Conversation / Conversationalists - Quotes

A conversation is a dialogue, not a monologue. That’s why there are so few good conversations: due to scarcity, two intelligent talkers seldom meet. - Truman Capote

A good conversation is like a good meal. You should leave it just before you have had enough. - Unknown

A good conversationalist is not one who remembers what was said, but says what someone wants to remember. - John Mason Brown

A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years mere study of books. - Henry Wadworth Longfellow

Conversation has a kind of charm about it, an insulating and insidious something that elicits secrets from us just like love or liquor. - Seneca

Conversation is a meeting of minds with different memories and habits. When minds meet, they don’t just exchange facts: they transform them, reshape them, draw different implications from them, engage in new trains of thought. Conversation doesn’t just reshuffle the cards: it creates new cards. - Theodore Zeldin

Conversation means being able to disagree and still continue the discussion. - Dwight Macdonald

Conversation should be pleasant without scurrility, witty without affectation, free without indecency, learned without conceitedness, novel without falsehood. - William Shakespeare

If people said what they thought, most conversations would be very brief. - Unknown

If you would be a popular conversationalist, have a care to the punctuation in your talk. And especially use question marks, which invite the other person to start talking. - Unknown

In conversation, humour is worth more than wit and easiness more than knowledge. - George Herbert

It was the polite thing to talk to people about what they were interested in, not about what you were interested in. - Harper Lee

It’s all right to hold a conversation, but you should let go of it now and then. - Richard Armour

Most conversations are simply monologues delivered in the presence of a witness. - Margaret Millar

Nothing lowers the level of conversation more than raising the voice. - Stanley Horowitz

Nothing you say can ensure that the other person will get it, or respond the way you want. You may never exceed his threshold of deafness. - Harriet Lerner

One factor that makes it rare for us to find so few people who can carry on an agreeable and rational conversation is that there are practically no people who do not think first of all about what they want to say, rather than responding precisely to what others are saying to them. The politest people are content merely to show an attentive mien, while all the time we see that their eyes and their minds are wandering, and that they are in a rush to return to what they want to say. They should consider that this insistent search for self-satisfaction is a poor way of giving pleasure, and that it is a greater accomplishment to listen well and reply justly than to speak well and often without responding to what others are saying to us. - Magdeleine Sable

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. - Jonathan Swift

One way to prevent conversation from being boring is to say the wrong thing. - Frank Sheed

The best conversationalists are those who are excellent listeners. - Unknown

The best of conversations occur when there is no competition, no vanity, but a calm quiet interchange of sentiments. - Samuel Johnson

The great gift of conversation lies less in displaying it ourselves than in drawing it out of others. He who leaves your company pleased with himself and his own cleverness is perfectly well pleased with you. - Jean De La Bruyere

The great secret of succeeding in conversation is to admire little, to hear much; always to distrust our own reason, and sometimes that of our friends; never to pretend to wit, but to make that of others appear as much as possibly we can; to hearken to what is said and to answer to the purpose. - Benjamin Franklin

The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered, but a general effect of pleasing impression. - Samuel Johnson

The key to conversation at work is flexibility and understanding how what you say might be perceived by others. - Deborah Tannen

The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the right place but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment. - Dorothy Neville

The reason so few men can carry on a sensible and agreeable conversation is that there is hardly one but thinks more of what he himself intends to say than of what is being said to him by others. Sometimes even the cleverest and politest man only feigns attention, while we can see by his eyes that his mind has gone back to polish up his own remarks. He does not consider that the worst way to win over others is to talk for his own pleasure, and that the best conversationalist is he who listens with care and answers to the point. - Duc de La Rochefoucauld

The true spirit of conversation consists more in bringing out the cleverness of others than in showing a great deal of it yourself. - Jean de La Bruyere

There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees. - Michel de Montaigne

There is no such thing as a worthless conversation, provided you know what to listen for. And questions are the breath of life for a conversation. - James Nathan Miller

There is no such thing as conversation. It is an illusion. There are intersecting monologues, that is all. - Rebecca West 

There is nothing so dangerous for anyone who has something to hide as conversation! A human being cannot resist the opportunity to reveal himself and express his personality which conversation gives him. Every time he will give himself away. - Agatha Christie

There isn’t much better in this life than finding a way to spend a few hours in conversation with people you respect and love. You have to carve this time out of your life because you aren’t really living without it. - Unknown

To listen closely and reply well is the highest perfection we are able to attain in the art of conversation. - Duc de La Rochefoucauld

We do not talk – we bludgeon one another with facts and theories gleaned from cursory readings of newspapers, magazines, and digests. - Henry Miller

We need people in our lives with whom we can be as open as possible. To have real conversations with people may seem like such a simple, obvious suggestion, but it involves courage and risk. - Thomas Moore