Prue Leith Quotes

I think I'm expected to behave in a certain manner.

At this level, the individual perceives the maintenance of the expectations of his family, group, or nation as valuable in its own right, regardless of immediate and obvious consequences.

We must watch over our modesty in the presence of those who cannot understand its grounds.

I love the honesty of New Yorkers. When a New Yorker says 'let's do lunch,' they actually mean it. In L.A., when they say 'let's do lunch,' they're just trying to say good-bye.

Situational variables can exert powerful influences over human behavior, more so that we recognize or acknowledge.

I was brought up with considerable discipline, and I was taught it wasn't proper to display certain very private emotions in public.

I lived in a world where social arrangements were taken for granted and assumed to be timeless. A child's obligation was to learn these usages, not to question them. The complexities of racial deportment were of a piece with learning manners and etiquette more generally.

It doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you don’t do it in the street and frighten the horses.

Tradition is an element that enters into play with destiny, because you are born into a particular family - Jewish or Islamic or Christian or Mexican - and your family determines to some extent what you are expected to become. And society is always there attempting to determine the role we will play within it.

The world is so mysterious, and there's so many social interactions where I have no idea what I'm supposed to do - what's being asked of me, what's expected of me.

The hat is not for the street: it will never be democratized. But there are certain houses that one cannot enter without a hat. And one must always wear a hat when lunching with people whom one does not know well. One appears to one's best advantage.

It is helpful to know the proper way to behave, so one can decide whether or not to be proper.

People who stare deserve the looks they get.

It was the old New York way...the way people who dreaded scandal more than disease, who placed decency above courage, and who considered that nothing was more ill-bred than "scenes", except those who gave rise to them.

To seem sorrowful is not in good taste: You're supposed to seem bored.

I think there is limits to the assumption that wherever you are, the situation in a way tells you how to behave.

Respectability offends my taste.

Respectable society believed in God in order to avoid having to speak about him.

It is wrong to wear diamonds before luncheon, except on one’s marriage rings. Before, after, and during breakfast, luncheon and dinner, it is vulgar to wear a mixture of colored precious stones. It is always a comfort to know that so many things one can’t afford to do anyway are vulgar.

Good manners can render even virtue tolerable.

Oh, quit that. Blushing is for virgins and Christians.

Standing, standing, standing - why do I have to stand all the time? That is the main characteristic of social Washington.

Conventions are often more cruel than the law.

The outrageous is the reasonable, if introduced politely.

I have noticed several times that people don't think I know how to behave even when I'm trying as hard as I can.