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Quotes about talking

319 quotes from 193 people

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A great man quotes bravely, and will not draw on his invention when his memory serves him with a word just as good.
Ralph Waldo Emerson1803–1882Letters and Social Aims (1876), Quotation and Originality
- Quotations
A speech comes alive only if it rises from the heart, not if it floats on the lips.
Erasmus1466–1536in The Erasmus Reader (1990), p. 130.
‘Twas but my tongue, ‘twas not my soul that swore.
Euripides481–407 BCHippolytus (428 BC), l. 612 (tr. Gilbert Murray, 1902)
To speak a language is to take on a world, a culture.
Frantz Fanon1925–1961Black Skin, White Masks (1952), pp. 38
I have far more confidence in the one man who works mentally and bodily at a matter than in the six who merely talk about it.
Michael Faraday1791–1867Letter to John Tyndall (19 April 1851), The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, letter 2411
- Work
A single fact will often spoil an interesting argument.
WFWilliam Feather1889–1981Featherisms (2008)
- Debate
- Facts
Human speech is like a cracked tin kettle, on which we hammer out tunes to make bears dance when we long to move the stars.
Gustave Flaubert1821–1880Madame Bovary (1857), Part II, Chapter TwelveIn context
- Music
Charles’s conversation was commonplace as a street pavement, and everyone’s ideas trooped through it in their everyday garb, without exciting emotion, laughter, or thought.
Gustave Flaubert1821–1880Madame Bovary (1857), Part I, Chapter SevenIn context
- Clever Jabs
Think before you speak is criticism’s motto; speak before you think is creation’s.
E. M. Forster1879–1970Two Cheers for Democracy (1951)
- Thinking
Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.
Benjamin Franklin1706–1790
As we must account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence.
Benjamin Franklin1706–1790
Words may show a man’s wit but actions his meaning.
Benjamin Franklin1706–1790Poor Richard’s Almanack
Many a long dispute among divines may be thus abridged: It is so. It is not so. It is so. It is not so.
Benjamin Franklin1706–1790Poor Richard’s Almanack (1879)
- Debate
Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
Benjamin Franklin1706–1790Date unclear
Analogies prove nothing, that is quite true, but they can make one feel more at home.
Sigmund Freud1856–1939“New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis” (1933)
- Debate