“Every day and almost every hour of our lives, those of us who are not hermits or anchorites have an opportunity to practice the minor ethics of good manners, of kindness toward and consideration for others in little things, of petty sacrifices. It is only on great and rare occasions of life that most of us have either the need or the opportunity to practice what I may call Heroic Ethics.

The rules of morality, and the rules of good manners, can and should be harmonized with each other. Yet most ethical writers seem to be almost exclusively concerned with heroic ethics, with Nobility, Magnanimity, All-Embracing Love, Saintliness, Self-Sacrifice. And they despise any effort to frame or to find the rules or even to seek the rationale behind the workaday ethics for the masses of humanity.”