Judith Martin

Judith Martin (September 13, 1938 - ) American advice columnist (under the pseudonym "Miss Manners")

Quotes

• If you can’t be kind, at least be vague.”
  • September 1997

• Civilized life begins with a boiled egg sitting upright in an egg cup.
  • Miss Manners column "Egg On Their Face", June 19, 2005

• Dear Miss Manners: What about Easter? I suppose you have etiquette rules that apply to Easter Day?
  Gentle Reader: Certainly, and when the Day of Judgment comes, Miss Manners will have etiquette rules to apply to that, as well.
  • Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior

• Dear Miss Manners: What should I say when I am introduced to a homosexual "couple?"
  Gentle Reader: "How do you do?" "How do you do?"
  • Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior

• Dear Miss Manners: What is the proper way to eat potato chips?
  Gentle Reader: With a knife and fork. A fruit knife and an oyster fork, to be specific. Good heavens, what is the world coming to? Miss Manners does not mind explaining the finer points of gracious living, but she feels that anyone without the sense to pick up a potato chip and stuff it in their face should probably not be running around loose on the streets.
  • Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior

• Miss Manners doubts that there is anything in the world like an elegantly dressed Bostonian lurching across the room and diving face first into a bowl of guacamole dip while simultaneously disengaging her bodice from her bosom. Therefore, Miss Manners has a wee bit of trouble preparing a general rule for dealing with this eventuality.
  • Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior

• If you put together all the ingredients that naturally attract children - sex, violence, revenge, spectacle and vigorous noise - what you have is grand opera.
  • Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior

• Traditionally, a luncheon is a lunch that takes an eon.
  • Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior

• In a fit of exasperation, Miss Manners once demanded of a six-year-old person how it could be so childish and was forced to admit the justice of its reply, “I'm a child."
  • Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior

• Machines do not have feelings... This is not to say that no inanimate objects have feelings -- toys are loaded with feelings, for instance, and only a monster would break the heart of a rag doll.
  • "Park your car, not your manners," March 29, 1981