Quote

The etiquette of intimacy is very different from the etiquette of formality, but manners are not just something to show off to the outside world. If you offend the head waiter, you can always go to another restaurant. If you offend the person you live with, it's very cumbersome to switch to a different family.

Judith Martin

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Judith Martin
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: September 13
Economist
Journalist
Washington
District of Columbia
Live
Outside
Waiter
Different
Head
Offend
Something
Show
Etiquette
Always
Family
Switch
World
Shows
Restaurant
Another
Intimacy
Persons
Restaurants
Cumbersome
Person
Manners
Formality

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Being listened to should be sufficiently gratifying in itself, whether or not the advice is followed.
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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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Nowadays people consider it a disgrace to admit that they are not stressed.
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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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If written directions alone would suffice, libraries wouldn't need to have the rest of the universities attached.
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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 way one was brought up isn't an excuse for rude behavior.
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Try not to annoy your relatives unnecessarily.
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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.
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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.
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many of the guests will eventually leave the table to watch football on television, which would be a rudeness at any other occasion but is a relief at Thanksgiving and probably the only way to get those people to budge.
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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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Nowadays, you form your beliefs to fit your behavior, not the other way around.
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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.
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