If you ever have to support a flagging conversation, introduce the topic of eating.
In conversation the game is, to say something new with old words. And you shall observe a man of the people picking his way along, step by step, using every time an old boulder, yet never setting his foot on an old place.
In conversation, humor is worth more than wit and easiness more than knowledge.
In my opinion, the most fruitful and natural play of the mind is in conversation. I find it sweeter than any other action in life; and if I were forced to choose, I think I would rather lose my sight than my hearing and voice. The study of books is a drowsy and feeble exercise which does not warm you up.
It is all right to hold a conversation but you should let go of it now and then.
It is not what we learn in conversation that enriches us. It is the elation that comes of swift contact with tingling currents of thought.
It's apparent that we can't proceed any further without a name for this institutionalized garrulousness, this psychological patter, this need to catalogue the ego's condition. Let's call it psychobabble, this spirit which now tyrannizes conversation in the seventies.
Mediocre people have an answer for everything and are astonished at nothing. They always want to have the air of knowing better than you what you are going to tell them; when, in their turn, they begin to speak, they repeat to you with the greatest confidence, as if dealing with their own property, the things that they have heard you say yourself at some other place. A capable and superior look is the natural accompaniment of this type of character.
Never hold anyone by the button or the hand in order to be heard out; for if people are unwilling to hear you, you had better hold your tongue than them.
Never talk for half a minute without pausing and giving others a chance to join in.
No collection of people who are all waiting for the same thing are capable of holding a natural conversation. Even if the thing they are waiting for is only a taxi.
No one is qualified to converse in public except those contented to do without such conversation.
No one will ever shine in conversation, who thinks of saying fine things: to please, one must say many things indifferent, and many very bad.
Not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.
Nothing lowers the level on conversation more than raising the voice.
One of the very best rules of conversation is to never, say anything which any of the company wish had been left unsaid.
Repartee is perfect when it effects its purpose with a double edge. It is the highest order of wit, as it indicates the coolest yet quickest exercise of genius, at a moment when the passions are roused.
Reply to wit with gravity, and to gravity with wit.
Say nothing good of yourself, you will be distrusted; say nothing bad of yourself, you will be taken at your word.
Saying what we think gives a wider range of conversation than saying what we know.
| Quotations 21 to 40 of 61 | First | < Previous | Next > | Last |