When you consider how epidemic boredom is in our time, you have to concede that entertaining is a healing art.

Yes, etiquette is hypocritical. Yes, it does inhibit children - if you're lucky. But the idea that it's elitist and irrelevant is like saying language is elitist and irrelevant.

The family dinner table is the cornerstone of civilization and those who 'graze' from refrigerators or in front of the television sets are doomed to remain in a state of savagery.

GENTLE READER: You, sir, are an anarchist, and Miss Manners is frightened to have anything to do with you. It is true that questioning the table manners of others is rude. But to overthrow the accepted conventions of society, on the flimsy grounds that you have found them silly, inefficient and discomforting, is a dangerous step toward destroying civilization.

When politeness is used to show up other people, it is reclassified as rudeness. Thus it is technically impossible to be too polite.

Many people mistakenly think a new technology cancels out an old one.

You think death is any better an excuse for desertion than any other?