Socializing Quotes

“Telling an introvert to go to a party is like telling a saint to go to Hell.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Every gathering has its moment. As an adult, I distract myself by trying to identify it, dreading the inevitable downswing that is sure to follow. The guests will repeat themselves one too many times, or you'll run out of dope or liquor and realize that it was all you ever had in common.”
― David Sedaris, Naked

“Truth changes with the season of our emotions. It is the shadow that moves with the phases of our inner sun. When the nights falls, only our perception can guess where it hides in the dark. Within every solar system of the soul lies a plan of what truth is--- the design God has created, in our own unique story. This is as varying as the constellations, and as turning as the tide. It is not one truth we live to, but many. If we ever hope to determine if there is such a thing as truth, apart from cultural and personal preferences, we must acknowledge that we are then aiming to discover something greater than ourselves, something that transcends culture and individual inclinations. Some say that we must look beyond ourselves and outside of ourselves. However, we don’t need to look farther than what is already in each other. If there was any great plan from a higher power it is a simplistic, repetitious theme found in all religions; the basic core importance to unity comes from shared theological and humanistic virtues. Beyond the synagogue, mosques, temples, churches, missionary work, church positions and religious rituals comes a simple “message of truth” found in all of us, that binds theology---holistic virtues combined with purpose is the foundation of spiritual evolution. The diversity among us all is not divided truth, but the opportunity for unity through these shared values. Truth is the framework and roadmap of positive virtues. It unifies diversity when we choose to see it and use it. It is simple message often lost among the rituals, cultural traditions and socializing that goes on behind the chapel doors of any religion or spiritual theology. As we fight among ourselves about what religion, culture or race is right, we often lose site of the simple message any great orator has whispered through time----a simplistic story explaining the importance of virtues, which magically reemphasizes the importance of loving one another through service.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“Nineteen twentieths of [mankind is] opaque and unenlightened. Intimacy with most people will make you acquainted with vices and errors and follies enough to make you despise them.”
― John Adams

“I have no fear of men, as such, nor of their books. I have mixed with them--one or two of them particularly-- almost as one of their own sex. I mean I have not felt about them as most women are taught to feel--to be on their guard against attacks on their virtue; for no average man-- no man short of a sensual savage--will molest a woman by day or night, at home or abroad, unless she invites him. Until she says by a look 'Come on' he is always afraid to, and if you never say it, or look it, he never comes.”
― Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure

“Socializing is more positive than being alone, that’s why meetings are so popular. People don’t like being alone. That would be, however, an important skill to learn...”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life

“Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everyone you meet.”
― Oliver North, Counterfeit Lies

“Don't let your teeth make you lose respect by permanently keeping them opened for the sake of being friendly.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson

“This was the problem with drinks parties: getting stuck with a person you didn't want to talk to while someone you did was tantalisingly in view.”
― Robert Harris, The Fear Index

“Fine, fine, I’ll indulge in this ‘socializing’ thing you always rave about.”
― Katherine McIntyre, Solid Ground

“Mathilde returned and strolled past the drawing-room windows; she saw him busily engaged in describing to Madame de Fervaques the old ruined castles that crown the steep banks of the Rhine and give them so distinctive a character. He was beginning to acquit himself none too badly in the use of the sentimental and picturesque language which is called wit in certain drawing-rooms.”
― Stendhal, The Red and the Black

“The introvert's anthem for not wanting to hang out is 'It's not you; it's me.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“Institutions, no less than persons, may need to be socialized.”
― Thomas Stephen Szasz

“During these years in the small-talk wilderness, I also wondered why Americans valued friendliness with commerce so much. Was handing over cash the sacred rite of American capitalism—and of American life? On a day that I don’t spend money in America, I feel oddly depressed. It’s my main form of social interaction—as it is for millions of Americans who live alone or away from their families.”
― Karan Mahajan

“How then did it work out, this? How did one judge people, think of them? How did one add up this and that and conclude that it was liking one felt, or disliking?”
― Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

“One of the problems of social life is to know what to say to one another when we meet; every man and woman's desire is to appear sympathetic and clever, and this makes conversation difficult, because, taking us all round, we are neither sympathetic nor clever.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Second Thoughts Of An Idle Fellow

“She hardly ever began conversations with strangers just to talk. It was not a matter of shyness. For her, a conversation had a straightforward function. How do I get to the pharmacy? or How much does the hotel room cost? Conversation also had a professional function. [...] When she worked as a researcher [...], she had never minded having a long conversation if it was to ferret out facts. On the other hand, she disliked personal discussions, which always led to snooping around in areas she considered private.”
― Stieg Larsson, The Girl Who Played with Fire

“In my own experience, contacts with the big world outside the typewriter are puzzling and terrifying; I don’t think I like reality very much. Principally, I don’t understand people outside; people in books are sensible and reasonable, but outside there is no predicting what they will do.”
― Shirley Jackson, Let Me Tell You: New Stories, Essays, and Other Writings

