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

The basis of good manners is self-reliance.

Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices.

All successful men have agreed in one thing -- they were causationists. They believed that things went not by luck, but by law; that there was not a weak or a cracked link in the chain that joins the first and last of things.

Things said for conversation are chalk eggs. Don't say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.

In conversation the game is, to say something new with old words. And you shall observe a man of the people picking his way along, step by step, using every time an old boulder, yet never setting his foot on an old place.

Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for competitors.

Other men are lenses through which we read our own minds. Each man seeks those of different quality from his own, and such as are good of their kind; that is, he seeks other men, and the rest.

I find that the Americans have no passions, they have appetites.

Every advantage has its tax.