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Who is not attracted by bright and pleasant children, to prattle, to creep, and to play with them?
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Infancy conforms to nobody: all conform to it, so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and play to it.
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Let us not look east and west for materials of conversation, but rest in presence and unity. A just feeling will fast enough supply fuel for discourse, if speaking be more grateful than silence. When people come to see us, we foolishly prattle, lest we be inhospitable. But things said for conversation are chalk eggs. Don't say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary. A lady of my acquaintance said, I don't care so much for what they say as I do for what makes them say it.
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Considering how foolishly people act and how pleasantly they prattle, perhaps it would be better for the world if they talked more and did less.