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

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.

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

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

A young lady is a female child who has just done something dreadful.

Chaperons, even in their days of glory, were almost never able to enforce morality; what they did was to force immorality to be discreet. This is no small contribution.

everyone old enough to have a secret is entitled to have some place to keep it.