My great-grandfather used to say to his wife, my great- grandmother, who in turn told her daughter, my grandmother, who repeated it to her daughter, my mother, who used to remind her daughter, my own sister, that to talk well and eloquently was a very great art, but that an equally great one was to know the right moment to stop.
ATTRIBUTION:
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791), Austrian composer. letter, Nov. 4, 1787. The Letters of Mozart and His Family, ed. Emily Anderson, 2nd edition (1966).
