Parry a Compliment, Accept One, Give Your Attention

1902

Accept One Always, but Never Take It Seriously

The famous Mme. Recamier said that she always found two words sufficed to make her guests seem welcome. Upon their arrival she exclaimed, "At last!" and when they took their leave she said, "Already?" If taken literally, we should deprecate the flattery. Flattery is insincere praise and wrongs him that gives and him that takes. It is sometimes kinder to accept a compliment than to parry it.

One may say "Thank you, it is pleasant to be seen through such kind (or partial) eyes," or perhaps, "It is a comfort to know that friendship is partly blind as well as the mythological boy," or any nonsense that serves to show that one appreciates the spirit that prompted the kind expression, however wide the truth.

The frequent repetition of the name of the person addressed h olds a subtle compliment, implying more complete concentration on the speaker's thought upon his or her personality.

De Quincy says: "More will be done for the benefit of conversation by the simple magic of good manners than by all varieties of intellectual power."

It is the sympathetic and responsive listeners that call forth the best efforts of a talker. For such are reserved his choicest stories, his finest thoughts.

A ready smile acts as inspiration, and interest shown in the conversation of others stimulates and vivifies their thoughts.

To a good listener the diffident will say what they think, and the verbose will think what they say.

There is nothing more trying than to find that one's conversation is receiving but a divided attention and nothing more rude than for a person to pick up a book or paper and look over it while pretending to listen to what one is saying. — New York Herald.

The Pleasures of the Dull

1874

Tormented by the pains of thinking, I have often envied the placid peace of those who cannot think at all. How delightful it must be, I have said to myself, to be able to hold the most utterly contradictory views on all things, divine and human, without the faintest suspicion as to their inconsistency, or any logical horror of inconsistency itself! Women, with occasional exceptions, are not much troubled by such inconsistencies. Are they, therefore, less happy than men? How soothing it must be to be hopelessly incapable of syllogisms! What pangs is not a mind spared that refuses to admit that if A is B, and C is A, therefore C is also B! What admirable wives and mothers and daughters there are, and what praiseworthy country parsons too, to whom all this bepuzzlement about A, B, and C, is as unintelligible as a conjurer's gibberish! Supposing it were suddenly proved that all our astronomers are wrong, and that the sun really goes round the earth, what horrible agonies should we thinking people endure who believe in mathematics and the multiplication-table, and what a hideous skepticism would darken the rest of our lives! Yet the unthinking multitude would be unmoved by a single painful thought, and would dress, dine, digest, and sleep as unconcernedly as if Copernicus and Newton had never existed.

Then, again, there is that enviable capacity for enjoying many things which in my unfortunate state of culture, I do detest. I never walk through an old house, filled with eighteenth-century furniture, without envying the simplicity and credulity of my ancestors. How easily must that generation have been pleased which saw beauty in those spindle-legged chairs and tables, and which could plaster up a Gothic roof or screen, and paint some venerable oak-carving a pale-blue color, and find itself refreshed by the effect! There are limits, indeed, to one's envy of the non-culture — I will not call it the barbarism — of the past. By no possible effort of sympathy can I wish to feel as those felt who delighted to contemplate King George IV., in his tight coat and silk stockings, sitting upon his royal sofa, with arm outstretched, as depicted by Sir Thomas Lawrence.

As to the amount of happiness connected with the mutabilities of ladies' dress, on the other hand, my thoughts are much exercised. Does it, or does it not, add to the enjoyment of one's whole life to be able to be equally delighted with a mass of false hair of reddish hue at the back of one's head, and a mass of false hair, made white with powder, on the top of one's head, and a head without any false hair at all? Take the whole amount of rapture which one has ever experienced from the contemplation of the Venus of Milo, and consider whether it is equal, in the long-run, to the daily self-complacency of the simple soul that is conscious of being always clothed as fashion demands, whether fashion prescribes four-and- twenty inches or three yards as the diameter of her gown. I go, perhaps, to a gayly-dressed evening gathering, where every woman, whether old or young, is decolletee, in varying degrees of exposure. What necks do I see! What shoulders! What complexions! Yet are not those smiling creatures happy, whose skins are as nearly as possible the same color as their dresses? Is the enjoyment of that amiable female marred by the thought that she has clothed herself in a hue which brings out most forcibly the sad fact that time is beginning its ravages upon her face and aims? And are women generally to be pitied because they are for the most part unaware of the fact that good-looking arms are not common, and that arms which are not good-looking had better be encased in some pleasant-looking sleeves than paraded before the public gaze? These are difficult questions for him to settle who speculates on the advantages of the culture of today. — Cornhill.

