A small wedding is not necessarily one to which very few people are invited. It is one to which the person you are addressing is not invited. - Judith Martin

Getting children to say ‘Please’ and ‘Thank you,’ directly and in writing, is one of the chief tasks of child-rearing. It is a simple matter, requiring about ten years of contant vigilance, but those who give up on it might as well — and generally do — concede failure on the entire enterprise of civilizing their young.

One can become quite proficient at this amiable patter; the trick is to omit the instructive parts when attending formal dinner parties outside the house.

Anyone who could remember the heyday of the cocktail party probably doesn’t.