Idle talk

“ If in ordinary conversation we were to pay great attention to every dull, vain, and puerile remark, we should be ashamed to speak or even to listen, and we should perhaps condemn ourselves to a perpetual silence, which would be more injurious to society than idle talk. ”

“ Idle talk corrupts the hearers' minds, and tendeth to make them light, and vain, and empty, even as good discourse doth tend to make them good. Why do you talk to others, but to communicate your sense and affections to them by your words? And for all that many take it for a little sin, I am sure it is not a little hurt that it doth. If men were not used to be entertained with so much vain discourse, they could not tell how to keep better things from their minds or mouths; nor would their thoughts be so habituated to vanity ”

“ Thief VI. Another time-wasting sin is idle talk. What abundance of precious time doth this consume! Hearken to most men's discourse when they are sitting together, or working together, or travelling together, and you shall hear how little of it is any better than silence: and if not better it is worse. So full are those persons of vanity who are empty, even to silence, of any thing that is good, that they can find and feed a discourse of nothing, many hours and days together ”

“ The common modern meaning is of light personal or social conversation, or, with an invidious sense, of idle tale-bearing. “Gossip” was early used with the sense of a friend or acquaintance, either of the parent of the child baptized or of the other god-parents, and thus came to be used, with little reference to the position of sponsor, for women friends of the mother present at a birth; the transition of meaning to an idle chatterer or talker for talking’s sake is easy. The application to the idle talk of such persons does not appear to be an early one. ”

“ If you depute to each their equal share of time, a composed discourse is fitter and spareth time better, than interrupting altercations and exchange of words; and if your memory cannot hold all that is said, either take notes, or crave the help of some repetition, or answer the part which you do remember.
3. Idle talk is worst when it is about holy things, and tendeth to profane them: when men unreverently babble about the Scriptures, or controversies of religion; or when by fluent tongues men design the increase of some faction, or propagating of some error, or the setting forth their parts. ”

“ It is an aggravation of the sin of loquacity and idle talk, when it is done in a proud, self-conceitedness of your own wit, with an unmannerly contempt of others. This is the case of abundance that have not the manners or patience to stay till another man hath done his speech. They think others so long that their list will not hold till they come to the end. ”

“ It is thus with a circle of friends when they convene together, and employ their time in the reciprocal interchange of thought upon a suitable theme. But when persons meet together and pass away the time in worse than idle talk, circulating tales of slander, whispering, backbiting, and speaking evil of their fellow-men, this is killing time. ”

“ Another sort of idle talk is vain and immoderate disputings, about the smaller circumstances of religion, or frequent discourses about such unedifying things while greater matters should be talked of. ”

“ They never talk about themselves but listen to you while you talk about yourself, and keep up an appearance of being interested in the conversation. ”

“ In fact, gossip usually represents the need of a bored world to be entertained at any price, the restless ennui that must be forever talking or listening to fill the vacuity of its existence, to supply its lack of really vital interests. This demand naturally creates a supply of idle talkers, whose social existence depends on their ability to provide the entertainment desired; and nothing would seem to be so well-pleasing to the idle human ear as the whisper that discredits, or the story that ridicules, the distinction it envies, and the goodness it cannot understand. ”

“ As a rule it will listen to neither a dull speaker nor a bright one. It refuses all persuasion. The dull speaker wearies it and sends it far away in idle dreams; the bright speaker throws out stimulating ideas which it goes chasing after and is at once unconscious of him and his talk. You cannot keep your mind from wandering, if it wants to; it is master, not you. ”

“ When idle words are frequent, multiplied, and made their common talk and custom: which is the case of some men, but of abundance of loquacious women; whose natural disposition inclineth them thereto. One that hath but little wit, and much self-conceitedness, and passion, will have a torrent of words for a drop of sense. ”

“ This passage, from Wordsworth's Ode on the Intimations of Immortality (1807) , was a favorite one with Stevenson, and he quotes it several times in various essays.]
IV TALK AND TALKERS I "Sir, we had a good talk." [1] —JOHNSON.
"As we must account [2] for every idle word, so we must for every idle silence."—FRANKLIN.
There can be no fairer ambition than to excel in talk; to be affable, gay, ready, clear and welcome; to have a fact, a thought, or an illustration, pat to every subject ”

“ And genuinely, an idle word is one that is vain, frivolous, ludicrous, which brings good neither to the speaker, nor to the hearer, even though it be injurious to no one, nor, in itself, reprehensible. Thus S. Jerome, “an idle word is what is spoken without profit either to the speaker, or the hearer, if omitting to speak of serious things we speak of what are frivolous and old wives’ fables. But a man who utters what is scurrilous, or anything immodest, will be accounted guilty, not of idle, but of wicked words.” ”

“ The drones of the commonwealth that have nothing else to do, but visit, and compliment, and prate of other men's matters, and that can have while to sit whole hours together, upon no business, are they that are most guilty of idle chat. Idle gentlemen, and beggars, and idle gossiping women, and old men that are void of the fear of God, and children that have no business to do, are they that can sit talking away their time to as little purpose, as if [Pg 366] they had been all the time asleep. All idle persons swarm with the vermin of idle thoughts and words. ”

“ Thus, coming at last to think sacredly of the character and reputation of others, he will destroy those wrong conditions of mind which give rise to slander.
The next step is the overcoming of gossip and idle conversation. Idle speech consists in talking about the private affairs of others, in talking merely to pass away the time, and in engaging in aimless and irrelevant conversation. Such an ungoverned condition of speech is the outcome of an ill-regulated mind. The man of virtue will bridle his tongue, and thus learn how rightly to govern the mind. ”

