Pleasantries Quotes:

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

- Robert Louis Stevenson

source: "The Complete Short Stories of Robert Louis Stevenson".

topic: Degrees, Serious, Pleasantries

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

topic: Political, Groups, Social, Pleasantries, Political Rhetoric

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

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

topic: Behavior, Conventions, Aggression, Pleasantries

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

- Judith Crist

topic: Love You, Memorable, Indifference, Pleasantries

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

- Voltaire

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

topic: Might, Serious, Should, Pleasantries

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

topic: Needs, Inquiry, Want, Pleasantries

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

topic: Strong, Soil, Sun, Pleasantries, Not Strong

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

topic: Talking, Leader, Church, Church Leaders, Pleasantries

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

- Tacitus

topic: Powerful, Remembrance, Ill, Pleasantries

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

- Honore de Balzac

topic: Nature, Flower, Toads, Pleasantries

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

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

topic: Philosophy, Views, Serious, Pleasantries

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

topic: Nice, Say Anything, Rotten, Insults You, Pleasantries

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

topic: Thinking, May, Innocent, Lively, Pleasantries

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

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

topic: Mind, Ordinary, Details, Naturalist, Pleasantries

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

source: Source: www.avclub.com

topic: Meaningful, Names, Two, Pleasantries

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

topic: Laughing, Done, Resources, Pleasantries

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

topic: Opposites, Gentleman, Misunderstood, Pleasantries

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

topic: Christian, Religious, Intelligent, Importation, Provinces

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

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

topic: People, Goal, Sometimes, Pleasantries, Undercut

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

topic: Men, Gossip, Stopping, Pleasantries, Bourne Identity

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

topic: New York, Eye, Years, Pleasantries