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Being listened to should be sufficiently gratifying in itself, whether or not the advice is followed.

Judith Martin

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Judith Martin
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: September 13
Economist
Journalist
Washington
District of Columbia
Whether
Women
Gratifying
Sufficiently
Listened
Followed
Advice

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You do not have to do everything disagreeable that you have a right to do
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There are three social classes in America: upper middle class, middle class, and lower middle class.
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A lot of men got upset at the feminist movement because they had all the toys and we wanted some.
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The etiquette question that troubles so many fastidious people New Year's Day is: How am I ever going to face those people again?
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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.
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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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Generosity and gratitude are inseparably linked.
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We are born charming fresh and spontaneous and must be civilized before we are fit to participate in society.
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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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For email, the old postcard rule applies. Nobody else is supposed to read your postcards, but you'd be a fool if you wrote anything private on one.
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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.
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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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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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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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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.
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Honesty has come to mean the privilege of insulting you to your face without expecting redress.
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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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It is said that dispensing advice is easy. What is difficult is getting anyone to listen to it.
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If written directions alone would suffice, libraries wouldn't need to have the rest of the universities attached.
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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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