Quotes About Conversation

Let us not look east and west for materials of conversation, but rest in presence and unity. A just feeling will fast enough supply fuel for discourse, if speaking be more grateful than silence. When people come to see us, we foolishly prattle, lest we be inhospitable. But things said for conversation are chalk eggs. Don't say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.

Musicians playing together, it's a conversation, and ideally I want our conversation to be really intriguing and interesting and beautiful.

I think my books give people a language to have a conversation about God that's not religious. There isn't enough new literature that brings the conversation of God into a modern context. I love the Bible, but in the West we've analyzed it until it fits into a structure of control. We need more new stories. We need different ways of looking at things, and I think it's coming.

He was right. They could have a whole conversation without exchanging a word. And the conversation they had right now went like this: Colin, shut it. I don’t think I will, M. Then I’ll make you. Really? How?I’m not certain, but it will be slow and painful. And I won’t leave any evidence.

At some point you do not need to talk to have a conversation. The conversation exists whether you have it or not. It continues silently in a parallel dimension of the marriage. They both pause to let it run its course toward another stalemate.

Be politically correct, but please don't bother other people with conversation about being politically correct, because that's the end of everything. You want to create boredom? Be politically correct in your conversation.

We are talking only to ourselves. We are not talking to the rivers, we are not listening to the wind and stars. We have broken the great conversation. By breaking that conversation we have shattered the universe. All the disasters that are happening now are a consequence of that spiritual 'autism.'

There are a lot of polls that show that actually Americans have a pretty high opinion of teachers, that Americans think teachers are just about as prestigious as doctors. And yet there's this political conversation - this reform conversation - that paints a very negative picture of the effectiveness of the teaching population. So there's definitely a tension between the way teaching is talked about and understood at the political level and how everyday average Americans think about teachers.

The affairs of the royal house form a subject of conversation for those who, as a rule, would have no conversation.

I've never been in the position where that conversation is a serious conversation before the movie even comes out. On one side of it, that's so great because you've got such great potential. The other side of that is that there's a level of pressure. Now, that clearly means that there's an expectation level, from the studio side, potentially from the audience's side, and from our side.

The moment when someone attaches you to a philosophy or a movement, then they assign all the baggage and all the rest of the philosophy that goes with it to you. And when you want to have a conversation, they will assert that they already know everything important there is to know about you because of that association. And that's not the way to have a conversation.

People often recommend, "Why do you ask?" as a good conversation stopper. But that really doesn't end the conversation, it just leaves the other person sputtering for a response. I like, "You'll be the first to know.".

If people are rude, that may be the end of the conversation, and maybe we won't have a subsequent conversation. But I believe in giving people the benefit of the doubt and believing the best about the person.

I don't need to convince men that feminism is important, that just isn't a goal of mine. I can't even have that conversation of whether or not it's important, because if someone asks me that... I don't want to have a conversation with them until they grow up.

Business is a conversation because the defining work of business is conversation - literally. And 'knowledge workers' are simply those people whose job consists of having interesting conversations.

I do not think stress is a legitimate topic of conversation, in public anyway. No one ever wants to hear how stressed out anyone else is, because most of the time everyone is stressed out. Going on and on in detail about how stressed out I am isn’t conversation. It’ll never lead anywhere. No one is going to say, “Wow, Mindy, you really have it especially bad. I have heard some stories of stress, but this just takes the cake.

This is a time for a national conversation. A conversation about the document that binds us as a nation and a people. That document, of course, is the Constitution.

Conversation creates a new kind of network within organizations. Current networks are used for competitive advantage, but conversation is focused on encouraging people to realize their potential.

What is literature, really? Boiled down to a single sentence, I'd say it's this: an endless conversation about what it means to be human. And to read literature is to engage in that conversation.

This is my new hobby. I watch my life depart minute by minute. I anticipate the end of everything and anything -- a conversation, a class, track practice, darkness -- only to be left with more clock-watching to take its place. I'm continually waiting for something better that never comes. Maybe it would help if I knew what I wanted.

Books are love letters (or apologies) passed between us, adding a layer of conversation beyond our spoken words.

I think those of us on a spiritual journey can help create a new conversation, a new America, and a new world.

And one of our points of continuing conversation with our trading partners is the urgency of their taking steps to remove barriers to their improved growth performance.

We are not simply intellectual creatures. We wish to make love, to enjoy a gourmet dinner, to jog in the park, to cheer lustily at a ball game, to engage in spirited conversation with our friends, to play bridge or tennis, travel to exotic places, struggle with others to build a better world, and to enjoy the arts. The arts are so vital because they help to make life worth living. Music, poetry, literature, paintings, dance, and the theater are among our richest joys...The fine arts contribute immeasurably to the good life and that is why we cherish them.

Word books traditionally focus on unusual and quirky items. They tend to ignore the words that provide the skeleton of the language, without which it would fall apart, such as 'and' and 'what,' or words that provide structure to our conversation, such as 'hello.

