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

What is a bore? Maxwell definition: a vacuum cleaner of society, sucking up everything and giving nothing. How do you spot one? Bores are always anxious to be seen talking to you.

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.

Someone has said that life itself is a party: you join after it's started and you leave before it's finished.

Laugh at yourself first, before anyone else can.

The loudest psalm singer in the congregation always is a reformed sinner.

Good manners spring from just one thing - kind impulses.