Only a great fool or a great genius is likely to flout all social grace with impunity, and neither one, doing so, makes the most comfortable companion.

Good manners have much to do with the emotions. To make them ring true, one must feel them, not merely exhibit them.

Parents must get across the idea that "I love you always, but sometimes I do not love your behavior."

When we learn to give thanks, we are learning to concentrate not on the bad things, but on the good things in our lives.

Everyone knows that a man can marry even if he reaches the age of 102, is penniless, and has all his facilities gone. There is always some woman willing to take a chance on him.

I am a journalist in the field of etiquette. I try to find out what the most genteel people regularly do, what traditions they have discarded, what compromises they have made.

The modern rule is that every woman should be her own chaperon.

Breakfast is the one meal at which it is permissible to read the paper.

We must learn which ceremonies may be breached occasionally at our convenience and which ones may never be if we are to live pleasantly with our fellow man.

The best-dressed women I know pay very little attention to the picayune aspects of fashion, but they have a sound understanding of style.

Do not smoke without asking permission or sit so near (as in a train) that the smoke might annoy.

Awkward silences rule the world. People are so terrified of awkward silences that they will literally go to war rather than face an awkward silence.

There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.

Books can break a man open, even ones about a panda, maybe especially so.

It's cool to have critical success because it's always nice for your peers to say, 'Good job.' But who cares about them?

People who need to believe in deities can find them everywhere they look.

Drinking freshly made juices and eating enough whole foods to provide adequate fiber is a sensible approach to a healthful diet.

I got hit a lot. I'm glad I lived through it.

Mumbling obeisance to abhorrence of apartheid is like those lapsed believers who cross themselves when entering a church.

I had to have a complete liver transplant.

There's no higher honor, in my estimation, than being asked to serve in the White House.