He knew very well that the great majority of human conversation is meaningless. A man can get through most of his days on stock answers to stock questions, he thought. Once he catches onto the...

Politeness. Now there’s a poor man’s virtue if ever there was one. What’s so admirable about inoffensiveness, I should like to know. After all, it’s easily achieved. One needs no particular talent to be polite....

Jacob, get over here or I’ll freeze your underwear.” Something like that.

Ability does catches my attention, but its a politeness in the person that I remember.

Nine times out of 10, the most charming thing to say in any given situation will be the exact opposite of what one really feels.

When the Starbursts cost a cent apiece, the average number of candies per customer was 3.5, but when the price went down to zero, the average went down to 1.1 per customer. The students limited...

Politeness is organized indifference.

Something else? That’s the nice way of saying they’re bat-shit crazy.

Piety is a discipline of the will through respect. It admits the right to exist of things larger than the ego, of things different from the ego.

Deep in my heart politeness impresses me more than competence.

We are enjoined whenever we behold the gifts of God in others so to reverence and respect the gifts as also to honor those in whom they reside.

All my life I have placed great store in civility and good manners, practices I find scarce among the often hard-edged, badly socialized scientists with whom I associate. Tone of voice means a great deal...

They’re the only thing worse than family, other people’s family.

Infants never learn to soothe themselves to sleep. They learn, abandoned in seclusion, that no matter the volume of their despondence, no matter the force of their tears, when they are alone and frightened, no-one...

When your family is twice as weird as normal, you have to be twice as polite to authority, because authority hates weird.

But Johannes had said, “Politeness is something you owe other people, because when you show a little courtesy, everything becomes easier and better. But first and foremost, it’s something you owe yourself. You are David.

As I am sure you know, when people say ‘It’s my pleasure,’ they usually mean something along the lines of, ‘There’s nothing on Earth I would rather do less.’ […]