On Conversation (1790) [ Practices ]
… pleasure that sheds the most delicious flowers which grow on the path of life; but in France she covers the whole way with roses, and the traveller can scarcely mark its ruggedness. Happy are a people, so fond of talking as the French, in … conversation. Then turn of expression is a dress that hangs so gracefully on gay ideas, that you are apt to suppose that wit, a quality parsimoniously distributed in other countries, is in France as common as the gift of speech. Perhaps that … ingenuity must we allow to a people who have formed a language, of which the common-place phrases give you the idea of wit! … "In every country it is social pleasure that sheds the most delicious flowers which grow on the path of life; but …
France | Conversation
Anthology