The happiest people are those who think the most interesting thoughts. Those who decide to use leisure as a means of mental development, who love good music, good books, good pictures, good company, good conversation, are the happiest people in the world. And they are not only happy in themselves, they are the cause of happiness in others.
|
True happiness arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's self, and in the next, from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions.
|
'Who are you,' said the caterpillar. This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, 'I—I hardly k...
|
How pleasant it was in the garden! And how delightful other people's emotions were! -- much more delightful than their ideas, it seemed to him. One's own soul, and the passions of one's friends -- those were the fascinating things in life. He pictured to himself with silent amusement the tedious luncheon that he had missed by staying so long with Basil Hallward. Had be gone to his aunt's, he would have been sure to have met Lord Goodbody there, and the whole conversation would have been about the feeding of the poor and the necessity for model lodging-houses. Each class would have preached the importance of those virtues, for whose exercise there was no necessity in their own lives. The rich would have spoken on the value of thrift, and the idle grown eloquent over the dignity of labour. It was charming to have escaped all that!
|
Marriage is one long conversation, chequered by disputes.
|
You ask whether I have ever been in love: fool as I am, I am not such a fool as that. But if one is only to talk from first-hand experience, conversation would be a very poor business. But though I have no personal experience of the things they call love, I have what is better -- the experience of Sappho, of Euripides, of Catallus, of Shakespeare, of Spenser, of Austen, of Bronte, of anyone else I have read.
|
Wine is a part of society because it provides a basis not only for a morality but also for an environment; it is an ornament in the slightest ceremonials of French daily life, from the snack to the feast, from the conversation at the local caf? to the speech at a formal dinner.
|
More knowledge may be gained of a man's real character by a short conversation with one of his servants than from a formal and studied narrative, begun with his pedigree and ended with his funeral.
|
I love America because America trusts me. When I go into a shop to buy a pair of shoes I am not asked to produce my Identity Card. I love it because my mail is not censored. My phone is not tapped. My conversation with friends is not reported to the secret police.
|
The primary use of conversation is to satisfy the impulse to talk.
|
I myself spent nine years in an insane asylum and I never had the obsession of suicide, but I know that each conversation with a psychiatrist, every morning at the time of his visit, made me want to hang myself, realizing that I would not be able to cut his throat.
|
My great-grandfather used to say to his wife, my great-grandmother, who in turn told her daughter, my grandmother, who repeated it to her daughter, my mother, who used to remind her daughter, my own sister, that to talk well and eloquently was a very great art, but that an equally great one was to know the right moment to stop.
|
I just use my muscles as a conversation piece, like someone walking a cheetah down 42nd Street.
|
Confidence contributes more to conversation than wit.
|
The reason why so few people are agreeable in conversation is that each is thinking more about what he intends to say than others are saying.
|
Speech is the small change of silence.
|
To acquire immunity to eloquence is of the utmost importance to the citizens of a democracy.
|
Logic and fact keep interfering with the easy flow of conversation.
|
Don't knock the weather nine-tenths of the people couldn't start a conversation if it didn't change once in a while.
|
If you ever have to support a flagging conversation, introduce the topic of eating.
|
When you have spoken the word, it reigns over you. When it is unspoken you reign over it.
|
A book is good company. It is full of conversation without loquacity. It comes to your longing with full instruction, but pursues you never.
|
There isn’t much better in this life than finding a way to spend a few hours in conversation with people you respect and love. You have to carve this time out of your life because you aren’t really living without it.
|
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.
|
There is nothing that exasperates people more than a display of superior ability or brilliance in conversation. They seem pleased at the time, but their envy makes them curse the conversationalist in their heart.
|
Conversation is the enemy of good wine and food.
|
That's the interesting thing about becoming a father. Suddenly you universally have something in common with other people. I can be sitting next to a very straight, humorless businessman or stockbroker type on an airplane and we'll just start talking about kids. And that conversation last three or four hours.
|
If, for instance, they have heard something from the postman, they attribute it to a semi-official statement; if they have fallen into conversation with a stranger at a bar, they can conscientiously describe him as a source that has hitherto proved unimpeachable. It is only when the journalist is reporting a whim of his own, and one to which he attaches minor importance, that he defines it as the opinion of well-informed circles.
|
The liar at any rate recognizes that recreation, not instruction, is the aim of conversation, and is a far more civilized being than the blockhead who loudly expresses his disbelief in a story which is told simply for the amusement of the company.
|
Failed experiments in ecumenism and social politics suggest that unity is not to be found in mass movements of like-minded people sharing common perspectives and policies. ... Experience suggests that unity embraces the multitude of our differences, that community is often far from cozy, and that conversion does not mean changing others to our point of view but perhaps just the opposite -- weaning each and every person and institution from the arrogant exclusivism that prevents genuine conversation. ... God comes to us, to rescue us not only from our enemies but also from our friends, not only from strangers but also from familiars, that we might see beyond these discriminating distinctions to a new way of relating.
|