Expressions of disapproval are on a level of vulgarity that cannot be tolerated. The way to express disapproval is to do without applause.
An excuse is a polite rejection. Men are not afraid of 'ruining the friendship.
When you're asking someone for assistance, make it as easy as possible for them to say 'no' to you. You don't want someone helping you who doesn't really want to.
Very gratefully, with grateful appreciation, with sincere appreciative gratitude, in appreciatively grateful sincerity of regret, he declined.
A soft refusal is not always taken, but a rude one is immediately believed.
For all the ladies out there, I'm taken. I'm sorry.
A nasty letter or a sarcastic one can make you righteously angry, but what can you do about a polite letter of rejection? Nothing, really, except cry.
When the New Yorker turned down work, they turned it down in such an elaborately gentlemanly way making apologies for their own shortsightedness. Undoubtedly it was their fault but somehow for some reason this fell short of the remarkably high standard that you by your own work have set for yourself. They had a way of rejecting my work that made me feel sorry for them somehow.
