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Quotes of the Day for 13 September 2011 – Miss Manners
Judith Sylvia Perlman was born at Washington City on this day in 1938. She grew up there and in various foreign capitals; her father was an economist with the United Nations. She graduated from Wellesley College, and went to work for the Washington Post. She started as a reporter, then became a theatre and movie critic, and after becoming Judith Martin was a founding member of the Post's Style section. In 1978 she started taking questions from readers on the subject of etiquette under the byline Miss Manners, responding with elegance, wit, and a no tolerance for nonsense.
You will find an expanded profile, photo, additional biographical links, and all quotes from this author on the author's Notable Quotable page.
The quotes:
The invention of the teenager was a mistake, in Miss Manners' opinion.... Once you identify a period of life in which people have few restrictions and, at the same time, few responsibilities - they get to stay out late but don't have to pay taxes - naturally, nobody wants to live any other way.
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.
If written directions alone would suffice, libraries wouldn't need to have the rest of the universities attached.
It's far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without your help.
When a society abandons its ideals just because most people can't live up to them, behavior gets very ugly indeed.
Traditionally, a luncheon is a lunch that takes an eon.
All from Judith Martin
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