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There are three social classes in America: upper middle class, middle class, and lower middle class.

Judith Martin

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Judith Martin
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: September 13
Economist
Journalist
Washington
District of Columbia
Social
Three
America
Women
Upper
Classes
Lower
Middle
Class

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Perhaps the greatest rudenesses of our time come not from the callousness of strangers, but from the solicitousness of intimates who believe that their frank criticisms are always welcome, and who feel free to be themselves with those they love, which turns out to mean being their worst selves, while saving their best behavior for strangers.
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Dishonesty is not the only alternative to honesty. There is also the highly underrated virtue of shutting up.
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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.
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The more skillful the performance of false cheer, the more pleasing the effect is upon one's public and on that private audience to whom one owes even more.
Judith Martin
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People think, mistakenly, that etiquette means you have to suppress your differences. On the contray, etiquette is what enables you to deal with them it gives you a set of rules.
Judith Martin
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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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Nowadays people consider it a disgrace to admit that they are not stressed.
Judith Martin
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The truly essential bargain between host and guest requires the guest only to respond promptly, show up on time, socialize with other guests, thank the host, write additional thanks and reciprocate. You needn't bring anything.
Judith Martin
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When politeness is used to show up other people, it is reclassified as rudeness. Thus it is technically impossible to be too polite.
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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.
Judith Martin
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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.
Judith Martin
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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
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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.
Judith Martin
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A young lady is a female child who has just done something dreadful.
Judith Martin
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A general rule of etiquette is that one apologizes for the unfortunate occurrence, but the unthinkable is unmentionable.
Judith Martin
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We are born charming fresh and spontaneous and must be civilized before we are fit to participate in society.
Judith Martin
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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
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The only way to enjoy the fun of catching people behaving disgustingly is to have children. One has to keep having them, however, because it is incorrect to correct grown people, even if you have grown them yourself.
Judith Martin
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Nowadays, you form your beliefs to fit your behavior, not the other way around.
Judith Martin
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A wedding invitation is sent by people who have been saying, Do we have to ask them? to people whose first response is, How much do you think we have to spend on them?
Judith Martin