If you would preserve your good looks, keep away from bar-rooms.
If you would keep out of the clutches of the devil, keep away from bar-rooms.
The first rule of speaking well is to think well.--MME. DE LAMBERT.
Attention is a tacit and continual compliment.--MME. SWETCHINE.
Gravity is a stratagem invented to conceal the poverty of the mind.--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.
To discuss an opinion with a fool is like carrying a lantern before a blind man.--DE GASTON.
To use many circumstances ere you come to matter is wearisome; and to use none at all is blunt.--BACON.
That is the happiest conversation where there is no competition, no vanity, but only a calm, quiet interchange of sentiment.--JOHNSON.
If you your lips Would keep from slips, Five things observe with care: Of whom you speak, To whom you speak, And how, and when, and where.
If you your ears Would save from jeers, These things keep meekly hid: Myself and I, And mine and my, And how I do or did.
Though there are not many persons that seem to think so, still it is true that the value of no other accomplishment can be compared with that of a thorough knowledge of one’s mother tongue, be that tongue what it may. The most of us do more or less talking in the course of every one of our waking hours, and we impress those that hear us, favorably or unfavorably--as far as our culture is concerned--according to the manner in which we express ourselves. The tones of the voice, the construction of our sentences, the choice of our words, and the manner in which we pronounce and articulate them--all have their influence in impressing, either favorably or unfavorably, even the most unlettered. How desirable then it is that we should cultivate the graces of speech, which are first among the rudiments of the Art of Conversation!
“There is a part of our education,” says a clever English writer, “so important and so neglected in our schools and colleges, that it cannot be too highly impressed on the young man that proposes to enter society. I mean the part that we learn first of all things, yet often have not learned well when death eases us of the necessity--the art of speaking our own language. In every-day life the value of Greek and Latin, French and German is small, when compared with that of English. We are often encouraged to raise a laugh at Doctor Syntax and the tyranny of grammar, but we may be certain that many misunderstandings arise from a want of grammatical precision.