Ceremonies are the outworks of manners.

Remember that whatever knowledge you do not solidly lay the foundation of before you are eighteen, you will never be master of while you breathe.

Enjoy pleasures, but let them be your own, and then you will taste them.

We are hardly ever grateful for a fine clock or watch when it goes right, and we pay attention to it only when it falters, for then we are caught by surprise. It ought to be the other way about.

Ceremony is necessary in Courts, as the outwork and defense of manners.

Learn to shrink yourself to the size of the company you are in. Take their tone, whatever it may be, and excell in it if you can;but never pretend to give the tone. A free conversation will no more bear a dictator than a free government will.

It is by vivacity and wit that man shines in company; but trite jokes and loud laughter reduce him to a buffoon.