Conversation Quotes
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If you start a conversation with your mind made up, you may as well not bother.
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More Conversation Quotes
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— Some Thoughts Concerning Education, Sec. 70 (1693)
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.
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)
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.
"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.
Among the Ibo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten.
Chinua originally Albert Chinualumogo Achebe— 1958 Things Fall Apart, ch.1. The title is taken fromYeats's poem 'The Second Coming'.
'What ho!' I said. 'What ho!'said Motty. 'What ho! What ho!' 'What ho! What ho! What ho!' After that it seemed rather difficult to go on with the conversation.
Plum— 1919 My ManJeeves,'Jeeves and the Unbidden Guest'.
The function of a blog is on some level to start a conversation that you're not involved in any more because you've already had your say. That thing of coming right off the news — did you see what I saw this morning, can you believe it? — has a kind of fun appeal.
Nora Ephron— Quoted in Emma Brockes, "Everything Is Copy", The Guardian (3 March 2007)
Writing, when properly managed, (as you may be sure I think mine is) is but a different name for conversation.
Laurence Sterne— Book II, Ch. 11.
Drying up in conversation, You will be the one who cannot talk, All your insides fall to pieces, You just sit there wishing you could still make love.
thom yorke— High and Dry
I don't think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering. I don't think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate. I think we need a national conversation to get to a better Medicare system with more choices for seniors.
newt gingrich— 2011-05-15 interview on Meet the Press, NBC, 15 May 2011 , quoted in Gingrich Calls GOP Budget 'Right Wing Social Engineering', PBS, 16 May 2011, retrieved on 2011-05-28
I remember… his first introduction to Mr. Haydon; and when in the course of conversation that great artist asked him, "if he did not love his country," how the blood rushed to his cheeks and the tears to his eyes, at his energetic reply. His love of freedom was ardent and grand.
john keats— Charles Cowden Clarke, article in the Morning Chronicle (27 July 1821).
I've always been impulsive. My thinking is usually pretty good, but I always seem to do it after I do my talking by which time I've generally destroyed all basis for further conversation.
roger zelazny— pp. 9-10 (This Immortal (1965))
Private opinion creates public opinion. Public opinion overflows eventually into national behaviour and national behaviour, as things are arranged at present, can make or mar the world. That is why private opinion, and private behaviour, and private conversation are so terrifyingly important.
— Jan Struther, "The Weather of the World", A Pocketful of Pebbles (1946), p. 341.
Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food.
william hazlitt— William Hazlitt, Lectures on the English Comic Writers, Lecture I.
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.
sarah orne jewett— As quoted in Reader's Digest Vol. 130 (1987)
