Clutter is what happens to things when they become useless but friendly.

The Good Quality Snob, or wearer of muted tweeds, cut almost exactly the same from year to year, often with a hat of the same material, [is] native to the Boston North Shore, the Chicago North Shore, the North Shore of Long Island, to Westchester County, the Philadelphia Main Line and the Peninsula area of San Francisco.

The world of the arts is by no means always comfortable, but neither is it likely ever to be boring. It is full of surprises, humor, traps for the unwary, and challenges to smugness. It is a world of moods as well as of revelation, of beliefs and fears, of unpleasant truth as well as of delicious fantasy. Perhaps it is arrogant to say that anyone who does not venture into this world is only half-interested in life. I say it, nonetheless.

The Art Snob will stand back from a picture at some distance, his head cocked slightly to one side

Any real New Yorker is a you-name-it-we-have-it-snob whose heart brims with sympathy for the millions of unfortunates who through misfortune, misguidedness or pure stupidity live anywhere else in the world.

A lady is nothing very specific. One man's lady is another man's woman; sometimes, one man's lady is another man's wife. Definitions overlap but they almost never coincide.

A truly appreciative child will break, lose, spoil, or fondle to death any really successful gift within a matter of minutes.