The joy of joys is the person of light but unmalicious humor. If you know any one who is gay, beguiling and amusing, you will, if you are wise, do everything you can to make him prefer your house and your table to any other; for where he is, the successful party is also.
Never take more than your share – whether of the road in driving your car, of chairs on a boat or seats on a train, or food at the table.
A little praise is not only merest justice but is beyond the purse of no one.
Manner is personality – the outward manifestation of one’s innate character and attitude toward life.
A gentleman does not boast about his junk.
Any child can be taught to be beautifully behaved with no effort greater than quiet patience and perseverance, whereas to break bad habits once they are acquired is a Herculean task.
The joy of joys is the person of light but unmalicious humor.
Never say “Au revoir” unless you have been talking French, or are speaking to a French person.
Excepting a religious ceremonial, there is no occasion where greater dignity of manner is required of ladies and gentlemen both, than in occupying a box at the opera. For a gentleman especially no other etiquette is so exacting.
Ideal conversation must be an exchange of thought, and not, as many of those who worry most about their shortcomings believe, an eloquent exhibition of wit or oratory.
Etiquette requires the presumption of good until the contrary is proved.
To the old saying that man built the house but woman made of it a ‘home’ might be added the modern supplement that woman accepted cooking as a chore but man has made of it a recreation.
Manners are made up of trivialities of deportment which can be easily learned if one does not happen to know them.
Alas! it is true: “Be polite to bores and so shall you have bores always round about you.”
In popular houses where visitors like to go again and again, there is always a happy combination of some attention on the part of the hostess and the perfect freedom of the guests to occupy their time as they choose.
To do exactly as your neighbors do is the only sensible rule.
The good guest is almost invisible, enjoying him or herself, communing with fellow guests, and, most of all, enjoying the generous hospitality of the hosts.
Never so long as you live, write a letter to a man – no matter who he is – that you would be ashamed to see in a newspaper above your signature.
Unconsciousness of self is not so much unselfishness as it is the mental ability to extinguish all thought of one’s self – exactly as one turns out the light.
It is impossible for a hatless woman to be chic.