Quotes About Formality

Rod always dresses for dinner - even if I just want to wear tracksuit bottoms, he dresses up.

When I was a kid, we called every teacher, every parent - anyone over the age of 20, it seemed - 'Mr. or Mrs. so-and-so.'

The day when a Frenchman switches from the formality of vous to the familiarity of tu is a day to be taken seriously. It is an unmistakable signal that he has decided - after weeks or months or sometimes years - that he likes you. It would be chulish and unfriendly of you not to return the compliment. And so, just when you are at last feeling comfortable with vous and all the plurals that go with it, you are thrust headlong in to the singular world of tu.

A diplomat these days in nothing, but a head waiter who is allowed to sit down occasionally.

between the constitutional formality and the political reality. For example, ministers are responsible formally to the monarch. Because of the political changes wrought in the nineteenth century, they are by convention responsible now also to Parliament. By convention, the government

Writing in other voices is almost Japanese in the sense that there's a certain formality there which allows me to sidestep the embarrassment of directly expressing to complete strangers the most intimate details of my life.

It's kind of really fun to get to dress up, because you take yourself a little more seriously if you dress nice in a starched shirt.

She'd never really known her father. Probably nobody had. With his shyness and his formality and his tyrannical rages he protected his interior so ferociously that if you loved him, as she did, you learned that you could do him no greater kindness than to respect his privacy.

She noted with pleasure that he'd already dispensed with a salutation

With his shyness and his formality and his tyrannical rages he protected his interior so ferociously that if you loved him, as she did, you learned that you could do him no greater kindness than to respect his privacy.

The empress, and young princes of the blood of both sexes, attended by many ladies, sat at some distance in their chairs; but

Ronald Reagan was a man who knew the diplomatic form. He also had a showman's ear for a tune. So when, at an official dinner, the marine band slipped into 'Edelweiss', he stopped mid-anecdote, rose to his feet, placed a reverential hand over his heart and stared into the blank mid-distance out of respect for the Austrian national anthem.

Now, what can I do for you, Agent Hayes?" "It's just R.C., thanks." He wondered for a second if he should have business cards printed up saying that. "What

A diplomat's life is made up of three ingredients: Protocol, Geritol, and alcohol.

I'm a businesswoman, and Ms. is an appropriate form of address.

Never wear a button-down collared shirt with a double-breasted suit. The more formal double-breasted suit looks best with the more formal spread or long-point collar.

When I grew up in television you couldn't go on a game show without being suited and booted.

My dear, when you are as old as I, they won't call you Jane, either. Old age is dreadfully formal. It's always 'Mrs. ' Young People don't like to call you 'Helen. ' It seems much too flip.

Each morning they came around, three brisk and serious men with efficient mouths and inefficient eyes...

Eating grapes with a knife and fork is not what one would call refined. It is what one would call ludicrous.

Miss Manners remembers who should be introduced to whom, but then she also remembers the difference between "who" and "whom." The formula is simple: One introduces inferiors to their superiors. Thus, gentlemen are introduced to ladies, young people to old, unranked ones to those of exalted stature and your own relatives to everyone else. It

egalitarianism allows them to use the term "sir" in very few instances.

You okay, there, Mr. Rat Man?" Minho asked. "My name is Assistant Director Janson," he replied, his voice low and strained, as if it was hard work to stay calm. His eyes never left Thomas. "Learn to show respect for your elders.

Our large age difference made us shy with each other; there was a formality, a generational reserve;