Harvard Manager's Social Etiquette and Speech Materials
Author: Unknown
Source: Etiquette World
Update Time: October 18, 2010
Speech is based on life as its content. Where there is life, there is something to talk about; the richer the life, the more abundant the topics for conversation. Therefore, you should always pay attention to and care about your country, society, friends, relatives, and colleagues. You should study what you see and hear, trying to understand their significance rather than being indifferent and letting them pass by unnoticed. You should always be planning, arranging, and improving your life instead of living carelessly.
Do you consider yourself closely connected to national affairs and social groups, refusing to be a frog at the bottom of a well, ignoring everything outside your immediate surroundings? If the answers to these questions are affirmative, then you are a thoughtful, observant person who takes things seriously and approaches life with enthusiasm. In that case, you are not far from possessing eloquence. Even if you are currently not a great speaker, you already have significant potential. If not, then you need to make a resolution and put in the effort.
When reading newspapers, use a red or blue pencil to underline the most interesting news or articles you come across each day. It would be even better if you could cut them out. Just two items per day will result in remembering quite a few interesting pieces of news after two weeks. When reading magazines or books, try to remember one or two meaningful sentences daily. Use a red or blue pencil to underline those sentences, and it would be even better if you copied them into your diary or notebook. At the beginning, don't aim for too much, or you might give up within a few days. If you keep recording one or two sentences every day, after two or three months, you will find your thoughts much richer than before. During conversations, these meaningful sentences will easily come to mind, or you can express them in your own words. These meaningful sentences will emerge at any time, helping you or resolving your difficulties.
When listening to speeches or others' conversations, you often encounter wise aphorisms or proverbs that reflect human wisdom. Remember them in your heart or write them down. Over time, your conversational topics and materials will become increasingly rich, and your eloquence will become increasingly polished. You may even be able to speak fluently and coherently about any topic.
To improve our ability to speak, here are several phrases commonly used:
1. Never refuse small tasks in your work, because great achievements are composed of small tasks.
2. The most important thing when loving someone is to love their future.
3. Individuals must consider the group because the group can protect individuals.
4. If someone offers you a restrictive love or friendship, it’s better to have neither.
5. The only eternal thing is one's career! Life develops through activity.
6. It's never too old to learn, and it's never too late to correct mistakes.
7. A smart person learns more from fools than fools do from smart people.
8. Do you really love her? Then why don’t you plan for her future?
9. If you love her, why let her sacrifice the education or social status she has worked hard for many years to achieve?
10. No matter how much your boyfriend says he loves you, it's all false unless his actions are for your future. Thinking just about you isn't enough; truly loving you means thinking about your future.
11. Please rest assured, I take my future very seriously.
For a great future, you cannot live too lazily, carelessly, or casually. You must force yourself to strive for what you hope to achieve now. "He went out looking for a donkey and ended up finding a kingdom." This means that people often have such unexpected encounters. What they initially sought was small, but the results were immense. Learning eloquence will yield more than just speaking skills—it will lead to a kingdom much greater than eloquence itself. What is this kingdom? It is your great and rich life! Your overall quality and abilities in various aspects will greatly improve.
Regarding the subject matter and material for conversation, on one hand, you need to know how to absorb knowledge, and on the other hand, you need to know how to apply it. As long as you know how to apply it, even an ordinary sentence can often produce astonishing results.
There was a philanthropist who mobilized his friends to raise funds for building a church. The fundraising situation was very difficult. One friend intended to abandon the work and quoted an ancient poem, "Knock ten times on the wooden door, nine remain closed," to describe the difficulty of fundraising. "Knock ten times on the wooden door, nine remain closed" accurately depicted the difficulty of fundraising, which indeed made people feel disheartened. However, this philanthropist applied the same sentence from another perspective, achieving completely opposite results. He said, yes, our current situation is that knocking ten times on the wooden door, nine remain closed; but this also means that one door out of ten knocks is open. To open ten doors, we just need to work a little harder and knock on dozens more doors. Thus, he transformed the phrase "Knock ten times on the wooden door, nine remain closed" into "Knock a hundred times on the wooden door, ten will open." This phrase indeed inspired his friends and completed the fundraising.
There was once an inventor trying to invent something. He and his assistant had conducted 1,642 experiments, but all failed. His assistant said, look, we’ve experimented 1,642 times, and it’s been useless. The inventor replied, why is it useless? This shows us that 1,642 methods won't succeed, so we must find success beyond these 1,642 methods.
A musician imprisoned still played the violin frequently. On the eve of his execution, the jailer asked him, "Tomorrow you die, why do you play today?" The musician answered, "Tomorrow I will die, if I don't play today, when else will I play?"
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