Derek Blasberg Quotes

Don’t lick the guests, darling. Bad manners.

In proceeding to the dining-room, the gentleman gives one arm to the lady he escorts--it is unusual to offer both.

Fashionably amusing table manners are a matter of breaking the right rule at the right time.

I was brought up in a way that when you're at a dinner party, you don't grab a chip unless it's been offered to everyone else. It's the manners of being brought up by English parents.

Basil Stag Hare tut-tutted severely as he remarked to Ambrose Spike, 'Tch, tch. Dreadful table manners. Just look at those three wallahs, kicking up a hullaballoo like that! Eating's a serious business.

It is nasty when you're playing in someone else's house to point out that they don't have enough balls.

A civil guest Will no more talk all, than eat all the feast.

To use bad taste, you have to know the rules of good taste. I've always thanked my mother for that. She taught how to eat with proper table manners and all that stuff, to the point of rebellion. But I couldn't have rebelled from it if I didn't know it.

If I'm out to dinner with a group of friends, and somebody offers to pay for the check, I immediately reach for my wallet. Inside is a note that says, "Say thanks!"

Shh! Don't talk with your mouth full.

it is bad manners to contradict a guest. You must never insult people in your own house - always go to theirs.

What matters is not whether you put your fork or knife together because you've finished your meal, or something like that. What matters is that you don't offend people, or hurt their feelings by mistake by saying the wrong thing or doing the wrong thing.

As a general rule, do not kick the shins of the opposite gentleman under the table, if personally unaquainted with him; your pleasantry is liable to be misunderstood--a circumstance at all times unpleasant.

Don't hit the person across from you with bits of toast, And don't, when dinner is nearly through, say 'Who's the host' It isn't done.

I'm a gentleman and I was always taught it's rude, to talk about a woman's age or weight unless you are breaking up with her.

People give out compliments because it's polite.

Howard and Shirley were clothed, always, in an invisible layer of decorum that they never laid aside.

When people complain of the decay of manners they have in mind not the impudent abbreviations of the crowd, but the decline in bowing and scraping and in speaking of one's employer as "the master." What the rich mean by the good manners of the poor is usually not civility, but servility.

You can fake your way to the table, but ultimately you have to learn how to eat.

There's times to be dainty and times to be a pig.

Avoid banquets which are given by strangers an ignorant persons. But if there is ever occasion to join them, let your attention be carefully fixed, that you slip not into the manner of the vulgar (the uninstructed).

No rule of etiquette is of less importance than which fork we use.

The civilities of the great are never thrown away.

Never speak of a man in his own presence. It is always indelicate, and may be offensive .

...Everyone had to eat, but eating people wasn't polite.