Giving parties is a trivial avocation, but it pays the dues for my union card in humanity.

Under pressure, people admit to murder, setting fire to the village church or robbing a bank, but never to being bores.

Good manners - the longer I live the more convinced I am of it - are a priceless insurance against failure and loneliness. And anyone can have them.

[On the British Museum:] It was manifestly impossible to read all the books in that huge, gloomy structure, but I made a good try and accumulated a fund of useless information guaranteed to cast a pall over any dinner table.

Nothing spoils a good party like a genius.

Good manners spring from just one thing - kind impulses.

Serve the dinner backward, do anything - but for goodness sake, do something weird.