Conversationalist

“ He may be thinking of bird dogs or dry fly fishing while you are discussing the fourth dimension, or the merits of a cucumber lotion. The charming conversationalist is prepared to talk in terms of his listener's interest. If his listener spends his spare time investigating Guernsey cattle or agitating social reforms, the discriminating conversationalist shapes his remarks accordingly. Richard Washburn Child says he knows a man of mediocre ability who can charm men much abler than himself when he discusses electric lighting. ”

“ A good talker, even more than a good orator, implies a good audience. Modern society is too vast and too restless to give a conversationalist a fair chance. ”

“ He had a good deal to say, and a good deal to ask about, but, with the instinct of the skilled conversationalist, he did not bring out his news in spate, nor ask a succession of questions, but ambled easily, so to speak, up and down the lanes and byways of intercourse, only occasionally emerging on to the highroads. ”

“ People thought her an interesting conversationalist because she had this ability to call out the best in others.
If you would make yourself agreeable you must be able to enter into the life of the people you are conversing with, and you must touch them along the lines of their interest. No matter how much you may know about a subject, if it does not happen to interest those to whom you are talking your efforts will be largely lost. ”

“ You can not hope to become a pleasing conversationalist until you own and use a good dictionary.
An excellent way to increase your vocabulary and perfect your speech is to talk less, and listen politely while others lead the conversation. ”

“ A conversationalist whose argument is wholly fallacious will often, by exercise of verbal adroitness, dispose of an objection which is really fatal. The full [50] swing of the personalities of the speakers in a conversation is what makes the flint strike fire. It is only from heated minds that the true essence of conversation springs; and it is in talk which glances from one to another of a group, more than in dialog, that this personality is reflected. "It is curious to note," says an editorial in The Spectator, "how very much dialog there is in the world, and how little true conversation ”

“ He wondered idly whether she was a poor conversationalist because she got no attention or got no attention because she was a poor conversationalist. ”

“ Gradually, however, conversation—real conversation—is coming into its own as the favorite pastime of dinner guests, and the young man or lady who can keep the conversational “ball” rolling is coming more and more into demand. Good conversationalists are, I fear, born and not made—but by study and practise any ambitious young man can probably acquire the technique, and, with time, mould himself into the kind of person upon whom hostesses depend for the success of their party. ”

“ In directing the trend of conversation, the tactful person will choose [Pg 32] topics of mutual interest. People are interesting not in proportion as they recount their personal experiences, but as they evince a broad, general interest in what concerns others.
He.—We might add another golden rule to our list,—Golden Rule Number VI: Be not continually the hero of your own story, nor on the other hand, do not leave your story without a hero. In other words, it is fatal to one's success as a conversationalist either to eliminate oneself entirely or to appear self-centered. ”

“ There are plenty of people who deliver one monolog after another and call their talk conversation. The good conversationalists are not the ones who dominate the talk in any gathering. They are the people who have the grace to contribute something of their own while generously drawing out the best that is in others. They hazard topics for discussion and endeavor each to give to the other the chance of enlarging upon them. Conversation is the interchange of ideas ”

“ Those who, now-a-days, have a reputation as good talkers are rather declaimers, haranguers, orators, than conversers. True conversationalists seem to be nearly obsolete; because our social gatherings, whether in the drawing-room or at the table, do not furnish the needed conditions. ”

“ Poor conversationalists excuse themselves for not trying to improve by saying that “good talkers are born, not made.” We might as well say that good lawyers, good physicians, good merchants or good salesmen are born, not made. ”

“ These conversationalists say the most shallow and needless of things, impart aimless information, simulate interest they do not feel, and generally impugn their claim to be considered reasonable creatures. ”

“ No matter, just at this moment, what he said; but he talked the Member of the Haouse asleep again.
They have a new term nowadays (I am speaking to you, the Reader) for people that do a good deal of talking; they call them “conversationists,” or “conversationalists “; talkists, I suppose, would do just as well. It is rather dangerous to get the name of being one of these phenomenal manifestations, as one is expected to say something remarkable every time one opens one's mouth in company. ”

“ Mein Herr respectfully replied, "I did not say 'small-talk.' I said 'conversation.' All such topics as the weather, or politics, or local gossip, are unknown among us. They are either vapid or controversial. What we need for conversation is a topic of interest and of novelty. To secure these things we have tried various plans——Moving-Pictures, Wild-Creatures, Moving-Guests, and a Revolving-Humorist. ”

“ In conversation do not lay thy hands upon another, nor speak too much, nor interrupt or disturb another's discourse. When any one discourses with thee, hear him attentively, and hold thyself in an easy attitude ”

“ My conversation hurls it violently at people's heads. My conversation—when I choose—makes people turn around in their chairs and stare and give me all of their attention. They admire me, though their admiration is mixed decidedly with other feelings. ”

“ You feel yourself in the presence of a learned, witty, and urbane talker, who does not wish to monopolize the talk, but desires to elicit that free, responsive play of thought which is essential to good conversation. ”

“ Mary A. Livermore, Julia Ward Howe, and Elizabeth S. P. Ward, had this wonderful conversational charm, as has ex-President Eliot of Harvard.
The quality of the conversation is everything. We all know people who use the choicest language and express their thoughts in fluent, liquid diction, who impress us by the wonderful flow of their conversation; but that is all there is to it. They do not impress us with their thoughts; they do not stimulate us to action. We do not feel any more determined to do something in the world, to be somebody, after we have heard them talk than we felt before. ”

