Polite literature

“ In proportion as people grow polite they cease to be poetical. They talk of poetry, but they have learnt to check its free impulses, to distrust its sallying emotions, and to supply its most affecting and picturesque usages by studied form and pompous ceremonial. ”

“ Let the young polish their manners, not by attending to mere artificial rules, but by the cultivation of right feelings. Let them mingle with refined society as often as they can; and, by refined society, I do not mean those whom you find in the ball-room—in the theater—in the crowded party, or those—however wealthy, or richly dressed—you feel to be only artificially [12] polite; but I mean those who make you feel at ease in their society, while, at the same time, they elevate your aims and polish your manners. What a good style is to noble sentiments, politeness is to virtue. ”

“ Cherish that delicacy of sentiment, that quick sympathy [Pg 71] with others, that nice sense of justice which will make you as regardful of their feelings as of their more substantial rights, and you will not fail to be polite. Without the sentiments of a gentleman, you may know all the rules of politeness, and be scrupulously observant of all the external forms of good breeding, and yet never be a gentleman. ”

“ Avoid the folly of copying, as models, letters to which peculiar circumstances impart brilliancy or genuine wit; but which, applied from different cases, are strangely out of place.
If you address one beneath you in education or position, don't make him feel his inferiority; be polite without familiarity, as politeness is due from every man of good parts to those beneath him. ”

“ Vulgarity in language or demeanor, indicates a vitiated heart. Cultivation and refinement of manners are, to a good degree, evidence of a pure spirit, and high and honorable feelings.
The youth who is truly polite, has a great advantage, in every respect, over those who are deficient in this desirable qualification. Many, however, entertain very erroneous views of the nature of politeness. ”

“ If the character is true and good, it will not be difficult to be polite and nice in manner, for manners are the outside part of us (just as the hands and face are the outside parts of the watch) . The kind, good thoughts within—in our hearts—will teach us how to behave. ”

“ A criticism that will go with him in his reading, and open up new meaning in familiar things, and touch the secrets of beauty and power, and reveal the hidden relations of literature to life, and help him to see the reasonableness of every true grace of style, the sincerity of every real force of passion,—a criticism that penetrates, illuminates, and appreciates, making the eyes clearer and the heart more sensitive to perceive the living spirit in good books,—that is the companionship which will be most helpful, and most grateful to the gentle reader. ”

“ They hunt for clever and suitable expressions, they clothe indecent circumstances with decent words; they glide swiftly over the fragile ice of decorum, and scratch the surface without breaking it. I see gentlemen, seated in gilt arm-chairs, of quiet wit and studied speech, cool in observation, eloquent sceptics, expert in the fashions, lovers of elegance, liking fine talk as much from vanity as from taste, who, while conversing between a compliment and a reverence, will no more neglect their good style than their neat gloves or their hat. ”

“ If, on the contrary, we are polite from an inward conviction that politeness is one of the forms of love to the neighbor, and because we believe that in being polite we are performing a duty that our neighbor has a right to claim from us, and because politeness is a trait that we love for its own inherent beauty, our manners belong to the substance of our Character,—they are not its garment, but its skin; and this is the permanent side of manners. Such manners will be ours in death, and afterwards, no less than in life. ”

“ If we cultivate the external forms of politeness from an indirect motive, that is, from the love of approbation, or from pride of character, it is the reward we love, and not the virtue; and if we gain this reward, it is only external and perishable ”

“ Whatever the skill of any country may be in the sciences, it is from its excellence in polite learning alone, it must expect a character from posterity. The poet and the historian, are they who diffuse a lustre upon the age, and the philosopher scarce acquires any applause, unless his character be introduced to the vulgar by their mediation. ”

“ There is no perceptible attempt at ambitious and weakish criticism, but a most felicitous selection and placing of these single lines of letters and conversations that are revelations of the soul and life of the persons under consideration. It is a reversion to charity and truth in literature and life, and as a piece of clean, sweet and clear work is deserving of the highest praise."—Philadelphia Times. ”

“ From the etymology of the word to the humanity of the character, a full, forcible, frank, and fervent discussion of the Gentleman is given, as he figures in history, in society, in domestic life, and in literature,—and as he lives, a grand and gracious ideal, in the consciousness of the author. ”

“ In society polite and reserved, of aristocratic coldness, gentlemanly in appearance, and well-bred; in his speech curt, mordant, emphatic, and occasionally witty, he could nevertheless show himself, when he chose, an amiable, original talker, full of piquant ideas. ”

“ While we are readers, every moral sentiment strikes us in all its beauty, but the love scenes are frigid, tawdry, and disgusting. When we are spectators, all the persuasives to vice receive an additional lustre. ”

“ In the ordinary compliments of civilized life, there is no intention to deceive, and consequently no falsehood. Polite language is pleasant to the ear, and soothing to the heart, while rough words are just the reverse ”

“ The polite are always catching modish innovations, and the learned depart from established forms of speech, in hope of finding or making better; those who wish for distinction forsake the vulgar, when the vulgar is right; but there is a conversation above grossness and below refinement, where propriety resides, and where this poet seems to have gathered his comick dialogue. ”

“ As we cannot possibly please all, we must endeavor to satisfy the greater number, and in so doing we may probably please ourselves. There is one thing of which our readers and patrons may rest assured, that we shall never knowingly countenance any thing either false in taste, or wrong in morals;—and we hold—that purity in both, is necessary to the dignity and value of literature. ”

“ For do we not see every day, gentle reader—that is to say, fashionable, fascinating, admired reader—how great and potent is the charm of this life? Do we not see men ruining themselves, girls giving themselves, for this alone? ”

