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many of the guests will eventually leave the table to watch football on television, which would be a rudeness at any other occasion but is a relief at Thanksgiving and probably the only way to get those people to budge.

Judith Martin

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Judith Martin
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: September 13
Economist
Journalist
Washington
District of Columbia
Leave
Relief
Television
Occasions
Probably
Table
Many
Eventually
Budge
Way
Tables
Rudeness
Would
Watches
Thanksgiving
People
Watch
Occasion
Football
Guests

More quotes by Judith Martin

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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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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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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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People will say, 'Seventy isn't old, it's middle-aged,' and I think, middle of what - 140?
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We are all entitled to our little harmless habits, but we are not entitled to demand approval for them.
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Try not to annoy your relatives unnecessarily.
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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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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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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.
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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 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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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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It is said that dispensing advice is easy. What is difficult is getting anyone to listen to it.
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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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Society cannot exist without etiquette ... It never has, and until our own century, everybody knew that.
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A wedding invitation is sent by people who have been saying, Do we have to ask them? to people whose first response is, How much do you think we have to spend on them?
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Meanwhile, the empty forms of social behavior survive inappropriately in business situations. We all know that when a business sends its customers 'friendly reminders,' it really means business.
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Hypocrisy is not generally a social sin, but a virtue.
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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 do not have to do everything disagreeable that you have a right to do
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