Quotes & Sayings About Pleasantries
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Top Pleasantries Quotes

Upbeat people have no need of pleasantries. They barely notice them. Only the tired and depressed truly appreciate good manners, and cling to them in desperation. — Mike Collier

At the moment when, ordinarily, there was still an hour to be lived through before meal-time sounded, we would all know that in a few seconds we should see the endives make their precocious appearance, followed by the special favour of an omelette, an unmerited steak. The return of this asymmetrical Saturday was one of those petty occurrences, intra-mural, localised, almost civic, which, in uneventful lives and stable orders of society, create a kind of national unity, and become the favourite theme for conversation, for pleasantries, for anecdotes which can be embroidered as the narrator pleases; it would have provided a nucleus, ready-made, for a legendary cycle, if any of us had had the epic mind. — Marcel Proust

Certainly she could never have exchanged pleasantries with anyone. What would there be for them to say anyway? Sorry? Sorry your daughter is dead, Sorry your daughter jumped off the roof of her school when you were on your way to pick her up. Sorry you were late. Too bad you'll be reliving that failure for the rest of your miserable life. — Kimberly McCreight

I sort of thought that maybe people had to talk that way, sort of saying the same things over and over because that way they can get along together without thinking." She stopped and thought. Why I was so worried," she said, "was because if people didn't say those damn things over and over, then they wouldn't talk to each other at all. — Shirley Jackson

Do you know someone who needs hours alone every day? Who loves quiet conversations about feelings or ideas, and can give a dynamite presentation to a big audience, but seems awkward in groups and maladroit at small talk? Who has to be dragged to parties and then needs the rest of the day to recuperate? Who growls or scowls or grunts or winces when accosted with pleasantries by people who are just trying to be nice?
If so, do you tell this person he is "too serious," or ask if he is okay? Regard him as aloof, arrogant, rude? Redouble your efforts to draw him out?
If you answered yes to these questions, chances are that you have an introvert on your hands - and that you aren't caring for him properly. — Jon Rauch

If you go into an underground train in London - probably anywhere, but chiefly in London - there's that sense of almost entering a ghostly dimension. People are very still and quiet; they don't exchange many pleasantries. — Seamus Heaney

The reason I pull Irish exits is not because I think I'm too busy and cool to be bothered with pleasantries. It's that when there is a gathering of more than thirty people I don't want to waste your time with hellos and good-byes. I think it's actually the more polite thing to do, because I'm not coercing partygoers into some big farewell moment with me. — Mindy Kaling

Hello." Sara's soft, sexy voice sounded on the other end. "Mitch?" "Yeah?" Forgoing pleasantries and getting right to the point, she said, "My kitty stopped purring. I think it needs to be resuscitated." — Cathryn Fox

I was aware of something stable in his nature. Ha game me a feeling of security, as if nothing I said or did would change his opinion of me. I never found his pleasantries irksome, partly, no doubt, because he was a Viscount, but, partly, too, because I respected his self-discipline. He had very little to laugh about, I thought, and yet he laughed. His gaiety had a background of the hospital and the battlefield. I felt he had some inner reserve of strength which no reverse, however serious, would break down. — L.P. Hartley

The pleasantries were just ritual, but ritual was important. In Amos' experience the more dangerous any two people were, the more carefully polite their social interactions tended to be. The loud, blustering ones were trying to get the other guy to back down. They wanted to stay out of a fight. The quiet ones were figuring out how to win it. — James S.A. Corey

The captains of England and Australia can barely exchange pleasantries these days without a body-language expert immediately declaiming on the angle of their handshakes. — Lawrence Booth

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

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

Mr. Italia sat belching under a pair of oval-framed photographs of parents hairier, if possible, than himself. His wife was dead, but there was a picture of her, too, in her casket, gazing out at us with an eerie simulacrum of motherly love. Dark-complected Mr. Italia was indeed, with handle-bar mustaches of a size that might have made him topple forward out of his chair were it not for the posture seemingly aimed at correcting the leverage in his favor. He drank beer after thrusting into my hand a bottle of soda pop of marked but unidentifiable flavor, pale yellow in color, and lukewarm. — Peter De Vries

Metaphysics is never more than semantic pleasantries anyway. — Haruki Murakami

Beyond these moments, she could hardly count the fumbling ministrations of boys in high school who, even to her senior prom, never went beyond sticky pleasantries. With one exception, it was just a sort of half-clothed handshake for bragging rights, none hers. — Thomm Quackenbush

