Social Skills Quotes

“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.”

“Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy, is the best bred man in company.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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 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.”

“Confidence in conversation has a greater share than wit.”

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

“There is no accomplishment so easy to acquire as politeness and none more profitable.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

“Be the first to say, "Hello".”

“Compliment three people every day.”

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

“The gallantry of the mind consists in agreeable flattery.”

“Confidence contributes more to conversation than wit.”

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

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

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

“If someone offers you a breath mint, accept it.”

“Be courteous to all, but intimate with few.”

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