To be punctilious is to be a bore... Such folk are worshippers of their own dignity, yet show how little it is justified since they fear that the least thing can destroy it... Neither affect nor despise etiquette: he cannot be great who is great at such little things.
Baltasar Gracián, 1647 (tr. Joseph Jacobs, 1892)
The person obsessed with protocol, exact seating, precise address, the correct order of everything, reveals the opposite of what he intends. Fussing over the forms shows a dignity so fragile he fears a small breach could destroy it, and real standing does not need that scaffolding. The maxim's balance is the useful part: neither affect ceremony nor despise it. Some etiquette is genuine consideration and social lubricant, worth observing without fuss. The failure is at both extremes, the punctilious bore who makes protocol a religion, and the deliberate boor who flouts every form to seem free. Great people handle etiquette lightly, using what serves and ignoring the rest, because they are not great at little things and do not want to be.
Practice
- Observe the etiquette that is genuine consideration; ignore the etiquette that is pure protocol, and do both without fuss.
- Watch your own reaction to small breaches; if a minor lapse in form genuinely upsets you, the dignity it threatens may be more fragile than you think.
- Never make protocol a test of others; the person who polices seating and address teaches the room that he is great at trifles and nothing larger.
Use this when
- Use this as a check on yourself in status-conscious settings, where the pull toward punctiliousness is strongest.
- Use it reading others; the protocol-obsessed senior has shown you exactly how fragile his standing feels to him.
Ignore this when
- Don't swing into deliberate rudeness; despising etiquette is the same small-souledness in reverse (maxim 118 keeps courtesy).
- Don't ignore the ceremony that genuinely honours people or institutions; some forms carry real meaning and dropping them is its own error.
A picture of it
Two department heads attend the same formal function. One spends the evening managing protocol, visibly bothered by a seating slip, correcting a junior's form of address, treating each small breach as a wound to his dignity. The other observes the courtesies that matter, lets the rest go, and is remembered as gracious and at ease. The room reads both accurately: the first has told everyone how fragile his standing feels to him, the second has shown that his does not need defending. Real dignity, it turns out, is the one that can survive a wrong seat.
Use the forms that honour people, drop the ones that only feed vanity. Greatness is never great at trifles.