The formal Washington dinner party has all the spontaneity of a Japanese imperial funeral.

At a formal dinner party, the person nearest death should always be seated closest to the bathroom.

It was a pity she couldn't do justice to the meal, which featured Scottish salmon, steaming roast joints, venison haunch accompanied by sausages and sweetbreads, and elaborate vegetable casseroles dressed with cream and butter and truffles. For dessert there were platters of luxury fruits; raspberries, nectarines, cherries, peaches and pineapples, as well as a surfeit of cakes, tarts, and syllabubs.

At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.

I've never been to a dinner party where everyone at the dinner table didn't say something funny.

A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery.