Top 100 Judith Martin Quotes
#1. Freedom without rules doesn't work. And communities do not work unless they are regulated by etiquette.
Judith Martin
#3. If it's against state law, it's generally considered a breach of Etiquette.
Judith Martin
#4. The stress of making small talk with in-laws is called being part of a family.
Judith Martin
#5. My children did not go through a stage of being rude to their parents. I'm sorry if that sounds incredible.
Judith Martin
#6. 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
#7. The most conventional statements are both true and welcome.
Judith Martin
#8. When you consider how epidemic boredom is in our time, you have to concede that entertaining is a healing art.
Judith Martin
#9. People will say, 'Seventy isn't old, it's middle-aged,' and I think, middle of what - 140?
Judith Martin
#10. There is nothing like a good friend to help you out when you are not in trouble.
Judith Martin
#11. Parents should conduct their arguments in quiet, respectful tones, but in a foreign language. You'd be surprised what an inducement that is to the education of children.
Judith Martin
#12. What restricts the use of the word 'lady' among the courteous is that it is intended to set a woman apart from ordinary humanity, and in the working world that is not a help, as women have discovered in many bitter ways.
Judith Martin
#13. Why bring children into a world where no one writes letters?
Judith Martin
#14. 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?
Judith Martin
#15. When you're in love, you put up with things that, when you're out of love you cite.
Judith Martin
#16. Society cannot exist without etiquette ... It never has, and until our own century, everybody knew that.
Judith Martin
#17. You glance at an e-mail. You give more attention to a real letter.
Judith Martin
#18. The underlying principles of manners- respect, fairness, and congeniality.
Judith Martin
#19. 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
#20. Nowadays people consider it a disgrace to admit that they are not stressed.
Judith Martin
#21. Presents are symbolic. When you give them in your personal life, they should show that you are paying attention to the person to whom you're giving them.
Judith Martin
#22. The language of clothing is high symbolism and we all, in moments where we need to know this, realize it.
Judith Martin
#23. Hypocrisy is not generally a social sin, but a virtue.
Judith Martin
#24. The idea that people can behave naturally, without resorting to an artificial code tacitly agreed upon by their society, is as silly as the idea that they can communicate by a spoken language without commonly accepted semantic and grammatical rules.
Judith Martin
#25. Eating grapes with a knife and fork is not what one would call refined. It is what one would call ludicrous.
Judith Martin
#27. Smart people duck when they hear the dread announcement 'I'm going to be perfectly honest with you.
Judith Martin
#28. Miss Manners herself, while never rude, is given to pulling a fast pinch in the way of a handshake on those who believe in kissing on, not even the first date, but the first sighting.
Judith Martin
#29. Try not to annoy your relatives unnecessarily.
Judith Martin
#30. Yes, etiquette is hypocritical. Yes, it does inhibit children - if you're lucky. But the idea that it's elitist and irrelevant is like saying language is elitist and irrelevant.
Judith Martin
#31. 'Honesty' in social life is often used as a cover for rudeness. But there is quite a difference between being candid in what you're talking about, and people voicing their insulting opinions under the name of honesty.
Judith Martin
#32. Etiquette does not render you defenseless. If it did, even I wouldn't subscribe to it. But rudeness in retaliation for rudeness just doubles the amount of rudeness in the world.
Judith Martin
#33. When virtues are pointed out first, flaws seem less insurmountable.
Judith Martin
#34. 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.
Judith Martin
#35. Fairness does not consist so much of everybody's doing the same thing, but of everybody's being willing to do something that others don't want to do.
Judith Martin
#36. A general rule of etiquette is that one apologizes for the unfortunate occurrence, but the unthinkable is unmentionable.
Judith Martin
#37. You think death is any better an excuse for desertion than any other?
Judith Martin
#38. There are three social classes in America: upper middle class, middle class, and lower middle class.
Judith Martin
#39. A young lady is a female child who has just done something dreadful.
Judith Martin
#40. Many people mistakenly think a new technology cancels out an old one.
Judith Martin
#41. Allowing an unimportant mistake to pass without a comment is a wonderful social grace ... Children who have the habit of constantly correcting should be stopped before they grow up to drive spouses and everyone else crazy by interrupting stories to say, 'No, dear
it was Tuesday, not Wednesday.
Judith Martin
#42. We have the reverse of the Puritan work ethic in America now. No one ever becomes a star by plugging along year after year. What is needed is flair, talent, 'an eye,' contacts, charisma, and, most of all, naturalness.
Judith Martin
#43. It doesn't matter whether the bride or the bridegroom writes the letters of thanks for wedding presents provided that these go out immediately after the arrival of each present and are not in the handwriting of the bride's mother.
Judith Martin
#44. [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.
Judith Martin
#45. 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
#46. Chaperons, even in their days of glory, were almost never able to enforce morality; what they did was to force immorality to be discreet. This is no small contribution.
Judith Martin
#47. You don't want to look too chic at a Washington party or people will think you don't have a job worth losing.
Judith Martin
#48. The way one was brought up isn't an excuse for rude behavior.
Judith Martin
#49. She only maintains that it is possible, under some circumstances, for a lady to murder her husband; but that a woman who wears ankle-strap shoes and smokes on the street corner, though she may be a joy to all who know her and have devoted her life to charity, could never qualify as a lady.
Judith Martin
#50. A lot of men got upset at the feminist movement because they had all the toys and we wanted some.
