"'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."
"One reason that the task of inventing manners is so difficult is that etiquette is folk custom, and people have emotional ties to the forms of their youth. That is why there is such hostility between generations in times of rapid change; their manners being different, each feels affronted by the other, taking even the most surface choices for challenges."
3 likes
Source: Judith Martin (1996). “Common courtesy: in which Miss Manners solves the problem that baffled Mr. Jefferson”
About the author
Same author
More quotes by Judith Martin
"The whole country wants civility. Why don't we have it? It doesn't cost anything. No federal funding, no legislation is involved. One answer is the unwillingness to restrain oneself. Everybody wants other people to be polite to them, but they want the freedom of not having to be polite to others."
"Most people who work at home find they do not have the benefit of receptionists who serve as personal guards"
"The dinner table is the center for the teaching and practicing not just of table manners but of conversation, consideration, tolerance, family feeling, and just about all the other accomplishments of polite society except the minuet."
"Indeed, Miss Manners has come to believe that the basic political division in this country is not between liberals and conservatives but between those who believe that they should have a say in the love lives of strangers and those who do not."
"GENTLE READER: You, sir, are an anarchist, and Miss Manners is frightened to have anything to do with you. It is true that questioning the table manners of others is rude. But to overthrow the accepted conventions of society, on the flimsy grounds that you have found them silly, inefficient and discomforting, is a dangerous step toward destroying civilization."