145 Conversation Quotes

No collection of people who are all waiting for the same thing are capable of holding a natural conversation. Even if the thing they are waiting for is only a taxi.

What a delightful thing is the conversation of specialists! One understands absolutely nothing and it's charming.

Conversation in real life is full of half-finished sentences and overlapping talk. Why shouldn't painting be too?

Although there exist many thousand subjects for elegant conversation, there are persons who cannot meet a cripple without talking about feet.

The conversational overachiever is someone whose grasp exceeds his reach. This is possible but not attractive.

The techniques of opening conversation are universal. I knew long ago and rediscovered that the best way to attract attention, help, and conversation is to be lost. A man who seeing his mother starving to death on a path kicks her in the stomach to clear the way, will cheerfully devote several hours of his time giving wrong directions to a total stranger who claims to be lost.

Don't knock the weather; nine-tenths of the people couldn't start a conversation if it didn't change once in a while.

If I thought a man had never committed a sin in his life, I don't think I'd want to talk with him. A man with flaws is more interesting.

Tallulah was sitting in a group of people, giving the monologue she always thought was conversation.

Two people in love, alone, isolated from the world, that's very beautiful. But what would they nourish their intimate talk with? However contemptible the world may be, they still need it to be able to talk together.

Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for his competitors, for it is that which all are practising every day while they live.

I would trade all the advantages of humanity to be a fly on the wall when Franklin and Jefferson discussed liberty, Lenin and Trotsky revolution, Newton and Halley the shape of the universe, or when Darwin entertained Huxley and Lyell at Down.

Conversation is a meeting of minds with different memories and habits. When minds meet, they don't just exchange facts: they transform them, reshape them, draw different implications from them, engage in new trains of thought. Conversation doesn't just reshuffle the cards: it creates new cards.

The kind of conversation I like is one in which you are prepared to emerge a slightly different person.

Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.

What's on your mind, if you will allow the overstatement?

Writers only think they are interested in politics, they are not really, it gives them a chance to talk and writers like to talk but really no real writer is really interested in politics.

Two may talk and one may hear, but three cannot take part in a conversation of the most sincere and searching sort.

A transition from an author's book to his conversation, is too often like an entrance into a large city, after a distant prospect. Remotely, we see nothing but spires of temples and turrets of palaces, and imagine it the residence of splendour, grandeur and magnificence; but when we have passed the gates, we find it perplexed with narrow passages, disgraced with despicable cottages, embarrassed with obstructions, and clouded with smoke.

There is in this world no real delight (excepting those of sensuality), but exchange of ideas in conversation.

There are two things in ordinary conversation which ordinary people dislike - information and wit.

Talk of the 'imperial decay' of your invalid port. 'Its gracious withdrawal from perfection, keeping a hint of former majesty withal, as it hovers between oblivion and the divine Untergang of infinite recession.'

But Conversation, choose what theme we may, And chiefly when religion leads the way, Should flow, like waters after summer show'rs, Not as if raised by mere mechanic powers.

'How many husbands have I had? You mean apart from my own?'

Edward Smith: What do you think is the characteristic of a really nice person? Some people you obviously do like more than others. Andy Warhol: Ummm, well, if they talk a lot. Edward Smith: What, and don't make you talk? Andy Warhol: Yeah, yes, that's a really nice person. Edward Smith: [laughs] Thank you, Andy.

Let silence be your general rule; or say only what is necessary and in few words. We shall, however, when occasion demands, enter into discourse sparingly, avoiding such common topics as gladiators, horse-races, athletes; and the perpetual talk about food and drink. Above all avoid speaking of persons, either in the way of praise or blame, or comparison. If you can, win over the conversation of your company to what it should be by your own. But if you should find yourself cut off without escape among strangers and aliens, be silent. (164)

'...Conversation should be like juggling; up go the balls and the plates, up and over, in and out, good solid objects that glitter in the footlights and fall with a bang if you miss them. But when dear Sebastian speaks it is like a little sphere of soapsud drifting off the end of an old clay pipe, anywhere, full of rainbow light for a secnd and then - phut! vanished, with nothing left at all, nothing.'

No animal should ever jump up on the dining room furniture unless absolutely certain that he can hold his own in the conversation.

I asked him the most important question that I think you could ask - if he had ever seen Caddyshack.

