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Quotes about talking

319 quotes from 193 people

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Talking and eloquence are not the same: to speak, and to speak well, are two things. A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks…
Ben Jonson1572–1637Timber: or Discoveries
Thou say’st an undisputed thing
In such a solemn way.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.1809–1894“To an Insect”, Poems (1836)
Why can’t somebody give us a list of things that everybody thinks and nobody says, and another list of things that everybody says and nobody thinks?
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.1809–1894The Professor at the Breakfast Table (1859), Ch. 6
- Thinking
There is no such thing as conversation. It is an illusion. There are intersecting monologues, that is all.
Rebecca West1892–1983The Harsh Voice: Four Short Novels (1935)
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice.
William Shakespeare1564–1616Hamlet (1600–1), Act I, scene iii.In context
- Advice
To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.
Frederick Douglass1817–1895A Plea For Free Speech in Boston (10 December 1860), as contained in Words That Changed America, Alex Barnett, Rowman & Littlefield (reprint, 2006), p. 156
- Freedom
Denial of one’s better self seals the lips or pollutes them. Fidelity to conviction opens them and truth blossoms in eloquence.
Eugene V. Debs1855–1926The Secret of Efficient Expression (1911)
- Truth & Lies
Perhaps it is possible to discover more in silence than in speech. Or perhaps it is only that those who are silent among us learn to listen.
Alice Hoffmanborn 1952The Dovekeepers (2011)
Opinions cannot survive if one has no chance to fight for them.
Thomas Mann1875–1955The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 6
- Debate
- Ideas
The finest eloquence is that which gets things done; the worst is that which delays them.
David Lloyd George1863–1945Speech at the Paris Peace Conference (January 1919)
Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better. Silence is deep as Eternity; speech is shallow as Time.
Thomas Carlyle1795–1881Sir Walter Scott (1838)
But, perhaps, the excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the expression of some rare or abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension of some obvious and useful truth in few words.
Samuel Johnson1709–1784The Rambler (1750–1752), No. 175 (19 November 1751)
- Quotations
The most disheartening tendency common among readers is to tear out one sentence from a work, as a criterion of the writer’s ideas or personality.
Emma Goldman1869–1940Anarchism and Other Essays (1910), Preface
- Quotations
- Reading
Your silence will not protect you.
Audre Lorde1934–1992The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action, p. 41
The best ideas are common property.
Seneca the Younger5 BC–AD 65Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XII: On old age, Line 11.
- Ideas
- Quotations