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I have always believed that the key to a happy marriage was the ability to say with a straight face, 'Why, I don't know what you're worrying about. I thought you were very funny last night and I'm sure everybody else did, too.

Judith Martin

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Judith Martin
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: September 13
Economist
Journalist
Washington
District of Columbia
Night
Sure
Else
Face
Worrying
Thought
Ability
Believed
Always
Lasts
Straight
Last
Keys
Faces
Marriage
Happy
Worry
Funny
Everybody

More quotes by Judith Martin

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We are born charming fresh and spontaneous and must be civilized before we are fit to participate in society.
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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.
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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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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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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.
Judith Martin
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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.
Judith Martin
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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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Only a person who considers himself too good for you is good enough.
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Allowing an unimportant mistake to pass without comment is a wonderful social grace.
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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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Nowadays, you form your beliefs to fit your behavior, not the other way around.
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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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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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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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.
Judith Martin
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A small wedding is not necessarily one to which very few people are invited. It is one to which the person you are addressing is not invited.
Judith Martin
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The invention of the teenager was a mistake. Once you identify a period of life in which people get to stay out late but don't have to pay taxes - naturally, no one wants to live any other way.
Judith Martin
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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.
Judith Martin
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We have the reverse of the Puritan work ethic in America now. No one ever becomes a star by plugging along year after year. What is needed is flair, talent, 'an eye,' contacts, charisma, and, most of all, naturalness.
Judith Martin