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The stress of making small talk with in-laws is called being part of a family.

Judith Martin

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Judith Martin
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: September 13
Economist
Journalist
Washington
District of Columbia
Law
Talk
Family
Making
Part
Stress
Women
Laws
Called
Small

More quotes by Judith Martin

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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.
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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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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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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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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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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 pejorative term political correctness was adapted to express disapproval of the enlargement of etiquette to cover all people, in spite of this being a principle to which all Americans claim to subscribe.
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?
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Society cannot exist without etiquette ... It never has, and until our own century, everybody knew that.
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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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Honesty has come to mean the privilege of insulting you to your face without expecting redress.
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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.
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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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A young lady is a female child who has just done something dreadful.
Judith Martin
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. . . women were brought up to have only one set of manners. A woman was either a lady or she wasn't, and we all know what the latter meant. Not even momentary lapses were allowed there is no female equivalent of the boys-will-be-boys concept.
Judith Martin
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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.
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Smart people duck when they hear the dread announcement 'I'm going to be perfectly honest with you.
Judith Martin
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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
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Try not to annoy your relatives unnecessarily.
Judith Martin
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Only a person who considers himself too good for you is good enough.
Judith Martin