CONVERSATION

Related Subjects: Discussion, Speech, Talk, Wit, Words

1. The secret of success in conversation is to be able to disagree without being disagreeable.—Anonymous
   

2. I don't like to talk much with people who always agree with me. It is amusing to coquette with an echo for a little while, but one soon tires of it.—CARLYLE
   

3. I don't know whether it is custom or inclination but somehow I can never carry on conversation except with men.—CATHERINE THE GREAT
   

4. In conversation, avoid the extremes of forwardness and reserve.—CATO THE CENSOR
   

5. Never hold any one by the button, or the hand, in order to be heard out; for if people are unwilling to hear you, you had better hold your tongue than them.—LORD CHESTERFIELD
   

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

7. Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for competitors.—EMERSON
   

8. Conversation is the laboratory and workshop of the student.—EMERSON
   

9. Our companions please us less from the charms we find in their conversation, than from those they find in ours.—GREVILLE
   

10. Silence is one great art of conversation.—HAZLITT
    

11. Repose is as necessary in conversation as in a picture.—HAZLITT
    

12. Inject a few raisins of conversation into the tasteless dough of existence.—O. HENRY
    

13. And when you stick on conversation's burs,
    Don't strew your pathway with those dreadful urs.—O. W. HOLMES, A Rhymed Lesson
    

14. The wit of conversation consists more in finding it in others than in showing a great deal yourself. He who goes from. your conversation pleased with himself and his own wit is perfectly well pleased with you.—LA BRUYERE
    

15. The reason why so few people are agreeable in conversation, is, that each is thinking more of what he is intending to say, than of what others are saying; and we never listen when we are planning to speak.—LA ROCHEFOTJCAULD, Maxims
    

16. There cannot be a greater rudeness than to interrupt another in the current of his discourse.—LOCKE
    

17. Do you know that conversation is one of the greatest pleasures in life? But it wants leisure.—SOMERSET MAUGHAM, The Trembling of a Leaf
    

18. It is good to rub and polish our brain against that of others.—MONTAIGNE, Essays
    

19. Be not too brief in conversation, lest you be not understood; nor too diffuse, lest you be troublesome.—PROTAGORAS
    

20. He that converses not, knows nothing.—Proverb
    

21. Conversation teaches more than meditation.—Proverb
    

22. A single conversation across the table with a wise man is worth a month's study of books.—Proverb
    

23. 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.—SIR RICHARD STEELE, The Spectator

24. Conversation is but carving!
    Give no more to every guest
    Than he's able to digest.
    Give Urn 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.—SWIFT, Conversation
    

25. One of the best rules in conversation is, never to say a thing which any of the company can rea­sonably wish had been left unsaid.—SWIFT
    

26. Lettuce is like conversation; it must be fresh and crisp, so sparkling that you scarcely notice the bitter in it.—CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER, My Summer in a Garden