What is telling?

Famous quotes containing the word telling:

    Do what you know you ought to do. Why should we ever go abroad, even across the way, to ask a neighbor’s advice? There is a nearer neighbor within us incessantly telling us how we should behave. But we wait for the neighbor without to tell us of some false, easier way.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Today’s comedian has a cross to bear that he built himself. A comedian of the older generation did an “act” and he told the audience, “This is my act.” Today’s comic is not doing an act. The audience assumes he’s telling the truth. What is truth today may be a damn lie next week.
    Lenny Bruce (1925–1966)

    To make a man perfectly happy tell him he works too hard, that he spends too much money, that he is “misunderstood” or that he is “different”; none of this is necessarily complimentary, but it will flatter him infinitely more that merely telling him that he is brilliant, or noble, or wise, or good.
    Helen Rowland (1875–1950)