Alfred Ayres - The Mentor

To select well among old things is almost equal to inventing new ones. – Trublet.

To be welcome in the society of persons of the better sort, who are always persons of culture and refinement, we must ourselves be persons of culture and refinement, i. e. , we must know and practise the usages that obtain in refined society, and have some acquaintance with letters and art.

In this world it is only like that seeks like. Those that have nothing in common, whose culture and breeding are unlike, whose thoughts are on different things, never seek the society of one another. What points of sympathy are there between the town gallant and the country spark, between the city belle and the dairymaid? If one would be received in the better social circles, one’s culture must be of the kind found there, and, above all, one’s manners must be marked by the observance of those usages that are to refined social commerce what the oil is to the engine.

It is often said that wealth is the surest passport to the better circles of society. Nothing could be further from the truth. The surest passport to the better circles of society is moral worth, supplemented with education, a thing that is made up of two other things – instruction and breeding. True, a little money is necessary to make one’s self presentable, but this little will always suffice. Wealth, we know, contributes greatly to men’s social success, and for good and obvious reasons; but it does not contribute more to social success than does distinction in intellectual pursuits. Laudable achievements will ever have quite as large a following as plethoric purses. Lands and goods are not the things we set the highest value on, many as there are that seem to think so.

This little book will be, I trust, of some service to those men that would better their acquaintance with the usages that govern in the polite world; and I am sure that he that learns half as much by reading it as I have learned in making it will feel well repaid for the time he gives to it.

Manners are the ornament of action. – Smiles.

Manners are the lesser morals of life. – Aristotle.

Little minds are vexed with trifles. – La Rochefoucauld.

It is always easy to say a rude thing, but never wise. – Stacy.

Marriage is the true road to Paradise. – De La Ferrière.

Guard the manners if you would protect the morals. – Davidson.

Anger blows out the lamp of the mind. – Robert G. Ingersoll.

Good temper is the essence of good manners. – Anonymous.

Politeness is the expression or imitation of social virtues. – Duclos.

Some people get into the bad habit of being unhappy. – George Eliot.

He that has no character is not a man: he is only a thing. – Chamfort.

Contempt should be the best concealed of our sentiments. – Anonymous.

Sow good services; sweet remembrances will grow from them. – Mme. de Staël.

Good manners are the shadows of virtues, if not virtues themselves. – Anonymous.

Consideration for woman is the measure of a nation’s progress in social life. – Grégoire.

In all professions and occupations, good manners are necessary to success. – Mrs. Ward.

Self-love is a balloon filled with wind, from which tempests emerge when pricked. – Voltaire.

Manners are the hypocrisies of nations; the hypocrisies are more or less perfected. – Balzac.

An earthly father who cannot govern by affection is not fit to be a father. – Robert G. Ingersoll.

It is generally allowed that the forming and the perfecting of the character is difficult. – Anonymous.

Respect your wife. Heap earth around that flower, but never drop any in the chalice. – A. de Musset.

Good manners is the art of making easy the persons with whom we are brought into contact. – Anonymous.

One should choose for a wife only such a woman as one would choose for a friend, were she a man. – Joubert.

It is a great misfortune not to have enough wit to speak well, or not enough judgment to keep silent. – La Bruyère.

Experience and observation in society are the chief means by which one acquires the polish that society demands. – Anonymous.

Let what you say be to the purpose, and let it be so said that if we forget the speech we may recollect the manner of it. – Anonymous.

The art of conversation consists less in showing one’s own wit than in giving opportunity for the display of the wit of others. – La Bruyère.

There is no surer proof of low origin, or of an innate meanness of disposition, than to be always talking and thinking of being genteel. – Hazlitt.

Were we as eloquent as angels, we should please some men, some women, and some children, much more by listening than by talking. – Lacon.

If you speak the sense of an angel in bad words, and with a disagreeable utterance, nobody will hear you twice who can help it. – Chesterfield.

One of the most effectual ways of pleasing and of making one’s self loved is to be cheerful; joy softens more hearts than tears. – Mme. de Sartory.

To live with our enemies as if they may some time become our friends, and to live with our friends as if they may some time become our enemies, is not a moral but a political maxim. – Anonymous.

There is no flattery so exquisite as the flattery of listening. It may be doubted whether the greatest mind is ever proof against it. Socrates may have loved Plato best of all his disciples because he listened best. – Anonymous.

The famous French painter, Girard, when quite young, was the bearer of a letter of introduction to a high officer at the court of Napoleon I. Girard was poorly dressed, and his reception was cold; but the courtier discovered in him such evidences of talent and good sense that on Girard’s rising to take leave, he arose also, and accompanied him to the antechamber.

The change in the courtier’s manner was so marked that Girard could not suppress an expression of surprise.

“My young friend,” said the courtier, “we receive strangers according to their dress; we take leave of them according to their merits.”

Good clothes are far from being sufficient to gain one admittance to the better circles of society, but without them admittance is impossible. When we go out into the world, it is not sufficient to do as others do, we must also dress as others dress.