Consigned to the home for dull dogs

From Quote Investigator. The quote being investigated is:

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.

I have never heard that one before but it is an attractive summary of life experience with the caveat that is noted by the person to first report its use in 1901.

From QI:

The earliest strong match known to QI appeared in a 1901 autobiography by Charles Stewart. As a child in London, Stewart listened to the conversation of dinner guests such as history scholar Henry Thomas Buckle who would sometimes discourse engagingly for twenty minutes on a topic. Boldface has been added to excerpts:

His thoughts and conversation were always on a high level, and I recollect a saying of his, which not only greatly impressed me at the time, but which I have ever since cherished as a test of the mental calibre of friends and acquaintances. Buckle said, in his dogmatic way: “Men and women range themselves into three classes or orders of intelligence; you can tell the lowest class by their habit of always talking about persons; the next by the fact that their habit is always to converse about things; the highest by their preference for the discussion of ideas.”

Stewart was pleased with Buckle’s adage, but he did not let its implicit guidance dictate his conversations. He wished to avoid the tedium of monotonous dialogues:

The fact, of course, is that any of one’s friends who was incapable of a little intermingling of these condiments would soon be consigned to the home for dull dogs.

Stewart is right. The triptych may in fact be true, but social convention requires you to be good at all three, and I envy those who are. I have always been drawn to conversations of ideas and of events but perform poorly when talking about people.

It is a gift to be triptych rich.