“ MY DEAR MR. BOK:”
No, no—it is like most interviews, pure twaddle, and valueless.
For several quite plain and simple reasons, an “interview” must, as a rule, be an absurdity. And chiefly for this reason: it is an attempt to use a boat on land, or a wagon on water, to speak figuratively. Spoken speech is one thing, written speech is quite another. Print is a proper vehicle for the latter, but it isn’t for the former. The moment “talk” is put into print you recognize that it is not what it was when you heard it; you perceive that an immense something has disappeared from it. That is its soul. ”

“ The cuddy table was patronized in stately silence, and at any time, indeed, conversation became as spasmodic and laconic as the merest courtesy would allow. We of the civilized persuasion have somehow drifted into the notion that it is imperative on us to talk at all times and seasons, so that few tongues ever rest from morning to night, when the timely interference of Providence paralyzes for a time our power of speech. ”

“ An odd effect of absence from general society, that the talent for conversation should have ripened, and the shyness have disappeared—but so it is. When I first saw her, her talk, delightful as it was, had something too much of the lamp—she spoke too well—and her letters were rather too much like the very best books. ”

“ But it was mortifying to find how strong the habit of idle speech may become in one's self. One need not always be saying something in this noisy world. ”

“ I have this evening been tired, jaded, nay, tormented, by the company of a most worthy, sensible and learned man, a near relation of mine, who dined and passed the evening with me. This seems a paradox, but is a plain truth, he has no knowledge of the world, no manners, no address; far from talking without book, as is commonly said of people who talk sillily, he only talks by book; which in general conversation is ten times worse. ”

“ That was my great idea for to-day, Ivor. I myself have not been doing very much talking of late—and, you know, I’m very tired of being with people whose main purpose in conversation is to massacre syntax and evade sense.”
“But it’s not quite fair to come to talk to a man who has been alone for weeks! ”

“ For the sake of this cowardly keeping up of appearances, I’ve filled the house with people I dislike, I’ve had to listen to and learn their empty, meaningless, surface-clever talk—to lead their artificial, unnatural life. ”

“ But I say to you that every idle word that men shall speak they shall render an account for it in the day of judgment, " and not one such word shall go unpunished. What must then be the result of all the useless thoughts, imaginations, vain conversations, idle staring, and other frivolous things in which the idle pass their time and squander it so shamefully? ”

“ He had not merely a capital flow of animal spirits, a store of what in women is called small-talk, but what in men may better be described as broad talk, a keen perception of the ludicrous, and a sufficient power of satire, but he had the great knack--learned in his long experience of life--of exactly suiting his conversation to his audience. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You are as silent as the grave commonly; but when you do speak, you speak well,” said the vivandiere condescendingly. “I hate silence myself! Thoughts are very good grain, but if they are not whirled round, round, round, and winnowed and ground in the millstones of talk, they keep little, hard, useless kernels, that not a soul can digest.” ”

“ They have come not to hear a lecture, but to converse; to talk as well as to listen; to contribute as well as to receive. Even the listeners and admirers that gathered around Macaulay sometimes longed for a ‘flash of silence.’ Oh, the misery of it, when some inordinate gossip gets you by the buttonhole and drums away at your aching tympanum with an incessant crash of prattle! ”

“ The men and women assembled, as though stimulated and inspired by some new interest, now strove to appear at their very best—and the friction of intellect with intellect resulted in more or less brilliancy of talk, which, for once, was totally free from the flippant and mocking spirit which usually pervaded the Santoisie social circle. ”

“ The instant any one is felt to be talking by rules all the charm of his society vanishes, and he becomes the worst of social culprits—a bore. For it is the natural easy flow of talk which is indeed the perfection of what we seek. Didactic teaching, humorous anecdotes, clever argument—these may take their part in social intercourse, but they are not its perfection. ”

“ If similitude of manners be a motive to kindness, the Idler may flatter himself with universal patronage. There is no single character under which such numbers are comprised. Every man is, or hopes to be, an Idler. Even those who seem to differ most from us are hastening to increase our fraternity; as peace is the end of war, so to be idle is the ultimate purpose of the busy.
There is perhaps no appellation by which a writer can better denote his kindred to the human species. It has been found hard to describe man by an adequate definition. ”

“ Not exactly the sort of thing for an idle fellow to think about, is it? But outsiders, you know, often see most of the game; and sitting in my arbour by the wayside, smoking my hookah of contentment, and eating the sweet lotus-leaves of indolence, I can look out musingly upon the whirling throng that rolls and tumbles past me on the great high road of life. ”

“ Either the reports in the biographies are one-sided and imperfect, or the race of people whom I frequently meet with now—and whom I venture to call Talk-stoppers, because their business in life seems to be the obstructing, confusing, and interrupting of all conversation—must be the peculiar and portentous growth of our own degenerate era. ”

“ So the word unpleasant, notwithstanding its negative form, does not connote the mere absence of pleasantness, but a less degree of what is signified by the word painful, which, it is hardly necessary to say, is positive. Idle, on the other hand, is a word which, though positive in form, expresses nothing but what would be signified either by the phrase not working, or by the phrase not disposed to work ”

“ However various and brilliant his talk may be, we suspect him of impoverishing us by excluding the contributions of other minds, which attract our curiosity the more because he has shut them up in silence. Besides, we get tired of a "manner" in conversation as in painting, when one theme after another is treated with the same lines and touches. ”

“ You do not mean now to be recognized as telling lies: you [Pg 131] would perhaps shudder at the thought; but what you now shudder at, you may fall into, by the inadvertent formation of habitual exaggerated talk. Therefore guard against these excessive and thoughtless hyperbolisms of speech. Speak of things, persons, and places as you see them, not as you fancy; speak to convey correct views, not to excite wonder or to rival others in “large talk,” and in “strange things.” Simple truth is always more welcome in society than swollen fiction. ”