“Conversation should be like juggling; up go the balls and plates, up and over, in and out, good solid objects that glitter in the footlights and fall with a bang if you miss them.”

Manners are especially the need of the plain. The pretty can get away with anything.

If a thing’s worth doing at all, it’s worth doing well.

Punctuality is the virtue of the bored.

O God, if there is a God, forgive him his sins, if there is such a thing as sin.

You have no idea how much nastier I would be if I was not a Catholic. Without supernatural aid I would hardly be a human being.

A work of art is not a matter of thinking beautiful thoughts or experiencing tender emotions , but of intelligence, skill, taste, proportion, knowledge, discipline and industry; especially discipline.

There is something incomparably thrilling in first opening a brand new book.

Words have basic inalienable meanings, departure from which is either conscious metaphor or inexcusable vulgarity.

Don’t hold your parents up to contempt. After all, you are their son, and it is just possible that you may take after them.

To know and love one other human being is the root of all wisdom.

He was gifted with the sly, sharp instinct for self-preservation that passes for wisdom among the rich.

For in that city -New York; there is neurosis in the air which the inhabitants mistake for energy.

What is youth except a man or a woman before it is ready or fit to be seen.

I prefer all but the very worst travel books, to all but the very best novels.

It is a curious thing. That every creed promises a paradise which will be absolutely uninhabitable for anyone of civilized taste.

To understand all is to forgive all.

What is truly a part of our spiritual path is that which brings us alive. If gardening brings us alive, that is part of our path, if it is music, if it is conversation we must follow what brings us alive.

The conversation between your fingers and someone else’s skin. This is the most important discussion you can ever have.

Good-breeding is not confined to externals, much less to any particular dress or attitude of the body; it is the art of pleasing, or contributing as much as possible to the ease and happiness of those with whom you converse.

The intimate conversation adores her. – sincere.

Customer conversion is dependent on the right customer conversation.

The pipe draws wisdom from the lips of the philosopher, and shuts up the mouth of the foolish; it generates a style of conversation, contemplative, thoughtful, benevolent, and unaffected.

Even an idle phone conversation when driving takes a 40 percent bite out of your focus and, surprisingly, can have the same effect as being drunk.

People who walk away from you without a clear conversation or a willingness to see your heart decided who you were long time ago. Let them go.