"Small talk" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 'Trevalyon's hidden wife;' while I have come to the conclusion that, here and now, I shall introduce the wife you have given me; her entree and recital of how you have come to give her to me will be as fragrant spice to your dish of small talk, as you tread a ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... with Fitch's, was equally as observant; it was not as literarily brilliant in its "small talk." But though the effervescent chatter, handled with increasing dexterity by him, is now old-fashioned, "Old Dry Ink" shows that the scenes in his plays were not merely cleverly arrived at, but were philosophically digested. How different ...
— Shenandoah - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Bronson Howard
... what a wildly hilarious time we'd have splashing out small talk to the collection of human bric-a-brac always to be found at Uncle Gilbert's, but what is one going to do when the richest old gink in the family waves ...
— You Should Worry Says John Henry • George V. Hobart
... name as a fabulously wealthy American girl to Cardinal Vitori and Queen Margherita and more subtle celebrities that one must have had some culture even to have heard of. She learned in England to prefer whiskey and soda to wine, and her small talk was broadened in two senses during a winter in Vienna. All in all Beatrice O'Hara absorbed the sort of education that will be quite impossible ever again; a tutelage measured by the number of things and people one could be contemptuous of and charming about; a culture rich in all arts and ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... heaven, she lives here. I can call and see her. To-morrow, I shall ride with her. She will love and marry some day like other women. Who is the man who shall ever kiss her between those straight brows? And fancies more audacious and extravagant fed the fever of his heart as he talked deliberate small talk, still holding his hat and ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... officers and burgomasters. The merchants discuss their affairs at the Cafe Schwarzenberg, in the Kaerntnerring. At the Cafe Heinrichshof, in the Opernring, one finds the leading actors and musicians immersed in the small talk of their craft. Thus it goes. In all the leading cafes—the Habsburg, Landtmann, Mokesch, Gartenbau, Siller, Prueckl—the tables are filled, and the coffee drinking, the baunzerln eating and the gossiping ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... she cried. "Three o'clock punctually, and bring all your stores of small talk with you, for ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... small talk until we came to the hollow, and I saw the tiny hut where my new friend lived. The hollow was a gruesome place. It acted as a kind of funnel whereby the wind from the great woods was poured over the beach, and sent moaning away across ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... but keen-witted and intelligent. In spite of the gay badinage with which she treated this young Westerner, she revealed a depth and positiveness of character, to which indeed her fine, broad forehead bore witness on first acquaintance. In the give and take of small talk she more than held her own, and occasionally discomfited her admirer by sallies which were tipped with wit and reached their mark unerringly.[295] Did she know that just such treatment—strange paradox—won, while it at times wounded, the ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... officer, Captain Lowbry, executed on the piano several pieces of his own composition, and was heartily applauded by the listeners. Once a week there was a social party at the club house where dancing, cards, billiards, and small talk continued ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... forth its sounding reverberation, Miss Bird and the three girls took their seats, and then there was a pause. In a house of less rigid habits of punctuality it would have been filled by small talk, but here it was so unusual that when it had lasted for no more than ten seconds the twins looked at one another in alert curiosity and Cicely's eyes met those of her mother, which showed a momentary apprehension before they fixed ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... had been squared by the addition of two young men, one of them a soldier from the Curragh, named Fortescue, and the other a naval sub-lieutenant, named Radway. He and Gabrielle, as the least important persons, found themselves in each other's company, while Captain Fortescue dished up the kind of small talk to which they were accustomed to the two Halberton girls, Lady Halberton continuously sparkling at Sir Jocelyn and her husband presiding over the whole function with set lips like ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... loquaciousness; talkativeness &c adj.; garrulity; multiloquence^, much speaking. jaw; gabble; jabber, chatter; prate, prattle, cackle, clack; twaddle, twattle, rattle; caquet^, caquetterie [Fr.]; blabber, bavardage^, bibble-babble^, gibble-gabble^; small talk &c (converse) 588. fluency, flippancy, volubility, flowing, tongue; flow of words; flux de bouche [Fr.], flux de mots [Fr.]; copia verborum [Lat.], cacoethes loquendi [Lat.]; furor loquendi [Lat.]; verbosity &c (diffuseness) 573; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... us were too tired to eat, many too tired for conversation, yet, from habit we fell into small talk concerning the circus, the animals, the prospects ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... pause. Thorpe and Mrs. Kildare had moved out of hearing. The three other young men rushed into the breach with small talk, casting furious looks at ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... first time, what he was pleased to term "his luck" had deserted him. Heretofore there had been no single tete-a-tete between him and either of the cousins since Diana surprised him in the temple ruins. It was his fixed intention that there should be none. He argued in himself that he had no "small talk" in his vocabulary, and would only reciprocate the boredom he would himself suffer, and rather than either should be inflicted he steered a resolute course which partnered him with a man. In vain Diana, spurred by pique, had once or twice laid a trap for him; and Meryl, with growing ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... she had begun to grapple with the situation, to take herself in hand and dissemble; already her face was regaining its accustomed cast of self-confidence, composure, and intelligent animation. Throughout she pursued without a break the thread of conventional small talk. ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... to say anything to you yet, Captain Mayo. It's too sudden—too big a blow. It's going to paralyze the Vose line." Mr. Fogg said this briskly, as if he were passing small talk on ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... other women she sat bolt upright, a red spot burning on either cheek-bone, her eyes bright with nervous excitement while she answered the careless small talk with preternatural seriousness. At such times Symes himself talked rapidly to hide the gaucheries of her speech, and they were ordeals which he took care should ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... you don't know and say nothing, but I've been sweating blood." He put the bag down and leaned against the gate. "That man," he said emphatically, "is a mining engineer. He—oh, good-night, Gibbons—he's been all over the globe, so Notya tells us. You'd think he might have picked up a little small talk as well as a fortune, but no. If he's picked it up, he's jolly careful with it. I tell you, I've made a fool of myself, and talked to a thing as ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... talked the usual small talk of the desert Places while he placed the saddle on Rabbit's still sweaty back. He went away down the rocky trail with the sun shining full on his right cheek, and was presently swallowed up by the blank immensity of the land that looked level as a floor from a distance, but which was a network ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... said Hughie the Graeme, "Of me my friends shall hae small talk;" And he has loup'd fifteen feet and three, Though his hands they ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... to the Abbey on Thursday morning;" and quite obviously Mr. Barradine now intended to gratify Dale by a few polite sentences of small talk, and thus show him that his offense had been pardoned. "Yes, I soon begin to pine for my garden. Friday, at latest, sees me home again. I always call the Abbey home. No ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... ready made," I heard Henry mutter, while I was obliged to turn round and listen to a string of compliments, and a flow of small talk from my right hand neighbour, which it seemed as if nothing would stop but some lucky accident, some sudden overthrow of the regular course of things, so steady and even was the tenor of its gentle prolixity. He had an eye, the mildness ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... ehrlich, und deshalb liebte ich ihn. Ich liege ganz darnieder vor Kummer." But scarcely has he turned the page with a short intervening paragraph, when he continues: "Ich bin, sonderbar genug, sehr guter Laune," and concludes the letter with some small talk. Now if he was sincere, as we may assume he was, in the asseveration of his grief at the death of his friend, then either that grief must have been anything but profound, or we have the clearest sort of evidence of ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... considering the antecedents of the men, the assembly was an orderly one; and would, I think, have been more so, but for the presence of the fair sex in the upper regions, many of whom, it is but justice to say, were enjoying the small talk of certain oily-haired young missionaries, and quite unconscious of being the objects of admiring glances ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... one reason is the habit that so many people have of frittering a way any serious impression or solemn thought they may have had by a stream of small talk in which they indulge with their own family or their intimate friends, after what they call the Sabbath is past. Do you know there are hundreds of people, good, well-meaning—in fact, Christians—who seem to think that the old Puritan rules in regard to hours ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... supposed, Graham was not well furnished with small talk, and while he had not the proverbial shyness and awkwardness of the student, he was somewhat silent because he knew not what to say. The young guest was entirely at her ease, and her familiarity with the hostess enabled ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... mitigating and two aggravating forms of defamation. Gossip is small talk, idle and sufficiently discolored to make its subject appear in an unfavorable light. It takes a morbid pleasure in speaking of the known and public faults of another. It picks at little things, and furnishes a steady occupation for people who have ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... you a new dress coat at once, since you are really going in for the proprieties of life," said Steve from the music stool, with the approving nod of one who was a judge of said proprieties. "Now, Rose, if you will just coach him a little in his small talk, he won't make a laughingstock of himself as he did the other night," added Steve. "I don't mean his geological gabble that was bad enough, but his chat with Emma Curtis was much worse. Tell her, Mac, and see if she doesn't think poor Emma had a right ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... patron was irretrievably landed and considering that his own "expert" dignity had been sufficiently saved, relaxed into enthusiasm and small talk. Only in the later Italian rooms did his critical claws again allow themselves to scratch. A small Leonardo, the treasure of the house, which had been examined and written about by every European student of Milanese art for half a ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a chair, and plunged into tea and small talk as though to the manner born. But all the time Cynthia, while approving his naval uniform, and his general picturesqueness, was secretly wondering what he had come about. For although he was enjoying ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to be over. We had exhausted the limited small talk of the harem, had learned from the young beauties that, though they were forbidden to look on at the ceremony, the dancers and singers would come to entertain them presently, and had begun to take leave when a negress hurried in to say that his Majesty begged Mme. Lyautey and her friends ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... him at a mild game of tennis in the broad grounds of the Campus Martius. We see him of an evening vagabonding among the nameless common folk of Rome, engaging in small talk with dealers in small merchandise. He may look in upon a party of carousing friends, with banter that is not without reproof. We find him lionized in the homes of the first men of the city in peace and war, where he mystifies the not too intellectual ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... dress; go down to the spring; drink to the music of the band; walk around the park—bow to gentlemen; chat a little; drink again; breakfast; see who comes in on the train; take a siesta; walk in the parlor; bow to gentlemen; have a little small talk with gentlemen; have some gossip with ladies; dress for dinner; take dinner an hour and a half; sit in the grounds and hear the music of the band; ride to the lake; see who comes by the evening train; dress for tea; get tea; dress for the hop; attend the hop; chat awhile in the parlors, ...
