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Meanwhile, the empty forms of social behavior survive inappropriately in business situations. We all know that when a business sends its customers 'friendly reminders,' it really means business.

Judith Martin

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Judith Martin
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: September 13
Economist
Journalist
Washington
District of Columbia
Form
Forms
Meanwhile
Mean
Letters
Reminders
Really
Empty
Sends
Behavior
Situations
Situation
Friendly
Means
Survive
Business
Customers
Social
Debt
Inappropriately

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What you have when everyone wears the same playclothes for all occasions, is addressed by nickname, expected to participate in Show And Tell, and bullied out of any desire form privacy, is not democracy it is kindergarten.
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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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When you consider how epidemic boredom is in our time, you have to concede that entertaining is a healing art.
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You do not have to do everything disagreeable that you have a right to do
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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.
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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.
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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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A lot of men got upset at the feminist movement because they had all the toys and we wanted some.
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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 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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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.
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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.
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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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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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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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The most conventional statements are both true and welcome.
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