Quotes About Formality

She said peevishly, 'Do you consider I'm old enough to stop calling you Mr Crawford?' 'No,' said Mr Crawford shortly. 'What alternatives would you suggest? Master? Uncle?' 'That would certainly unsettle the Maréchale, for one,' said Philippa more cheerfully.

How do you do?" "How do you do?" echoed Mr. Ingleby. They gazed at one another with the faint resentment of two cats at their first meeting. Mr. Hankin smiled kindly at them both.

They wouldn't even lift a finger to save their own grandmothers from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal without orders signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters.

Will you be so kind, Mademoiselle, as to write down your permanent address on this piece of paper?' She complied. Her writing was clear and legible.

Mr. Fortescue's contribution to the ritual was a grunt.

You can propose marriage naked or in handcuffs, but no one is going to agree to forsake all others for a man in shorts. You can't declare war in shorts or deliver a eulogy in shorts.

The grandfather clock struck the half hour. She must be away. Glancing from Mama to Mrs. Smith to Mrs. Astor, she did the only polite thing she could do. She rolled her eyes back in her head, exhaled a loud gasp and swooned out of her chair.

We've become much more casual and much more relaxed in social interactions, where there was a formality and maybe a kind of respect at that time that doesn't exist now.

Em breve, o sociólogo e o historiador, eles também filhos da Formalidade, esquecerão o riso ácido, a zombaria sutil, o humor que sente os pólos em confronto. Então o mundo volverá à solenidade, à gravidade, irremediavelmente mergulhado no lado do qual extrairá as regras, as normas e as leis de conduta

You don't speak to people in London, he remembered; in fact you don't speak to people anywhere in England; there is plenty of time for that sort of thing on the appointed occasions –

Dr. Kellet himself wore a three-piece Harris tweed suit strung with a large gold fob watch. He smelled of cloves and pipe tobacco and had a twinkly look about him as if he were going to toast muffins or read a particularly good story to her, but instead he beamed at Ursula and said, So, I hear you tried to kill your maid? (Oh, that's why I'm here, Ursula thought.)

Some people did not like this ceremonious style. But after all when you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite.

A group of men in evening clothes looks like a flock of crows, and is just about as inspiring.

I thought everyone must know that a short jacket is always worn with a silk hat at a private view in the morning.

The government favors the most diplomatic language. That's why any letter to them should always start with, "Dear turkeys and foul maggots..."

The prerequisites for being in the diplomatic corps are the ability to handle protocol alcohol and Geritol.

Anyone who can be cool about his first visit to the Oval Office has lost so much body heat that rigor mortis is probably about to set in.

lettres recommandées (registered letters)

RITUALISM, n. A Dutch Garden of God where He may walk in rectilinear freedom, keeping off the grass.

Protocol is etiquette with a government expense account.

We are all members of the same great family ... On social occasions the formality of strictly military occasions should be relaxed, and a spirit of friendliness and goodwill should prevail.

Even on the most solemn occasions I got away without wearing socks and hid that lack of civilization in high boots

The trouble with dead people today is they have no sense of decorum

There is an atmosphere of well-sounding oratory that likes to attach itself to dress clothes. Away with it