Most people who work at home find they do not have the benefit of receptionists who serve as personal guards

People think, mistakenly, that etiquette means you have to suppress your differences. On the contray, etiquette is what enables you to deal with them; it gives you a set of rules.

It is not rude to turn off your telephone by switching it on to an answering machine, which is cheaper and less disruptive than ripping it out of the wall. Those who are offended because they cannot always get through when they seek, at their own convenience, to barge in on people are suffering from a rude expectation.

Nowadays, we never allow ourselves the convenience of being temporarily unavailable, even to strangers. With telephone and beeper, people subject themselves to being instantly accessible to everyone at all times, and it is the person who refuses to be on call, rather than the importunate caller, who is considered rude.

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

Honesty has come to mean the privilege of insulting you to your face without expecting redress.

It is said that dispensing advice is easy. What is difficult is getting anyone to listen to it.