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

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.

The whole country wants civility. Why don't we have it? It doesn't cost anything. No federal funding, no legislation is involved. One answer is the unwillingness to restrain oneself. Everybody wants other people to be polite to them, but they want the freedom of not having to be polite to others.

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.

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

If written directions alone would suffice, libraries wouldn't need to have the rest of the universities attached.

Hypocrisy is not generally a social sin, but a virtue.