“They are a very decent, generous lot of people out here and they don't expect you to listen. Always remember that, dear boy. It's the secret of social ease in this country. They talk entirely for their own pleasure. Nothing they say is designed to be heard.”
― Evelyn Waugh, The Loved One

“She was the guest everyone invited when they needed to blend a group of disparate personalities, just as a roux would bind soup or sauce into velvety smoothness.”
― Lisa Kleypas, Devil's Daughter

“That Seigo could go into geisha houses, accept luncheon invitations, drop in at the Club, see people off at Shimabashi, meet them at Yokohama, run out to Oiso to humor the elders—that he could put in his appearance at large gatherings from morning to evening without seeming either triumphant or dejected—this must be because he was thoroughly accustomed to this kind of life, thought Daisuke; it was probably like the jellyfish's floating in the sea and not finding it salty.”
― Natsume Sōseki, And Then

“If you drink the good wine of the noble countess, you have to entertain her less desirable friends.”
― Virginia Woolf

“In a useful conversation... there is a double coincidence of wants. You have to be interested in what I have to say; I have to be interested in what you have to say. This is an important reason why people with conventional interests seem more socially intelligent. Even if they don't check whether their audience cares, it probably does.”
― Bryan Caplan

“I might be tempted to socialize more if the conversations taking place around me were half as interesting as the dialogue going on inside my head.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich, Slaying Dragons

“Every day the words that Keep-on-Dancin’ and the Gypsy imparted to me - theories, observations, advice and warnings - are substantiated and acquire deeper meaning.

‘It’s not for nothing there are so many bistrots in Paris,’ Keep-on-Dancin’ asserted. ‘The reason so many people are always crowded into them isn’t so much they go there to drink but to meet up, congregate, come together, comfort each other. Yes, comfort each other: people are bored the whole time, and they’re scared, scared of loneliness and boredom. And they all carry around in their heart of hearts their own pet little arch-fear: fear of death, no matter how devil-may-care they might appear to be. They’d do anything to avoid thinking about it. Don’t forget, it’s with that fear all temples and churches were built. So in cities like this, where forty different races mingle together, everyone can always find something to say to each other.”
― Jacques Yonnet, Paris Noir: The Secret History of a City

“In order to "be a light" we need to "plug into" The Light!”
― Evinda Lepins, Back to Single

“Of course, now I wonder where I had gotten the idea that for you to participate in a gathering, the other people had to really, really want you to be there and that anything short of rabid enthusiasm on their part meant you'd be a nuisance. Where had I gotten the idea that being a nuisance was that big a deal? Sometimes now I think of all the opportunities I didn't take - to get a manicure in town, to watch television in another dorm, to go outside for a snowball fight - and of how refusal became a habit for me, and then I felt it would be conspicuous if I ever did join in.”
― Curtis Sittenfeld, Prep

“Τότε, εκείνο το τετράμηνο του περπατητού πένθους, διδάχτηκε τα δύο βασικά μυστικά της συναναστροφής. Το πρώτο ήταν ότι αυτός που μιλάει έχει ξαναμιλήσει, κι αυτός που δεν μιλάει δεν έχει ξαναμιλήσει, αλλά δεν αποκλείεται κάποια στιγμή ν' αρχίσει πάλι να μιλάει, ώστε κάποτε να ξαναμιλήσει - εξάλλου υπάρχει καιρός για όλους και για κανέναν. Το δεύτερο ήταν ότι αυτός που μιλάει, που γεμίζει τον χώρο μιας συνάθροισης με λόγια, που τρέμει τη σιωπή, που τη θεωρεί ένα βήμα μετά την αγένεια κι ένα βήμα πριν από τη βλασφημία, έχει μυστικά, μυστικά που τα σκεπάζει με λόγια, όπως η γάτα τα κόπρανά της με χώμα· κι ότι εκείνος που σωπαίνει συχνά σωπαίνει λαλίστατος, αφού ξελαρυγγιάζεται να φωνάζει προς όλες τις κατευθύνσεις, σαν τον χαμένο στην έρημο, ακούστε τη σιωπή μου, είμαι σιωπηλός σαν την πέτρα.”
― Michel Fais, Από το ίδιο ποτήρι και άλλες ιστορίες

“Back then, we were all still willing to take the “risk,” if “risk” is the right word to describe entering into the lives of others, not merely in symbol but in reality.”
― Zadie Smith, Feel Free: Essays

“It was not so much that he had anything against people in general, more that he saw no purpose in deliberately setting up occasions on which you stood around trying to think of something to say. Moreover, the whole process was self-perpetuating; the guest became the host in an act of social revenge and thus it was on for ever. The only sensible course was never to start it in the first place.”
― Penelope Lively, Passing On