“Courtesy is a science of the highest importance. It is, like grace and beauty in the body, which charm at first sight, and lead on to further intimacy and friendship, opening a door that we may derive instruction from the example of others, and at the same time enabling us to benefit them by our example, if there be anything in our character worthy of imitation.”
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Michel De Montaigne 264
(1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, … 1533–1592Related quotes

William Stanley Jevons Letter to his brother (1 June 1860), published in Letters and Journal of W. Stanley Jevons (1886), edited by Harriet A. Jevons, his wife, p. 151 - 152.

Experimental Researches in Electricity, Vol. 2 (1834) p. 257 http://books.google.com/books?id=XuITAAAAQAAJ&vq=257&pg=PA257

“Precepts may instruct, but examples persuade.”
Heaven On Earth, 1654

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), Love (1947), p. 274

Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, Volume 4, p. 500, also cited in W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America (1935), p. 592