Читать книгу The Etiquette of To-day - Edith B. Ordway - Страница 3

Table of Contents

The customs of social life need frequent restating and adaptation to new needs. They are customs because they are the best rules of conduct that have been garnered from the experiences of succeeding generations under common conditions.

To know them, to catch their spirit, and to follow them in an intelligent way, without slavish punctiliousness but with careful observance, make one skillful in the art of social intercourse, and at home in any society.

Etiquette will not take the place of character, nor of an accurate knowledge of human nature and the arts of practical life. Given these, however, it will unlock to any man or woman doors of success and profit and real happiness which, without it, would have remained forever closed.

E. B. O.

"We feel 'at home' wherever we know how to conduct ourselves."

T. L. Nichols

"The secret of success in society is a certain heartiness and sympathy. A man who is not happy in the company cannot find any word in his memory that will fit the occasion. All his information is a little impertinent. A man who is happy there finds in every turn of the conversation equally lucky occasions for the introduction of that which he has to say. The favorites of society, and what it calls whole souls, are able men, and of more spirit than wit, who have no uncomfortable egoism, but who exactly fill the hour and the company, contented and contenting, at a marriage or a funeral, a ball or a jury, a water party or a shooting match."

Emerson.