“ The moment he enters the room, or caffé, where a circle may happen to be conversing, he immediately takes part in the discussion—of whatever nature, or upon whatever subject that may be, is not of the most distant consequence to him. He strikes in with the utmost self-assurance and adroitness, maintains a prominent part in the conversation with the most perfect plausibility; and although, from his want of accurate information, he will rarely instruct, he seldom fails to amuse by the exuberance of his fancy, and the rapidity of his elocution. ”

“ You are thrown on your back immediately; the conversation is stopt like a country-dance by those who do not know the figure. But when a set of adepts, of illuminati, get about a question, it is worth while to hear them talk."
If we are to have a rising generation of good talkers, by our own choice and deliberate aim social intercourse should be freed from the barbarisms which so often hamper it. Conversation at its highest is the most delightful of intellectual stimulants; at its lowest the most deadening to intellect. ”

“ If he does he will soon realize a distinct loss through lack of social intercourse with his fellow men. The faculties most needed in pulpit preaching are those very powers that are so largely exercised in ordinary conversation. The ability to think quickly, to marshal facts and arguments, to introduce a vivid story or illustration, to [Pg 98] parry and thrust as is sometimes needed to hold one's own ground, and the general mental activity aroused in conversation, all tend to produce an interesting, vivacious, and forceful style in public speaking. ”

“ Someone has said, very wisely, "A talker who monopolizes the conversation is by common consent insufferable, and a man who regulates his choice of topics by reference to what interests not his hearers but himself has yet to learn the alphabet of the art." To be agreeable in conversation, one must first learn the law of talking just enough, of listening politely while others speak, and of speaking of that in which one's companions are most interested. ”

“ Without a leader or "moderator," as the admirable Scotch word has it, conversation is apt to become either tepid or demoralized; and often, for the want of proper and sophisticated leading, discussion that would otherwise be brilliant deteriorates into pandemonium. As paradoxical as it sounds on first thought, it is nevertheless true that thoroughly good conversation is impossible where there is too much talk. Some sort of order must be imperceptibly if not unconsciously maintained, or the sentences clash in general conversation. ”

“ The common lien of society is Talk; and the talk must be essentially small talk. No greater blunder could be committed than to suppose that society wants, or ought to want, Conversation, in the dignified sense of that term, in which an idea is introduced and expanded, a proposition developed, or an argument stated. ”

“ It is conversation of thoughts; it is dialogue—the mother of dialectic in more than the etymological sense. No process is more recurrent in history than the transfer of operations carried on between different persons into the arena of the individual's own consciousness. The discussion which at first took place by bringing ideas from different persons into contact, by introducing them into the forum of competition, and by subjecting them to critical comparison and selective decision, finally became a habit of the individual with himself. ”

“ It goes without saying that a people who have assimilated all the foregoing tenets of good conversation are never disjointed in their talk. Their consummate art of listening is responsible for their skill in following the logical trend of the discourse. ”

“ It is easier to go on in the subordination of one's personality to the strictly conventional life. It expects rather to record a continually perfected machinery, a life in which not only speech but ideas are brought into rule. We have had something to say occasionally of the art of conversation, which is in danger of being lost in the confused babel of the reception and the chatter of the dinner-party—the art of listening and the art of talking both being lost. ”

“ The tranquil and yet spirited discussion of great subjects is the most stimulating of all talk. The thing to be desired is not the avoidance of discussion but the encouragement of it according to its unwritten codes and precepts. "The first condition of any conversation at all," says Professor Mahaffy of Dublin, "is that people should have their minds so far in sympathy that they are willing to talk upon the same subject, and to hear what each member of the company thinks about it. ”

“ But the light give and take, the prompt wit, the ready repartee, which form the mainstay of a conversation, are now all so rare that it would be impossible to gather together anything like a company of true masters and mistresses of conversation. ”

“ To interrupt another, even in common conversation, is reckoned highly indecent. How different this is from the conduct of a polite British house of commons, where scarce a day passes without some confusion, that makes the speaker hoarse in calling to order; and how different from the mode of conversation in many polite companies of Europe, where, if you do not deliver your sentence with great rapidity, you are cut off in the middle of it by the impatient loquacity of those you converse with, and never suffered to finish it! ”

“ The daily newspaper and the magazines should not be allowed to usurp the place of conversation. If the art of talking is rapidly dying out, as some assert, we should do our share to revive it. We may not again have the wit and repartee, the brilliant intellectual combats of those other days, but we can at [Pg 99] least each have a cultivated speaking-voice, an interesting manner of expressing our ideas in conversation, and a refined pronunciation of our mother tongue. ”

“ Conversation.—When you are in company, bring the conversation to some useful subject, but à portée of that company. Points of history, matters of literature, the customs of particular countries, the several orders of knighthood, as Teutonic, Maltese, etc., are surely better subjects of conversation than the weather, dress, or fiddle-faddle stories, that carry no information along with them. The characters of kings and great men are only to be learned in conversation; for they are never fairly written during their lives. ”

“ In real life you and A talk, and B pretends to be taking a share by interjecting interruptions, or one of the three talks a monologue. And the more subtle your sympathy and the greater your restraint from [Pg 30] self-assertion, the more incredible triple and quadruple conversation becomes.
I have observed that there is even nowadays a certain advance towards my views in this matter. Men may not pick out antagonists, and argue to the general audience as once they did: there is a tacit taboo of controversy, neither may you talk your "shop," nor invite your antagonist to talk his. ”

“ Perhaps the first consideration is the mere mechanical distribution of dialogue. In real life only the after-dinner speaker talks at inordinate length. Conversation, except that of the bore, is essentially fragmentary. Not only is each person's part fragmentary, but the whole conversation is usually somewhat brief. ”