Formal Setting Quotes

You might want to comment on that, Honorable.

In the restaurant it's much more serious.

[To a woman whose cellphone rang during a formal meeting:] You'd better answer that. It could be someone important.

Prayers were held in Assembly Hall. We all perched in rows on wooden benches while teachers sat up on the platform in armchairs, facing us.

With your permission, I am going to ask Carol Hartwell from the Budget Committee, who is our staff expert on this to sit with me. In the event you are overly inquisitive, I will have to ask her for answers.

The dining room in my old house was truly magnificent, but by far the worst room for conversation. I'd get up from the table, a very long table, and somebody would always say, Paul, I never got to talk to you.

Sometimes you go into Nando's, and you want to tuck into the chicken wings with your fingers, but you know someone is watching you, so you don't. I'm sat there thinking, 'If these chicken wings were at home, they would get demolished!' But I've got to use a knife and fork, and you end up saying: 'Could I get a bag to take these home, please?'

People do not use foul language in the House of Commons chamber. They just don't do it, and I don't, either.

I'd make a terrible practitioner of any religion in any formal setting.

'Fine dining.' I'd love to know who coined the term and whether they meant it to be as offputting as it is. The words evoke an idea of phoney refinement, of needless flummery, snooty waiters, and an atmosphere designed to intimidate the customer.

The White House is a serious place, with serious people, doing serious work. If you're not careful, it can grind you down.

The whole being-in-a-room interview thing, at a junket or a film festival, is very inhuman. You meet the person, have five or 10 minutes to talk, and it's not like a conversation.

I was a halfway-decent-looking English boy who looked nice in a drawing-room standing by a piano.

Did you ever feel as if the whole world was a tuxedo, and you were a pair of brown shoes?

Sen. McCain isn't someone who strikes you as a particularly dynamic speaker. He doesn't seem to like the formality of giving speeches. He clearly isn't too comfortable reading off a TelePrompter.