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When politeness is used to show up other people, it is reclassified as rudeness. Thus it is technically impossible to be too polite.

Judith Martin

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Judith Martin
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: September 13
Economist
Journalist
Washington
District of Columbia
Politeness
Polite
Thus
Impossible
Show
Shows
Used
Rudeness
People
Technically

More quotes by Judith Martin

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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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We are born charming fresh and spontaneous and must be civilized before we are fit to participate in society.
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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?
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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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Allowing an unimportant mistake to pass without comment is a wonderful social grace.
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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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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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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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A young lady is a female child who has just done something dreadful.
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Honesty has come to mean the privilege of insulting you to your face without expecting redress.
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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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People will say, 'Seventy isn't old, it's middle-aged,' and I think, middle of what - 140?
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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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What you have when everyone wears the same playclothes for all occasions, is addressed by nickname, expected to participate in Show And Tell, and bullied out of any desire form privacy, is not democracy it is kindergarten.
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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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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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Society cannot exist without etiquette ... It never has, and until our own century, everybody knew that.
Judith Martin
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You think death is any better an excuse for desertion than any other?
Judith Martin
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The way one was brought up isn't an excuse for rude behavior.
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