The invention of the teenager was a mistake. Once you identify a period of life in which people get to stay out late but don't have to pay taxes - naturally, no one wants to live any other way.

If you put together all the ingredients that naturally attract children - sex, violence, revenge, spectacle and vigorous noise - what you have is grand opera.

We are born charming fresh and spontaneous and must be civilized before we are fit to participate in society.

Society cannot exist without etiquette ... It never has, and until our own century, everybody knew that.

the obligation to express gratitude deepens with procrastination. The longer you wait, the more effusive must be the thanks.

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.

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.