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Quotations about conversation
Note that not all quotations have been tagged, so the Search function may find additional quotations on this topic.
Marriage is nine-tenths talk.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) American writer and journalist [Henry Lewis Mencken]
Diary (30 May 1945)
(Source)
Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the number of books that were written because authors couldn’t find anyone to talk to.
Alain de Botton (b. 1969) Swiss-British author
The Consolations of Philosophy, ch. 4 “Consolation for Inadequacy” (2000)
(Source)
You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.
Plato (c.428-347 BC) Greek philosopher
(Spurious)
Frequently attributed to Plato, starting in the 1950s, but not found in his works. Earliest citation is as a Portuguese proverb, in A Polyglot of Foreign Proverbs, tr. Henry G. Bohn (1857): "Mais descobre huma hora de jogo, que hum anno de conversação." For more see here.
Ultimately, the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or friendship, is conversation.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) Irish poet, wit, dramatist
De Profundis, “Epistola: In Carcere et Vinculis” (1897)
(Source)
The young man appeared disconcerted at the vehemence of Phryne’s discourse, and she changed the subject. One did not wantonly disconcert young men on whom one might be having designs in future.
Kerry Greenwood (b. 1954) Australian author and lawyer
Murder on the Ballarat Train (1991)
A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years’ study of books.
Other Authors and Sources
Chinese proverb
Given in translation in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Hyperion, ch. 7 (1839).
The most influential of all educational factors is the conversation in a child’s home.
William Temple (1881-1944) English Anglican archbishop, teacher, preacher
The Hope of a New World (1940)
The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest men of past centuries.
René Descartes (1596-1650) French philosopher, mathematician
Discourse on Method [Discours de la méthode] (1637)
Notoriously insensitive to subtle shifts in mood, children will persist in discussing the color of a recently sighted cement mixer long after one’s interest in the topic has waned.
Fran Lebowitz (b. 1950) American journalist
Metropolitan Life (1978)
Writing, when properly managed, (as you may be sure I think mine is) is but a different name for conversation.
Laurence Sterne (1713-1786) Anglo-Irish novelist, Anglican clergyman
Tristam Shandy, Book 2, ch. 11 (1760-1767)
Don’t take up a man’s time talking about the smartness of your children; he wants to talk to you about the smartness of his children.
Edgar Watson "Ed" Howe (1853-1937) American journalist and author [E. W. Howe]
Country Town Sayings (1911)
Silence is the unbearable repartee.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
The Illustrated London News (30 Sep 1933)
There was much conversation, most of which sounded like the rest of it.
Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951) American novelist, playwright
Arrowsmith, ch. 14 (1925)
To listen closely and reply well is the highest perfection we are able to attain in the art of conversation.
François VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) French epigrammist, memoirist, noble
Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales [Maxims] (1665-1678)
Our companions please us less from the charms we find in their conversation than from those they find in ours.
Fulke Greville (1554-1628) 1st Baron Brooke; Elizabethan poet, dramatist, and statesman
Maxims, Characters and Reflections, 98 (1757 ed.)
I have seen a man of genius who made one think if other men were like him, cooperation were impossible. Must we always talk for victory, and never once for truth, for comfort, and joy?
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
“Table Talk,” American Life lecture, Boston (18 Dec 1864)
(Source)
Speaking of Thoreau's style of conversation. Originally a Journal entry of 29 Feb 1856. Also part of the lecture "Social Aims".
People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them.
Dave Barry (b. 1947) American humorist
“25 Things I Have Learned In 50 Years,” #12 (1997)
“Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people.”
Sig Lines
~
Attributed to many people, most prominently Eleanor Roosevelt and Hyman Rickover, but the origin appears to be a recollection of a statement by Henry Thomas Buckle: "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." -- Charles Stewart, Haud Immemor: Reminiscences of Legal and Social Life in Edinburgh and London 1850-1900 (1901). More information here.
After three days without reading, talk becomes flavorless.
Other Authors and Sources
Chinese proverb
There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees.
Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) French essayist
(Attributed)
