Daily Inspiration Quote by Edgar Watson Howe

There’s a small, mean little truth tucked into Howe’s sentence: politeness is often not a personality, it’s a tactic. As an editor who lived on the front lines of American boosterism and salesmanship, Howe understood how public manners could be privately instrumental. His warning isn’t against commerce itself; it’s against the cozy illusion that civility equals character. The line works because it punctures a common vulnerability in buyers: we treat friendliness as evidence, when it’s frequently just packaging.

The phrasing is slyly calibrated. “When a man is trying to sell you something” frames the interaction as a temporary role, not a stable self. Then “don’t imagine” casts the buyer as a romantic, someone inventing a flattering story about the seller’s constant decency. Howe’s real accusation is aimed at the consumer’s need to be liked. If you’re basking in someone’s courtesy, you’re already negotiating from a weaker position.

Context matters: Howe wrote in an era when modern advertising, door-to-door selling, and the culture of hustle were thickening into a national style. The early 20th century was full of “good fellows” offering miracle tonics, land deals, and civic progress - the smile as credential. Howe’s line anticipates a core media-literacy lesson: persuasion is a performance. The point isn’t to become paranoid; it’s to become unsentimental about incentives. Politeness, in sales, can be genuine. It can also be the cheapest, most effective tool in the kit.