Judith Martin
#51. 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
#52. There are always proper responses, even to rude questions.
Judith Martin
#53. You do not have to do everything disagreeable that you have a right to do.
Judith Martin
#54. Etiquette is all human social behavior. If you're a hermit on a mountain, you don't have to worry about etiquette; if somebody comes up the mountain, then you've got a problem. It matters because we want to live in reasonably harmonious communities.
Judith Martin
#55. People who put slipcovers, doilies, plastic protectors, and cellophane on everything good that they own rarely live to see an occasion so good that all these covers are removed.
Judith Martin
#56. We are born charming, fresh and spontaneous and must be civilized before we are fit to participate in society.
Judith Martin
#57. 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
#58. Most people who work at home find they do not have the benefit of receptionists who serve as personal guards.
Judith Martin
#59. The challenge of manners is not so much to be nice to someone whose favor and/or person you covet (although more people need to be reminded of that necessity than one would suppose) as to be exposed to the bad manners of others without imitating them.
Judith Martin
#60. 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
#61. The family dinner table is the cornerstone of civilization and those who 'graze' from refrigerators or in front of the television sets are doomed to remain in a state of savagery.
Judith Martin
#62. One of the big no-nos in cyberspace is that you do not go into a social activity, a chat group or something like that, and start advertising or selling things. This etiquette rule is an attempt to separate one's social life, which should be pure enjoyment and relaxation, from the pressures of work.
Judith Martin
#64. The truly essential bargain between host and guest requires the guest only to respond promptly, show up on time, socialize with other guests, thank the host, write additional thanks and reciprocate. You needn't bring anything.
Judith Martin
#65. We are all born rude. No infant has ever appeared yet with the grace to understand how inconsiderate it is to disturb others in the middle of the night.
Judith Martin
#66. When someone has tried to please you, it is rude, as well as disheartening, to respond by announcing that the effort was a failure.
Judith Martin
#67. The more skillful the performance of false cheer, the more pleasing the effect is upon one's public and on that private audience to whom one owes even more.
Judith Martin
#68. The simple idea that everyone needs a reasonable amount of challenging work in his or her life, and also a personal life, complete with noncompetitive leisure, has never really taken hold.
Judith Martin
#69. 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
#70. 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.
Judith Martin
#71. The rationale that etiquette should be eschewed because it fosters inequality does not ring true in a society that openly admits to a feverish interest in the comparative status-conveying qualities of sneakers. Manners are available to all, for free.
Judith Martin
#72. Miss Manners' meager arsenal consists only of the withering look, the insistent and repeated request, the cold voice, the report up the chain of command and the tilted nose. They generally work.
Judith Martin
#73. Washington knows that it is not safe to kick people who are down until you find out what their next stop will be.
Judith Martin
#74. Chaperons don't enforce morality; they force immorality to be discreet.
Judith Martin
#75. Miss Manners does not mind explaining the finer points of gracious living, but she feels that anyone without the sense to pick up a potato chip and stuff it in their face should probably not be running around loose on the streets.
Judith Martin
#76. Manners require showing consideration of all human beings, not just the ones to whom one is close.
Judith Martin
#77. Everyone old enough to have a secret is entitled to have some place to keep it.
Judith Martin
#78. For email, the old postcard rule applies. Nobody else is supposed to read your postcards, but you'd be a fool if you wrote anything private on one.
Judith Martin
#79. We are all entitled to our little harmless habits, but we are not entitled to demand approval for them.
Judith Martin
#80. If written directions alone would suffice, libraries wouldn't need to have the rest of the universities attached.
Judith Martin
#81. Honesty has come to mean the privilege of insulting you to your face without expecting redress.
Judith Martin
#82. There is no etiquette rule that decrees one must give out personal information to anyone who asks.
Judith Martin
#83. What is Thanksgiving without a nutty relative?
Judith Martin
#84. Indeed, Miss Manners has come to believe that the basic political division in this country is not between liberals and conservatives but between those who believe that they should have a say in the love lives of strangers and those who do not.
Judith Martin
#85. It is far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without your help.
Judith Martin
#86. When people start hurling insults at you, you know their minds are closed and there's no point in debating. You disengage yourself as quickly as possible from the situation.
Judith Martin
#87. Protocol is etiquette with a government expense account.
Judith Martin
#88. Whamming someone smaller than oneself in order to teach that person civilized behavior is not within Miss Manners' concept of propriety, much less logic.
Judith Martin
#89. 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
#90. Generosity and gratitude are inseparably linked.
Judith Martin
#91. Email is very informal, a memo. But I find that not signing off or not having a salutation bothers me.
Judith Martin
#92. Question- Should I loan a small amount of money to a friend? Answer- If you are sure that you can, if necessary, spare both.
Judith Martin
#93. Being listened to should be sufficiently gratifying in itself, whether or not the advice is followed.
Judith Martin
#94. The mistake people keep making is that if they find a wonderful new tool, like email, they have to give up all others. They don't. You have simply added another very useful means to your communications repertoire.
Judith Martin
#95. 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
#96. Adorable children are considered to be the general property of the human race. Rude children belong to their mothers.
Judith Martin
#97. 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
#98. 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.
Judith Martin
#99. The obligation to express gratitude deepens with procrastination. The longer you wait, the more effusive must be the thanks.
Judith Martin
#100. Over the last couple of decades, the personalization of the office changed dramatically ... there's an informality people often take for the absence of rules - which it's not.
Judith Martin
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