quote · Legacy record
One of the reasons that we find so few persons rational and agreeable in conversation is there is hardly a person who does not think more of what he wants to say than of his answer to what is said. 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. 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 of the reasons that we find so few persons rational and agreeable in conversation is there is hardly a person who does not think more of what he wants to say than of his answer to what is said. 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. 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.
Approximate author period: c. 1646 AD · renaissance
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- Author or tradition
- Francis, Duc De La Rochefoucauld
Attribution: attributed - Country attributed
- Not established
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- Approximate author period: c. 1646 AD · renaissance
author lifetime midpoint (1613–1680); not quotation composition date
An author lifetime, approximate period or collection date is not necessarily the date when these words were first written or spoken. - Recorded source
- Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1871 English edition) (1871 AD)
Main maxims, complete printed maxim 139; J. W. Willis Bund and J. Hain Friswell translation; Simpson Low, Son, and Marston,188FleetStreet,1871 (printed imprint spelling retained)
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