Judith Martin
Judith Martin
Judith Martin, better known by the pen name Miss Manners, is an American journalist, author, and etiquette authority...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth13 September 1938
CountryUnited States of America
law people everyday
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.
emotional ties people
One reason that the task of inventing manners is so difficult is that etiquette is folk custom, and people have emotional ties to the forms of their youth. That is why there is such hostility between generations in times of rapid change; their manners being different, each feels affronted by the other, taking even the most surface choices for challenges.
real giving letters
You glance at an e-mail. You give more attention to a real letter.
teaching accomplishment tolerance
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.
wedding people persons
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.
husband shoes smoking
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.
children parent done
A young lady is a female child who has just done something dreadful.
secret enough entitled
everyone old enough to have a secret is entitled to have some place to keep it.
hypocrisy sin virtue
Hypocrisy is not generally a social sin, but a virtue.
mother writing letters
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.
unique knowing tragedy
Knowing that others have gone through similar tragedies may be a help, but it should be remembered that every tragedy is not only commonplace but also unique.
thanksgiving football people
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.
wall expectations people
It is not rude to turn off your telephone by switching it on to an answering machine, which is cheaper and less disruptive than ripping it out of the wall. Those who are offended because they cannot always get through when they seek, at their own convenience, to barge in on people are suffering from a rude expectation.
inspirational children growing-up
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.