Quotes About Communication

I will say here and now that I have never discovered, nor can I see, any reasonable use or excuse for the " waynee, weedee, weekee " convention. It is not merely that I have a profound sympathy with one of my friends who says he just cannot believe that Caesar was the kind of man to talk in that kind of way. Caesar may, indeed, have done so, but what then ?

And by the way, my dear,' he said, 'you might just mention to Mrs. Sutton that if she must read the morning paper before I come down, I should be obliged if she would fold it neatly afterwards.' 'What an old fuss-box you are, darling,' said his wife. Mr. Mummery sighed. He could not explain that it was somehow important that the morning paper should come to him fresh and prim, like a virgin. Women did not feel these things. (Suspicion)

The popular mind has grown so confused that it is no longer able to receive any statement of fact except as an expression of personal feeling.

Those who prefer their English sloppy have only themselves to thank if the advertisement writer uses his mastery of the vocabulary and syntax to mislead their weak minds.

nothing is more vulgar than a careful avoidance of beginning a letter with the first person singular)

Sadie, you're the most tactless girl I ever had the bad luck to meet.' But I am enthusiastic. I get carried away. I don't stop to think. I'm just the same with my work. I don't consider my own feelings; I don't consider other people's feelings. I just wade right in and ask for what I want, and I mostly get it.

Mummy, I think I might understand if only you wouldn't explain.

Peter: Oy! Harriet: Hullo! Peter: I just wanted to ask whether you'd given any further thought to that suggestion about marrying me. Harriet (sarcastically) : I suppose you were thinking how delightful it would be to go through life together like this? Peter: Well, not quite like this. Hand in hand was more my idea. Harriet: What is that in your hand? Peter: A dead starfish. Harriet: Poor fish! Peter: No ill-feeling, I trust? Harriet: Oh, dear no.

this plain, sulky, inarticulate girl, who had never had any

Harriet agreed that intellectual women should marry and reproduce their kind; but she pointed out the English husband had something to say in the matter and that, very often, he did not care for an intellectual wife.

I think,' said Bredon, who was accustomed to his father's meaningless outbursts of speech, 'she's silly.' 'So do I; but don't say I said so.' 'And rude.' 'And rude. I, on the other hand, am silly, but seldom rude. Your mother is neither rude nor silly.' 'Which am I?' 'You are an egotistical extravert of the most irrepressible type.

Any fool can tell a lie, and any fool can believe it; but the right method is to tell the truth in such a way that the intelligent reader is seduced into telling the lie for himself.

Do you find it easy to get drunk on words? So easy that, to tell you the truth, I am seldom perfectly sober. Lord Peter Wimsey in Gaudy Night

I love you.' 'Bravely said – though I had to screw it out of you like a cork out of a bottle. Why should that phrase be so difficult? I – personal pronoun, subjective case; L – O – V – E, love, verb, active, meaning – Well, on Mr Squeers's principle, go to bed and work it out.'  

The whole question is extraordinarily complicated because of the gulf that has grown up between art on the one hand and on the other hand both the Church and secular society, so that the artists tend to be out of touch with the common man, while the latter, whether Christian or not, has only a very fumbling critical judgment to rely on.

He spoke in a series of gruff barks, and held himself so rigidly that if he had swallowed a poker it could only have produced unseemly curves and flexions in his figure.

Discretion plays a major part in making up the salesman's art, for truths that no one can believe are calculated to deceive.

Men of science spend much time and effort in the attempt to disentangle words from their metaphorical and traditional associations;

The professional interpreter is a minor miracle—far better

If I can't make you see the thing in the right perspective this time I'll chuck it for good.

Reading maketh a full man—" "Conference a ready man," said Harriet. "And writing an exact man," said the Superintendent. "Mind that, Joe Sellon, and see you let me have them notes so as they can be read to make sense.

You said 'The glass-blower's cat is bompstable'," retorted Lord Peter. "It's a perfectly rippin' word, but I don't know what you mean by it.

So, you're the man who can't spell 'fuck.' Dorothy Parker to Norman Mailer after publishers had convinced Mailer to replace the word with a euphemism, 'fug,' in his 1948 book, The Naked and the Dead.

Q: What's the difference between an enzyme and a hormone? A: You can't hear an enzyme.