“ Here lives our gentleman the greater portion of the year; lives aspiringly according to his Wordsworthian creed. He eschews or uses with admirable moderation the coarser pleasures and vanities of life. Unselfishness, gentleness, and nicety of thought and speech are the custom of his household. He himself finds congenial occupation in literary or scientific research, in the hope of adding some book or monograph to the world's store of art or knowledge. ”

“ If his muse of kindness halt a little behind the strong lines, in fashion in this excitement-craving age, his prose is the best of the sort in the world, and exhibits a faithful transcript of his own healthy natural mind, and cheerful innocent tone of conversation. ”

“ A familiarity with the fine arts is necessary, in fact, to give him a just perception of the sublime and beautiful, the very foundation whence our emotions of delight must arise. Any one attempting to shine in conversation, without possessing the trifling acquirements here mentioned,—for I have said nothing of learning and science,—will most assuredly make an indifferent figure, and had better therefore content himself with simply pleasing by unaffected cheerfulness and good humor, which is within reach of all. ”

“ Though politeness, in its best form, should resemble water—"best when clearest, most simple, and without taste"—yet genius in a man will always cover many defects of manner, and much will be excused to the strong and the original. ”

“ Such writers probably make no distinction between what is praised, and what is pleasing; between those commendations which the reader pays his own discernment, and those which are the genuine result of his sensations. ”

“ In politeness, as in many other things connected with the formation of character, people in general begin outside, when they should begin inside; instead of beginning with the heart, and trusting that to form the manners, they begin with the manners, and trust the heart to chance influences. ”

“ To keep my lips closed and listen to good conversation, to find myself in the delightful society of clever and virtuous people, is a hundred times more pleasant to me than to be stunned by all the insipid praises which they lavish upon me right and left in many places to which I go. ”

“ Would you be of the number of those blessed, "who are pure in heart," you must hate and avoid every thing, both in books and in conversation, that conveys impure ideas, however neatly clothed in decent language, or recommended to your taste by pretended refinements, and tender sentiments—by elegance of style, or force of wit and genius. ”

“ If we find humor, gay or rich, if we find brilliant wit; if we find constructive ability joined with dialogue which moves like an arrow; if we find delicate and keen characterization, with a touch of genius in the choice of names; if we find poetic power which moves on easy wing—the gentle jailers of the writer are justified, and the gentle reader thanks their severity. ”

“ On the other hand, you will meet constantly, in the best society, men whose polish of manner is exquisite,{34} who will perform to the minutest point the niceties of good breeding, who never commit the least act that is forbidden by the strictest rules of etiquette; yet under all this mask of chivalry, gallantry, and politeness will carry a cold, selfish heart; will, with a sweet smile, graceful bow, and elegant language, wound deeply the feelings of others, and while passing in society for models of courtesy and elegance of manner, be in feeling as cruel and barbarous as the veriest savage. ”

“ But pause and listen, first of all, gentle reader, to the living testimony of a poet heart, brimful, and gushing over with home love:—“There are not, in the unseen world, voices more gentle and more true, that may be more implicitly relied on, or that are so certain to give none but the tenderest counsel, as the voices in which the spirits of the fireside and the hearth address themselves to human kind!” ”

“ Among the wits, the littérateurs, the fashionable men and women of the time, he would have found society congenial to his tastes, and sufficient employment for his talents. He would have exhibited in his own life and character their vices and their superficial virtues, their extravagance, libertinism, and impiety, their politeness, courage, and wit. ”

“ And the lover of honor—what will be his opinion? Will he not think that the pleasure of riches is vulgar, while the pleasure of learning, if it brings no distinction, is all smoke and nonsense to him? ”

“ But, again, I ask you, do you at all believe in honesty, or at all in kindness, or do you think there is never any honesty or benevolence in wise people? None of us, I hope, are so unhappy as to think that. Well, whatever bit of a wise man's work is honestly and benevolently done, that bit is his book or his piece of art. ”

“ One is that here strangers are welcome from their rarity; another, that politeness is a part of the education of the place, which, besides its other uses, is an adult school of manners, morals, religion, grammar, writing and cobbling. ”

“ With one half the world, in its judgment of literature and life, vulgarity is the opposite of gentility, and gentility is merely negative, and implies the absence of all character, and, in language, of all idiom, all bone and muscle.... You may find in Shakespeare household words and phrases from every condition and walk in life—as much coarseness as you please to look for—anything and everything except gentility and vulgarity. ”

“ I appeal to that larger and more solemn public, who know how to look with tender humility at faults and errors; how to admire generously extraordinary genius, and how to reverence with warm, full hearts, all noble virtue. ”

“ The first peculiarity that strikes the modern reader is the extreme care of almost all the writers, even when near relations, to avoid a curt and dry style, destitute of the ambages which were in those days esteemed an essential part of politeness. ”

“ We have had many vain men to encounter in these talks of ours—men assured of their own judgment and taste; but not one, I think, as yet, so thoroughly and highly conscious that his cleverness and scholarship and deftness and wit were as sure of their reward as the sun was sure to shine. ”

“ It is possible to imagine such brilliant conversation, such varied wit, such graceful manners, such apparent gentleness, that would stifle the complaints of the moralist, and cause the half-uttered expostulation to die away upon his lips. ”

“ It is to pleasure you that wit is studied, and were it not that ye might be pleased, certainly providence had placed wit beyond the reach of our studies: it is to sooth your humor that men school themselves in patience; and by your miraculous voice, the storms of their passions are calmed; from your beauty, cowards borrow courage, and niggards liberality ”