Authors:
  • Ceremony is an invention to take off the uneasy feeling which we derive from knowing ourselves to be less the object of love and esteem with a fellow-creature than some other person is. It endeavours to make up, by superior attentions in little points, for that invidious preference which it is forced to deny in the greater.

    'Essays of Elia' (1823) 'A Bachelor's Complaint of the Behaviour of Married People'