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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.

Judith Martin

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Judith Martin
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: September 13
Economist
Journalist
Washington
District of Columbia
Technology
Uttering
Feelings
Presumption
Women
Expanding
Come
Psychology
Combination
Popular
Thoughts
Worth

More quotes by Judith Martin

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We already know that anonymous letters are despicable. In etiquette, as well as in law, hiring a hit man to do the job does not relieve you of responsibility.
Judith Martin
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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
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it's no longer socially acceptable to make bigoted statements and racist remarks. Some people are having an awful time with that: 'I didn't know anybody would be offended!' Well, where have you been? I remember when people got away with it and they don't anymore. That's fabulous.
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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Dishonesty is not the only alternative to honesty. There is also the highly underrated virtue of shutting up.
Judith Martin
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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.
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 etiquette question that troubles so many fastidious people New Year's Day is: How am I ever going to face those people again?
Judith Martin
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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.
Judith Martin
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We are all entitled to our little harmless habits, but we are not entitled to demand approval for them.
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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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
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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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Learn graceful ways of saying no and of pointing out that this pressure to do something is not in line with most people's wishes.
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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The invention of the teenager was a mistake. Once you identify a period of life in which people get to stay out late but don't have to pay taxes - naturally, no one wants to live any other way.
Judith Martin
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You think death is any better an excuse for desertion than any other?
Judith Martin
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A lot of men got upset at the feminist movement because they had all the toys and we wanted some.
Judith Martin
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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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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