Judith Martin (née Perlman; born September 13, 1938), better known by the pen name Miss Manners, is an American journalist, author, and etiquette authority.
Hypocrisy is not generally a social sin, but a virtue.
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.
If written directions alone would suffice, libraries wouldn't need to have the rest of the universities attached.
It has always puzzled me, in my business, that people think they have to answer questions, no matter how disagreeable or dangerous, just because they were asked. Of course, we journalists would be out of business if they didn't.
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.
People say when you're in love, you don't need etiquette. Well, you need it then more than anything. Or they say, "At home I can just be myself. " What they mean is they can be their worst selves. . . They always mean they will save all their anxiety about how to behave for somebody like the head waiter of a restaurant, someone they'll never see again.
Everybody's an art critic.
Nowadays, you form your beliefs to fit your behavior, not the other way around.
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.
Allowing an unimportant mistake to pass without comment is a wonderful social grace.
everyone old enough to have a secret is entitled to have some place to keep it.
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.
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.
'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.
We are born charming fresh and spontaneous and must be civilized before we are fit to participate in society.
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.
The etiquette business has its emergencies, heaven knows, but it is in the nature of etiquette emergencies that once one realizes what one has done, it is too late. One might as well get a good night's sleep and send flowers with an apology in the morning.
Honesty has come to mean the privilege of insulting you to your face without expecting redress.
Nobody believes that the man who says, 'Look, lady, you wanted equality,' to explain why he won't give up his seat to a pregnant woman carrying three grocery bags, a briefcase, and a toddler is seized with the symbolism of idealism.
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.