The Art of Conversation Is... & More Word Wisdom

“The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the right place but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.”

• Dorothy Nevill

“Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”

• A widely circulated paraphrase of advice from Russian writer Anton Chekhov

“When you're drowning you don't think, I would be incredibly pleased if someone would notice I'm drowning and come and rescue me. You just scream.”

• John Lennon

“Summer afternoon, summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.”

• Henry James, quoted by Edith Wharton in her autobiography A Backward Glance

“Words ought to be a little wild for they are the assaults of thought on the unthinking.”

• John Maynard Keynes

“No iron can pierce a heart with such force as a period put just at the right place.”

• Isaac Babel, from his short story Guy de Maupassant

“Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say 'infinitely' when you mean 'very;' otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.”

• C.S. Lewis in Letters to Children

“I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.”

• Catherine Morland, in Jane Austen's novel Northanger Abbey

“The oldest, shortest words – 'yes' and 'no' – are those which require the most thought.”

• Attributed to the Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras