Quotes About Conversation

One day,I was already old, a man came up to me in the street.

une once d'inertie pèse plus qu'un boisseau de sagesse (La conversation à Innsbruck)

Celui qui prétend se souvenir mot pour mot d'une conversation m'a toujours paru un menteur ou un mythomane. Il ne me reste jamais que des bribes, un texte plein de trous, comme un document mangé des vers. Mes propres paroles, même à l'instant où je les prononce, je ne les entends pas. Quand à celles de l'autre, elles m'échappent, et je ne me souviens que du mouvement d'une bouche à portée de mes lèvres. (p. 202-203)

But don't you know that girls never think of what they are talking about, or rather never talk of what they are thinking about? And they have always ten times more to say to the man they don't care for, than to him they do.

We cannot judge either of the feelings or of the characters of men with perfect accuracy from their actions or their appearance in public; it is from their careless conversations, their half finished sentences, that we may hope with the greatest probability of success to discover their real characters.

Ireland?" "Small wet place across the Irish Sea," Barry offered kindly. "Where they drink a lot?" Lisa said faintly. "And they never stop talking. That's the place.

How we are talking to each other is as corrupt and corrupting as what anyone is saying

And there would be nowhere else for them to go with their conversation after that except to the bedroom

A good conversationalist directs attention, inspires, corrects, affirms, and empowers others. It is a demanding vocation that involves attentiveness, skilled listening, awareness of one's own interpretive frames, and a will to understand and discern what is true.

Conversation is an exchange of gifts. Native American tribal wisdom teaches that when you encounter a person on your life path, you must seek to find out what gifts you have for one another so that you may exchange them before going your separate ways. This seems true even of daily encounters with those we know well. We come into one another's presence bearing whatever harvest of experience the day has offered, and we foster relationship by making a gift of what we have received.

Caring for language is a moral issue. Caring for one another is not entirely separable from caring for words. Words are entrusted to us as equipment for our life together, to help us survive, guide, and nourish one another. We need to take the metaphor of nourishment seriously in choosing what we feed on in our hearts, and in seeking to make our conversation with each other life-giving.

In a broad and true sense, good conversation is life-giving: it inspires and invigorates...livelieness in our use of language, both oral and written, matters: how lively language is life-giving - how it may literally, physiologically, quicken our breath, evoke our laughter, raise our eyebrows, open our hearts, renew our energies. Lively language invents and evokes and sustains.

Good conversation is a courtesy, a kindness, a form of caritas that has as its deepest implicit intention binding one another together in understanding and love.

When we converse, we act together toward a common end, and we act upon one another. Indeed, conversation is a form of activism - a political enterprise in the largest and oldest sense - a way of building sustaining community.

Conversation, like good reading, nourishes.

Hobbs dominating the conversation with so long a catalogue of his woes that Jack fell behind to avoid having to listen.

She said, "I don't know why I come here. That's a fact." He shrugged. "Since you are here, maybe you could tell me a little about yourself?" She shook her head. "I don't talk about that. I just been wondering lately why things happen the way they do." "Oh!" he said. "Then I'm glad you have some time to spare. I've been wondering about that more or less my whole life.

A good sermon is one side of a passionate conversation. It has to be heard in that way. There are three parties to it, of course, but so are there even to the most private thought-the self that yields the thought, the self that acknowledges and in the same way responds to the thought, and the Lord. That is a remarkable thing to consider.

Now, that is probably my least favorite topic of conversation in the entire world. I have spent a great part of my life hearing that doctrine talked up and down, and no one's understanding ever advanced one iota. I've seen grown men, God-fearing men, come to blows over that doctrine. The first thought that came to my mind was, Of course he would bring up predestination!

I have had a certain amount of experience with skepticism and the conversation it generates, and there is an inevitable futility in it.

It was probably best just to be quiet and wait until the conversation changed, as conversations will when no one is saying anything.

Beauty is a conversation between humankind and reality. . . .

Beauty is a conversation between humankind and reality, and we are an essential part of it, bringing to it our singular gifts of reflection and creation.

A good sermon is one side of a passionate conversation. It has to be heard in that way. There are three parties to it, of course, but so are there even to the most private thought—the self that yields the thought, the self that acknowledges and in some way responds to the thought, and the Lord. That is a remarkable thing to consider. I