A Quote by Samuel Johnson
The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered, but a general effect of pleasing impression.
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The constant desire of pleasing which is the peculiar quality of some, may be called the happiest of all desires in this that it rarely fails of attaining its end when not disgraced by affectation.
Conversation. What is it? A Mystery! It's the art of never seeming bored, of touching everything with interest, of pleasing with trifles, of being fascinating with nothing at all.
I concluded that I might take as a general rule the principle that all things which we very clearly and obviously conceive are true: only observing, however, that there is some difficulty in rightly determining the objects which we distinctly conceive.
Selection is the very keel on which our mental ship is built. And in this case of memory its utility is obvious. If we remembered everything, we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing.
Merriment is always the effect of a sudden impression. The jest which is expected is already destroyed.
The secret of pleasing in conversation is not to explain too much everything; to say them half and leave a little for divination is a mark of the good opinion we have of others, and nothing flatters their self-love more.
To see distinctly the machinery--the wheels and pinions--of any work of Art is, unquestionably, of itself, a pleasure, but one which we are able to enjoy only just in proportion as we do not enjoy the legitimate effect designed by the artist.
Nothing can be pleasing which is not also becoming.
Most of the time, communication gets confused with conversation. In fact, the two are distinctly different.
The general public doesn't know and probably doesn't care about punctuated equilibria nor indeed should they, or the greenhouse effect on some other planet - they barely have the ability to cope with the greenhouse effect on their own planet. So I think you have to distinguish between the broad visibility of a scientist when he or she is speaking to a general public and trying to address general issues and the continued position that a scientist may have into the history of a particular subject.
It is a strange thing how little in general people know about the sky. It is the part of creation in which nature has done more for the sake of pleasing man.
One might get the impression that I recommend a new methodology which replaces induction by counterinduction and uses a multiplicity of theories, metaphysical views, fairy tales, instead of the customary pair theory/observation. This impression would certainly be mistaken. My intention is not to replace one set of general rules by another such set: my intention is rather to convince the reader that all methodologies, even the most obvious ones, have their limits.
One of the ways by which astrology tricks human brains is via the Barnum effect, which is the process by which individuals take general and vague statements that could apply to anyone and anywhere, and find personal meaning in them.
My happiest hours are those in which I think nothing, want nothing, when I do not even dream, but lose myself in some spurious vegetable torpor, moss growing on the surface of life. Without a trace of bitterness I savour my absurd awareness of being nothing, a mere foretaste of death and extinction.
In the first place, it is to be remembered, that the general government is not to be charged with the whole power of making and administering laws. Its jurisdiction is limited to certain enumerated objects, which concern all the members of the republic, but which are not to be attained by the separate provisions of any.
The true test of all the arts is not solely whether the production is a true copy of nature, but whether it answers the end of art, which is to produce a pleasing effect upon the mind.
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