For it is enough to make you liked. Politeness is the main ingredient of culture,, a kind of witchery that wins the regard of all... It costs little and helps much: every one is honoured who gives honour. Politeness and honour have this advantage, that they remain with him who displays them to others.
Baltasar Gracián, 1647 (tr. Joseph Jacobs, 1892)
The economics deserve framing: courtesy is the only expenditure that remains with the spender. Honour given returns as honour; the politeness shown is filed under your name, not the receiver's; and the compounding runs for decades on an investment of seconds. The reputation of courtesy, note, the reputation, built from consistency, not incidents, functions as a standing letter of introduction that precedes you into rooms and outlasts your titles. His two refinements keep it honest: too much beats too little, but uniform courtesy to all, since favouritism in politeness is injustice with manners; and courtesy to opponents especially, where it reads, correctly, as strength.
Practice
- Standardise the small liturgy: names remembered, greetings returned, thanks specific, calls returned within the day; reputation is built from the boring reps.
- Aim it where it is least required: juniors, staff, strangers with nothing to offer; courtesy that tracks rank is read, accurately, as strategy.
- Be most courteous in disagreement; the polite No and the respectful pushback are where the reputation is actually minted (maxim 14 gilds them).
Use this when
- Use this everywhere, which is the point; its power is uniformity, and one rude exception is remembered against a thousand compliances.
- Use it under pressure deliberately; courtesy maintained on the worst day is the version people retell.
Ignore this when
- Don't let courtesy soften into compliance; you can be perfectly polite and completely immovable in the same sentence (maxim 54's honey and sting).
- Don't perform it as ceremony; his own maxim 184 mocks the ceremonious, and warmth without stiffness is the target.
A picture of it
Forty years after retirement, the old station master is still greeted on the platform by name, by railwaymen who never served under him. The inheritance travelled by story: he was the officer who thanked pointsmen by name in an era when officers did not, who returned every salute including the hesitant ones, whose refusals, and he refused plenty, came with reasons and tea. His juniors became station masters and told their juniors. Nothing he built of steel outlasted him. The courtesy is in its third generation.
Buildings crumble and titles expire. Thank-yous, oddly, compound. Be remembered for what cost you least.