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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
Ever
Fastidious
Many
Etiquette
Going
Troubles
Years
Question
People
Trouble
Year
Face
Faces

More quotes by 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.
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A general rule of etiquette is that one apologizes for the unfortunate occurrence, but the unthinkable is unmentionable.
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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.
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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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Nowadays, you form your beliefs to fit your behavior, not the other way around.
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Being listened to should be sufficiently gratifying in itself, whether or not the advice is followed.
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Honesty is a virtue, but not the only one. If you're in a courtroom you need the whole truth and nothing but the truth in the living room, sometimes you need anything but. Often.
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Nowadays people consider it a disgrace to admit that they are not stressed.
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The way one was brought up isn't an excuse for rude behavior.
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You should resolve not to seek public approval of your private business, when you are not also prepared to accept public disapproval.
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I make a distinction between manners and etiquette - manners as the principles, which are eternal and universal, etiquette as the particular rules which are arbitrary and different in different times, different situations, different cultures.
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Only a person who considers himself too good for you is good enough.
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A young lady is a female child who has just done something dreadful.
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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.
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Etiquette enables you to resolve conflict without just trading insults. Without etiquette, the irritations in modern life are so abrasive that you see people turning to the law to regulate everyday behavior. This frightens me it's a major inroad on our basic freedoms.
Judith Martin
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Screening telephone calls with a receptionist or the humbler answering machine is not a dishonorable thing to do. The warmest people in the world still need uninterrupted time to attend to their lives and should not be outwitted if they have made it obvious that they are not always available upon summons.
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There are three social classes in America: upper middle class, middle class, and lower middle class.
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.
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.
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