‘Oh dear me, where are my manners? I know, I never had any to start with.’ (ISWM)
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... when offered port you should say, ‘Ah, yes, I will have a little port.’ Everyone says this. You have to say it even if what you intend is a lot of port. (NOC)
... good manners started to happen as soon as all the mammoths were killed off and there was no piece of food big enough for everyone to eat at the same time. (NOC)
... upper class etiquette in Ankh-Morpork held that, while you could snub your friends any time you felt like it, it was the height of bad form to be impolite to your worst enemy. (NW)
'Did I say "thank you?"'
'No, you did not.' 'Oh, dear.' 'No, you noticed that you didn't, so zat is okay,' said Otto. (TT) Granny Weatherwax had a primal snore. It had never been tamed. No one had ever had to sleep next to it, to curb its wilder excesses by means of a kick, a prod in the small of the back or a pillow used as a bludgeon. (CJ)
'Don't trust the cannibal just 'cos he's usin' a knife and fork.' (CJ)
They didn't have any gods themselves but were generally polite about those belonging to other people. (CP)
In Mrs Whitlow's book, gods were socially very acceptable, at least if they had proper human heads and wore clothes ... (LC)
There are some people that would whistle 'Yankee Doodle' in a crowded bar in Atlanta.
Even these people would consider it tactless to mention the word 'billygoat' to a troll. (LL) Even if someone was your worst enemy, you invited them in and gave them tea and biscuits. In fact, the worser your enemy, the better the crockery you got out and the higher the quality of the biscuits. You might wish black hell on ‘em later, but while they were under your roof you’d feed ‘em till they choked. (SLF)
'Throwing women over your pommel and riding off into the night isn't approved of around here. It's probably an ism,' he added gloomily. (BOS)
When Mrs Whitlow was in the grip of acute class consciousness she could create aitches where nature never intended them to be. (MP)
'I should have thought you'd be all for kings.'
'Some of them were fearful oiks, you know,' she said airily. 'Wives all over the place, and chopping people's heads off, fighting pointless wars, eating with their knife, chucking half-eaten chicken legs over their shoulders, that sort of thing. Not our sort of people at all.' (GG) It appears to be a fact of life that if two or more well-born ladies should gather together, cupcake are essential. Otherwise the ceiling might fall on them. (SC)
‘… it’s not right to eat other people’s furniture.’ (LF)
'Act your age, Gytha.’
‘Act? Don’t have to act, can do it automatic,’ said Nanny. ‘Acting half my age…now that’s the difficult trick.' (LL) 'Everybody knows trolls eat people and spit them out. Everybody knows dwarfs cut off your legs. But at the same time everybody knows that what everybody knows is wrong.' (UA)
'People are a bit like machines,’ he added solemnly, while his face went redder, ‘and words like please and thank you are just like grease. They make them work better.' (Dig)
Misogynists to a man, the wizards were therefore always punctiliously polite to ladies. (TG)
'You don’t get manners from heaven,’ said Granny. (W)
'Try not to fart, in a nutshell.’
‘In a nutshell I imagine it would be pretty unpleasant!' (W) 'I don’t gallivant! I’ve never gallivanted. I don’t know how to vant! I don’t even have a galli!' (Th)
'But what do you want to sacrifice us for?’ asked Twoflower. ‘You hardly know us!’
‘That’s rather the point isn’t it? It’s not very good manners to sacrifice a friend.’ (COM) |
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