18 Judith Martin Quotes

Judith Martin quotes

1. If written directions alone would suffice, libraries wouldn't need to have the rest of the universities attached.

2. You can deny all you want that there is etiquette, and a lot of people do in everyday life. But if you behave in a way that offends the people you're trying to deal with, they will stop dealing with you...There are plenty of people who say, 'We don't care about etiquette, but we can't stand the way so-and-so behaves, and we don't want him around!' Etiquette doesn't have the great sanctions that the law has. But the main sanction we do have is in not dealing with these people and isolating them because their behavior is unbearable.

3. 'Dear Miss Manners: How is a hat correctly worn?

4. 'Dear Miss Manners: Does joint custody mean I always have to be polite to someone I can't stand?

5. Traditionally, a luncheon is a lunch that takes an eon.

6. There are three possible parts to a date, of which at least two must be offered: entertainment, food, and affection. It is customary to begin a series of dates with a great deal of entertainment, a moderate amount of food, and the merest suggestion of affection. As the amount of affection increases, the entertainment can be reduced proportionately. When the affection IS the entertainment, we no longer call it dating. Under no circumstances can the food be omitted.

1. 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.

2. Smart people duck when they hear the dread announcement 'I'm going to be perfectly honest with you.

3. If you put together all the ingredients that naturally attract children - sex, violence, revenge, spectacle and vigorous noise - what you have is grand opera.

4. The one prediction that never comes true is, 'You'll thank me for telling you this.

5. 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.

6. There are always proper responses, even to rude questions.

7. 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.

8. We are all entitled to our little harmless habits, but we are not entitled to demand approval for them.

9. Greece is a good place for rebirths.

10. Adorable children are considered to be the general property of the human race. Rude children belong to their mothers.

11. 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.

12. It is, indeed, a trial to maintain the virtue of humility when one can't help being right.