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Conversation quotes

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“My idea of good company, Mr Elliot, is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.” Jane Austen, “Persuasion” - 1816

“Ah, good conversation—there's nothing like it, is there? The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing.” Edith Wharton, “The Age of Innocence” - 1920

“I certainly have not the talent which some people possess . . . of conversing easily with those I have never seen before.” Jane Austen, “Pride and Prejudice” - 28 January 1813

“I often have long conversations all by myself, and I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.” Oscar Wilde, “The Remarkable Rocket” - 1888

“And we change people through conversation, not through censorship.” JAY-Z, “Decoded” - 2010

“The man as he converses is the lover; silent, he is the husband.” Honoré de Balzac, “Letters of Two Brides” - 1841

“In the meantime let us try and converse calmly, since we are incapable of keeping silent.” Samuel Beckett, “Waiting for Godot” - 1953

“I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. That way I wouldn't have to have any goddam stupid useless conversations with anybody. If anybody wanted to tell me something, they'd have to write it on a piece of paper and...” J. D. Salinger, “The Catcher in the Rye” - 1951

“Her reputation of reading a great deal hung about her like the cloudy envelope of a goddess in an epic; it was supposed to engender difficult questions and to keep the conversation at a low temperature.” Henry James, “The Portrait of a Lady” - 1881

“When she had failed once or twice to respond to some conversational gambit or other, Bond also relapsed into silence and occupied himself with his own gloomy thoughts.” Ian Fleming, “Casino Royale” - 1953

“The only reason why we ask other people how their weekend was is so we can tell them about our own weekend.” Chuck Palahniuk, “Invisible Monsters” - 1999

“I don't think that women ought to sit down at table with men. It ruins conversation and I'm sure it's very bad for them. It puts ideas in their heads, and women are never at ease with themselves when they have ideas.” W. Somerset Maugham, “Of Human Bondage” - 1915

“He had pondered for twenty years the problem whether he loved liquor because it made him talk or whether he loved conversation because it made him thirsty.” W. Somerset Maugham, “Of Human Bondage” - 1915

“They have a notion, that when people are met together, a short silence does much improve conversation: this I found to be true; for during those little intermissions of talk, new ideas would arise in their minds, which very much enlivened the...” Jonathan Swift, “Gulliver's Travels” - 1726

“He was one of that class of men who, apart from a scientific career in which they may well have proved brilliantly successful, have acquired an entirely different kind of culture, literary or artistic, of which they make no use in the specialised...” Marcel Proust, “Swann's Way” - 1913

“We don't talk, we hold forth. We don't converse, we expound.” J. D. Salinger, “Franny and Zooey” - 1961

Related topics

silence ideas women understanding reading stupidity drinking books deafness intelligence cleverness change thought husband sociability calm question talking censorship science

Related authors

Jane Austen (2)
W. Somerset Maugham (2)
J. D. Salinger (2)
Oscar Wilde (1)
Jonathan Swift (1)
Henry James (1)
Edith Wharton (1)
Honoré de Balzac (1)
Chuck Palahniuk (1)
Samuel Beckett (1)
Marcel Proust (1)
Ian Fleming (1)
JAY-Z (1)

Related sources

Of Human Bondage (2)
Pride and Prejudice (1)
Gulliver's Travels (1)
The Portrait of a Lady (1)
The Age of Innocence (1)
Letters of Two Brides (1)
The Catcher in the Rye (1)
Waiting for Godot (1)
Swann's Way (1)
Casino Royale (1)
Decoded (1)
Franny and Zooey (1)
Persuasion (1)
Invisible Monsters (1)
The Remarkable Rocket (1)