Elizabeth Gaskell writing about dinner parties where people are entertaining and clever and scintillating: "These dinners were delightful; but even here Margaret's dissatisfaction found her out. Every talent, every feeling, every acquirement; nay, even every tendency toward virtue, was used up as materials for fireworks; the hidden, sacred fire, exhausted itself in sparkle and crackle."

--Elizabeth Gaskell in her novel "North and South," Chapter 48, "Ne'er to be Found Again."

The crowd at the dinner party and the crowd at the bar cannot, as a crowd, say, "Go deeper with that."