Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

More quotes by Judith Martin

Image
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
Image
Nowadays people consider it a disgrace to admit that they are not stressed.
Judith Martin
Image
. . . 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.
Judith Martin
Image
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.
Judith Martin
Image
When you consider how epidemic boredom is in our time, you have to concede that entertaining is a healing art.
Judith Martin
Image
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
Image
Nowadays, you form your beliefs to fit your behavior, not the other way around.
Judith Martin
Image
There are three social classes in America: upper middle class, middle class, and lower middle class.
Judith Martin
Image
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
Image
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.
Judith Martin
Image
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
Image
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
Image
If written directions alone would suffice, libraries wouldn't need to have the rest of the universities attached.
Judith Martin
Image
People will say, 'Seventy isn't old, it's middle-aged,' and I think, middle of what - 140?
Judith Martin
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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.
Judith Martin
Image
Being listened to should be sufficiently gratifying in itself, whether or not the advice is followed.
Judith Martin
Image
The most conventional statements are both true and welcome.
Judith Martin
Image
The stress of making small talk with in-laws is called being part of a family.
Judith Martin