I see in my friends that don't have kids, when they come over, and the amount of times our conversation gets interrupted by my children. It's almost jarring.

I think that there are many things in the New Testament that show us that the godliness of our conversation plays an important evangelistic role. The apostles are clear that we mustn't limit the explicit sharing of the gospel to formal preaching. It can also happen in ordinary conversations.

No one appreciates the very special genius of your conversation as the dog does.

In my head, thought, I would love to do an interview where it's just sort of de-constructed - the talking points of Iraq - sort of the idea of, is this really the conversation we're having about this war? That if we don't defeat Al Qaeda in Iraq, they'll follow us home? That to support the troops means not to question that the surge could work. That, what we're really seeing in Iraq is not a terrible war, but in fact, just the media's portrayal of it.

Whenever you read a book or have a conversation, the experience causes physical changes in your brain.

Begin with art, because art tries to take us outside ourselves. It is a matter of trying to create an atmosphere and context so conversation can flow back and forth and we can be influenced by each other.

The beautiful thing about older people is their ability to cut the fat off of conversation. When they talk, they don't go on forever and ever. They say what they have to say, and that's it. That was my grand dad. Some of the things he said stunned me, but his words were logical. I'll never forget them.

That man is guilty of impertinence who considers not the circumstances of time, or engrosses the conversation, or makes himself the subject of his discourse, or pays no regard to the company he is in.

I suppose the difference between baby people and me is that I do not consider smiling while farting 'holding up your end of a conversation.

The conversation between Fletcher and Jonathan Livingston Seagull is centered on why some have achieved more than others . . . are they divine . . . ahead of their times . . . Fletcher says, Well, this kind of flying has always been here to be learned by anybody who wanted to discover it; that's got nothing to do with time. We're ahead of the fashion, maybe. Ahead of the way most gulls fly. Poor Fletch. Don't you believe what your eyes are telling you? All they show is limitations. Look with your understanding, find out what you already know, and you'll see the way to fly.

While some of my closest friends were jocks, it seemed that they spoke a different language with each other. Joining in their conversation was fraught with risk.

In the early fight for women's rights, the point was not that women were morally superior or better. The conversation was about the difference between men and women - power, privilege, voting rights, etc. Unfortunately, it quickly moved to the "women are better" argument. If this were true in life or in fiction, we wouldn't have any dark or deep characters. We wouldn't have any Salomes, Carmens, Ophelias. We wouldn't have any jealousy or passion.

The phone conversation where I haven't had a smoke, it's like trying to talk without using adverbs.

Many people believe letters the most personal and revealing form of communication. In them, we expect to find the charmer at his nap, slumped, open-mouthed, profoundly himself without thought for appearances. Yet, this is not quite true. Letters are above all useful as a means of expressing the ideal self; and no other method of communication is quite so good for this purpose. In conversation, those uneasy eyes upon you, those lips ready with an emendation before you have begun to speak, are a powerful deterrent to unreality, even to hope.

Conversation like television set on honeymoon... unnecessary.

Statistics are the lifeblood of baseball. In no other sport are so many available and studied so assiduously by participants and fans. Much of the game's appeal, as a conversation piece, lies in the opportunity the fan gets to back up opinions and arguments with convincing figures, and it is entirely possible that more American boys have mastered long division by dealing with batting averages than in any other way.

There is so little to remember of anyone - an anecdote, a conversation at a table. But every memory is turned over and over again, every word, however chance, written in the heart in the hope that memory will fulfill itself, and become flesh, and that the wanderers will find a way home, and the perished, whose lack we always feel, will step through the door finally and stroke our hair with dreaming habitual fondness not having meant to keep us waiting long.

That which chiefly causes the failure of a dinner-party, is the running short--not of meat, nor yet of drink, but of conversation.

An isolated person requires correspondence as a means of seeing his ideas as others see them, and thus guarding against the dogmatisms and extravagances of solitary and uncorrected speculation. No man can learn to reason and appraise from a mere perusal of the writing of others. If he live not in the world, where he can observe the public at first hand and be directed toward solid reality by the force of conversation and spoken debate, then he must sharpen his discrimination and regulate his perceptive balance by an equivalent exchange of ideas in epistolary form.

I feel like we are so much more comfortable sweeping things under the rug and putting on a brave face, and to me, sweeping under the rug is a coward move, not a brave move at all. I want to get out there and have a conversation.

The show [Shots Fired] is an autopsy of our criminal justice system, a space where the conversation surrounding the issues in our country is offering a seat at the table to all the voices to be heard, a murder mystery, and grassroots look at our own humanity as we move through the parts and pieces of the story.

There has to be a reason and objective (to air strikes). What does it do to move the effort down the road for a political conversation?

Design is about creating spaces for people to enjoy and of course, creating moments where you elevate the spirit, but 'design for good' is figuring out a program that not only creates better spaces, but creates jobs, creates new industry and really kind of raises the conversation about how we rebuild.