True politeness is perfect ease and freedom. It simply consists in treating others just as you love to be treated yourself.

Real courtesy is relaxed. It is not a set of rules carefully observed but an ease that lets other people be at ease too, and its whole content is treating them as you would want to be treated in their place. Stiffness and rule-following often produce the opposite of what manners are for.

In the next awkward social situation, aim to make the other person comfortable rather than to perform correctly. Ask what you would want if you were the newest person in the room. Then do that, simply, without making a display of it.