n them in the midst of all their habits and environments among
those necessary conditions from which they cannot escape, when we have
seen how they affect those about them, and how they adapt themselves to
their circumstances, it is ignorance nay, worse, it is ill-will, to find
ridiculous what in more than one sense has a claim on our respect.

"That which we call politeness and good breeding effects what otherwise
can only be obtained by violence, or not even by that.

"Intercourse with women is the element of good manners.

"How can the character, the individuality, of a man co-exist with polish
of manner?

"The individuality can only be properly made prominent through good
manners. Every one likes what has something in it, only it not be a
disagreeable something.

"In life generally, and in society, no one has such high advantages as
a well-cultivated soldier.

"The rudest fighting people at least do not go out of their character,
and generally behind the roughness there is a certain latent good humor,
so that in difficulties it is possible to get on, even with them.

"No one is more intolerable than an underbred civilian. From him one has
a right to look for a delicacy, as he has no rough work to do.

"When we are living with people who have a delicate sense of propriety,
we are in misery on their account when anything unbecoming is committed.
So I always feel for and with Charlotte, when a person is tipping his
chair. She cannot endure it.

"No one would ever come into a mixed party with spectacles on his nose,
if he did but know that at once we women lose all pleasure in looking at
him or listening to what he has to say.

"Free-and-easiness, where there ought to be respect, is always
ridiculous. No one would put his hat down when he had scarcely paid the
ordinary compliments if he knew how comical it looks.

"There is no outward sign of courtesy that does not rest on a deep moral
foundation. The proper education would be that which communicated the
sign and the foundation of it at the same time.

"Behavior is a mirror in which every one displays his own image.

"There is a courtesy of the heart. It is akin to love. Out of it arises
the purest courtesy in the outward behavior.

"A freely offered homage is the most beautiful of all relations. And how
were that possible without love?

"We are never further from our wishes than when we imagine that we
possess what we have desired.

"No one is more a