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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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Judith Martin
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: September 13
Economist
Journalist
Washington
District of Columbia
Use
Emotion
Variety
Laudable
Used
Virtue
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Carries
Ideas
Moral
Emotions
Carrie
Great
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Express
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Like
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Tool
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Evil
Ignorance
Manners
Language
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Code

More quotes by Judith Martin

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Allowing an unimportant mistake to pass without comment is a wonderful social grace.
Judith Martin
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Parents should conduct their arguments in quiet, respectful tones, but in a foreign language. You'd be surprised what an inducement that is to the education of children.
Judith Martin
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Nowadays people consider it a disgrace to admit that they are not stressed.
Judith Martin
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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.
Judith Martin
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Nowadays, you form your beliefs to fit your behavior, not the other way around.
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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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.
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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[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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A young lady is a female child who has just done something dreadful.
Judith Martin
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Only a person who considers himself too good for you is good enough.
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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One of the big no-nos in cyberspace is that you do not go into a social activity, a chat group or something like that, and start advertising or selling things. This etiquette rule is an attempt to separate one's social life, which should be pure enjoyment and relaxation, from the pressures of work.
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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Dishonesty is not the only alternative to honesty. There is also the highly underrated virtue of shutting up.
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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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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Smart people duck when they hear the dread announcement 'I'm going to be perfectly honest with you.
Judith Martin
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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.
Judith Martin
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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