Quotes About Communication

M. de Charlus and M. de Sidonia had each of them immediately detected the other's vice, which was in both cases that of soliloquising in society, to the extent of not being able to stand any interruption. Having decided at once that, in the words of a famous sonnet, there was 'no help,' they had made up their minds not to be silent but each to go on talking without any regard to what the other might say.

The things people joke about most are usually those which irritate them, but which they do not want to seem to be irritated by; there is perhaps, too, an unspoken hope of further advantage: that the person we are speaking to, hearing us admit something jokingly, will believe that it is not true.

Hardly ever do we hear anything that does not make us regret something that we have said

But I had long since ceased trying to extract from a woman the square root of her unknown, as it were, which did not often survive a simple introduction.

You hadn't heard 'Teaser Augustus'?" the Princesse d'Épinay would ask. "But of course," the Marquise de Bavano would reply with a blush, "the Princesse de Sarsina-La Rochefoucauld told me about it, but not in quite the same terms. But it must have been so much more interesting to hear it repeated like that in the company of my cousin," she added, as though she had been speaking of a song accompanied by the composer himself.

We lie all our life long, especially indeed, perhaps only, to those people who love us.

Marcel's attempts to interpret Albertine are constantly deflected—by Aimé's unreliable letters, by Albertine's misinterpreted telegrams, by Marcel's failure to recognize Gilberte at the Guermantes. All of these misreadings could be seen as part of a general comedy or tragedy of social misunderstanding and psychological failure to grasp the nature of other people, as well as one's own self.

But there is edited every day in Paris, Balzac would tell us, a sort of spoken newspaper, more terrible than its printed rivals

De liefde? Die bedrijf ik vaak maar ik spreek er nooit over. (Mme de Villeparisis in 'De kant van Guermantes'.

that men can be being sincere with their friends, and even with themselves, when they speak warmly of a woman's kindness to them, even though, to tell the truth, their relationship is undermined secretly, in a way they do not confess to others or which is revealed involuntarily in response to questions, to inquiries, by a painful anxiety.

at that time I still supposed that it was by means of words that one communicated the truth to others.

I had allowed myself to murmur a few impatient and hurtful words, which, I had sensed from the way her face contracted, had struck home, had wounded her; it was I whom they were lacerating, now that the consolation of a thousand kisses was forever impossible.

He was the offended party, he was owed an explanation. In fact there is almost always, attached to the idea of a conversation which might clear up a misunderstanding, some other idea which for one reason or another makes us reluctant to have that conversation.

Ao falar, imaginamos sempre que nos escutam com os nossos ouvidos, com a nossa alma.

To be with the people one loves, to speak to them, not to speak to them, it is all the same.

The words Gisèle's eyes promised would be spoken to me as soon as Albertine left us alone together were not to be uttered,

our social personality is created by the thoughts of other people.

notre personnalité sociale est une création de la pensée des autres. Même l'acte si simple que nous appelons « voir une personne que nous connaissons » est en partie un acte intellectuel

But we lied to each other, Robert and I, as in every conversation when one friend is genuinely anxious to help another who is desperately in love. The friend who is being counsellor, prop, comforter, may pity the other's distress but cannot share it, and the kinder he is to him the more he has to lie.

É singular que certa ordem de atos secretos tenha como consequência exterior um mode de falar ou gesticular que os revela.

But as soon as I was with some one else, when I began to talk to a friend, my mind at once 'turned about,' it was towards the listener and not myself that it directed its thoughts, and when they followed this outward course they brought me no pleasure.

For, as far as these important diplomats are concerned, to look at you in a certain way is intended to convey to you not that they have seen you but that they have not, and that they have some serious matter

To anything that we do not know to be related to the real life of the person whom we love we pay but scant attention, we forget immediately what she has said to us about some incident or people that we do not know, and her expression while she was saying it.

But friendship does not express itself in the same way in different people.