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people, in forming their opinions of others, are usually lazy enough to go by whatever is most obvious or whatever chance remark they happen to hear. So the best policy is to dictate to others the opinion you want them to have of you.

Judith Martin

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Judith Martin
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: September 13
Economist
Journalist
Washington
District of Columbia
People
Happen
Forming
Opinion
Remarks
Chance
Lazy
Whatever
Opinions
Others
Obvious
Happens
Usually
Best
Policy
Remark
Enough
Hear
Dictate

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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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People will say, 'Seventy isn't old, it's middle-aged,' and I think, middle of what - 140?
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Try not to annoy your relatives unnecessarily.
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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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If written directions alone would suffice, libraries wouldn't need to have the rest of the universities attached.
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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.
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There are three social classes in America: upper middle class, middle class, and lower middle class.
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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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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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In its natural state, the child tells the literal truth because it is too naive to think of anything else. Blurting out the complete truth is considered adorable in the young, right smack up to the moment that the child says, 'Mommy, is this the fat lady you can't stand?
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Nowadays people consider it a disgrace to admit that they are not stressed.
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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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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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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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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.
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Smart people duck when they hear the dread announcement 'I'm going to be perfectly honest with you.
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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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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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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.
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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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