A prig always finds a last refuge in responsibility.

Blue laws once frowned on Sunday labor, also loud recreation, unseemly dress, and any "deportment inconsistent with proper reverence," and those laws still frown but do it in private, in the book of old ordinances, in a section unread for many years.

Propriety is the least of all laws, and the most observed.

Ceremony forbids us to express by words things that are lawful and natural, and we obey it; reason forbids us to do things unlawful and ill, and nobody obeys it.

Politeness requires this thing; decorum that; ceremony has its forms, and fashion its laws, and these we must always follow, never the promptings of our own nature.