Pleasantries Quotes

• If you get beyond the political rhetoric [and assembled a group to solve Social Security] it would take them 15 minutes. It would take them 15 minutes only because 10 minutes was used for pleasantries.

  Alan Greenspan

  Political, Groups, Social

  "Senator Kerry speaks, &c." by Jay Nordlinger, www.nationalreview.com. November 01, 2006.

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• New Zealanders have conventions and pleasantries, but we are direct. We are encouraged to be transparent with our behavior and not to employ passive aggression.

  Daniel Gillies

  Behavior, Conventions, Aggression

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• All you'll get from strangers is surface pleasantry or indifference. Only someone who loves you will criticize you.

  Judith Crist

  Women, Love You, Memorable

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• All pleasantry should be short; and it might even be as well were the serious short also.

  Voltaire

  Might, Serious, Should

  Voltaire (1824). “A philosophical dictionary, from the Fr. [by J.G. Gurton].”, p.319

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• Pleasantries are low entropy, biased so far that they stop being an earnest inquiry and become ritual. Ritual has its virtues, of course, and I don't quibble with them in the slightest. But if we really want to start fathoming someone, we need to get them speaking in sentences we can't finish.

  Brian Christian

  Needs, Inquiry, Want

  "The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive". Book by Brian Christian, March 1, 2011.

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• Although I may express myself with some degree of pleasantry the purport of my words is entirely serious.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Degrees, Serious

  "The Complete Short Stories of Robert Louis Stevenson".

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• The fairest blossoms of pleasantry thrive best where the sun is not strong enough to scorch, nor the soil rank enough to corrupt.

  Roger L'Estrange

  Strong, Soil, Sun

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• In one sense what may pass between the pope and myself may be trivialities. In another sense the fact of talking trivialities is itself a portent of great significance. But the pleasantries which we exchange may, as one church leader said, be pleasantries about profundities.

  Geoffrey Fisher

  Talking, Leader, Church

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• The powerful hold in deep remembrance an ill-timed pleasantry.
  [Lat., Facetiarum apud praepotentes in longum memoria est.]

  Tacitus

  Powerful, Remembrance, Ill

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• A careful observation of Nature will disclose pleasantries of superb irony. She has for instance placed toads close to flowers.

  Honore de Balzac

  Nature, Flower, Toads

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• Pleasantry is never good on serious points, because it always regards subjects in that point of view in which it is not the purpose to consider them.

  Voltaire

  Philosophy, Views, Serious

  Voltaire (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of Voltaire (Illustrated)”, p.4541, Delphi Classics

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• I wanted to wear the most impenetrable suit of armour ever known to mankind. 'Hello, Mr. Rotten...' You can't say anything about me. You can't put me down in any way shape or form - I'm rotten to the core... you know, what's left for you? Pleasantries? I suppose the worst insult you could sling my way is 'Oh, he's really nice, him.'

  John Lydon

  Nice, Insults You, Say Anything

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• For my own part I think no innocent species of wit or pleasantry should be suppressed: and that a good pun may be admitted among the smaller excellencies of lively conversation.

  James Boswell

  Thinking, May, Innocence

  James Boswell (1807). “The life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: comprehending an account of his studies and numerous works, in chronological order; a series of his epistolatory correspondence and conversations with many eminent persons; and various original pieces of his composition, never before published: the whole exhibiting a view of literature and literary men in Great-Britain, for near half a century during which he flourished”, p.403

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• The naturalist is a civilized hunter. He goes alone into the field or woodland and closes his mind to everything but that time and place, so that life around him presses in on all the senses and small details grow in significance. He begins the scanning search for which cognition was engineered. His mind becomes unfocused, it focuses on everything, no longer directed toward any ordinary task or social pleasantry.

  E. O. Wilson

  Mind, Ordinary, Details

  "Biophilia". Book by E. O. Wilson, 1984.

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• In a world where your interactions with humans are solely about rating one to five, two things happen: One is all humanity is lost in the name of fake pleasantries and also there's no nuance to that system. There's no room for complex interactions that are rich and meaningful.

  Michael Schur

  Meaningful, Names, Two

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• I always put these pert jackanapeses out of countenance by looking extremely grave when they expect that I should laugh at their pleasantries; and by saying Well, and so?--as if they had not done, and that the sting were still to come. This disconcerts them, as they have no resources in themselves, and have but one set of jokes to live upon.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Laughing, Done, Resources

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• As a general rule, do not kick the shins of the opposite gentleman under the table, if personally unaquainted with him; your pleasantry is liable to be misunderstood--a circumstance at all times unpleasant.

  Lewis Carroll

  Opposites, Gentleman, Misunderstood

  Lewis Carroll (1996). “The Complete Illustrated Lewis Carroll”, p.1114, Wordsworth Editions

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• The archiepiscopal throne of Macedonius, which had been polluted with so much Christian blood, was successively filled by Eudoxus and Damophilus. Their diocese enjoyed a free importation of vice and error from every province of the empire; the eager pursuit of religious controversy afforded a new occupation to the busy idleness of the metropolis: and we may credit the assertion of an intelligent observer, who describes, with some pleasantry, the effects of their loquacious zeal.

  Edward Gibbon

  Christian, Religious, Intelligent

  Edward Gibbon (2000). “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume II: A.D. 395 to A.D. 1185 (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.21, Modern Library

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• Everyone’s default state is this pleasantry state. My goal in the show is to undercut that as quickly as possible. If you really do let it sit, it’s sometimes amazing what comes out of people.

  Nathan Fielder

  People, Goal, Sometimes

  "Nathan Fielder's Ingenious Dumb Humor" by Johan Weiner, www.nytimes.com. June 12, 2014.

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• Men and women walked casually about as they did on the main floor, every now and then stopping one another, exchanging pleasantries or scraps of relevantly irrelevant information. Gossip.

  Robert Ludlum

  Men, Gossip, Information

  Robert Ludlum (2013). “The Jason Bourne Series 3-Book Bundle: The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, The Bourne Ultimatum”, p.237, Bantam

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• It is one of the sublime provincialities of New York that its inhabitants lap up trivial gossip about essential nobodies they've never set eyes on, while continuing to boast that they could live somewhere for twenty years without so much as exchanging pleasantries with their neighbors across the hall.

  Louis Kronenberger

  New York, Eye, Years

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