To know how to entertain people is a talent; but there is one better, and which makes you still more popular with your friends and acquaintances—it is that talent which consists in drawing them out and allowing them to entertain you.

I know very clever people, not exactly conceited or assertive, but who have the objectionable knack of gently sitting upon you. Their opinions are given with an ex cathedra air that seems to exclude any appeal against them.

Sometimes they tell anecdotes very well, and they give you strings of them, each one bridged over to the other by a 'That reminds me.' They laugh at their anecdotes heartily, and invite you to do so with such a suggestion as 'That's a good one, isn't it?'

You do laugh, and you hope for your reward, that you will be able to tell a little anecdote yourself. Sometimes they will cut you short and go on with another; sometimes they will give you a chance, show little signs of impatience while you give it, and never laugh when you have finished.

Worse than that, they will occasionally say: 'Oh yes,' on the tune of 'I have heard that one before,' or, maybe, 'Why, I am the inventor of it myself.' I have known such clever people and good anecdote tellers to prove terrific bores.

Whether you are discussing a question or merely spending a little time telling stories over a cup of coffee and a couple of cigarettes, you like to be allowed to prove alive, and the really entertaining people are those who know how to make you enjoy yourself as well as their company.

You are grateful to those friends who give you a chance of shining yourself, and there are some who know not only how to draw you out, but who know how to do it to the extent of making you brilliant.

Those who make you feel like an idiot are no better than those who take you for one. Although they do not do it on purpose, the result is exactly the same as if they did. You find that kind of man in every walk of life.

There is the savant who pours forth science by the gallon and talks you deaf, dumb, and lame. There is the other kind also. I once spent an hour talking on philology with the greatest professor of the College of France in Paris.

I know a little philology, but my knowledge of that science compared to his is about in the proportion of the length of my little finger to that of his whole body, and he is over six feet. He put me so much at my ease; he so many times asked me 'if I didn't think that it was so,' that for the time being I really felt I was something of a philologist myself. It was only after I had left him that I realized that I had learned a great deal from the famous master.

The nice people of the world are those who make you feel satisfied with yourself. All the talkers, advice-givers, assertive critics put together are not worth for your good a considerate friend who gives you a little praise, or a good, loving woman who, two or three times a day, gives you a teaspoonful of admiration.

After all, the greatest reward for our humblest efforts is appreciation, the greatest incentive is encouragement. What makes us powerless to achieve anything are the sneers of all the wet-blankets and kill-joys of this world.

You do not make a child get on at school by calling him a little idiot and telling him he will never do anything in his life; you do not impart bravery into the heart of a timid soldier by treating him as if he were a coward.

If a horse is afraid of anything lying on the road, don't whip him, don't use the spurs; pat him gently on the neck and lead him near the object to make him acquainted with it. Like that you will cure him of his shyness.

Help men with encouragement, praise, and admiration.