Top 60 Emily Post Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others.”

— Emily Post

Featured in: Quotes About Feelings

2. “Good manners reflect something from inside-an innate sense of consideration for others and respect for self.”

— Emily Post

3. “Whenever two people come together and their behavior affects one another, you have etiquette.”

— Emily Post

4. “Nothing is less important than which fork you use. Etiquette is the science of living. It embraces everything. It is ethics. It is honor.”

— Emily Post

5. “Jealousy is the suspicion of one’s own inferiority.”

— Emily Post

6. “Etiquette requires the presumption of good until the contrary is proved.”

— Emily Post

7. “To make a pleasant and friendly impression is not only good manners, but equally good business.”

— Emily Post

8. “The honor of a gentleman demands the inviolability of his word, and the incorruptibility of his principles. He is the descendent of the knight, the crusader; he is the defender of the defenseless and the champion of justice – or he is not a gentleman.”

— Emily Post

9. “To tell a lie in cowardice, to tell a lie for gain, or to avoid deserved punishment – are all the blackest of black lies.”

— Emily Post

10. “Ideal conversation must be an exchange of thought, and not, as many of those who worry most about their shortcomings believe, an eloquent exhibition of wit or oratory.”

— Emily Post

11. “The eleventh commandment, “Thou shalt not be found out” is despicable, but nevertheless, it is the one thing you can never get away from.”

— Emily Post

12. “Manner is personality – the outward manifestation of one’s innate character and attitude toward life.”

— Emily Post

13. “If you are hurt, whether in mind or body, don’t nurse your bruises. Get up and light-heartedly, courageously, good temperedly get ready for the next encounter. This is the only way to take life – this is also ‘playing’ the game!”

— Emily Post

14. “A gentleman does not boast about his junk.”

— Emily Post

15. “Custom is a mutable thing; yet we readily recognize the permanence of certain social values. Graciousness and courtesy are never old-fashioned.”

— Emily Post

16. “The letter we all love to receive is one that carries so much of the writer’s personality that she seems to be sitting beside us, looking at us directly and talking just as she really would, could she have come on a magic carpet, instead of sending her proxy in ink-made characters on mere paper.”

— Emily Post

17. “The joy of joys is the person of light but unmalicious humor.”

— Emily Post

18. “Any child can be taught to be beautifully behaved with no effort greater than quiet patience and perseverance, whereas to break bad habits once they are acquired is a Herculean task.”

— Emily Post

19. “It is impossible for a hatless woman to be chic.”

— Emily Post

20. “Elbows are never put on the table while one is eating.”

— Emily Post

21. “Never think, because you cannot write a letter easily, that it is better not to write at all. The most awkward note imaginable is better than none.”

— Emily Post

22. “Consideration for the rights and feelings of others is not merely a rule for behavior in public but the very foundation upon which social life is built.”

— Emily Post

23. “There is little you can do about the annoying speech mannerisms of others, but there is a lot you can do about your own.”

— Emily Post

24. “To the old saying that man built the house but woman made of it a ‘home’ might be added the modern supplement that woman accepted cooking as a chore but man has made of it a recreation.”

— Emily Post

25. “Courtesy demands that you, when you are a guest, shall show neither annoyance nor disappointment – no matter what happens.”

— Emily Post

26. “The attributes of a great lady may still be found in the rule of the four S’s: Sincerity, Simplicity, Sympathy, and Serenity.”

— Emily Post

27. “Never take more than your share – whether of the road in driving your car, of chairs on a boat or seats on a train, or food at the table.”

— Emily Post

28. “A little praise is not only merest justice but is beyond the purse of no one.”

— Emily Post

29. “To do exactly as your neighbors do is the only sensible rule.”

— Emily Post

30. “Never say “Au revoir” unless you have been talking French, or are speaking to a French person.”

— Emily Post

31. “Never so long as you live, write a letter to a man – no matter who he is – that you would be ashamed to see in a newspaper above your signature.”

— Emily Post

32. “No rule of etiquette is of less importance than which fork we use.”

— Emily Post

33. “Manners are made up of trivialities of deportment which can be easily learned if one does not happen to know them.”

— Emily Post

34. “Alas! it is true: “Be polite to bores and so shall you have bores always round about you.””

— Emily Post

35. “The good guest is almost invisible, enjoying him or herself, communing with fellow guests, and, most of all, enjoying the generous hospitality of the hosts.”

— Emily Post

36. “Rather be frumpy than vulgar! Much. Frumps are often celebrities in disguise – but a person of vulgar appearance is vulgar all through.”

— Emily Post

37. “A gentleman should never take his hat off with a flourish.”

— Emily Post

38. “The natural impulses of every thoroughbred include his sense of honor; his love of fair play and courage; his dislike of pretense and of cheapness.”

— Emily Post

39. “In popular houses where visitors like to go again and again, there is always a happy combination of some attention on the part of the hostess and the perfect freedom of the guests to occupy their time as they choose.”

— Emily Post

40. “The only occasion when the traditions of courtesy permit a hostess to help herself before a woman guest is when she has reason to believe the food is poisoned.”

— Emily Post

41. “A lady never asks a gentleman to dance, or to go to supper with her.”

— Emily Post

42. “Nothing appeals to children more than justice, and they should be taught in the nursery to “play fair” in games, to respect each other’s property and rights, to give credit to others, and not to take too much credit to themselves.”

— Emily Post

43. “An overdose of praise is like 10 lumps of sugar in coffee; only a very few people can swallow it.”

— Emily Post

44. “The most vulgar slang is scarcely worse than the attempted elegance which those unused to good society imagine to be the evidence of cultivation.”

— Emily Post

45. “There is a big deposit of sympathy in the bank of love, but don’t draw out little sums every hour or so – so that by and by, when perhaps you need it badly, it is all drawn out and you yourself don’t know how or on what it was spent.”

— Emily Post

46. “The fault of bad taste is usually in over-dressing. Quality not effect, is the standard to seek for.”

— Emily Post

47. “The joy of joys is the person of light but unmalicious humor. If you know any one who is gay, beguiling and amusing, you will, if you are wise, do everything you can to make him prefer your house and your table to any other; for where he is, the successful party is also.”

— Emily Post

48. “Houses without personality are a series of walled enclosures with furniture standing around in them. Other houses are filled with things of little intrinsic value, even with much that is shabby and yet they have that inviting atmosphere...”

— Emily Post

49. “Training a child is exactly like training a puppy; a little heedless inattention and it is out of hand immediately; the great thing is not to let it acquire bad habits that must afterward be broken.”

— Emily Post

50. “Golf is a particularly severe strain upon the amiability of the average person’s temper, and in no other game, except bridge, is serenity of disposition so essential.”

— Emily Post