How not to be Clever

...In England it is bad manners to be clever, to assert something confidently. It may be your own personal view that two and two make four, but you must not state it in a self-assured way, because this is a democratic country and others may be of a different opinion.

A continental gentleman seeing a nice panorama may remark:

"This view rather reminds me of Utrecht, where the peace treaty concluding the War of Spanish Succession was signed on the 11th April 1713. The river there, however, recalls the Guadalquivir, which rises in the Sierra de Cazorla and flows south-west to the Atlantic Ocean and is 650 kilometres long. Oh, rivers... What did Pascal say about them? "Les rivieres sont les chemins qui marchent..." '

This pompous, showing-off way of speaking is not permissible in England. The Englishman is modest and simple. He uses but few words and expresses so much -but so much- with them. An Englishman looking at the same view would remain silent for two or three hours and think about how to put his profound feeling into words. Then he would remark:

'It's pretty, isn't it?'...

Quoted from How to be an Alien by Georges Mikes (Penguin)