Hints on conversation – part one

Taken from Enquire Within

• Speak distinctly, neither too rapidly nor too slowly
• Accommodate the pitch of your voice to the hearing of the person with whom you are conversing
• Never speak with your mouth full
• The woman who wishes her conversation to be agreeable will avoid conceit, affectation and loud laughter
• Her lips will readily yield to a pleasant smile, she will not love to hear herself talk, her tones will bear the impress of sincerity and her eyes kindle with animation as she speaks
• We need scarcely advert to the rudeness of interrupting anyone who is speaking, or to the impropriety of pushing, to its full extent, a discussion which has become unpleasant.
• Some persons have a mania for Greek and Latin quotations, this is particularly to be avoided. It is like pulling up the the stones from a tomb wherewith to kill the living.
• Nothing is more wearisome than pedantry!

Enquire Within published 1935 by The Daily Express

I am sure that where there is a she – it can be a he!

The final point about pedantry – well – what can I say –

I always have a quotation for everything – it saves original thinking.
Dorothy L. Sayers