Small talk

“ She always admired the way in which he talked, prettily, sensibly and divertingly, with a sort of talent for small-talk. Very likely he had acquired it because, without him, his father and mother would have been silent, when they were not quarrelling. ”

“ Though small talk is as indispensable in social life as pennies and halfpennies in the transactions of everyday existence, we must also have conversational gold and silver at our command if we wish to be successful. ”

“ We have most of us some friend with similar characteristics, with whom conversation is simply impossible, though they are always armed and ready for a game of contradiction. Advance an argument, or venture on a ripple of pleasant small talk, as modestly as you may, your arguments are knocked down one after the other, like ninepins, as fast as you set them up, and your rippling talk is swamped in a wave of fine phrases. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The ground-work of conversation is knowledge of the subject under consideration, and without this words are but useless sounds. Yet there are conditions in which a vigorous flow of “small-talk,” we talk with no particular object or value. Live to enliven and keep in good humor, is most desirable. ”

“ But if the young person who does not know how to talk treats these questions interrogatively, ten chances to one, unless she is seated next an imbecile, she will get some very good and light small-talk out of her next neighbor. ”

“ In society one should always be prepared for impromptu conversation, or small talk, and should always have plenty of it in stock; that is, not the whole substance of the expected conversation, but subjects upon which you can converse at a moment’s notice. At receptions, teas, dinners, dances, or any other entertainment, the topics should be select, and the oral abilities prepared to discuss them in a free and familiar way. ”

“ We all know that there are talkers so distinguished that you must not ask both of them to dinner on the same day lest they silence each other, while we know others who bring to us just an average amount of tact, facility of expression, geniality, and a pleasant gift at a quotation, a bit of repartee; such a person we call a ready small- talker, a "most agreeable person," one who frightens nobody and who has a great popularity. ”

“ Talk could still be good, because the comparatively small society was constantly meeting, and each prepared to take his part in the game, and was [Pg 194] not being swept away distractedly into a miscellaneous vortex of all sorts and conditions of humanity. ”

“ There are indolent states of the spirits in which, indisposed to talk ourselves, the talk of others is pleasant to our listless ears; and I gazed on, pleased with the tinkle of the ladies' conversation. ”

“ You know how they talk, even when they don't know what they are saying."
"I care for no one's talk," she said, passionately. "I came to see your hand, and put the herbs upon it; you cannot do it with your left." ”

“ Nobody is to mind him, to tease him with inquiries or salutations. If he will, he breaks into the stream of conversation, and sometimes, rousing up from one of these dreamy trances, finds himself, ere he or they know how, in the mood for free and friendly talk. ”

“ But it is not, and never can be, a substitute for conversation. People equipped with reason, sentiment, and a vocabulary should have something to talk about, some common ground on which they can meet, and penetrate into one another's minds. The exquisite pleasure of interchanging ideas, of awakening to suggestions, of finding sympathy and companionship, is as remote from the languid amusement yielded by story-telling as a good play is remote from the bald diversion of the music hall. ”

“ Oh, I mean, is he like other people, like other young men—empty—and conceited?—or has he wherewithal to make his conversation endurable—worth listening to—point—repartee—subject—does he talk of people or of things? ”

“ Chance acquaintances and intimate friends fall alike under its spell, talk is absolutely spontaneous, it flows rapidly or slowly, or dies away altogether. What need for talk when the fire is saying it all—now flaring up in a blaze to interpret our rarest enthusiasms, now popping and snapping with wit or fury, [Pg 229] now burning with the even heat of steady, rational life, now settling into a contemplative glow of meditation. ”

“ Given the opportunity, conversation, charming in its spontaneity, rises out of the mental habit of noting down for future reference pleasant or odd personal experiences, good stories, the quirks in one’s own mind. One must not intrude these in a place where they do not fit, but it is not in the least a social sin to guide the talk toward your own thought provided you do not thereby push out something better. We are all given tongues and with them a certain conversational responsibility. ”

“ There this incredible man stood, on his official hearth-rug, talking, talking with enormous power and skill, talking as though a pause in his talk, his explanations, his presentation of standpoints and lights, of considerations and expedients, would permit some antagonistic influence to leap into being—into vocal being, the only being he could comprehend. ”

“ A conversation such as hers, always 'seasoned with personal talk,' must necessarily be ill-natured. A discourse that turns entirely on persons, not things, will only admit praise as a novelty or a discovery. ”

“ You see, their idea is to talk in such a manner as to hide what they really think, and you and I regard conversation as a means of expressing our thoughts."
"I suppose that's it. I hope I'll get used to it, but it makes me afraid just now."
"You needn't be. If the thoughts are worth revealing, I think our way is the best. ”

“ It was hitherto a custom of long standing among us that, when any earnest word was uttered, either to an audience or in print, those who never got beyond polite conversation took possession of the word and transformed it into an amusing subject of talk to relieve their boredom. ”

“ The best mix as ill as good and bad. You shall have very useful and cheering discourse at several times with two several men, but let all three of you come together and you shall not have one new and hearty word. Two may talk and one may hear, but three cannot take part in a conversation of the most sincere and searching sort. ”

“ And if people sought their refreshment among all those sweet and wholesome things, conversation would no longer be the difficult and the dry thing it is in many a company. There would be something to talk about worth talking of; and men of sense would venture to talk sense, even to women ”

