Humorous Quotes from P. J. O'Rourke's
Modern Manners

The world is going to hell. All we can do is look good on the trip.

If you happen to be on a sinking ship with too few lifeboats, take one and slip quietly away. There's going to be a terrific fuss among the drowning passengers, and it's rude to deliberately overhear an argument which is none of your concern.

Although the Curies were extremely famous, they were rarely invited out socially. They were too thoughtful. Also, they glowed.

If our behavior were really determined by our ancestors, we'd all act like amoebas. We'd eat by osmosis and reproduce by division, meaning we'd smear food all our bodies at dinner and have sex by throwing ourselves under a train.

Racism is very lower-class. Upper-class people are never racists; they're anti-Semites.

Family love is messy, clinging, and of an annoying and repetitive pattern, like bad wallpaper.

Rich children are shipped to boarding schools, often before they are weaned. It would be unfair to call the atmosphere in these schools bestial. A child who was kept in the Bronx Zoo for twelve years would acquire more courtesy and taste.

It's better to spend money like there's no tomorrow than to spend tonight like there's no money.

It's far more instructive to have a drunk parent right there in the tenement with you than it is to have a drunk parent off in Gstaad.

A hat should be taken off when you greet a lady and left off for the rest of your life. Nothing looks more stupid than a hat.

Never steal anything so small that you'll have to go to an unpleasant city jail for it instead of a minimum security federal tennis prison.

Never transmit a sexual disease in public.

Women and children should be protected in every tax-deductible way.

An important person should be treated like anyone else holding a gun at your head.

Fame is a communicable disease. And if you kiss the ass of someone who's got it, you may catch it yourself.

The social habits of famous people are like the sexual practices of porcupines, which urinate on each other to soften the quills.

Table manners are a test to see whether you're acting like a beast because you're rudely ignorant or acting like a beast because you're fashionably amusing.

You must make your high spirits contagious before anyone has time for second thoughts. Second thoughts always consist of calling the police.

Never have a food fight with school-dining-hall food. It's too dangerous. Once, a few years ago, at Phillips Exeter Academy, a student was hit in the face with a piece of dining-hall meatloaf. Some of it got in his mouth, and he died.

If you are young and you drink a great deal it will spoil your health, slow your mind, make you fat - in other words, turn you into an adult.

You can acquire a Texas accent by any of the usual means of getting brain damage.

Satan probably wouldn't have talked so big if God had been his wife.

People shouldn't be treated as objects. They aren't that valuable.

Wife swapping is never done in the best circles of society. Wives can rarely, if ever, be traded for anything useful like a set of golf clubs.

Having children is impolite. It imposes on the peace and quiet of others and leaves you with less time for that key component of courtesy, being nice to yourself.

Super Babies are similar to regular babies except they belong to you.

Explain the concept of death very carefully to your child. This will make threatening him with it much more effective.

The worst part of Christmas is dinner with the family, when you realize how truly mutated and crippled is the gene stock from which you sprang.

These days the honeymoon is rehearsed much more often than the wedding. It's not necessary to give a dinner every time you do that.

Q. How should family members be seated at the wedding?
A. On their asses.

There is only one hard-and-fast rule about the place to have a party: someone else's place.

Never hit anyone from behind (people should be kicked from behind).

If the show wasn't any good, wait outside the stage door with a gun. This will lift the rock star's spirits by making him feel as important as John Lennon.

It's a nice touch, when you're a houseguest, to make your bed. It's a particularly nice touch to make it a place of delight for your host's teen-age daughters.

Your necktie should not be so wide that it looks as though you can't afford to get soup on your shirt.

If you run more than twenty miles a week, try not to die young. It will make people snigger.

Don't bend over in Turkey. Who knows what they might think it's a polite invitation to do.

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