Traditional Etiquette Quotes

When I was a kid, we called every teacher, every parent - anyone over the age of 20, it seemed - 'Mr. or Mrs. so-and-so.'

I heard that chivalry was dead, but I think it's just got a bad flue.

If you are in Bangkok, you will find that people there will never speak to you without joining their hands. It's not that they are speaking to you like that because you are tourists. They even speak at their home like that.

That's something I learned from both my stepdad and my grandfather - that there is a thing called chivalry, and it doesn't have to die with the birth of the Internet. The way I see it, if you're asking a girl out on a date, it's only right to do it in a way that she can hear your voice.

No convention gets to be a convention at all except by grace of a lot of clever and powerful people first inventing it, and then imposing it on others. You can be pretty sure, if you are strictly conventional, that you are following genius--a long way off. And unless you are a genius yourself, that is a good thing to do.

In the modern world there's no such thing as formality. A dinner jacket used to mean a tuxedo, you know?

I like playing the social convention. If you're in a period drama, there's always something dancing underneath the surface as a human - but then you always have to conform to the social conventions around you, and those two things get to be juxtaposed against each other. You're being human, but you're trapped within the social convention of the time.

A period film, where you, for example, where you have a traditional wardrobes, you are bound to act a certain way. But in a modern film, a lot of body gesture.

I think I tend to try to let a woman walk through a door first, and I walk on the outside on the street. But that's probably because I'm an ancient creature.

Research the venue and location before outfit shopping, as it helps set the mood and style focus: a traditional wedding in the countryside offers a different set of sartorial rules to a tropical, beach vibe, for instance.