Quote

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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Judith Martin
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: September 13
Economist
Journalist
Washington
District of Columbia
Think
Response
Thinking
Whose
People
Spend
Saying
Asks
Invitation
Firsts
Invitations
First
Wedding
Much
Sent

More quotes by 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.
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The etiquette business has its emergencies, heaven knows, but it is in the nature of etiquette emergencies that once one realizes what one has done, it is too late. One might as well get a good night's sleep and send flowers with an apology in the morning.
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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.
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Hypocrisy is not generally a social sin, but a virtue.
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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.
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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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You do not have to do everything disagreeable that you have a right to do
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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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Visiting the sick is supposed to exhibit such great virtue that there are some people determined to do it whether the sick like it or not. ... All visitors everywhere are supposed to make plans to depart if they observe their hosts visibly wilting or in pain, but this is especially true at hospitals.
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The simple idea that everyone needs a reasonable amount of challenging work in his or her life, and also a personal life, complete with noncompetitive leisure, has never really taken hold.
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People will say, 'Seventy isn't old, it's middle-aged,' and I think, middle of what - 140?
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When politeness is used to show up other people, it is reclassified as rudeness. Thus it is technically impossible to be too polite.
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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.
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Only a person who considers himself too good for you is good enough.
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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.
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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
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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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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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A general rule of etiquette is that one apologizes for the unfortunate occurrence, but the unthinkable is unmentionable.
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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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