A man like Kappler might become angriest, most detached, even sickest at those times his psychiatrist edges closest to the truths about his life. The rage and even the psychosis has to be seen for what it is: the flamethrower of a fortress under siege. Pleasantries, humor, and easy exchanges might be clues that no real work is being done.
There can be no retreat on the psychiatrist's part. One patient with a psychotic illness has written: "the doctor has to feel sure he has the right to break into the illness, just as a parent knows he has the right to walk into a baby's room, no matter what the baby feels about it. The doctor has to know he's doing the right thing ... some people go through life with vomit on their lips. You can feel their terrible hunger but they defy you to feed them." (95, The Strange Case of Dr. Kappler) — Keith Ablow

You make many small decisions as you drive your car, absorb some information as you read the newspaper, and conduct routine exchanges of pleasantries with a spouse or a colleague, all with little effort and no strain. Just like a stroll. — Daniel Kahneman

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

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

Pedersen was always wooing her. Sometimes he was gracious and kind, but at other times when his failure wearied him he would be cruel and sardonic, with a suggestive tongue whose vice would have scourged her were it not that Marie was impervious, or too deeply inured to mind it. She always grinned at him and fobbed him off with pleasantries, whether he was amorous or acrid.
'God Almighty,' he would groan, 'she is not good for me, this Marie. What can I do for her? She is burning me alive and the Skaggerack could not quench me, not all of it. The devil! What can I do with this? Some day I shall smash her across the eyes, yes, across the eyes.'
So you see the man really loved her.
("The Tiger") — A.E. Coppard

Don Lorenzo and 'Master Eccari' fenced pleasantries for a few moments thereafter; Galdo eventually let himself be skewered with the politest possible version of 'Thanks, but piss off. — Scott Lynch

Dad, why did you marry a crazy woman?" I asked after the usual pleasantries. "I didn't know she was crazy before I married her. By the time I found out, she was already knocked up and it was too late. — L.D. Davis

Can I please have some coffee?" I asked my secretary, Sue. I knew I was talking to her breasts, but I didn't care: she must be used to it by now. [...] I decided to call my wife. We bantered and exchanged pleasantries for a few minutes and I stared at Sue's breasts as she brought in my coffee. [...] After I hung up the phone, I asked Sue's breasts to send in Quentin. — Brett Kiellerop-Morris

Women are always expected to be the gracious hostess, quick with an anecdote and a sprinkling of laughter at others' stories. We are always the ones who have to smooth over all the awkward moments in life with soul-crushing pleasantries. We are basically unpaid geishas. But when we do not fulfill this expectation ( because we are introverted ) people asume we must be either depressed or a cunt". — Amy Schumer

Whatever the unknown in Europe, it had to be better than the known in a small town, where truth was hidden behind smiles, pleasantries, and an abundance of stretch lace at weddings. Whatever, the yet-to-be-written truth about her own life, it seemed certain to be waiting elsewhere on a blank page, somewhere people made no attempt to predict the future based upon a person's past.
Quote from: A Summer Abroad, Mrs. Duchesney's First Real Mystery
c. 2013 Peggy Kopman-Owens — Peggy Kopman-Owens

We don't believe in false pleasantries around these parts, nor do we kick a fella when he's down. So I'll just say, bless your heart, and leave it at that. — Penny Reid

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

Riding broomsticks, consorting with unholy powers. Who has the time for such pleasantries anymore? Why, I haven't been on a date since the late eighties. — Max Gladstone

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

Instead of focusing on "why didn't he want me", focus on "what do I actually want." Because I can guarantee you don't want the kind of person who doesn't have the integrity to just tell you that you're not the one. Do not allow pleasantries to tether you to cowards. No one is too busy to be with the love of their life. # — Kelton Wright

He continued. "So I shall simply tell you the truth. I have spent my entire life preparing for a cold, unfeeling, unimpassioned life - a life filled with pleasantries and simplicity. And then you came into it . . . you . . . the opposite of all that. You are beautiful and brilliant and bold and so very passionate about life and love and those things that you believe in. And you taught me that everything I believed, everything I thought I wanted, everything I had spent my life espousing - all of it . . . it is wrong. I want your version of life . . . vivid and emotional and messy and wonderful and filled with happiness. But I cannot have it without you.
"I love you, Juliana. I love the way you have turned my entire life upside down, and I am not certain I could live without you now that I have lived with you. — Sarah MacLean

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

When the two men sat down to supper, Jan Myers cracked some of his favorite jokes about the clergy and their dogma. Though Zeno remembered that he used to find such pleasantries amusing, they seemed rather flat to him now; nevertheless...he said to himself that at a time when religion was leading to savagery, the rudimentary skepticism of this good fellow certainly had its value. For himself, however, being more advanced in methods of negating assumptions, at first, in order to see if thereafter something positive can be reaffirmed, and of breaking down a whole in order to watch the parts recompose themselves on another plane or in some other fashion, he no longer felt able to laugh at those easy jests. — Marguerite Yourcenar

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