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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
Form
Around
Way
Nowadays
Beliefs
Fit
Behavior
Belief

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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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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A general rule of etiquette is that one apologizes for the unfortunate occurrence, but the unthinkable is unmentionable.
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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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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The only way to enjoy the fun of catching people behaving disgustingly is to have children. One has to keep having them, however, because it is incorrect to correct grown people, even if you have grown them yourself.
Judith Martin
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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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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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. . . 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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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.
Judith Martin
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Hypocrisy is not generally a social sin, but a virtue.
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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[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.
Judith Martin
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Indeed, Miss Manners has come to believe that the basic political division in this country is not between liberals and conservatives but between those who believe that they should have a say in the love lives of strangers and those who do not.
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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It is wrong to wear diamonds before luncheon, except on one’s marriage rings. Before, after, and during breakfast, luncheon and dinner, it is vulgar to wear a mixture of colored precious stones. It is always a comfort to know that so many things one can’t afford to do anyway are vulgar.
Judith Martin
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What restricts the use of the word 'lady' among the courteous is that it is intended to set a woman apart from ordinary humanity, and in the working world that is not a help, as women have discovered in many bitter ways.
Judith Martin
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The most conventional statements are both true and welcome.
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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Smart people duck when they hear the dread announcement 'I'm going to be perfectly honest with you.
Judith Martin