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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

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Judith Martin
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: September 13
Economist
Journalist
Washington
District of Columbia
Accomplishments
Food
Table
Practicing
Feeling
Center
Society
Tables
Polite
Family
Cooking
Culinary
Feelings
Dinner
Accomplishment
Except
Consideration
Conversation
Manners
Teaching
Tolerance

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Etiquette enables you to resolve conflict without just trading insults. Without etiquette, the irritations in modern life are so abrasive that you see people turning to the law to regulate everyday behavior. This frightens me it's a major inroad on our basic freedoms.
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The etiquette business has its emergencies, heaven knows, but it is in the nature of etiquette emergencies that once one realizes what one has done, it is too late. One might as well get a good night's sleep and send flowers with an apology in the morning.
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A small wedding is not necessarily one to which very few people are invited. It is one to which the person you are addressing is not invited.
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Generosity and gratitude are inseparably linked.
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Most people who work at home find they do not have the benefit of receptionists who serve as personal guards
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[after the death of a loved one] It is when there is nothing more to be done that the reality of the loss often hits with full force.
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You should resolve not to seek public approval of your private business, when you are not also prepared to accept public disapproval.
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Allowing an unimportant mistake to pass without a comment is a wonderful social grace ... Children who have the habit of constantly correcting should be stopped before they grow up to drive spouses and everyone else crazy by interrupting stories to say, 'No, dear -- it was Tuesday, not Wednesday.
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A young lady is a female child who has just done something dreadful.
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Only a person who considers himself too good for you is good enough.
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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.
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When a society abandons its ideals just because most people can't live up to them, behavior gets very ugly indeed.
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What restricts the use of the word 'lady' among the courteous is that it is intended to set a woman apart from ordinary humanity, and in the working world that is not a help, as women have discovered in many bitter ways.
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One of the big no-nos in cyberspace is that you do not go into a social activity, a chat group or something like that, and start advertising or selling things. This etiquette rule is an attempt to separate one's social life, which should be pure enjoyment and relaxation, from the pressures of work.
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The challenge of manners is not so much to be nice to someone whose favor and/or person you covet (although more people need to be reminded of that necessity than one would suppose) as to be exposed to the bad manners of others without imitating them.
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Allowing an unimportant mistake to pass without comment is a wonderful social grace.
Judith Martin
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We are all entitled to our little harmless habits, but we are not entitled to demand approval for them.
Judith Martin
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It is one of Miss Manners's great discoveries that one needn't contradict others in order to set them straight.
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The way one was brought up isn't an excuse for rude behavior.
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We have the reverse of the Puritan work ethic in America now. No one ever becomes a star by plugging along year after year. What is needed is flair, talent, 'an eye,' contacts, charisma, and, most of all, naturalness.
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