The dinner table is the center for the teaching and practicing not just of table manners but of conversation, consideration, tolerance, family feeling, and just about all the other accomplishments of polite society except the minuet.

Judith Martin (b. 1938) American author, journalist, etiquette expert [a.k.a. Miss Manners]

Miss Manners’ Guide for the Turn-of-the-Millennium, Part 2 “Home Life,” “Parents and Children” (1989)
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