Judith Martin Quotes

If you don't like someone, don't shake their hand.

Emily Post says that talking about oneself isn't very polite.' 'I'm sure Miss Post is perfectly correct, but that doesn't seem to stop the rest of us.

Please, Lord Maccon, use one of the cups. My delicate sensibilities.” The earl actually snorted. “My dear Miss Tarabotti, if you possessed any such things, you certainly have never shown them to me.

In England, we have such good manners that if someone says something impolite, the police will get involved.

Manners are the hypocrisy of a nation.

People don't know how to behave in public anymore.

To Americans, English manners are far more frightening than none at all.

Nothing is less important than which fork you use. Etiquette is the science of living. It embraces everything. It is ethics. It is honor.

I like things that are civilized.

I'm a gentleman, if nothing else. It's taken me years to become one, but finally I have a sense of propriety.

You can't be truly rude until you understand good manners.

Etiquette means behaving yourself a little better than is absolutely essential.

The Japanese have perfected good manners and made them indistinguishable from rudeness.

No gentleman ever discusses any relationship with a lady.

Sometimes I pine for the era of Miss Manners, when there were hard and fast rules dictating a well-bred individual's behaviour in any given situation.

Gentlemen don't do that.

There used to be an art form called the 'comedy of manners.' Why aren't comedies of manners made now in this country? The answer is simple. We no longer have manners to speak of.

I'm completely the opposite of an etiquette icon. I'm brash, and I don't follow any social rules, really. I'm nice, but really, I'm the least-put-together lady in the world.

I shake hands on the first date.

Tis a rule of manners to avoid exaggeration.

The man who thrusts his manners upon me does as if he were to insist on introducing me to his cabinet of curiosities, when I wished to see himself.

It is perfectly right for a gentleman to say "ladies and gentlemen," but a lady should say, "gentlemen and ladies." You mention your friend's name before you do your own. I always feel like rebuking any woman who says, "ladies and gentlemen." It is a lack of good manners.

The genteel thing is the genteel thing any time, if as be that a gentleman bees in a concatenation accordingly.

Good manners, to those one does not love, are no more a breach of truth, than "your humble servant," at the bottom of a challengeis; they are universally agreed upon, and understand to be things of course. They are necessary guards of the decency and peace of society.

Etiquette has no regard for moral qualities.