A Quote by Judith Martin

The etiquette of intimacy is very different from the etiquette of formality, but manners are not just something to show off to the outside world. If you offend the head waiter, you can always go to another restaurant. If you offend the person you live with, it's very cumbersome to switch to a different family.

Judith Martin

Quote Topics

Always Another Different Etiquette Family Formality Go Head Intimacy Just Just Something Live Manners Off Offend Outside Outside World Person Restaurant Show Show Off Something Switch Very Waiter World

Quote Author

Judith Martin
American - Author
Born: September 13, 1938

I make a distinction between manners and etiquette - manners as the principles, which are eternal and universal, etiquette as the particular rules which are arbitrary and different in different times, different situations, different cultures.

Judith Martin

To sacrifice the principles of manners, which require compassion and respect, and bat people over the head with their ignorance of etiquette rules they cannot be expected to know is both bad manners and poor etiquette. That social climbers and twits have misused etiquette throughout history should not be used as an argument for doing away with it.

Judith Martin

In Buddhism we have a great deal of etiquette. Etiquette is simply ways of living to conserve energy. Etiquette allows people to live in harmony with their environment.

Frederick Lenz

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.

Judith Martin

Truly good manners are invisible: they ease the way for others, without drawing attention to themselves. It is no accident that the word "punctilious" ("attentive to formality or etiquette") comes from the same original root as punctuation.

Lynne Truss

Lack of etiquette and manners is a huge turn off. Men who don't behave decently are irritating. Also, I don't like guys who show off. When will guys realize that girls hate showoffs!

Shraddha Kapoor

I have different methods. Sometimes I just like to immerse myself in music; that's a really good way to switch off from the world. I also like to listen to Eckhart Tolle, a very wise, very spiritual man, who teaches us how to live in the present.

Alesha Dixon

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.

Judith Martin

Because I would never work for a niche publication or a niche program on television and because I am a journalist and not an opinion person, my job is to try to see how many different points of view I can represent or how. It's not even a question of who you don't offend because you are always going to offend somebody. The question is how can you get people to listen to the information you have to present.

Gwen Ifill

It doesn't matter how many people you offend, as long as you're getting your message to your consumers. I say to those people who do not want to offend anybody: You are going to have a very, very difficult time having meaningful advertising.

Phil Knight

I have traveled to a lot of places, and you look at another young person who lives under very different circumstances than you but has the same dreams or the same interests or might be better at what I do than what I do. But I was born in a different place, and she was born in a different place. Just for that alone, you're kind of inherently given opportunity. That's something that I'm very grateful for, but I'm also very aware of.

Dakota Fanning

Etiquette is all human social behavior. If you're a hermit on a mountain, you don't have to worry about etiquette; if somebody comes up the mountain, then you've got a problem. It matters because we want to live in reasonably harmonious communities.

Judith Martin

When we believe or say we have been offended, we usually mean we feel insulted, mistreated, snubbed, or disrespected. And certainly clumsy, embarrassing, unprincipled, and mean-spirited things do occur in our interactions with other people that would allow us to take offense. However, it ultimately is impossible for another person to offend you or to offend me. Indeed, believing that another person offended us is fundamentally false. To be offended is a choice we make; it is not a condition inflicted or imposed upon us by someone or something else.

David A. Bednar

I think there's always some good reason to try and modernize most period things, because at the end of the day, they may have, I suppose, used a different language or a different etiquette, but ultimately, these are still people that loved and breathed and lived and ate and weed and pooed just like we do now.