Conversation Quotes - Page 19

• But stories somehow lengthen when begun.

  Lord Byron

  Stories

  Lord Byron (2013). “Byron: Selected Poetry and Prose”, p.352, Routledge

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• It's beyond the grasp of anyone's memory to recall conversations in kind of [memoir] detail. So it's fake. It's all made up.

  Paul Auster

  Memories, Fake, Details

  Time Out Interview, www.timeout.com.

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• I do not repeat conversations that I can't remember. And it's something that irritates me a great deal, because I think most memoirs are false novels.

  Paul Auster

  Thinking, Remember, Novel

  Interview with Lotte Hansen, www.timeout.com.

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• His enemies might have said before that he talked rather too much; but now he has occasional flashes of silence, that make his conversation perfectly delightful.

  Sydney Smith

  Silence, Enemy, Might

  Sydney Smith (1856). “Wit and Wisdom of the Rev. Sydney Smith”, p.439

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• It is a wonderful thing that so many, and they not reckoned absurd, shall entertain those with whom they converse by giving them the history of their pains and aches and imagine such narrations their quota of conversation.

  Richard Steele

  Pain, Giving, Quota

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1826). “The Spectator: With Notes, and a General Index”, p.132

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• Grandad has a long and earnest conversation with his grandchild. He says, you are noisy and wiggly and will be sent back if you don't pull herself together....The baby smiles complacently. She has him exactly where she wants him.

  Pam Brown

  Baby, Grandchildren, Long

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• The world is waiting for you to wake up to the person you are called to be. Stop listening to the negative inner conversation that's causing you to play small. Focus your mind on positive thoughts, possibilities and solutions that can move you forward. Tap into your creativity and determination and stay busy. Stay focused.

  Les Brown

  Motivational, Encouragement, Determination

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• Water is two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. What if someone says, “Well, that’s not how I choose to think about water.”? All we can do is appeal to scientific values. And if he doesn’t share those values, the conversation is over. If someone doesn’t value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove they should value it? If someone doesn’t value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic?

  Sam Harris

  Thinking, Oxygen, Logical Arguments

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• Since nothing appears to me to give Children so much becoming Confidence and Behavior, and so raise them to the conversation of those above their Age, as Dancing. I think they should be taught to dance as soon as they are capable of learning it.

  John Locke

  Children, Thinking, Giving

  John Locke, Ruth Weissbourd Grant, Nathan Tarcov (1996). “Some Thoughts Concerning Education: And, Of the Conduct of the Understanding”, Hackett Publishing

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• The serious reader in the age of technology is a rebel by definition: a protester without a placard, a Luddite without hammer or bludgeon. She reads on planes to picket the antiseptic nature of modern travel, on commuter trains to insist on individualism in the midst of the herd, in hotel rooms to boycott the circumstances that separate her from her usual sources of comfort and stimulation, during office breaks to escape from the banal conversation of office mates, and at home to revolt against the pervasive and mind-deadening irrelevance of television.

  Eric Burns

  Home, Technology, Irrelevance

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• In their presence, there's no need for continuous conversation, but you find you're quite content in just having them nearby.

  Bob Marley

  Love, Needs, Reggae

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• To meet at all, one must open ones eyes to another; and there is no true conversation no matter how many words are spoken, unless the eye, unveiled and listening, opens itself to the other.

  Jessamyn West

  Inspirational, Eye, Listening

  Jessamyn West (1959). “Love is not what you think”

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• We have all of us free access to all that is great, and good, and happy, and carry within ourselves a key to all the treasures that heaven has to bestow upon us. We starve in the midst of plenty, groan under infirmities, with the remedy in our own hand; live and die without knowing and feeling anything of the One only God, whilst we have it in our power to know and enjoy it in as great a reality as we know and feel the power of this world over us; for Heaven is as near to our souls as this world is to our bodies; and we are created, we are redeemed, to have our conversation in it.

  William Law

  God, Reality, Keys

  William Law (1836). “Extracts from The spirit of prayer”, p.2

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• Major Greene this evening fell into some conversation with me about the Divinity and satisfaction of Jesus Christ. All the argument he advanced was, "that a mere creature or finite being could not make satisfaction to infinite justice for any crimes," and that "these things are very mysterious." Thus mystery is made a convenient cover for absurdity.

  John Adams

  Wisdom, Jesus, Justice

  John Adams (1961). “Diary and Autobiography of John Adams: Diary, 1755-1770”, Belknap Pr

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• You can start over again! Don't even think about quitting now! It is easy to replay in your mind how things did not work, how much you lost, what you are going through, how angry you are. There is no amount of conversation or magic that is going to wipe the slate clean. You are wasting valuable time and energy that could be used to regain a new normal and start another version of your life. Even though you are hurt and you may be feeling down — stop kicking yourself! Face what has happened. Make the decision to start over again.

  Les Brown

  Hurt, Thinking, New Normal

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• When I'm writing, my neural pathways get blocked. I can't read. I can barely hold a conversation without forgetting words and names. I wish I could wear the same clothes and eat the same food each day.

  Kate Atkinson

  Writing, Names, Clothes

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• Mr. Adams, describing a conversation with Jonathan Sewall in 1774, says: "I answered that the die was now cast; I had passed the Rubicon. Swim or sink, live or die, survive or perish with my country was my unalterable determination."

  John Adams

  Country, Determination, Swim

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• It is a secret known but to few, yet of no small use in the conduct of life, that when you fall into a man's conversation, the first thing you should consider is, whether he has a greater inclination to hear you, or that you should hear him.

  Richard Steele

  Fall, Men, Secret

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1826). “The Spectator: With Notes, and a General Index”, p.64

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• It is an impertinent and unreasonable fault in conversation for one man to take up all the discourse.

  Richard Steele

  Men, Faults, Discourse

  Joseph Addison, Richard Steele (1854). “The Spectator”, p.321

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• I love sitting down and having actual conversations. But I don't do that sound-bite, be-candidly-funny thing.

  Kristen Stewart

  Funny Things, Sitting Down, Sound

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• For mankind, speech with a capital S is especially meaningful and committing, more than the content communicated. The outcry of the newborn and the sound of the bells are fraught with mystery more than the baby's woeful face or the venerable tower.

  Paul Goodman

  Meaningful, Baby, Sound

  Paul Goodman (1966). “Five years”

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• A dearth of words a woman need not fear; But 'tis a task indeed to learn to hear: In that the skill of conversation lies; That shows and makes you both polite and wise.

  Edward Young

  Wise, Lying, Skills

  John Milton, Edward Young, Thomas Gray, James Beattie, William Collins (1836). “The Poetical Works of Milton, Young, Gray, Beattie, and Collins”

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• Ideas matter in New York. I am certain that more conversations in New York are about ideas than anywhere else. Not just vague theories, but ideas that New Yorkers have the will, and the clout, to do something about.

  David Frost

  New York, Ideas, Matter

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• Man and wife are equally concerned, to avoid all offence of each other, in the beginning of their conversation. Every little thing can blast an infant blossom.

  Jeremy Taylor

  Men, Wife, Littles

  Thomas Smart Hughes, Thomas Sherlock, Jeremy Taylor (1837). “Summaries of the sermons and discourses of Sherlock and Jeremy Taylor”, p.309

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• Sometimes the most important conversations are the most difficult to engage in.

  Jeanne Phillips

  Women, Important, Sometimes

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