Zitat des Tages von Judith Martin:
The mistake people keep making is that if they find a wonderful new tool, like email, they have to give up all others. They don't. You have simply added another very useful means to your communications repertoire.
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.
There are three social classes in America: upper middle class, middle class, and lower middle class.
Honesty has come to mean the privilege of insulting you to your face without expecting redress.
You glance at an e-mail. You give more attention to a real letter.
Hypocrisy is not generally a social sin, but a virtue.
Chaperons don't enforce morality; they force immorality to be discreet.
We are born charming, fresh and spontaneous and must be civilized before we are fit to participate in society.
You do not have to do everything disagreeable that you have a right to do.
If written directions alone would suffice, libraries wouldn't need to have the rest of the universities attached.
We already know that anonymous letters are despicable. In etiquette, as well as in law, hiring a hit man to do the job does not relieve you of responsibility.
The greater the controversy, the more you need manners.
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.
Chaperons, even in their days of glory, were almost never able to enforce morality; what they did was to force immorality to be discreet. This is no small contribution.
Many people mistakenly think a new technology cancels out an old one.
Presents are symbolic. When you give them in your personal life, they should show that you are paying attention to the person to whom you're giving them.
Most people who work at home find they do not have the benefit of receptionists who serve as personal guards.
Parents should conduct their arguments in quiet, respectful tones, but in a foreign language. You'd be surprised what an inducement that is to the education of children.
It's far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without your help.
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.
Learn graceful ways of saying no and of pointing out that this pressure to do something is not in line with most people's wishes.
Etiquette is all human social behavior. If you're a hermit on a mountain, you don't have to worry about etiquette; if somebody comes up the mountain, then you've got a problem. It matters because we want to live in reasonably harmonious communities.
Freedom without rules doesn't work. And communities do not work unless they are regulated by etiquette.
Obviously I'm going to be polite, so nobody has anything to fear from me.
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.
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.