Quotes from Judith Martin

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

Greece is a good place for rebirths.

There is nothing like a good friend to help you out when you are not in trouble.

Only a person who considers himself too good for you is good enough.

Protocol is etiquette with a government expense account.

It's far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without your help.

Honesty has come to mean the privilege of insulting you to your face without expecting redress.

Honesty is a virtue, but not the only one. If you're in a courtroom you need the whole truth and nothing but the truth; in the living room, sometimes you need anything but. Often.

Chaperons don't enforce morality; they force immorality to be discreet.

The language of clothing is high symbolism and we all, in moments where we need to know this, realize it.

Obviously I'm going to be polite, so nobody has anything to fear from me.

Being polite does not mean being mummified.

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.

I am a traditionalist, and I'm an innovator. Most of what I do is to weigh change and legislate to the best of my ability on what should change and what should not. Do I have a respect for tradition? Of course I do. Do I have a blind belief in it? No.

Over the last couple of decades, the personalization of the office changed dramatically... there's an informality people often take for the absence of rules - which it's not.

People read informality as, 'Do whatever you feel like,' and whatever you feel like might be disastrous.

First. I began my career as a copy girl. and the White House coverage, for example, was in the then-Women's section. So it was social coverage. It wasn't news, although we often got rather startling news out of it.

You do not have to do everything disagreeable that you have a right to do.

Many people mistakenly think a new technology cancels out an old one.

We are born charming fresh and spontaneous and must be civilized before we are fit to participate in society.

Society cannot exist without etiquette ... It never has, and until our own century, everybody knew that.

When a society abandons its ideals just because most people can't live up to them, behavior gets very ugly indeed.

The stress of making small talk with in-laws is called being part of a family.

Life is full of wonderful passions that come and go over the years, but the only one that will never let you down is reading.