Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide lubrication where people rub together. Often the very young, the untraveled, the naive, the unsophisticated deplore these formalities as “empty,” “meaningless,” or “dishonest,” and scorn to use them. No matter how “pure” their motives, they thereby throw sand into machinery that does not work too well at best.
Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) American writer
Time Enough for Love, “Notebooks of Lazarus Long” (1973)
Quotations about:
rude
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Pride, ill nature, and want of sense, are the three great sources of ill manners.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) English writer and churchman
A Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding (1754)
INARA: What did I say to you about barging into my shuttle?
MAL: That it was manly and impulsive?
INARA: Yes, precisely. Only the exact phrase I used was, “Don’t.”
Joss Whedon (b. 1964) American screenwriter, author, producer [Joseph Hill Whedon]
Firefly, 1×02 “The Train Job” [with Tim Minear] (20 Sep 2002)
