"grow out"
of you; but your relations are for ever immutable. The friends of your
youth you have sometimes nothing in common with later on, except
"memories"; and except for these "memories" there is little or no tie
between you. But the "memories" of friends centre around pleasant
things, whereas the "memories" of relations seem to specialise at all
times in the disagreeable. Moreover, relations will never acknowledge
that you have ever really _grown up_. This is one of their most
tiresome characteristics. To them you will always be the little boy
who forgot to write profusive thanks for the half-a-crown they gave you
when you first went to school. You can always tell the man or woman
who live among their relatives. They possess no individuality, no
"vision"; they are narrow, self-centred, pompous, clannish--with that
clannishness which means only complete self-satisfaction with the clan.
They take their mental and moral "cue" from the oldest generation among
them. The younger members are, metaphorically speaking, patted on the
head and told to believe in grandpapa as they believe in God.

No, the great benefit of having relations is to come back to them. To
visit them is like stirring up once more the memories of your lost
youth, which time and distance have rendered faint. And to return once
more to one's youth is good for every man. It makes him realise
himself, and the "thread" which has been running through his life
linking all the incidents together. And, as I said before, relations
are agreeable adjuncts at your own funeral, since you may always depend
upon them saying nice things about you when it's too late for you to
hear them. Friends will never do that. They don't need to. They
carry your epitaph with them written on their own hearts. The "nice"
things have been said--they have been said to YOU.

_Polite Conversation_

A man may live to be a hundred; he may have learnt to speak twelve
different languages--all badly; he may know, in fact, everything a man
ought to know, and have done everything a man ought to have done; but
one thing he probably won't have learnt--or, if he has done so, then he
ought to be counted among the Twelve Apostles and other "wonders"--and
that is the fact that, what interests him enormously to talk about
won't necessarily be anything but a bore for other people to listen to.
Most people talk a great deal and tell you absolutely nothing you want
particularly