Etiquette

Etiquette is the set of conventional rules of personal behaviour in polite society, usually in the form of an ethical code that delineates the expected and accepted social behaviours that accord with the conventions and norms observed by a society, a social class, or a social group.

Regulate your manner of behaviour towards others, not according to your own humour, but agreeably to the pleasure and inclination of those with whom you converse. ~ Giovanni della Casa

Quotes

• You ought to regulate your manner of behaviour towards others, not according to your own humour, but agreeably to the pleasure and inclination of those with whom you converse.
  • Giovanni della Casa, (1503-1556). Galateo: Or, A Treatise on Politeness and Delicacy of Manners

In Company Shocked at a Lady Getting up to Ring the Bell (1805) James Gillray caricatured "A widow and her suitors, who seem to have forgot their manners in the intensity of their admiration."

• "You hear him, ma'am?" said Mr. Pluck, looking round; "you hear the unimpeachable testimony of my friend Pyke—that reminds me—formalities, formalities, must not be neglected in civilized society. Pyke—Mrs. Nickleby."
  • Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby (1838), chapter XXVII. Mrs. Nickleby Becomes Acquainted with Messrs. Pyke and Pluck, Whose Affection and Interest Are beyond all Bounds.

• It must be admitted that the laws of etiquette and social politeness are much more clearly laid down, and much better observed by all classes of Hindus, even by the lowest, than they are by people of corresponding social position in Europe.
  • Jean-Antoine Dubois, Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies (1806), trans. Henry K. Beauchamp (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905), p. 331.

• The stereotyped style of cultic representations was well known as early as the Neolithic age, but the stiffly ceremonial forms of courtly art are absolutely new and come into prominence here for the first time in the history of human culture. They reflect the rule of a higher, superindividual social order, of a world which owes its greatness and splendour to the favour of the king. They are anti-individualistic, static and conventional... All the good things and the charms of life are connected, for the privileged members of this society, with their separation from the other classes, and all the maxims which they follow assume more or less the character of rules of decorum and etiquette. This decorum and etiquette, the whole self-stylization of the upper class, demand among other things that one does not allow oneself to be portrayed as one really is, but according to how one must appear to conform with certain hallowed conventions, remote from reality and the present time. Etiquette is the highest law not merely for the ordinary mortal, but also for the king, and in the imagination of this society even the gods accept the forms of courtly ceremonial.
  • Arnold Hauser, The Social History of Art, Volume I. From Prehistoric Times to the Middle Ages, 1999.

• Etiquette is what you are doing and saying when people are looking and listening. What you are thinking is your business.
  • Virginia Cary Hudson, O Ye Jigs & Juleps! (New York: Macmillan, 1962), p. 8.

• In Städten glaubt man, es gehöre zum guten Tone, nicht einmal zu wissen, wer in demselben Hause wohnt.
  • In cities people think that it is good manners not even to know who lives in the same building.
    • Adolph Freiherr Knigge, quoted in Der kleine Rechthaber: Wem gehört die Parklücke und andere juristische Überraschungen (2008) by Claus Murken, p. 79.

• Dear Miss Manners: What about Easter? I suppose you have etiquette rules that apply to Easter Day?
  Gentle Reader: Certainly, and when the Day of Judgment comes, Miss Manners will have etiquette rules to apply to that, as well.
  • Judith Martin, Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior

• Etiquette can be at the same time a means of approaching people and of staying clear of them.
  • David Riesman, The Lonely Crowd (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950), p. 72

• Etiquette is a set of rules people use so they can be rude to each other in public.
  • Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind (2007), Chapter 60

See also

• Compassion
• Consciousness
• Cooperation
• Courtesy
• Ethics
• Manners
• Morality
• Patience
• Politeness
• Rule of law
• Tolerance
• Virtues