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The etiquette question that troubles so many fastidious people New Year's Day is: How am I ever going to face those people again?

Judith Martin

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Judith Martin
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: September 13
Economist
Journalist
Washington
District of Columbia
Face
Faces
Ever
Fastidious
Many
Etiquette
Going
Troubles
Years
Question
People
Trouble
Year

More quotes by 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.
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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.
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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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Try not to annoy your relatives unnecessarily.
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Being listened to should be sufficiently gratifying in itself, whether or not the advice is followed.
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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.
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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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Hypocrisy is not generally a social sin, but a virtue.
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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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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.
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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.
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The etiquette business has its emergencies, heaven knows, but it is in the nature of etiquette emergencies that once one realizes what one has done, it is too late. One might as well get a good night's sleep and send flowers with an apology in the morning.
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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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People will say, 'Seventy isn't old, it's middle-aged,' and I think, middle of what - 140?
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Nobody believes that the man who says, 'Look, lady, you wanted equality,' to explain why he won't give up his seat to a pregnant woman carrying three grocery bags, a briefcase, and a toddler is seized with the symbolism of idealism.
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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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Generosity and gratitude are inseparably linked.
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It is said that dispensing advice is easy. What is difficult is getting anyone to listen to it.
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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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Nowadays, you form your beliefs to fit your behavior, not the other way around.
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