Social Skills Quotes

You haven't learned life's lesson very well if you haven't noticed that you can give the tone or colour, or decide the reaction you want of people in advance. It's unbelievable simply. If you want them to take an interest in you, take an interest in them first. If you want to make them nervous, become nervous yourself...It's as simple as that. People will treat you as you treat them. It's no secret. Look about you. You can prove it with the next person you meet.

The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.

Be smarter than other people, just don't tell them so.

Of all bad listeners, the worst and most terrible to encounter is the man who is so fond of listening that he wishes to hear, not only your conversation, but that of every other person in the room.

To build your self image, you need to join the smile, firm handshake and compliment club.

Confidence contributes more to conversation than wit.

I think a compliment ought always to precede a complaint, where one is possible, because it softens resentment and insures for the complaint a courteous and gentle reception.

In truth, politeness is artificial good humor, it covers the natural want of it, and ends by rendering habitual a substitute nearly equivalent to the real virtue. It is the practice of sacrificing to those whom we meet in society, all the little inconveniences and preferences which will gratify them, and deprive us of nothing worth a moment's consideration; it is the giving a pleasing and flattering turn to our expressions, which will conciliate others, and make them pleased with us as well as themselves. How cheap a price for the good will of another!

Defect in manners is usually the defect of fine perceptions. Men are too coarsely made for the delicacy of beautiful carriage and customs. It is not quite sufficient to good breeding, a union of kindness and independence.

Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence.

True popularity comes from acts of kindness rather than acts of stupidity.

There is no talent so useful toward rising in the world, or which puts men more out of the reach of fortune, than that quality generally possessed by the dullest sort of men, and in common speech called discretion; a species of lower prudence, by the assistance of which, people of the meanest intellectuals, without any other qualification, pass through the world in great tranquillity, and with universal good treatment, neither giving nor taking offence.

The reason why so few people are agreeable in conversation is that each is thinking more about what he intends to say than others are saying.

The secret of pleasing in conversation is not to explain too much everything; to say them half and leave a little for divination is a mark of the good opinion we have of others, and nothing flatters their self-love more.

Compliment three people every day.

Self-control is the ability to restrain a laugh at the wrong place.

Take the emotional temperature of those listening to you. Facial expressions, voice inflection and posture give clues to a person's mood and attitude.

The art of conversation, or the qualification for a good companion, is a certain self-control, which now holds the subject, now lets it go, with a respect for the emergencies of the moment.

To listen closely and reply well is the highest perfection we are able to attain in the art of conversation.

Be the first to say, "Hello".

You must not pay a person a compliment, and then straightway follow it with a criticism.

Nothing is so great an example of bad manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none; If you flatter only one or two, you offend the rest.

Be not forward, but friendly and courteous; the first to salute, hear and answer; and be not pensive when it is time to converse.

She had lost the art of conversation but not, unfortunately, the power of speech.

Perpetual aiming at wit is a very bad part of conversation. It is done to support a character: it generally fails; it is a sort of insult on the company, and a restraint upon the speaker.

Confidence in conversation has a greater share than wit.

Story-telling is subject to two unavoidable defects,--frequent repetition and being soon exhausted; so that, whoever values this gift in himself, has need of a good memory, and ought frequently to shift his company.

The habit of paying compliments kept a man's tongue oiled without any expense.

Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest people uneasy is the best bred in the room.

I have trod a measure, I have flattered a lady, I havebeen politic with my friend, smooth with mine enemy.

Instead of considering that the worst way to persuade or please others is to try thus strongly to please ourselves, and that to listen well and to answer well are some of the greatest charms we can have in conversation.

It is bad enough that our geniuses cannot do anything useful, but it is worse that no man is fit for society who has fine traits.He is admired at a distance, but he cannot come near without appearing a cripple.

It's pretty hard to be efficient without being obnoxious.

The secret of success in society is a certain heartiness and sympathy. A man who is not happy in company, cannot find any word in his memory that will fit the occasion; all his information is a little impertinent. A man who is happy there, finds in every turn of the conversation occasions for the introduction of what he has to say. The favorites of society are able men, and of more spirit than wit, who have no uncomfortable egotism, but who exactly fill the hour and the company, contended and contenting.

A bore is a person who opens his mouth and puts his feats in it.

Be courteous to all, but intimate with few.

I seek constantly to improve my manners and graces, for they are the sugar to which all are attracted.

If it requires great tact to speak to the purpose, it requires no less to know when to be silent.

The last thing I'd learn, well into my career, was how to get on, how to say hello, how to get in with the audience.

Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each one a stroke of genius or of love, now repeated and hardened into usage, they form at last a rich varnish, with which the routine of life is washed, and its details adorned. If they are superficial, so are the dew-drops which give such a depth to the morning meadows.

talking too much is a far greater social fault than talking too little.

The basis of good manners is self-reliance. Necessity is the law of all who are not self-possessed.

A man does not please long when he has only species of wit.

If someone offers you a breath mint, accept it.

Nature has left every man a capacity of being agreeable, though not of shining in company; and there are a hundred men sufficiently qualified for both who, by a very few faults, that they might correct in half an hour, are not so much as tolerable.

One thing which makes us find so few people who appear reasonable and agreeable in conversation is, that there is scarcely any one who does not think more of what he is about to say than of answering precisely what is said to him.

The happy phrasing of a compliment is one of the rarest of human gifts, and the happy delivery of it another.

In truth, politeness is artificial good humor, it covers the natural want of it, and ends by rendering habitual a substitute nearly equivalent to the real virtue.

Of all wit's uses, the main one is to live well with who has none.

The most clever and polite are content with only seeming attentive while we perceive in their mind and eyes that at the very time they are wandering from what is said and desire to return to what they want to say.

Have convictions. Be friendly. Stick to your beliefs as they stick to theirs. Work as hard as they do.

I have criticized absent people so often, and then discovered, to my humiliation, that I was talking with their relatives, that I have grown superstitious about that sort of thing and dropped it.

The basis of good manners is self-reliance.

Whether it's eight o'clock in the morning or eight o'clock at night, I always try to greet others before they have a chance to speak to me.

Our success depends very largely upon how well we negotiate our way through our daily contacts with other people without friction or opposition.

The gallantry of the mind consists in agreeable flattery.

If you wou'd have Guests merry with your cheer, Be so your self, or so at least appear.

Manners are the happy ways of doing things.

Politeness and an affable address are our best introduction.

(Politeness is) a tacit agreement that people's miserable defects, whether moral or intellectual, shall on either side be ignored and not be made the subject of reproach.