A Quote by Heinrich Heine
Silence can be defined as conversation with an Englishman
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We are articulate, but we are not particularly conversational. An Englishman won't talk for the sake of talking. He doesn't mind silence. But after the silence, he sometimes says something.
People sometimes think that defining a term is pedantic and useless, but terms need to be defined if they're going to be discussed, even if the terms are only defined for a single conversation. Those involved in the conversation need to know how the terms are being used.
Conversation was never begun at once, nor in a hurried manner. No one was quick with a question, no matter how important, and no one was pressed for an answer. A pause giving time for thought was the truly courteous way of beginning and conducting a conversation. Silence was meaningful with the Lakota, and his granting a space of silence to the speech-maker and his own moment of silence before talking was done in the practice of true politeness and regard for the rule that, "thought comes before speech."
Real speech can only come from complete silence. Incomplete silence is as fussy as deliberate conversation.
I'm not afraid of silence. You know, I'm not afraid to sit in a room and have the conversation drop into silence. I think that's a very southern thing.
As with most great communicators, God knows that the point of silence and the pause between sentences is not to give the audience the chance to fill the silence with empty babbling but to help create more depth to the conversation.
Every Englishman is convinced of one thing, viz.: That to be an Englishman is to belong to the most exclusive club there is.
It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him.
Every Englishman is an average Englishman: it is a national characteristic.
Against the vast majority of my countrymen, even at this moment, in the name of humanity and civilization, I protest against our share in the destruction of Germany. A month ago Europe was a peaceful comity of nations; if an Englishman killed a German, he was hanged. Now, if an Englishman kills a German, or if a German kills an Englishman, he is a patriot, who has deserved well of his country.
If any Englishman dedicated his life to securing the freedom of India, resisting tyranny and serving the land, I should welcome that Englishman as an Indian.
to the Indian, politics are what the weather is to an Englishman. Politics are an introduction to a stranger on a train, they are the standard filler for embarrassing silences in conversation, they are the inevitable small talk at any social gathering.
There are all kinds of silences and each of them means a different thing. There is the silence that comes with morning in a forest, and this is different from the silence of a sleeping city. There is silence after a rainstorm, and before a rainstorm, and these are not the same. There is the silence of emptiness, the silence of fear, the silence of doubt.
As an American married to an Englishman and living in France, I've spent much of my adult life trying to decode the rules of conversation in three countries. Paradoxically, these rules are almost always unspoken.
Silence is also conversation.
Silence is one great art of conversation.
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