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Quotes about talking

319 quotes from 193 people

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I don’t like doing interviews. There is always the problem of being misquoted or, what’s even worse, of being quoted exactly.
Stanley Kubrick1928–1999“Kubrick on Barry Lyndon: An interview with Michel Ciment” (1982)
- Quotations
The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him. That remark in itself wouldn’t make any sense if quoted as it stands.
Robert Benchley1889–1945“Quick Quotations” in My Ten Years in a Quandary and How They Grew (1936)
- Quotations
For in spite of language, in spite of intelligence and intuition and sympathy, one can never really communicate anything to anybody.
Aldous Huxley1894–1963Music at Night and Other Essays (1931), “Sermons in Cats”
Then there was a maiden speech, so inaudible, that it was doubted whether, after all, the young orator really did lose his virginity.
Benjamin Disraeli1804–1881The Young Duke (1831), Book I, Chapter 6.
- Comedy
Gossip is a sort of smoke that comes from the dirty tobacco-pipes of those who diffuse it: it proves nothing but the bad taste of the smoker.
George Eliot1819–1880Daniel Deronda (1876)
Any church that imprisons a man because he has used an argument against its creed, will simply convince the world that it cannot answer the argument.
Robert G. Ingersoll1833–1899The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)
- Debate
- Religion
Silence never shows itself to so great an advantage, as when it is made the reply to calumny and defamation, provided that we give no just occasion for them.
Joseph Addison1672–1719The Tatler, No. 133 (14 February 1710)
To be apt in quotation is a splendid and dangerous gift. Splendid, because it ornaments a man’s speech with other men’s jewels; dangerous, for the same reason.
Robertson Davies1913–1995Dangerous Jewels (1960)
- Quotations
Heaven, n. A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with talk of their personal affairs, and the good listen with attention while you expound your own.
Ambrose Bierce1842–1914The Devil’s Dictionary (1911)
- Comedy
In the mountains, the shortest way is from peak to peak: but for that, you need long legs. Aphorisms should be peaks: and those to whom they are spoken, big and tall.
Friedrich Nietzsche1844–1900Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883), Part I, Chapter 7
- Quotations
- Writing
Matters of religion should never be matters of controversy. We neither argue with a lover about his taste, nor condemn him, if we are just, for knowing so human a passion.
George Santayana1863–1952The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress (1905-1906), Vol. III, Reason in Religion, Ch. VI
- Debate
- Religion
I talk half the time to find out my own thoughts, as a school-boy turns his pockets inside out to see what is in them. One brings to light all sorts of personal property he had forgotten in his inventory.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.1809–1894The Poet at the Breakfast Table (1872), Ch. 1
- Thinking
There is nothing in the world like a persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus and upset the convictions and debauch the emotions of an audience not practised in the tricks and delusions of oratory.
Mark Twain1835–1910“The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg”, ch. III, in The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories and Essays (1900)
Granted I am a babbler, a harmless vexatious babbler, like all of us. But what is to be done if the direct and sole vocation of every intelligent man is babble, that is, the intentional pouring of water through a sieve?
Fyodor Dostoyevsky1821–1881Notes from Underground (1864), Part 1, Chapter 5 (tr. Constance Garnett, 1918)In context
- Intelligence
Mediocrity can talk, but it is for genius to observe.
IDIsaac D'Israeli1766–1848Curiosities of Literature (1791–1834)
- Genius