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.

Nothing is less important than which fork you use. Etiquette is the science of living. It embraces everything. It is ethics. It is honor.

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.

To do exactly as your neighbors do is the only sensible rule.

Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others. If you have that awareness, you have good manners, no matter what fork you use.

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.

Bread is like dressed hats and shoes in other words essential

Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others. If you have that awareness you have good manners no matter what fork you use.

Good manners reflect something from inside an innate sense of consideration for others and respect for self.

Manners are made up of trivialities of deportment which can be easily learned if one does not happen to know them.

Manners are like primary colors, there are certain rules and once you have these you merely mix, i.e., adapt, them to meet changing situations.

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.

The most vulgar slang is scarcely worse than the attempted elegance which those unused to good society imagine to be the evidence of cultivation.

I just use my muscles as a conversation piece, like someone walking a cheetah down 42nd Street.

Food was a constant topic of conversation in our household.

A sudden silence in the middle of a conversation suddenly brings us back to essentials: it reveals how dearly we must pay for the invention of speech.

Don't knock the weather; nine-tenths of the people couldn't start a conversation if it didn't change once in a while.

What I think we need to do to engage the American people in a conversation about entitlement reform is to have a bipartisan group of people who come together and put every solution on the table, every alternative on the table. And then we ought to engage in a long conversation with the American people so they understand the choices.

It was impossible to get a conversation going, everybody was talking too much.

If you're interested in how people behave, if you're interested in the way they talk about themselves, the way the conceive of themselves, it's very hard to ignore drugs nowadays, because that is so much part of the conversation.

No animal should ever jump up on the dining-room furniture unless absolutely certain that he can hold his own in the conversation.

Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food.

Those who decide to use leisure as a means of mental development, who love good music, good books, good pictures, good plays, good company, good conversation - what are they? They are the happiest people in the world.

Although there exist many thousand subjects for elegant conversation, there are persons who cannot meet a cripple without talking about feet.

I've been in a serious conversation with one of my children, and a fan has come up. I've been in a public bathroom and had the hand come under the stall with a paper and pen. That sort of thing anybody can live without.

Tonight was a great opportunity to take on the political status quo that has given us trillion dollar deficits and put millions out of work. Our objective was to inject some common sense into the conversation among Republicans at a time when business-as-usual simply won't work.

Marriage is one long conversation, chequered by disputes.

I can wear a hat or take it off, but either way it's a conversation piece.

The difficulty with this conversation is that it's very different from most of the ones I've had of late. Which, as I explained, have mostly been with trees.

A good pun may be admitted among the smaller excellencies of lively conversation.

I spend a good portion of my dinner-party conversation defending America because no matter what the political agenda, it's still a fantastic, amazing place.

Well, my closest friends are still the ones that I went to school with, but it's nice to go to work, at the studios, and have people there that you're willing to talk to and have a good conversation with.

There was a sense of all the things that go on on the street, particularly in New York, that you are just completely unaware of, that that conversation could be happening at any time. I loved the instability of the camera. It's just an unstable world.

For most women, the language of conversation is primarily a language of rapport: a way of establishing connections and negotiating relationships.

If you are ever at a loss to support a flagging conversation, introduce the subject of eating.

The dining room in my old house was truly magnificent, but by far the worst room for conversation. I'd get up from the table, a very long table, and somebody would always say, Paul, I never got to talk to you.

His struggle for a bare living left him no time to take advantage of the public evening school. In time he learned to read, to follow a conversation or lecture; but he never learned to write correctly; and his pronunciation remains extremely foreign to this day.

When I spoke, I was listened to; and I was at a loss to know how I had so easily acquired the art of commanding attention, and giving the tone to the conversation.

You can pick out actors by the glazed look that comes into their eyes when the conversation wanders away from themselves.

I cannot forget a conversation that I had with an elderly couple from the tribe. They asked me whether I would kill them after I had finished. When I asked them why they asked that, they replied, Because you white men always do!

A conversation goes sometimes into personal things and that's nicer. You look to each other and you have a different picture, you get into a relationship.

Conversation would be vastly improved by the constant use of four simple words: I do not know.

Mistresses are like books; if you pore upon them too much, they doze you and make you unfit for company; but if used discreetly, you are the fitter for conversation by em.

I consider myself a religious person. God is something very personal with me and I don't flaunt religion in conversation with others.

In conversation, humor is worth more than wit and easiness more than knowledge.

I'm smart and I can be really funny and interesting and I can go toe-to-toe with anybody in a conversation.

She had lost the art of conversation but not, unfortunately, the power of speech.

The primary use of conversation is to satisfy the impulse to talk.

A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years mere study of books.