“ TALK-STOPPERS.
We hear a great deal of lamentation now-a-days, proceeding mostly from elderly people, on the decline of the Art of Conversation among us. Old ladies and gentlemen with vivid recollections of the charms of society fifty years ago, are constantly asking each other why the great talkers of their youthful days have found no successors in this inferior present time. ”

“ Common sense, if such you have, must certainly intimate when you exceed the bounds of propriety in the volume of your talk. How would you like another to impose his talk upon you to the extent you impose your talk upon him? When you talk I have noticed you are so pleased [Pg 10] with yourself as to think very little of what you say, or of how people hear. If you talked about fifty or seventy-five per cent. less than you do, you would be welcomed into the circles of society with fifty or seventy-five per cent. greater pleasure than you are. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Oh, well, if you want original conversation, you'd better go and talk to yourself. ”

“ 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. You have nothing but a dead carcass left on your hands. Color, play of feature, the varying modulations of voice, the laugh, the smile, the informing inflections, everything that gave that body warmth, grace, friendliness, and charm, and commended it to your affection, or at least to your tolerance, is gone, and nothing is left, but a pallid, stiff and repulsive cadaver. ”

“ It has come to me through my association with these working girls that the meagerness of their lives does not so much mean the lack of things as the lack of thoughts, and I have been planning these talks which have been running through the winter in answer to the question ‘What shall we think about?’ I have asked every one to make the talk simple and plain and I have tried to impress upon them that it is to be only a talk, not a lecture. ”

“ Talking of these taciturn people reminds me that there are others who excel them in taciturnity, and who have a very remarkable gift. These are they who know how to talk without saying anything; and who carry on a conversation for two whole hours without its being possible to discover their meaning, to rehearse their talk, or to remember a word of what they have said. ”

“ They have a notion, that when people are met together, a short silence does much improve conversation: this I found to be true; for during those little intermissions of talk, new ideas would arise in their minds, which very much enlivened the discourse. ”

“ In every conversation, every departure must either be a presumption when you talk into your antagonist's special things, a pedantry when you fall back upon your own, or a platitude when you tell each other things you both know. I don't see any other line a conversation can take. The reason why one has to keep up the stream of talk is possibly, as I have already suggested, to manifest goodwill. ”

“ If we are to talk together, let us free ourselves, if we can, from formulas, since they only check growth in the spirit, and, so to speak, are mere inns at which we rest for a moment on account of our weariness and weakness. ”

“ Why do we so willingly speak and talk one with another, when notwithstanding we seldom cease our converse before we have hurt our conscience?
Why we so willingly talk is, for that by discoursing one with another, we seek to receive comfort one of another, and desire to ease our mind. ”

“ The reading which lies behind the talk is varied, and the talker speaks from a full mind, but there is none of that restraint of art which gives weight to the words and makes one wish to read again and again the reflections. ”

“ yes, I feel I must come with you. Do let me. And you will promise to talk to me all the time? No one talks so wonderfully as you do." ”

“ Indeed, when we come to think of it, conversation between these two must have been difficult at times, because they had nobody to talk about. ”

“ In the second place, there are some, especially among young people, who never talk in any other way—with whom this kind of conversation is not an amusement, but a habit—giving the impression that they never think seriously at all. ”

“ WRiting, when properly managed, (as you may be sure I think mine is) is but a different name for conversation: As no one, who knows what he is about in good company, would venture to talk all;—so no author, who understands the just boundaries of decorum and good breeding, would presume to think all: The truest respect which you can pay to the reader's understanding, is to halve this matter amicably; ”

“ The sparkle of talk, the free breeze that swelled its current, are always fled when you write it down; but there is a gentle flow, and truth to the moment, rarely attained in more elaborate compositions. ”

“ The presence of people disturbs me and prevents my thinking deeply, so I talk out what comes along. Have you ever found me so very talkative—unless I am with people who don’t interest me very much above a certain degree, say one above zero? ”

“ I have met this talker in company more than once or twice; and I must say that my conversation with him has been anything but pleasant or satisfactory. I have thought every time that he has increased in his idiosyncracy, that he has become more and more dogged, self-willed, and obstinate. I have wished that he might see himself as others see him. But to this he has been as blind as an owl in mid-day. Where is the salve that would give him this power of vision? He see himself as others see him! Can the blind be made to see, or the deaf to hear? ”

“ I’ve no one belonging to me out here—no one I can talk intimately with. I’ve knocked around. That sort of life doesn’t lend itself to intimacies. I want to talk—oh! about things one doesn’t talk about generally... ”

“ Not only is there no space for rambling and irrelevant talk, but the necessary talk—the talk that is helpful and pertinent—must at the same time carefully consult the limits of space. There are a lot of points to be made in every act—aye, in every scene. ”

“ Good talk is like good scenery—continuous yet constantly varying, and full of the charm of novelty and surprise. How unnatural it is to think except when one is forced to do it, is discovered when one [Pg 137] attempts to analyze one’s thoughts when alone. ”

“ But such a conversation does not seem empty and commonplace when one is speaking with a dear little soul; when the conversation is simply the canvas on which that soul fastens the golden flowers of its own thoughts and feelings, and when, from time to time, its interior is disclosed, like the opening interior of a white rose. ”

“ But routine has never at any time of the world passed for conversation. His utterances, such as, "We'll work Willo' Creek to-morro' mawnin'," or, "I want the wagon to be at the fawks o' Stinkin' Water by Thursday," though on some occasions numerous enough to sound like discourse, never once broke the man's true silence. ”