Life & Wisdom Quote by Nubar Gulbenkian

A dinner party is supposed to be a little theater of intimacy and status; Nubar Gulbenkian flips it into a one-man show with paid supporting cast. “The best number... is two” borrows the language of etiquette and immediately sabotages it. You expect a couple, or at least a small, tasteful circle. Instead you get “myself and a dam’ good head waiter,” a punch line that turns sociability into logistics. The guest list isn’t people you love or admire; it’s service you can trust.

The intent reads as aristocratic misanthropy sharpened into a joke: company is work, conversation is risk, and other diners are liabilities. Gulbenkian’s “dam’” (a clipped, impatient oath) performs blasé worldliness; he’s too refined to swear properly, too certain of his position to bother being polite. The head waiter stands in for the ideal audience: attentive, discreet, professionally agreeable, never stealing the spotlight, never contradicting you. It’s solitude with the comforting illusion of being catered to.

Context matters: this is the voice of wealth accustomed to restaurants and staff, where the head waiter is gatekeeper, confidant, and problem-solver. The line skewers the social ritual of the dinner party by revealing its hidden infrastructure: the meal only “works” when someone else is managing the chaos. Gulbenkian’s wit isn’t just anti-social; it’s a sly admission that what the elite often crave isn’t community, but control.