Judith Martin quote: "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."

'Honesty' in social life is often used as a cover for rudeness. But there is quite a differe...
JUDITH MARTIN

Email is very informal, a memo. But I find that not signing off or not having a salutation bothers m...
JUDITH MARTIN

If written directions alone would suffice, libraries wouldn't need to have the rest of the universit...
JUDITH MARTIN

There are three possible parts to a date, of which at least two must be offered: entertainment, food...
JUDITH MARTIN

We are all born charming, fresh, and spontaneous and must be civilized before we are fit to partici...
JUDITH MARTIN

Honesty has come to mean the privilege of insulting you to your face without expecting redress.
JUDITH MARTIN

Let us make a special effort to stop communicating with each other, so we can have some conversation...
JUDITH MARTIN

We are born charming, fresh and spontaneous and must be civilized before we are fit to participate i...
JUDITH MARTIN

One of the big no-nos in cyberspace is that you do not go into a social activity, a chat group or so...
JUDITH MARTIN

There was no singles problem until singles got so single-minded that they stopped wasting time with ...
JUDITH MARTIN

When virtues are pointed out first, flaws seem less insurmountable.
JUDITH MARTIN

We already know that anonymous letters are despicable. In etiquette, as well as in law, hiring a hit...
JUDITH MARTIN

When people start hurling insults at you, you know their minds are closed and there's no point i...
JUDITH MARTIN

Etiquette does not render you defenseless. If it did, even I wouldn't subscribe to it. But ruden...
JUDITH MARTIN

Chaperons, even in their days of glory, were almost never able to enforce morality; what they did wa...
JUDITH MARTIN

Chaperons don't enforce morality; they force immorality to be discreet.
JUDITH MARTIN

We're now seeing email that people thought they had deleted showing up as evidence in court. You...
JUDITH MARTIN

I make a distinction between manners and etiquette - manners as the principles, which are eternal an...
JUDITH MARTIN

What restricts the use of the word 'lady' among the courteous is that it is intended to set a woman ...
JUDITH MARTIN

A young lady is a female child who has just done something dreadful.
JUDITH MARTIN

We are all born charming, fresh and spontaneous and must be civilized before we are fit to participa...
JUDITH MARTIN

What you have when everyone wears the same playclothes for all occasions, is addressad by nickname, ...
JUDITH MARTIN

There are three social classes in America: upper middle class, middle class, and lower middle class.
JUDITH MARTIN

It is far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without your help.
JUDITH MARTIN

It's far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without your help.
JUDITH MARTIN

Parents should conduct their arguments in quiet, respectful tones, but in a foreign language. You...
JUDITH MARTIN

Etiquette is all human social behavior. If you're a hermit on a mountain, you don't have to ...
JUDITH MARTIN

Freedom without rules doesn't work. And communities do not work unless they are regulated by eti...
JUDITH MARTIN

I am a traditionalist, and I'm an innovator. Most of what I do is to weigh change and legislate ...
JUDITH MARTIN

Many people mistakenly think a new technology cancels out an old one.
JUDITH MARTIN

It's far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without your help.
JUDITH MARTIN

Gentle reader: Yes, the thing to do is to ignore it. A general rule of etiquette is that one apologi...
JUDITH MARTIN

The simple idea that everyone needs a reasonable amount of challenging work in his or her life, and ...
JUDITH MARTIN

Hypocrisy is not generally a social sin, but a virtue.
JUDITH MARTIN

The invention of the teenager was a mistake. Once you identify a period of life in which people get ...
JUDITH MARTIN

If you can't be kind, at least be vague.
JUDITH MARTIN

For email, the old postcard rule applies. Nobody else is supposed to read your postcards, but you...
JUDITH MARTIN

She only maintains that it is possible, under some circumstances, for a lady to murder her husband; ...
JUDITH MARTIN

DEAR MISS MANNERS:
Should you tell your mother something if it is important when she is talking...
JUDITH MARTIN

College women are typically given to declaring for one or the other (in my day, for marriage; now, g...
JUDITH MARTIN

Eating grapes with a knife and fork is not what one would call refined. It is what one would call lu...
JUDITH MARTIN

One of the major mistakes people make is that they think manners are only the expression of happy id...
JUDITH MARTIN

