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Nowadays, you form your beliefs to fit your behavior, not the other way around.

Judith Martin

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Judith Martin
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: September 13
Economist
Journalist
Washington
District of Columbia
Fit
Behavior
Belief
Form
Around
Way
Nowadays
Beliefs

More quotes by 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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Allowing an unimportant mistake to pass without comment is a wonderful social grace.
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One should not be assigned one's identity in society by the job slot one happens to fill. If we truly believe in the dignity of labor, any task can be performed with equal pride because none can demean the basic dignity of a human being.
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Screening telephone calls with a receptionist or the humbler answering machine is not a dishonorable thing to do. The warmest people in the world still need uninterrupted time to attend to their lives and should not be outwitted if they have made it obvious that they are not always available upon summons.
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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.
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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.
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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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Most people who work at home find they do not have the benefit of receptionists who serve as personal guards
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Society cannot exist without etiquette ... It never has, and until our own century, everybody knew that.
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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.
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There are three social classes in America: upper middle class, middle class, and lower middle class.
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I make a distinction between manners and etiquette - manners as the principles, which are eternal and universal, etiquette as the particular rules which are arbitrary and different in different times, different situations, different cultures.
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Smart people duck when they hear the dread announcement 'I'm going to be perfectly honest with you.
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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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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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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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When a society abandons its ideals just because most people can't live up to them, behavior gets very ugly indeed.
Judith Martin
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Nobody believes that the man who says, 'Look, lady, you wanted equality,' to explain why he won't give up his seat to a pregnant woman carrying three grocery bags, a briefcase, and a toddler is seized with the symbolism of idealism.
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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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Washington knows that it is not safe to kick people who are down until you find out what their next stop will be.
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