The Egyptians had a particularly nasty way of getting rid of people they felt had no consequence. Instead of embalming them, they simply constructed a fake mummy made from old strips of linen wrapped around a dummy of mud. If, in our modern world, you feel that there are a lot of "mud mummies" around you, get rid of the mud.

Although some fools find rudeness sexy, it is never the path to seduction.

Learn the absolute pleasure of kindness.

Start a conversation with someone with whom you have "nothing in common" and no possibility of scoring with, networking with, or even seeing again. In other words, a conversation just for the civilized hell of it.

Learn to detest things that do not allow you to be yourself, and embrace things that make that self larger, more thrilling, and voluptuous.

Eat without the TV going on. Learn to appreciate food with only the entertainment of conversation-yours and someone else's.

The lowest form of barbarism is smugly to berate someone for extending an act of kindness.