GENTLE READER:
You, sir, are an anarchist, and Miss Manners is frightened to have anything to ...
JUDITH MARTIN

DEAR MISS MANNERS:
When does a gentleman offer his arm to a lady as they are walking down the s...
JUDITH MARTIN

A small wedding is not necessarily one to which very few people are invited. It is one to which the ...
JUDITH MARTIN

DEAR MISS MANNERS:
I a tired of being treated like a child. My father says it's because I am a ...
JUDITH MARTIN

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

…women were brought up to have only one set of manners. A woman was either a lady or she wasn't, a...
JUDITH MARTIN

Nobody believes that the man who says, 'Look, lady, you wanted equality,' to explain why he won't gi...
JUDITH MARTIN

One reason that the task of inventing manners is so difficult is that etiquette is folk custom, and ...
JUDITH MARTIN

Nowadays, we never allow ourselves the convenience of being temporarily unavailable, even to strange...
JUDITH MARTIN

Children should acknowledge other people, saying 'hello,' 'good morning,' 'goodbye'. They should und...
JUDITH MARTIN

Indeed, Miss Manners has come to believe that the basic political division in this country is not be...
JUDITH MARTIN

The mistake people keep making is that if they find a wonderful new tool, like email, they have to g...
JUDITH MARTIN

If written directions alone would suffice, libraries wouldn't need to have the rest of the unive...
JUDITH MARTIN

The language of clothing is high symbolism and we all, in moments where we need to know this, realiz...
JUDITH MARTIN

The invention of the teenager was a mistake. Once you identify a period of life in which people get ...
JUDITH MARTIN

Charming villains have always had a decided social advantage over well-meaning people who chew with ...
JUDITH MARTIN

The rationale that etiquette should be eschewed because it fosters inequality does not ring true in ...
JUDITH MARTIN

Honestly, what can really be said about 'the Jewish people' as a whole? Is it not a lamentab...
JUDITH BUTLER

I believe God has a path for me. He's always had a path for me, and I've always been in the ...
JUDITH JAMISON

I think we won't be able to understand the operations of trans-phobia, homophobia, if we don'...
JUDITH BUTLER

We act as if that being of a man or that being of a woman is actually an internal reality or somethi...
JUDITH BUTLER

A man who reads effeminate may well be consistently heterosexual, and another one might be gay. We c...
JUDITH BUTLER

You can browse to your heart's content but it's hard work and not easy on the feet unless yo...
JUDITH KRANTZ

Only if we accept the proposition that the state of Israel is the exclusive and legitimate represent...
JUDITH BUTLER

Love is much nicer to be in than an automobile accident, a tight girdle, a higher tax bracket, or a ...
JUDITH VIORST

Love is the direct opposite of hate. By definition it's something you can't feel for more than a few...
JUDITH ROSSNER

But it's hard to be hip over thirty when everyone else is nineteen, when the last dance we learned w...
JUDITH VIORST

The way Alvin Ailey has transformed modern dance and dance in general is the fact of variety. It'...
JUDITH JAMISON

Cameras help to minimize collateral damage, and very often, without a camera a missile cannot fire. ...
JUDITH BUTLER

There is nothing enduring in life for a woman except what she builds in a man's heart.
JUDITH ANDERSON

Identity is a bag and a gag. Yet it exists for me with all the force of a fatal disease. Obviously I...
JUDITH ROSSNER

Love is much nicer to be in than an automobile accident, a tight girdle, a higher tax bracket or a h...
JUDITH VIORST

Two separate, distinct personalities, not separate at all, but inextricably bound, soul and body and...
JUDITH GUEST

A lie is an affront to the soul, as well as an insult to the intelligence of the person to whom one ...
JUDITH MCNAUGHT

Why is it when you yield, I feel like the one who has been conquered?"

