Quotes About Communication

We have a continual desire to communicate our feelings and yet at the same time the need to conceal them for proper social functioning.

People who are outwardly distant or shy are often better targets than extroverts. They are dying to be drawn out, and still waters run deep.

Understand: we can never really experience what other people are experiencing. We always remain on the outside looking in, and this is the cause of so many misunderstandings and conflicts.

Be Frugal with Flattery. It may seem that your superiors cannot get enough flattery, but too much of even a good thing loses its value. It also stirs up suspicion among your peers.

Never criticize people overtly—that will make them insecure, and resistant to change. Plant ideas, insinuate suggestions. Charmed by your diplomatic skills, people will not notice your growing power.

You must never assume that what people say or do in a particular moment is a statement of their permanent desires.

It is a great folly to hope that other men will harmonize with us; I have never hoped this. I have always regarded each man as an independent individual, whom I endeavored to understand with all his peculiarities, but from whom I desired no further sympathy. In this way have I been enabled to converse with every man, and thus alone is produced the knowledge of various characters and the dexterity necessary for the conduct of life. —JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

The idea that the early Christian tradition was limited to its Greek and Latin expressions is still widespread. This assumption distorts historical reality and weakens greatly our understanding of the roots of Christian theology and spirituality. In the third and fourth centuries Syriac was the third international language of the church. It served as the major means of communication in the Roman diocese of the East, which included Syria, Palestine, and Mesopotamia.

I think we'd had enough of this folly. Who ever heard of a door-mat TELLING anyone anything? They simply don't do it. They are not that sort at all. Door-mats know their place.

We others, who have long lost the more subtle of the physical senses, have not even proper terms to express an animal's inter-communications with his surroundings, living or otherwise, and have only the word 'smell,' for instance, to include the whole range of delicate thrills which murmur in the nose of the animal night and day, summoning, warning, inciting, repelling.

from talking with your mouth full. The Badger did not mind that sort of thing at all, nor did he take any notice of elbows on the table, or everybody speaking at once. As he did not go into Society himself, he had got an idea that these things belonged to the things that didn't really matter. (We know of course that he was wrong, and took too narrow a view; because they do matter very much, though it would take too long to explain why.)

O STOP being an ass, Toad!' cried the Mole despairingly.

Who ever heard of a door-mat TELLING anyone anything? They simply don't do it. They are not that sort at all. Door-mats know their place.

You have enchanted me with a single kiss Which can never be undone Until the destruction of language

I probably misunderstand misunderstanding itself

A basso sings, and a soprano answers him. Then there is thunder in a clear blue sky, And, from the earth, a sigh: "This song is finished.

AESTHETICS OF OPERA Don't sing an aria To someone who can't Sing one back.

If you were closer, I'd slap you, she said. Let me help, I replied, and stepped closer. She promptly slapped me, which surprised me only a little. We glared at each other in the near dark, and then she looked away. I'm sorry I slapped you, she said. That's all right. I quite enjoyed it.

I raised my hands, trying to shush her. Don't shush me, she said, eyes blazing. I hate being shushed.

It's not actually that hard to be an expert on Iran. You only need to know two phrases: I don't know and it depends.

Brother, Cap said, he's a Pig-nut! Pig-nut? I asked. Pig-nut, Cap repeated. You can tell a man with brains he's wrong and he'll try to fix things up: but you take and tell a pig-nut he's wrong, and he'll spend the rest of his life trying to have something heavy fall on you when you ain't looking. - From Kennebunk born Pulitzer Prize winner Kenneth Roberts' 1933 novel Rabble in Arms.

I'll never use force to try to make my enemies think the way I think, George - partly because I don't believe in it, and partly because it's useless. You can't destroy ideas by force, and you can't hide 'em by silence.

I wonder if you would come and sleep in the night with me. And talk.

Who does ever get what they want? It doesn't seem to happen to many of us if any at all. It's always two people bumping against each other blindly, acting out old ideas and dreams and mistaken understandings. Except I still say that this isn't true of you and me. Not right now, not today.