Judith Martin Quotes

My idea of a perfect holiday is spending time with the family, waking up on Christmas morning or Thanksgiving morning, watching football all day, having the family come over, people you haven't seen...

Thanksgiving is coming. I wonder what the holiday will be like at Dog the Bounty Hunter’s house—obviously, they’ll have a turkey with all-white meat.

They yell at me to be dignified. But what are the dignified people like? The people who are held up as examples of me? They are snobs. Frightful snobs I'm a curiosity in Hollywood. I'm a big freak, because I'm myself!

It is terribly rude to tell people that their troubles are boring.

If it is a cocktail party, I think bringing your partner, husband or wife is fine. To a certain extent, when someone throws a party, they expect to have people over. If it's a seated dinner, though, you should check beforehand. Asking to bring your partner is fair. Asking to bring eight friends from college is not. A good hostess will always accommodate extras and stragglers, but she'll never forget who brought them.

What is Thanksgiving without a nutty relative?

I loathe people who say, 'I always read the ending of the book first.' That really irritates me, It's like someone coming to dinner, just opening the fridge and eating pudding, while you're standing there still working on the starter. It's not on.

Your Great-Aunt Muriel doesn't agree, I just met her upstairs while she was giving Fleur the tiara. "She said 'Oh dear, is this the muggle born?' and then, 'Bad posture, skinny ankles.'" Don't take it personally, she's rude to everyone," said Ron. "Talking about Muriel?" inquired George, reemerging from the marquee with Fred. "Yeah, she's just told me my ears are lopsided. Old bat.

...Everyone had to eat, but eating people wasn't polite.

The line between the public life and the private life has been erased, due to the rapid decline of manners and courtesy. There is a certain crudeness and crassness that has suddenly become accepted behavior, even desirable.

I love to read the way people love to watch television.

It was the old New York way...the way people who dreaded scandal more than disease, who placed decency above courage, and who considered that nothing was more ill-bred than "scenes", except those who gave rise to them.

Oh, this shouldn't be allowed. There should be a rule which says that people you've met in the gym should never meet you in real life.

Well, Thanksgiving we'll all gather at my house for dinner and we usually do Christmas at Beau's house. My mom is still feisty and kicking. She's 92. I saw her last night and she published a book at 90. It's a wonderful book called "You Caught Me Kissing" and it's basically love-poems that she wrote for my dad. It's more than that, it's a wonderful book.

It is a widespread and firm belief among guests that their departure is always a matter of distress to their hosts, and that in order to indicate that they have been pleasantly entertained, they must demonstrate an extreme unwillingness to allow the entertainment to conclude. This is not necessarily true.

When politeness is used to show up other people, it is reclassified as rudeness. Thus it is technically impossible to be too polite.

You don't want to be mean to people, but some people are real assholes. And you can't say that on TV - or, you can, but probably, as a celebrity, I can't get away with it. Trust me. Unless you're somebody who can say anything they want, I guess, like Donald Trump.

Manners are made up of trivialities of deportment which can be easily learned if one does not happen to know them.

Political correctness is the the inability to state certain truths because they may offend certain people

I've got confidence that most people in America still have a decent sense of manners, propriety, morality.

Its almost Thanksgiving! A day when you get to hear your extended family use racial slurs for groups are not taking away their jobs.

Society, by insisting on conventions, has merely insisted on certain convenient signs by which we may know that a man is considering, in daily life, the comfort of other people.

It bewilders me when people speak to you rudely or are mean, because I'd never be that way.

I’m not being weird, you’re being a little rude. Don’t you think as a host, when I say ‘this is what I want to talk about’ that’s what we should address?

I suspect people channel-surf, as they tend to everywhere. But I'm told that we're not much on at the State Department, so we'll have to look into that.