How to Develop Your Personality (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1920. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XIII PERSONALITY IN CONVERSATION What Is Conversation?--Don't Talk at People, Talk with Them-- Are You a Dead Load on Others' Brains?--What to Do with a Too Talkative Person--Making Each Contact with Others Teach You Something--The Unforgivable Bore; the Man Who Cannot Admit the Possibility of Mistake; the "Black Is White" Talker--Keep a Judicial Attitude of Mind. CONVERSATION is the verbal exchange of information and idea between human beings. You will impress people favorably through your improved physical bearing; the work you have so conscientiously followed out on your voice and diction will carry the conviction of refinement and charm; you have stored your mind with treasures of literature, and the jewels of wisdom you have culled have opened up new and unsuspected vistas of life and thought to you; but the real test of your power of personality lies in your command of the art of conversation. The first rule of good conversation is to have something worth saying, and to say it as briefly and interestingly as possible. Merely pouring out a constant stream of words isn't conversation. No one can be more thoroughly and unforgivably boring than the man or woman US whose habit it is to deluge every long-suffering acquaintance with an unending flow of speech. Only the unintelligent find pleasure in such breaches of good taste, consequently it is the people who really have least to say that is worth listening to who inflict themselves on one in this dreary repetition of uninteresting talk. If you are one of these bores, take yourself in hand at once. Allow yourself only the most meager participation in any conversation until you can trust yourself to contribute your share and no more. The high-caste Hindu takes a vow to say "Nothing which is not ...