-Royce Westmorelan...
JUDITH MCNAUGHT

Here is the same clock that walked quietly
Through those enormous years I half recall,
When b...
JUDITH WRIGHT

It takes far less courage to kill yourself than it takes to make yourself wake up one more time. It ...
JUDITH ROSSNER

One advantage of marriage is that, when you fall out of love with him or he falls out of love with y...
JUDITH VIORST

One advantage of marriage, it seems to me, is that when you fall out of love with him, or he falls ...
JUDITH VIORST

You end up as you deserve. In old age you must put up with the face, the friends, the health, and th...
JUDITH VIORST

Infatuation is when you think he's as sexy as Robert Redford, as smart as Henry Kissinger, as noble ...
JUDITH VIORST

An answering smile drifted across his tanned face. "What is mine, I intend to
keep.
JUDITH MCNAUGHT

Royce Westmoreland stared at him with biting scorn. "I despise hypocrisy, particularly when it is co...
JUDITH MCNAUGHT

Strength is the capacity to break a Hershey bar into four pieces with your bare hands - and then eat...
JUDITH VIORST

There will be a few times in your life when all your instincts will tell you to do something, someth...
JUDITH MCNAUGHT

Every dreamer knows that it is entirely possible to be homesick for a place you've never been to, pe...
JUDITH THURMAN

You are mad!" she snapped, her chest heaving. "And you are a devil!"
"And you, my dear," Royce ...
JUDITH MCNAUGHT

It's true love because if he said quit drinking martinis but I kept on drinking them and the next mo...
JUDITH VIORST

Experience is a comb that life gives you after you lose your hair.
JUDITH STERN

Infatuation is when you think that he's as sexy as Robert Redford, as smart as Henry Kissinger, as n...
JUDITH VIORST

Geez, if I could get through to you, kiddo, that depression is not sobbing and crying and giving ven...
JUDITH GUEST

There is nothing enduring in life for a women except what she builds in a man's heart.
JUDITH ANDERSON

Dance is about never-ending aspiration.
JUDITH JAMISON

Always serve too much hot fudge sauce on hot fudge sundaes. It makes people overjoyed, and puts them...
JUDITH OLNEY

For me being depressed means you can spend all day in bed, and still not get a good night’s rest.
JUDITH GUEST

I'm convinced that it's energy and humor. The two of them combined equal charm.
JUDITH KRANTZ

Brevity may be the soul of wit, but not when someone's saying "I love you."
JUDITH VIORST

If we are going to teach creation science as an alternative to evolution, then we should also teach ...
JUDITH HAYES

We can go on talking about racism and who treated whom badly, but what are you going to do about it?...
JUDITH JAMISON

Love is the same as like except you feel sexier.
JUDITH VIORST

Strength is the capacity to break a chocolate bar into four pieces with your bare hands -- and then ...
JUDITH VIORST

Superstition is foolish, childish, primitive and irrational -- but how much does it cost you to knoc...
JUDITH VIORST

A handsome parson is fit for nothing but ti put ideas into the young woman's heads.
JUDITH BROCKLEHURST

I had lived with my mother in anger and love - I suppose most daughters do - but my children only kn...
JUDITH VIORST

You only trust those who are absolutely like yourself, those who have signed a pledge of allegiance ...
JUDITH BUTLER

We've observed that people who stall in their personal growth work often have counterproductive ...
JUDITH WRIGHT

You know, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender - people are people.
JUDITH LIGHT

Soft addictions are an alluring, seductive aspect of our culture - they are easy to attain and socia...
JUDITH WRIGHT

Close friends contribute to our personal growth. They also contribute to our personal pleasure, maki...
JUDITH VIORST

Masculine and feminine roles are not biologically fixed but socially constructed.
JUDITH BUTLER

When we say gender is performed, we usually mean that we've taken on a role or we're acting ...
JUDITH BUTLER

It's my view that gender is culturally formed, but it's also a domain of agency or freedom a...
JUDITH BUTLER

There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender... identity is performatively constitut...
JUDITH BUTLER

Surely the whole point of writing your own life story is to be as honest as you possibly can, reveal...
JUDITH KRANTZ

I really love being finance director.
JUDITH MCKENNA

I think you need to go through some stuff to really appreciate life and understand what it means to ...
JUDITH HILL

A social impact bond is a new way of bringing financing into social and environmental support issues...
JUDITH RODIN

As a dancer, you really try to stay true to whatever the choreographer/artistic director is giving y...
JUDITH JAMISON

Superstition is foolish, childish, primitive and irrational - but how much does it cost you to knock...
JUDITH VIORST

I was a protege; by the age of 10, I was studying with ballet choreographer Anthony Tudor in a class...
JUDITH JAMISON

