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Try not to annoy your relatives unnecessarily.

Judith Martin

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Judith Martin
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: September 13
Economist
Journalist
Washington
District of Columbia
Trying
Unnecessarily
Annoy
Relatives
Annoying
Women

More quotes by Judith Martin

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people, in forming their opinions of others, are usually lazy enough to go by whatever is most obvious or whatever chance remark they happen to hear. So the best policy is to dictate to others the opinion you want them to have of you.
Judith Martin
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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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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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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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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.
Judith Martin
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Honesty has come to mean the privilege of insulting you to your face without expecting redress.
Judith Martin
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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.
Judith Martin
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When you consider how epidemic boredom is in our time, you have to concede that entertaining is a healing art.
Judith Martin
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The most conventional statements are both true and welcome.
Judith Martin
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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.
Judith Martin
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Allowing an unimportant mistake to pass without comment is a wonderful social grace.
Judith Martin
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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.
Judith Martin
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If written directions alone would suffice, libraries wouldn't need to have the rest of the universities attached.
Judith Martin
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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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Parents should conduct their arguments in quiet, respectful tones, but in a foreign language. You'd be surprised what an inducement that is to the education of children.
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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The way one was brought up isn't an excuse for rude behavior.
Judith Martin
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It's far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without your help.
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.
Judith Martin
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Society cannot exist without etiquette ... It never has, and until our own century, everybody knew that.
Judith Martin