Laws are always unstable unless they are founded on the manners of a nation; and manners are the only durable and resisting power in a people.
--
Chapter XVIAlexis de Tocqueville
» Alexis de Tocqueville - all quotes »
Manners are of more importance than laws. The law can touch us here and there, now and then. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation like that of the air we breathe in.
Edmund Burke
We don't bother much about dress and manners in England, because as a nation we don't dress well and we've no manners.
George Bernard Shaw
My superficial manners stink and my profound manners are almost as bad.
William Saroyan
If we would succeed in works of the imagination, we must offer a mild morality in the midst of rigid manners; but where the manners are corrupt, we must consistently hold up to view an austere morality.
Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
I said I knew a very wise man so much of Sir Christopher's sentiment, that he believed if a man were permitted to make all the ballads he need not care who should make the laws of a nation, and we find that most of the ancient legislators thought that they could not well reform the manners of any city without the help of a lyric, and sometimes of a dramatic poet.
Andrew Fletcher
Tocqueville, Alexis de
Todorov, Tzvetan
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z