Dancers use their bodies in extraordinary ways, so we are chronically pre-arthritic, because of how ...
JUDITH JAMISON

Exactly Straight women who surround themselves only with gay men or white people who refuse any othe...
JUDITH LIGHT

The gay community just recognizes what their closets are and we straight have to spend years trying ...
JUDITH LIGHT

I am much more open about categories of gender, and my feminism has been about women's safety fr...
JUDITH BUTLER

Either give me your hand, or end it now, and put us both out of our misery
JUDITH MCNAUGHT

To say that gender is performative is a little different because for something to be performative me...
JUDITH BUTLER

When we learn new behaviors and break through to higher levels of consciousness and love, we can ful...
JUDITH WRIGHT

The point is not to stay marginal, but to participate in whatever network of marginal zones is spawn...
JUDITH BUTLER

Feelings or emotions are the universal language and are to be honored. They are the authentic expres...
JUDITH WRIGHT

I learned to be with myself rather than avoiding myself with limiting habits; I started to be aware ...
JUDITH WRIGHT

My mother was born in June and later, feeling a vacancy, chose her birth month for her middle name. ...
JUDITH VIORST

When Zionism becomes co-extensive with Jewishness, Jewishness is pitted against the diversity that d...
JUDITH BUTLER

Strength is the capacity to break a chocolate bar into four pieces with your bare hands - and then e...
JUDITH VIORST

Everyone has bad days, and when you're having a bad day, you think, 'Here I am being singled...
JUDITH VIORST

Kids are always writing me: 'I had a bad day too.' 'I got gum in my hair.' And the k...
JUDITH VIORST

I thought that the 40s was a tough decade, because it's when you finally figure out that you'...
JUDITH VIORST

I don't think of myself as a leader. I am, but I don't think of myself that way. I'm not...
JUDITH JAMISON

I believe in being prepared. I'm going to say that. Pray, prepare, proceed.
JUDITH JAMISON

My favorite was 'The Secret Garden'. I loved it, and I think it's had a big influence on...
JUDITH VIORST

I knew that sunny citrus helped put things in focus, sharpened the memory, just like a squeeze of le...
JUDITH FERTIG

Always serve too much hot fudge sauce on hot fudge sundaes.
It makes people overjoyed, and puts...
JUDITH OLNEY

When I did my first price guide in 1979, publications weren't interested in mentioning it. Now I...
JUDITH MILLER

When you're visiting an antiques fair, turn left once you've passed through the entrance. Ev...
JUDITH MILLER

I think when you get interested in antiques, the most frustrating thing is that books don't have...
JUDITH MILLER

You become an expert by working hard. We've got fantastic museums, collections and antique shows...
JUDITH MILLER

Junk stands and antique markets are the perfect place to pick up clues about the history of a countr...
JUDITH MILLER

When one set of Jews labels another set of Jews 'anti-Semitic,' they are trying to monopoliz...
JUDITH BUTLER

Race and class are rendered distinct analytically only to produce the realization that the analysis ...
JUDITH BUTLER

Dealers always like to sell chairs in sets of four, six, or eight. And they charge a premium for sup...
JUDITH MILLER

To search is more blessed than to find, Gissler thinks.
JUDITH SCHALANSKY

I always credited my mother with inspiring me to be a writer because she was such a passionate reade...
JUDITH VIORST

The modern designers are quite showy, and a lot of the young people really like it. Costume jewelry ...
JUDITH MILLER

Kids need to encounter kids like themselves - kids who can sometimes be crabby and fresh and rebelli...
JUDITH VIORST

There is a new venue for theory, necessarily impure, where it emerges in and as the very event of cu...
JUDITH BUTLER

So much of our fictional medievalism is distorted through a lens of Protestantism and the Reformatio...
JUDITH TARR

There is no original or primary gender a drag imitates, but gender is a kind of imitation for which ...
JUDITH BUTLER

The purpose of it is to be a community building event.
JUDITH ANDERSON

There's been some conflict with old-time ranchers being engulfed with new development.
JUDITH ANDERSON

Personally I believe it is important for mankind to respect nature - for homeostasis - and I have vo...
JUDITH ANDERSON

