Conversation Quotes
More Conversation Quotes
It is notorious that we speak no more than half-truths in our ordinary conversation, and even a soliloquy is likely to be affected by the apprehension that walls have ears.
Eric Robert Linklater— Juan in America, book 2, part 4 (1931)
Inject a few raisins of conversation into the tasteless dough of existence.
— O. Henry (1862–1910), The Complete Life of John Hopkins. Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 137.
I am a guy who talks about bacon and escalators. Stand-up comedy is very much a conversation. It's very personal, stylistically.
jim gaffigan— John Wenzel (October 10, 2008) "Underneath that pasty exterior beats the dark heart of a comic", The Denver Post, p. D-12.
During the conversation with Mike during and after the time he masturbated me, he told me about some drugs that he could get for me that would enhance my masturbation experience.
ted haggard— KRDO, accessed June 26, 2008
See a glass half full as an opportunity to top it up, start a conversation and spark a new idea.
richard branson
Writing, when properly managed (as you may be sure I think mine is) is but a different name for conversation.
Laurence Sterne— 1759-67 Tristram Shandy, bk.2, ch.11.
Sometimes, I genuinely enjoy having conversations with journalists; enjoying the few moments of intimacy with a stranger is fascinating to me. But once in a while that backfires and you're suddenly reading something that has a bent on it that you didn't feel was in the least bit a part of the conversation that you thought you were having. Then you get overly protective and say very little and then you come out of the hole again.
gillian anderson— The Observer staff (October 1, 2000 ) "Review: Interview: The truth is out here: X-files star Gillian Anderson has rejected the lure of Hollywood for the austere style of cult British director Terence Davies. What is she thinking of...", The Observer.
Science is like literature, a continuing dialog among diverse and conflicting voices, no one ever wholly right or wholly wrong, but a steady conversation forever provisional and personal and living.
gregory benford— Afterword (p. 498)
"In the same way that the Soviets' Sputnik satellite woke up the country to the need for math and science education, the outsourcing conversation cries out for a constructive, long-term solution that ensures Americans have world-class education, a world-class workforce and the ability to remain a competitive global leader." (2004)
— "High Tech, Strangled By the Beltway", The Washington Post, 13 March 2004
— Note: The context of this quote was an article on the offshoring of American labor.
Lettuce is like conversation: it must be fresh and crisp, so sparkling that you scarcely notice the bitter in it.
charles dudley warner— Ninth Week
What a delightful thing is the conversation of specialists! One understands absolutely nothing and it’s charming.
edgar degas— Quoted in a letter by Daniel Halévy (1892-01-31), from Degas Letters, ed. Marcel Guerin, trans. Marguerite Kay (1947)
They drew near, and observing that they were very comfortable standing before the warm fire, they put on logs and, while thus keeping it alive, brought up other people to it, showing them by signs how much comfort they got from it. In that gathering of men, at a time when utterance of sound was purely individual, from daily habits they fixed upon articulate words just as these had happened to come; then, from indicating by name things in common use, the result was that in this chance way they began to talk, and thus originated conversation with one another.
vitruvius— Chapter I "The Origin of the Dwelling House" Sec. 1
The Sufi adoration of God is also expressed by the salat (ritual prayer), which is in fact, the second pillar of Islam… Prayer is seen as an intimate conversation between the human and the Divine.... Rumi ’s view, absorption in the Divine Unity is the soul of prayer .
— Dr. Liyakat Takim, in "Adoration in Islamic Mystical tradition", P.3
A young man before he leaves the shelter of his father's house, and the guard of a tutor, should be fortify'd with resolution, and made acquainted with men, to secure his virtues, lest he should be led into some ruinous course, or fatal precipice, before he is sufficiently acquainted with the dangers of conversation, and his steadiness enough not to yield to every temptation.
john locke— John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693), Sec. 70
The music of the brook silenced all conversation.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Kavanagh: A Tale (1849), Chapter XXI.
It is evident that deportations of Armenians is not motivated by military considerations, the minister of the Interior Talaat Bey recently in a conversation with Dr. Mortsmann presently in the Imperial Service, declared openly that the Porte wants to profit from the World War for radically finishing their internal enemies – the Christians before the intervention of outside powers.
— Baron Hans Freiherr von Wangenheim, German Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1912 to October 1915, in a document sent to the German Chancellery, 17 June 1915
conversation is the laboratory and workshop of the student.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82), Society and Solitude, Clubs. Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 137.
The politics of our society are a conversation in which past, present and future each has a voice; and though one or other of them may on occasion properly prevail none permanently dominates, and on this account we are free.
Michael Joseph Oakeshott— 1962 Rationalism in Politics.
My philosophy is that every phone conversation has a loser.
scott adams— "Phone". Scott Adams Blog (2010-09-03). Retrieved on 2011-09-30.
Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food.
william hazlitt— "On Wit and Humour"
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.
richard steele— No. 49 (April 26, 1711).
Any conversation I have about innovation starts with the ultimate goal.
— Sergey Brin. Interviewed by Jemima Kiss for the Guardian (UK) newspaper, ‘Secrets of a nimble giant’, Wednesday 17th June 2009
In desperation I asked Fermi whether he was not impressed by the agreement between our calculated numbers and his measured numbers. He replied, "How many arbitrary parameters did you use for your calculations?" I thought for a moment about our cut-off procedures and said, "Four." He said, "I remember my friend Johnny von Neumann used to say, with four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk." With that, the conversation was over.
freeman dyson— "A meeting with Enrico Fermi" in Nature 427 (22 January 2004), p. 297 (subscription required)
Unforced, as conversation passed, he had the talent of saluting felicitously every theme, of listening like a judge-supreme while serious topics were disputing, or, with an epigram-surprise, of kindling smiles in ladies' eyes.
— Ch. 1, st. 5 (Eugene Onegin (1823))
"I don’t really care that much about if I want to be more successful or less successful in art, because I never think life and art should be separate. What’s life if you don’t have conversation and joy and anger?"
— “Ai Weiwei "Every day I think, this will be the day I get taken in again..." in: Guardian, November 25, 2011.
Equality is the life of conversation; and he is as much out who assumes to himself any part above another, as he who considers himself below the rest of the society.
richard steele— Richard Steele, Tatler (1709-1711), No. 225.
