Platitudes — hackneyed declarative sentences that assert the truth — are maligned for a reason. Ordinarily found in speech (most people know enough to avoid them in writing), platitudes assert everything — and nothing — all at once. Because they’ve been uttered so many times previously, and in so many trivial conversations, they tend to arrive stillborn, no more than a clump of meaningless words. Their form, stiff and unbendable by nature, permits little if any wiggle room for play. Just as greetings like “Hello” are conversation-starters, platitudes like, “Life is a process of change,” or the one that’s most particularly grating to me as an artist — “Art is a form of communication” — are conversation-stoppers.

For the educated, who are on call 24/7 to be as clever and quick-witted as possible, to be caught uttering a platitude is as embarrassing as being caught making a grammatical error. Once it’s slipped out of the mouth (by accident, of course), the only recourse is to quickly smother the mortifying moment by piling on a few sentences making it clear the platitude was meant ironically.

Sometimes platitudes are a way for the speaker to assert his or her power over others. For example, “Education is the key” — a particularly popular platitude in today’s lexicon — frequently masks a hidden agenda. It doesn’t mean, “Education will make you successful in life,” as much as it means, “If only you’d come around to my position, you’d be right.” To say, “Education is the key” is often no more than code for the command, “Think like I do.”

Then there are the platitudes that, although clearly intended on takeoff to mean well, and to comfort the suffering, can accidentally land very roughly. One of my colleagues, a classicist who teaches courses in etymology, told me he can’t stand it when people say, “Death is a part of life.” Whenever he hears those words, he says, he always thinks, “No it’s not. It’s death. That’s why it’s got its own word.” This little platitude is particularly fascinating because it easily can be turned on its head to become, “Life is a part of death.” Since only a mortician could possibly take comfort from these words, however, this particular baby never got off the ground.

Not all platitudes are bad. Like WD 40, the handiest and most efficient grease for opening that pesky stuck drawer, some platitudes open stuck conversations. Moreover, they lend a human loveliness, if not a liveliness, to speech. They work beautifully when people can’t find any way to end a bad conversation.

For example, a long tale of woe, coming from a nice but bothersome neighbor, can be abruptly and satisfactorily ended with the gentle platitude, “Well, you know, life is a process of growth and change.” Repugnant and new-agey as it might seem to an intelligent soul to utter this sentence, it can be a powerful, yet delicate, deus ex machina when applied with care. The conversation instantaneously leaps from wallowing in muck to a happier plane where, not so surprisingly, it all works out for the best.