be careful.

Some men have a necessity to be mean, as if they were exercising a faculty which they had to partially neglect since early childhood.

The vulgar man is always the most distinguished, for the very desire to be distinguished is vulgar.

What a man believes may be ascertained, not from his creed, but from the assumptions on which he habitually acts.

Our judgments when we are pleased and friendly are not the same as when we are pained and hostile.

I act on impulse and I go with my instincts.

Everybody, to some extent, manipulates. Even children learn to cry when they want something. There are all kinds of subtle things we do to get others to follow our lead, not bother us, and so on.

There are four ways, and only four ways, in which we have contact with the world. We are evaluated and classified by these four contacts: what we do, how we look, what we say, and how we say it.

It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims.

Thought is the parent of the deed.

When you’re young, you’re very reckless. Then you get conservative. Then you get reckless again.

There are some people who need to wear a label round their necks to show that they are Christians at all, or else we might mistake them for sinners, their actions are so like those of the ungodly.

The big question about how people behave is whether they’ve got an Inner Scorecard or an Outer Scorecard. It helps if you can be satisfied with an Inner Scorecard.

He is a drunkard who takes more than three glasses though he be not drunk.

Everything’s intentional. It’s just filling in the dots.

Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey ‚people.‘ People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war… Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest.

It is in the treatment of trifles that a person shows what they are.

I know from having had a child, and from having been a child myself, that children will copy you.

I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don’t trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance any day in the week, if there is anything to be got by it.

Well, they’re Southern people, and if they know you are working at home they think nothing of walking right in for coffee. But they wouldn’t dream of interrupting you at golf.

But behavior in the human being is sometimes a defense, a way of concealing motives and thoughts, as language can be a way of hiding your thoughts and preventing communication.

If someone offers you a breath mint, accept it.

A superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions.

He must be very ignorant for he answers every question he is asked.

A man’s true character comes out when he’s drunk.

Nowadays, manners are easy and life is hard.

The fact is that people are good, Give people affection and security, and they will give affection and be secure in their feelings and their behavior.

Manners require time, and nothing is more vulgar than haste.

A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world.

No person who is well bred, kind and modest is ever offensively plain; all real deformity means want for manners or of heart.

Often people display a curious respect for a man drunk, rather like the respect of simple races for the insane… There is something awe-inspiring in one who has lost all inhibitions.

Insanity in individuals is something rare – but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.

The opportunity for doing mischief is found a hundred times a day, and of doing good once in a year.

All my pictures are built around the idea of getting in trouble and so giving me the chance to be desperately serious in my attempt to appear as a normal little gentleman.

Not always actions show the man; we find who does a kindness is not therefore kind.

Extremely religious, legalistic people have a criticism or judgment about everyone and everything. They just have a way of bringing people down with what they say.

The way you see people is the way you treat them, and the way you treat them is what they become.

When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.

I have a slight bit of OCD, I think. I’m not walking around flipping light switches. But when I say I’m going to do something, I have to do it.

Of course, like anybody I repeat myself endlessly, but I don’t know that I’m doing it, usually.

In my experience, many people confuse being cowardly with being nice.

Behavior is what a man does, not what he thinks, feels, or believes.

Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.

To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered.

Of course, when I say that human nature is gentleness, it is not 100 percent so. Every human being has that nature, but there are many people acting against their nature, being false.

Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.

We just seem to have lost all our morals and principles and values these days.

Of the billionaires I have known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars.

Those who have virtue always in their mouths, and neglect it in practice, are like a harp, which emits a sound pleasing to others, while itself is insensible of the music.

Campaign behavior for wives: Always be on time. Do as little talking as humanly possible. Lean back in the parade car so everybody can see the president.

Dogs never bite me – just humans.

Look not at what is contrary to propriety; listen not to what is contrary to propriety; speak not what is contrary to propriety; make no movement which is contrary to propriety.