Comment: Do you have any idea what this poor unfortunate person is talking about?

Russian Proverbs

1878

When life is not bright, death does not fright.
A tongue that is pert is its own sure hurt.
Speak out with might when your cause is right.
If Heaven don't forsake us the pigs will not take us.
Truth is severe, but to God 'tis dear.
Don't plunge in the brook for a ford till you look.
If simply you live to five score, you'll survive.
Every fox praises his own tail.
Stretch your feet according to the length of your coat.
Chase two wolves and you will not catch one.
Pledge not thy word rashly but hold to it when pledged.
Dig not a pit for others lest thou fall into it thyself.
Through heedless words the head falls off.
Fear not the threats of the great but rather the tears of the poor.
A word is not a sparrow, for, once flown, you can never catch it again.
Every little frog is great in his own bog.
Disease comes in by hundred weights and goes out by ounces.
An old friend is worth two new ones.
Water runs not beneath a resting stone.
Be praised not for your ancestors but for your virtues.
To the sky 'tis high, to the czar 'tis far.

Something Worth Bragging About

1915

One day I decided to visit one of my old friends and to take my little niece, five years old, with me. We were talking about dishes and my friend got one of her highly-prized hand-painted plates and was telling me how much she valued it, when the little girl broke in: "Oh, that's nuffin'. Why, we live in a hand-painted house." — Chicago Tribune.


Thinkers

"Men of thought" are the thinkers, the creators of ideas, the men who furnish the inspirations and theories, while "men of action" are the workers, who carry out the plans furnished by the others. Sometimes the two are combined in one, as in the case of Napoleon, Caesar, Da Vinci, who were at one and the same time great in both theory and practice.


Smallest Bird

The smallest bird is a Central American hummingbird, about the size of a blue bottle fly.


Daily Thought

Wise, cultivated, genial conversation is the last flower of civilization, and the best result which life has to offer us. — Emerson.


Another Try

Recruiting Officer — What's the good of coming here and saying you're only seventeen years old! Go and walk around that yard and come back and see if you're not nineteen. — Punch.

Leave Fighting Dogs Alone

1915

Let the dogs fight it out. A Nebraska court has held that a man who voluntarily attempts to separate two fighting dogs cannot recover damages from the owner of the dog by which he is bitten.


Cause of Sleep

What causes sleep? Some have thought that it depends on a flow of blood to the brain resulting from a recumbent position, but you have seen that the brain contains less blood during sleep, and a person can lie down for a long time without sleeping. Repeated observations on the displacement of the blood pressure from the brain to the extremities during sleep gave basis for the thought that sleep is due to cerebral anaemia.


Their Days of Comfort

We have come to the belief that the happiest ones in the world are those who, having experienced wealth and the intolerable bother of keeping to a certain standard of fashion and high living, lose their money and are then able thoroughly to enjoy the ease and comfort of poverty and privation.


What "Penny" of Nails Mean

The terms ten-penny, etc., as applied to nails came from the number in a pound, pronounced pun. Nails of such a size that it took 1,000 of them to weigh four, six, eight or ten pounds were popularly known as four-pun' nails, six-pun' nails, eight-pun' nails and ten-pun' nails, respectively; and in the course of time, four-pun* nails, six-pun' nails, etc., were gradually corrupted to the meaningless four-penny nails, six-penny nails, etc.


Considering the Ant

A sapper of effectiveness is the habit of thinking ourselves busy, says the Nevada Post. Its confusion of thought is a certain preventive of accomplishment. The ant which frantically runs up a grass stem and then runs down again is doubtless racking his nervous system with the idea that he is busy, but he is gathering no food for the colony.


Double Lack of Understanding

One half of the world, dissatisfied with what it has, can't understand how the other half can be dissatisfied with what it hasn't.


Optimistic Thought

Let it content thee that thou art a man.

Some Shots at "Haste"; It Maketh Waste, You Know

1916

Hurry usually leads to error.

The motto of Baron Plunket was "Hasten slowly." Churchill said, "The more haste ever the worst speed;" Boileau, "Hasten slowly and without losing heart put your work twenty times upon the anvil." "Haste maketh waste," said Heywood. "I'm always in haste, but never in a hurry," is from John Wesley. Richard III mumbled, "Sweet flowers are slow and weeds make haste." He would have made a successful farmer. This is Seneca: "Haste trips up its own heels, fetters and stops itself;" Tennyson, "Raw haste, half sister to delay."

