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
Judith Martin quotes about
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.
want doe fairness
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.
jobs party thinking
You don't want to look too chic at a Washington party or people will think you don't have a job worth losing.
pain sick people
Visiting the sick is supposed to exhibit such great virtue that there are some people determined to do it whether the sick like it or not. ... All visitors everywhere are supposed to make plans to depart if they observe their hosts visibly wilting or in pain, but this is especially true at hospitals.
retirement organization ties
There was no singles problem until singles got so single-minded that they stopped wasting time with anyone ineligible. Before that, it was understood that one of society's main tasks was matchmaking. People with lifelong friendships and ties to local nonprofessional organizations did not have to fear that isolation would accompany retirement, old age, or losing a spouse. Overburdened householders could count on the assistance not only of their own extended families, but of the American tradition of neighborliness.
enough good-enough persons
Only a person who considers himself too good for you is good enough.
nice people challenges
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.
new-year years people
The etiquette question that troubles so many fastidious people New Year's Day is: How am I ever going to face those people again?
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.
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.
real giving letters
You glance at an e-mail. You give more attention to a real letter.
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.
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.
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.