"Although the noise of the chattering clientele is much more significant than the topics of their chatter, it does finally constitute that type of social and indistinct expression that we refer to as rhubarb. The very particular volume in which people tell each other their news seems to generate all by itself that acoustic chiaroscuro, a sounding murk, in which every communication seems to lose its edges, truth projects the shadow of a lie, and a statement seems to resemble its opposite."

Source : Joseph Roth (2002). “What I Saw: Reports from Berlin 1920-1933”, p.141, W. W. Norton & Company

Joseph Roth

#Lying Quotes #Communication Quotes #Expression Quotes

“It's the boredom that kills you. You read until you're tired of that. You do crossword puzzles until you're tired of that. This is torture. This is mental torture.”
“I guess the most important thing I learned from my mother was you have to raise your own children. I try to say this without judgment, but a lot of people really don't want to do the job because it's so much work. Kids are the hardest job there is, so they just hire someone to do it and then they go to work. There's something about that whole how do you balance being a mother and working, and i f I had to choose, I'd have to choose my kids and I do.”
“Mia: I can't do this, I'm a girl. Gym Teacher Harbula: What am I? A duck?”
“Being a sex symbol has to do with an attitude, not looks. Most men think it's looks, most women know otherwise.”

Source : The Observer, London, December 28, 1986.
“Silence is one of the great arts of conversation.”
“The astronomer is, in some measure, independent of his fellow astronomer; he can wait in his observatory till the star he wishes to observe comes to his meridian; but the meteorologist has his observations bounded by a very limited horizon, and can do little without the aid of numerous observers furnishing him contemporaneous observations over a wide-extended area.”

Source : James Pollard Espy, Alfred Osborn Pope Nicholson (1857). “Message from the President of the United States: Communicating, in Compliance with a Resolution of the Senate of July 24, 1854, the Fourth Meteorological Report of Prof. James P. Espy”, p.40
“Jumpy is the most incredible animal of all time. The movie [Valley of Violence] is the tamest example of what that dog is capable of.”
“No government can be long secure without a formidable opposition. It reduces their supporters to that tractable number which can be managed by the joint influences of fruition and hope. It offers vengeance to the discontented, and distinction to the ambitious; and employs the energies of aspiring spirits, who otherwise may prove traitors in a division or assassins in a debate.”

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