Learn graceful ways of saying no and of pointing out that this pressure to do something is not in line with most people's wishes.

It's far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without your help.

It is, indeed, a trial to maintain the virtue of humility when one can't help being right.

Learn graceful ways of saying no and of pointing out that this pressure to do something is not in line with most people's wishes.

A small wedding is not necessarily one to which very few people are invited. It is one to which the person you are addressing is not invited.

Perhaps the greatest rudenesses of our time come not from the callousness of strangers, but from the solicitousness of intimates who believe that their frank criticisms are always welcome, and who feel free to "be themselves" with those they love, which turns out to mean being their worst selves, while saving their best behavior for strangers.

To sacrifice the principles of manners, which require compassion and respect, and bat people over the head with their ignorance of etiquette rules they cannot be expected to know is both bad manners and poor etiquette. That social climbers and twits have misused etiquette throughout history should not be used as an argument for doing away with it.