— Saratoga and How to See It • R. F. Dearborn
... he was driven home by his young companion, was full of joyous chatter and light small talk. He had done a good stroke of business, and was happy. If only the Baronet could be brought round, all the troubles which had enveloped him since a beard had first begun to grow on his chin would disappear ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... attention, could neither read nor be read to, nor occupy himself in any way; but he was amused by talk around him, and companionship was never lacking. Wilmet, whose forte had never been conversation, found herself in a stream of small talk with inquiring friends of all degrees in the hierarchy; but was most at her ease when the female Harewoods were prattling good-humoured inconsequent chatter. Willie lying on the grass murmuring with Lance, or John lured into stories of Indian ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... became a regular specimen of a 'long day' spent together by relations, who, intending to be very happy, make themselves very weary of each other, by discarding ordinary occupations, and reducing themselves to needlework and small talk. Albinia was bent on liveliness, and excelled herself in her droll observations; but to Winifred, who knew her so well, this brilliancy did not seem like perfect ease; it was more like effort than natural spirits. This was no wonder, for ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and Kennedy did not attempt to relieve the tension even by small talk as he wrapped the forearms of each of us with cloths steeped in a solution of salt. Upon these cloths he placed little plates of German silver to which were attached wires which led back of a screen. At last he was ready ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... majesty and beauty of their landscapes, the fertility and diversity of their soil, and the exalted intelligence and comeliness of their inhabitants, found hosts of believers; and nothing else formed the staple of conversation, until the beaux and belles, and dealers in small talk generally, began to grumble, and openly express their wishes that the Dickens had Doctor Dick ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... that Mr. C. was a master of monologue, mais qu'il ne savait pas le dialogue. There was a spice of vindictiveness in this, the exact history of which is not worth explaining. And if dialogue must be cut down in its meaning to small talk, I, for one, will admit that Coleridge, amongst his numberless qualifications, possessed it not. But I am sure that he could, when it suited him, converse as well as any one else, and with women he frequently did converse in a very winning and popular style, confining ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... shoot, and he liked to tramp through the mountain wilds under the guidance of such a man as Matlack; but to keep company all day with Raybold, who, in the very heart of nature, talked only of the gossip of the town, and who punctuated his small talk by intermittent firing at everything which looked like a bird or suggested the movements of an animal, was not agreeable to him. Clyde was a better fellow, and Mr. Archibald liked him, but he was young and abstracted, and ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton
... dresses, and smiled as she felt how incapable she would be of describing their magnificence to mamma. It was her first big dinner party, and she was amused and interested in watching the brilliant groups, and in listening to the small talk. ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... said which might not pass in conversation between a couple of "wits," with, at most, some graceful indulgence in passing moods of solemn or tender sentiment. Johnson, though devoted to society in his own way, was anything but a producer of small talk. Society meant to him an escape from the gloom which beset him whenever he was abandoned to his thoughts. Neither his education nor the manners acquired in Grub Street had qualified him to be an observer of those lighter foibles which ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... and sudden intimacy of hers with Bellew. Still, what was the use of caring? There were worse hurts in store for him, if, indeed, they met again as he predicted. She bit on the bullet and ignored the pain at her heart. Bellew did not waste any small talk on her; that was one comfort. He seemed to be more concerned about his luggage than about her, shouting out to the coloured men to be careful and to remove nothing from the van without his direction. At the Customs House, in fact, all his stuff was left assiduously alone. April's was opened and gone ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... said Ramsden curtly, "you kindly remember that this is a competition, and keep your merry flow of conversation as much as possible to yourself. You've got a bad habit of breaking into small talk when a man's addressing ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... minutes I stood and made small talk with Miss Prendergast. They were the longest twenty minutes I have ever spent. I was dead tired in any case, but my desperate position kept my thoughts so busy that, for all my endeavours to be polite, I fear my ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... or passed other family groups, stiffly armoured for the weekly penance to a bewildering puzzle of mortality. Ceremonious greetings were exchanged with these. The day was bright and the world all fair, but there could be no levity, no social small talk, while this grim business was on. They reached the white house of worship, impressive under its heaven-pointing steeple, and passed within its portals, stepping softly to the accompaniment of those silken whisperings, with now and again the high squeak of new ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson |
