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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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Judith Martin
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: September 13
Economist
Journalist
Washington
District of Columbia
Effect
Owes
Private
Skillful
Effects
Pleasing
Public
Deception
Audience
Cheer
Upon
Performance
Even
False
Performances
More quotes by Judith Martin
The stress of making small talk with in-laws is called being part of a family.
Judith Martin
Meanwhile, the empty forms of social behavior survive inappropriately in business situations. We all know that when a business sends its customers 'friendly reminders,' it really means business.
Judith Martin
A young lady is a female child who has just done something dreadful.
Judith Martin
Chaperons, even in their days of glory, were almost never able to enforce morality what they did was to force immorality to be discreet. This is no small contribution.
Judith Martin
When a society abandons its ideals just because most people can't live up to them, behavior gets very ugly indeed.
Judith Martin
It doesn't matter whether the bride or the bridegroom writes the letters of thanks for wedding presents provided that these go out immediately after the arrival of each present and are not in the handwriting of the bride's mother.
Judith Martin
We are born charming fresh and spontaneous and must be civilized before we are fit to participate in society.
Judith Martin
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
Only a person who considers himself too good for you is good enough.
Judith Martin
Allowing an unimportant mistake to pass without comment is a wonderful social grace.
Judith Martin
Smart people duck when they hear the dread announcement 'I'm going to be perfectly honest with you.
Judith Martin
[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.
Judith Martin
I have always believed that the key to a happy marriage was the ability to say with a straight face, 'Why, I don't know what you're worrying about. I thought you were very funny last night and I'm sure everybody else did, too.
Judith Martin
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
We are all entitled to our little harmless habits, but we are not entitled to demand approval for them.
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
Being listened to should be sufficiently gratifying in itself, whether or not the advice is followed.
Judith Martin
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
The whole country wants civility. Why don't we have it? It doesn't cost anything. No federal funding, no legislation is involved. One answer is the unwillingness to restrain oneself. Everybody wants other people to be polite to them, but they want the freedom of not having to be polite to others.
Judith Martin
Nobody believes that the man who says, 'Look, lady, you wanted equality,' to explain why he won't give up his seat to a pregnant woman carrying three grocery bags, a briefcase, and a toddler is seized with the symbolism of idealism.
Judith Martin