"I have not been pope long enough to forget good manners." Cowper says:-- A modest, sensible, and well-bred man Would not insult me, and no other can.
"I never listen to calumnies," said Montesquieu, "because if they are untrue I run the risk of being deceived, and if they are true, of hating people not worth thinking about." "I think," says Emerson, "Hans Andersen's story of the cobweb cloth woven so fine that it was invisible--woven for the king's garment--must mean manners, which do really clothe a princely nature." No one can fully estimate how great a factor in life is the possession of good manners, or timely thoughtfulness with human sympathy behind it.

They are the kindly fruit of a refined nature, and are the open sesame to the best of society.

Manners are what vex or soothe, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us by a constant, steady, uniform, invincible operation like that of the air we breathe.

Even power itself has not half the might of gentleness, that subtle oil which lubricates our relations with each other, and enables the machinery of society to perform its functions without friction.
"Have you not seen in the woods, in a late autumn morning," asks Emerson, "a poor fungus, or mushroom,--a plant without any solidity, nay, that seemed nothing but a soft mush or jelly,--by its constant, total, and inconceivably gentle pushing, manage to break its way up through the frosty ground, and actually to lift a hard crust on its head?
It is the symbol of the power of kindness." "There is no policy like politeness," says Magoon; "since _a good manner often succeeds where the best tongue has failed_." The art of pleasing is the art of rising in the world.
The politest people in the world, it is said, are the Jews.

In all ages they have been maltreated and reviled, and despoiled of their civil privileges and their social rights; yet are they everywhere polite and affable.