I am inspired by many mediums and use them to express varied aspects of my philosophies and life obs...
JUDITH ANDERSON

All of my work is based on nature. I grew up in a rural environment and living in the Bay Area allow...
JUDITH ANDERSON

This technique requires both sides of your brain -- analytical and creative.
JUDITH ANDERSON

Innovation, creativity, and enthusiasm are all linked. When you walk into a warehouse and the manage...
JUDITH ANDERSON

Understanding Hamas/Hezbollah as social movements that are progressive, that are on the left, that a...
JUDITH BUTLER

When I do uptempo songs, I like to bring in the funk and world music and different elements.
JUDITH HILL

Victorian racehorse owners frequently named their horses after murderers. That was so astonishing. C...
JUDITH FLANDERS

On the one hand, shopping is dependable: You can do it alone, if you lose your heart to something th...
JUDITH KRANTZ

There is nothing enduring in life for a woman except what she builds in a man's heart
JUDITH ANDERSON

Looking at you has been my favorite pastime from the moment you asked me to describe your face," he ...
JUDITH MCNAUGHT

No letter from a lover is ever more welcome, brings more joy, than a publisher's expression of inter...
JUDITH BROCKLEHURST

A young lady who faints may awake chivalrous sentiments in gentleman; a young lady who weeps engende...
JUDITH BROCKLEHURST

The biblical account of Noah's Ark and the Flood is perhaps the most implausible story for fundament...
JUDITH HAYES

One of the things that made Epic strong when I wrote the original code was that it never occurred to...
JUDITH FAULKNER

The more facts one introduces, the more truth one shows, the more determined the bigot is to cling t...
JUDITH TARR

You are about to begin the hero's journey. Travel well on the quest. A life of More is your birthrig...
JUDITH WRIGHT

He had led off being a perfectionist when he discovered that not promptly kept appointments, not a h...
JUDITH GUEST

The great thing about costume jewelry is that there's something for everyone - there are very hu...
JUDITH MILLER

I would say that I'm a feminist theorist before I'm a queer theorist or a gay and lesbian th...
JUDITH BUTLER

Sexual harassment law is very important. But I think it would be a mistake if the sexual harassment ...
JUDITH BUTLER

Rawn did her own thing in her own way. She cast the female gaze on a genre heavy with all-male quest...
JUDITH TARR

It frustrates me about myself when I see I'm not taking the road that demands more of me.
JUDITH LIGHT

My Girl Scout leader. She told me if I listened more and talked less, I could grow up to be a good w...
JUDITH VIORST

I was an undergrad math major and a grad student in computer science. I'm hugely introverted, no...
JUDITH FAULKNER

As we get past our superficial material wants and instant gratification we connect to a deeper part ...
JUDITH WRIGHT

Maybe it's a generational thing, but I never wanted to be the best black dancer in the world. I ...
JUDITH JAMISON

I heard directly from my source that I should testify before the grand jury,
JUDITH MILLER

Obama's failure to close Guantanamo is yet another instance where the rhetoric of democratic and...
JUDITH BUTLER

I got that experience through dating dozens of men for six years after college, getting an entry lev...
JUDITH KRANTZ

If judged only by the results that challenge the laws of probabilities, then the power of prayer is ...
JUDITH HAYES

My mother was a huge, huge reader. I think I picked up very early how precious it was to write thing...
JUDITH VIORST

Some of his comments suggested insubordination on my part. I have always written the articles assign...
JUDITH MILLER

I started buying bits of broken porcelain. I furnished our first flat with pieces of 'junk.'...
JUDITH MILLER

Obama was late to affirm the Egyptian revolution as a democratic movement, and even then he was eage...
JUDITH BUTLER

Without Mark Felt there would have been none of the revelations that showed what began as a third-ra...
JUDITH MILLER

As a Jew, I was taught that it was ethically imperative to speak up and to speak out against arbitra...
JUDITH BUTLER

Why is it that almost every human culture yet discovered has found it necessary to believe in an aft...
JUDITH HAYES

The message of transformation and how we all can live from our heart, not just from our head, was a ...
JUDITH LIGHT

Identifying Israel with Jewry obscures the existence of the small but important post-Zionist movemen...
JUDITH BUTLER

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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Judith Martin

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.

Judith Martin

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