A question is a trap, and an answer your foot in it.

Conversation is but carving! Give no more to every guest Than he's able to digest. Give him always of the prime, And but little at a time. Carve to all but just enough, Let them neither starve nor stuff, And that you may have your due, Let your neighbor carve for you.

When you fall into a man's conversation, the first thing you should consider is, whether he has a greater inclination to hear you, or that you should hear him.

I will call I've heard that line before No you haven't. That's the guy's line, so I know you haven't heard it, and I don't think you've even said it

Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.

Ma'am have you ever taken one off the chin?

Do you think there's a sign where the chickens live that says, 'Don't choke the chicken' ?

(To caller with Southern accent) Let me ask you something, how are things up there in Cold Mountain?

Hoes, Dave, Dave, hoes.

'By 'eck it were grand.'

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

'I would trade all of my technology for an afternoon with Socrates.'

Bore, n. A person who talks when you wish him to listen.

King Louis Philippe once said to me that he attributed the great success of the British nation in political life to their talking politics after dinner.

Talk to a man about himself, and he is generally captivated.

Where did you get that hat? (1953)

Edinburgh: And what exotic part of the world do you come from? Lord Taylor: I'm from Birmingham. (1999)

Ce qui fait que si peu de personnes sont agreables dans la conversation, c'est que chacun songe plus a ce qu'il veut dire qu'a ce que les autres disent.

Why can we remember the tiniest detail that has happened to us, and not remember how many times we have told it to the same person.

One seeks a midwife for his thoughts, another someone to whom he can be a midwife: thus originates a good conversation.

Years ago, I tried to top everybody, but I don't anymore. I realized it was killing conversation. When you're always trying for a topper you aren't really listening. It ruins communication.

When our life ceases to be inward and private, conversation degenerates into mere gossip. We rarely meet a man who can tell us any news which he has not read in a newspaper, or been told by his neighbor; and, for the most part, the only difference between us and our fellow is, that he has seen the newspaper, or been out to tea, and we have not. In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post-office.

Love and scandal are the best sweeteneers of tea.

If we attend to the course of conversation in mixed companies consisting not merely of scholars and subtle reasoners but also of business people or women, we notice that besides storytelling and jesting they have another entertainment, namely, arguing.

Well, to tell you the truth, I'd much rather talk one thousand times to one girl, than to talk one time to a thousand girls.

Jack: Gee, I never thought of that.

You will have a great deal of unreserved discourse with Mrs. K., I dare say, upon this subject, as well as upon many other of our family matters. Abuse everybody but me.

It is so difficult to mix with artists! You must choose business men to talk to, because artists only talk of money.

How much of our literature, our political life, our friendships and love affairs, depend on being able to talk peacefully in a bar!

To mark all that I say in conversation, merely to beget in others, a good opinion of myself, and examine it.

Long time no see. I only pray the caliber of your questions has improved.

Writing, when properly managed, (as you may be sure I think mine is) is but a different name for conversation.

There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees.

They would talk of nothing but high life, and high-lived company, with other fashionable topics, such as pictures, taste, Shakespeare, and the musical glasses.

I love talking about nothing, father. It is the only thing I know anything about.

A slight throbbing about the temples told me that this discussion had reached saturation point.

'Have you ever heard of Market Snodsbury Grammar School?'

My God! The English language is a form of communication! Conversation isn't just crossfire where you shoot and get shot at! Where you've got to duck for your life and aim to kill! Words aren't only bombs and bullets - no, they're little gifts, containing meanings!

We're in such a hurry most of the time we never get much chance to talk. The result is a kind of endless day-to-day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that it's all gone.

We don't have much time here to talk about Ron Paul because the time is dwindling. Let's see, I have seven seconds, six seconds. What can I say? Uh... Ron Paul. Republican candidate for president, Ron Paul.

It does seem so pleasant to talk with an old acquaintance who knows what you know. I see so many new folks nowadays who seem to have neither past nor future. Conversation has got to have some root in the past, or else you have got to explain every remark you make, and it wears a person out.

Everybody is interesting for an hour, but few people can last more than two.

How is this? Ought not the petitioner to speak first, and the conqueror to listen in silence?

The dinner table was Wilde's event and made him the greatest talker of his time:

Jack: What's the matter?

'You're pulling my leg.'

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