"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."

Judith Martin Journalism See all quotes by Judith Martin →

React to this quote

More by Judith Martin

“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.”

“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.”

“Civilized life begins with a boiled egg sitting upright in an egg cup.”

“Traditionally, a luncheon is a lunch that takes an eon.”

“If you put together all the ingredients that naturally attract children - sex, violence, revenge, spectacle and vigorous noise - what you have is grand opera.”

Resonant Thoughts

"Science Fiction has long been babbling about cosmic destructions and the ending of either physical or civilized worlds, but it has all been displaced babble. SF has been carrying on about near-future …"

— R. A. Lafferty

Literature1914–2002

#time

"Slugs have ridden their contempt for defensive armour as much to death as the turtles their pursuit of it. They have hardly more than skin enough to hold themselves together; they court death every ti…"

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Literature1835–1902

#death

"Is it because we're having so much fun at home we've forgotten the world? Is it because we're so rich and the rest of the world's so poor and we just don't care if they are? I've heard rumors; the wor…"

— Ray Bradbury

Literature1920–2012

#money

"The easiest way in which one can put unintentional strains on the enemy is to have a force which looks "trigger-happy." The one circumstance under which almost all Soviet experts agree the Russians mi…"

— Herman Kahn

Science1922–1983

#philosophy