Michel de Montaigne

“ I have often seene men proove unmanerly by too much maners, and importunate by over-much courtesie. The knowledge of entertainment is otherwise a profitable knowledge. It is, as grace and beautie are, the reconciler of the first accoastings of society and familiarity: and by consequence, it openeth the entrance to instruct us by the example of others, and to exploit and produce our example, if it have any instructing or communicable thing in it. ”

“ To what end doe men avoid the servitude of Courts, and entertaine the same in their owne houses? Moreover it is a common rule in all assemblies, that hee who is the meaner man, commeth first to the place appointed, forsomuch as it belongs to the better man to be staid-for and waited upon by the other. ”

“ Not onely each countrey, but every Citie, yea, and every vocation hath his owne particular decorum I have very carefully beene brought up in mine infancie, and have lived in verie good company, because I would not bee ignorant of the good maners of our countrey of France, and I am perswaded I might keepe a schoole of them. I love to follow them, but not so cowardly, as my life remaine thereby in subjection. They have some painfull formes in them, which if a man forget by discretion, and not by errour, hee shall no whit bee disgraced. ”