Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
The dinner table is the center for the teaching and practicing not just of table manners but of conversation, consideration, tolerance, family feeling, and just about all the other accomplishments of polite society except the minuet.
Judith Martin
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
Judith Martin
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: September 13
Economist
Journalist
Washington
District of Columbia
Food
Table
Accomplishments
Feeling
Center
Practicing
Society
Tables
Polite
Family
Cooking
Culinary
Feelings
Dinner
Accomplishment
Except
Consideration
Conversation
Manners
Teaching
Tolerance
More quotes by Judith Martin
Try not to annoy your relatives unnecessarily.
Judith Martin
people, in forming their opinions of others, are usually lazy enough to go by whatever is most obvious or whatever chance remark they happen to hear. So the best policy is to dictate to others the opinion you want them to have of you.
Judith Martin
Like language, a code of manners can be used with more or less skill, for laudable or for evil purposes, to express a great variety of ideas and emotions. In itself, it carries no moral value, but ignorance in use of this tool is not a sign of virtue.
Judith Martin
The simple idea that everyone needs a reasonable amount of challenging work in his or her life, and also a personal life, complete with noncompetitive leisure, has never really taken hold.
Judith Martin
You do not have to do everything disagreeable that you have a right to do
Judith Martin
Generosity and gratitude are inseparably linked.
Judith Martin
We already know that anonymous letters are despicable. In etiquette, as well as in law, hiring a hit man to do the job does not relieve you of responsibility.
Judith Martin
You should resolve not to seek public approval of your private business, when you are not also prepared to accept public disapproval.
Judith Martin
many of the guests will eventually leave the table to watch football on television, which would be a rudeness at any other occasion but is a relief at Thanksgiving and probably the only way to get those people to budge.
Judith Martin
Indeed, Miss Manners has come to believe that the basic political division in this country is not between liberals and conservatives but between those who believe that they should have a say in the love lives of strangers and those who do not.
Judith Martin
A young lady is a female child who has just done something dreadful.
Judith Martin
Only a person who considers himself too good for you is good enough.
Judith Martin
We are born charming fresh and spontaneous and must be civilized before we are fit to participate in society.
Judith Martin
What we have come to, through a combination of popular psychology and expanding technology, is a presumption that all our thoughts and feelings are worth uttering.
Judith Martin
Learn graceful ways of saying no and of pointing out that this pressure to do something is not in line with most people's wishes.
Judith Martin
Honesty is a virtue, but not the only one. If you're in a courtroom you need the whole truth and nothing but the truth in the living room, sometimes you need anything but. Often.
Judith Martin
When politeness is used to show up other people, it is reclassified as rudeness. Thus it is technically impossible to be too polite.
Judith Martin
We are all entitled to our little harmless habits, but we are not entitled to demand approval for them.
Judith Martin
I make a distinction between manners and etiquette - manners as the principles, which are eternal and universal, etiquette as the particular rules which are arbitrary and different in different times, different situations, different cultures.
Judith Martin
The stress of making small talk with in-laws is called being part of a family.
Judith Martin