222 Quotes by Judith Martin

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.

A wedding invitation is sent by people who have been saying, "Do we have to ask them?" to people whose first response is, "How much do you think we have to spend on them?

Learn graceful ways of saying no and of pointing out that this pressure to do something is not in line with most people's wishes.

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.

When you're in love, you put up with things that, when you're out of love you cite.

It is said that dispensing advice is easy. What is difficult is getting anyone to listen to it.

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

'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.

People will say, 'Seventy isn't old, it's middle-aged,' and I think, middle of what - 140?