Life for delays and doubts no time does give.
None ever yet made haste enough to live.

That bright couplet was written by Cowley. Listen to Bulwer-Lytton:

Business dispatched is business well done,
But business hurried is business ill done.

Comment: I wonder who said, "The faster I go the behinder I get."

Why We Lower the Head in Deep Thinking

1912

WHY HEAD IS LOWERED

GENERALLY THE ACCOMPANIMENT OF DEEP THOUGHT

However, One May Take His Choice of Various Scientific Reasons Assigned for This Practically Universal Habit.

It is a regular part of the education of a Mussulman to learn how to balance his head in order to aid his memory, an exchange says. Although the natives of other countries do not make this a matter of training, it is noticeable that the habit of bowing the head when in deep thought is customary with all humans, even when they do not know why they do it. Closing the eyes can readily be explained by the desire to shut out the sight of objects that might otherwise confuse the brain activities, but the simple act of bending the neck seems to have special significance whether the eyes are closed or not.

Lessening one blood supply and increasing another appears to bring into contact and use an impression on the brain which has not been used frequently or not for a long time.

The innumerable individual mannerisms count for but little, for the habit of contracting the jugulars and carotids and then letting loose the whirlpool seems to be universal and important. The physicians cannot tell us why, for the actual workings of man's brains are still a mystery to a large extent, but men do contract the arteries mentioned and loosen the others instinctively in an effort at concentrated thought.

Bowing the head to conceal thought is also common, although we know of no country where that is a part of one's education. This is doubtless due to a desire not to look a person directly in the eye.

The honest man, searching his brain for truth, thus makes the same obeisance to his instinct as the clever rascal seeking to hide a trick too dangerous for human observation.

Ask the ordinary cheat his price for produce and almost invariably he makes the sign of humility. His head drops forward and frequently his eyelids follow. Intelligent rogues, who do not wish to be found out, avoid thinking of their crimes in the presence of certain people. Instead, they endeavor to concentrate their thoughts upon something distant from the facts, as if they feared a too plain mental picture might be observed by other than their own individual egos.

This fear may be justified in that experience which we all have at some time when a person ransacking his memory for a forgotten thing hears it spoken of by one who has made no effort to think it up, but has merely read it from the brain of the thinker before the thinker himself has put it into words.

—The Daily Commonwealth, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, December 19, 1912, page 3.

Keeping Private Letters Private: Burn Them

1912

Wise Man

Once upon a time a wise man penned a letter full of confidential statements, and at the end he wrote a line, heavily underscored: "Burn this letter." Then, being a wise man, he took his own advice and burned the letter himself.


Gift That Is Divine

If instead of a gem, or even a flower, we could cast the gift of a lovely thought into the heart of a friend, that would be giving as the angels must give — George MacDonald.


Jane Austen Unpopular

It has been pointed out with some surprise that the late W. S. Gilbert had a strong dislike for Jane Austen, but a correspondent of the New York Evening Post reminds us that Mark Twain had a similar antipathy. He said once that "a library that does not contain Jane Austen's works is a good library, even if it hasn't another book in it."


Have Enjoyed Long Life

Living in the Isle of Wight is a family of three brothers and two sisters who are all in receipt of the old age pension, and whose combined ages total 387 years. The veteran of the family is Mrs. Ann Harris of Cowes, aged eighty-four; the "baby" of the family is Mr. Robert Butt of Niton, who has seen only seventy-two summers.

—The Daily Commonwealth, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, December 17, 1912, page 11.

Quotations and Thoughts: The Case of Human Liberty

1912

Garrison's Philosophy

The truth that we utter is impalpable, yet real; it cannot be thrust down by brute force, nor pierced with a dagger, nor bribed with gold. . . . The cause that we espouse is the cause of human liberty, formidable to tyrants, and dear to the oppressed, throughout the world.—William Lloyd Garrison.


Daily Thought

No thought which ever stirred a human breast should be untold.—Robert Browning.


Truth

A mood is that which turns yesterday's truth into today's falsehood. -Life.


Couldn't Take Prescription

Physician—"You should seek a higher altitude."
Patient—"It always gets me dizzy to travel by airship."


They Generally Succeed

People who expect to have their feelings hurt are seldom disappointed.


Some of us want Satan to get behind us for the sake of giving us a shove!

Careful observation informs us that a good deal of the gloom is willful and not a little of it is a pose!

We've noticed that the fellow who habitually plays safe billiards never makes a record run!

—The Daily Commonwealth, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, December 17, 1912, page 2.