The best of life is conversation. [ Emerson ]

Conversation is a game of circles. [ Emerson ]

Conversation makes one what he is. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Many can argue, not many converse. [ A. Bronson Alcott ]

The soul of conversation is sympathy. [ William Hazlitt ]

Face to face; a private conversation. [ French ]

Repartee is the soul of conversation. [ Dryden ]

With thee conversing I forget the way. [ Gay ]

The less men think, the more they talk. [ Montesquieu ]

I hate war, for it spoils conversation. [ Fontenelle ]

With thee conversing I forget all time. [ Milton ]

All men, well interrogated, answer well. [ Plato ]

Silence is one great art of conversation. [ Hazlitt ]

Unconstraint is the grace of conversation. [ Dr. Johnson ]

Conceit causes more conversation than wit. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

Conversation teaches more than meditation. [ Proverb ]

Discourse, the sweeter banquet of the mind. [ Homer ]

Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food. [ William Hazlitt ]

Debate is masculine; conversation is feminine. [ A. Bronson Alcott ]

Silence is one of the great arts of conversation. [ Cicero ]

In conversation dwell not too long on a weak side. [ Proverb ]

Avoid making yourself the subject of conversation. [ Bruyere ]

Solitude makes us love ourselves, conversation others. [ Proverb ]

Our common conversation is but a babble about nothing. [ Proverb ]

Good discourse sinks differences and seeks agreements. [ A. Bronson Alcott ]

Repose is as necessary in conversation as in a picture. [ Hazlitt ]

Egotists cannot converse, they talk to themselves only. [ A. Bronson Alcott ]

Confidence in conversation has a greater share than wit. [ Rochefoucauld ]

Reasonable men are the best dictionaries of conversation. [ Goethe ]

Education begins a gentleman, conversation completes him. [ Proverb ]

Conversation is the laboratory and workshop of the student. [ Emerson ]

Questioning is not the mode of conversation among gentlemen. [ Sam'l Johnson ]

Conversation is the vent of character as well as of thought. [ Emerson ]

In conversation avoid the extremes of forwardness and reserve. [ Cato ]

It is good to rub and polish our brain against that of others. [ Montaigne ]

Conversation is an abandonment to ideas, a surrender to persons. [ A. B. Alcott ]

Conversation, which, when it is best, is a series of intoxications. [ Emerson ]

It is time, conversation and business, that discovers what a man is. [ Proverb ]

I owe it to old age, that my relish for conversation is so increased. [ Cicero ]

Conversation is an art in which v. man has all mankind for competitors. [ Emerson ]

Knowledge begins a gentleman, but it is conversation that completes him. [ Proverb ]

Speak little and well, if you wish to be considered as possessing merit. [ From the French ]

If one hears bad music it is one's duty to drown it by one's conversation. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]

The secret of tiring is to say everything that can be said on the subject. [ Voltaire ]

Debate is angular, conversation circular and radiant of the underlying unity. [ A. Bronson Alcott ]

Conversation enriches the understanding; but solitude is the school of genius. [ Gibbon ]

A great thing is a great book, but greater than all is the talk of a great man. [ Earl of Beaconsfield ]

It was hard to have a conversation with anyone; there were too many people talking. [ Yogi Berra ]

Life is no life without the blessing of a true, friendly, and edifying conversation. [ L'Estrange ]

His conversation does not show the minute hand; but he strikes the hour very correctly. [ Samuel Johnson ]

The most delightful letter does not possess a hundredth part of the charm of a conversation. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Upon the common course of life must our thoughts and our conversation be generally employed. [ Johnson ]

If we should leave out of conversation scandal, gossip, commonplaces, fatuity - what silence! [ Mme. Bachi ]

No one is qualified to converse in public who is not highly contented without such conversation. [ Thomas à Kempis ]

A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years' study of books. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

As soon as a woman begins to dress loud, her manners and conversation partake of the same element. [ Haliburton ]

Silence holds the door against the strife of tongue and all the impertinences of idle conversation. [ James Hervey ]

There is no arena is which vanity displays itself under such a variety of forms as in conversation. [ Pascal ]

Don't hang a dismal picture on the wall, and don't daub with sables and glooms in your conversation. [ Emerson ]

Much of the good or evil that befalls persons arises from the well or ill managing of their conversation. [ Judge Hale ]

One could take down a book from a shelf ten times more wise and witty than almost any man's conversation. [ Campbell ]

Only just the right quantum of wit should be put into a book; in conversation a little excess is allowable. [ Joubert ]

Conversation in society is found to be on a platform so low as to exclude science, the saint, and the poet. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Topics of conversation among the multitude are generally persons, sometimes things, scarcely ever principles. [ W. B. Clulow ]

Counsel and conversation is a good second education, that improves all the virtues and corrects all the vices. [ Clarendon ]

Amongst such as out of cunning hear all and talk little, be sure to talk less; or if you must talk, say little. [ La Bruyere ]

Our companions please us less from the charms we find in their conversation than from those they find in ours. [ Lord Greville ]

There is nothing more tiresome than the conversation of a lover who has nothing to desire, and nothing to fear. [ Mme. de Sartory ]

Much of the pleasure, and all the benefit of conversation, depends upon our own opinion of the speaker's veracity. [ Paley ]

The perfection of conversational intercourse is when the breeding of high life is animated by the fervor of genius. [ Leigh Hunt ]

Two may talk and one may hear, but three cannot take part in a conversation of the most sincere and searching sort. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

It is by speech that many of our best gains are made. A large part of the good we receive comes to us in conversation. [ Washington Gladden ]

As it is the characteristic of great wits to say much in few words, so it is of small wits to talk much and say nothing. [ Rochefoucauld ]

The study of books is a languishing and feeble motion that hearts not, whereas conversation teaches and exercises at once. [ Montaigne ]

Never argue. In society nothing must be: give only results. If any person differs from you, bow, and turn the conversation. [ Beaconsfield ]

The extreme pleasure we take in talking of ourselves should make us fear that we give very little to those who listen to us. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

Method is not less requisite in ordinary conversation than in writing, provided a man would talk to make himself understood. [ Addison ]

The art of conversation consists less in showing one's own wit than in giving opportunity for the display of the wit of others. [ La Bruyere ]

There are three things in speech that ought to be considered before some things are spoken - the manner, the place and the time. [ Southey ]

One of the greatest pleasures of life is conversation, and the pleasures of conversation are enhanced by every increase of knowledge. [ Sydney Smith ]

One of the first observations to make in conversation is the state, or the character, and the education of the person to whom we speak. [ Madame Necker ]

You may fail to shine, in the opinion of others, both in your conversation and actions, from being superior, as well as inferior to them. [ Greville ]

The art of conversation is to be prompt without being stubborn, to refute without argument, and to clothe great matters in a motley garb. [ Beaconsfield ]

Eloquence may be found in conversation and all kinds of writings; it is rarely where we seek it, and sometimes where it is least expected. [ La Bruyere ]

Associate with men of judgment, for judgment is found in conversation, and we make another man's judgment ours by frequenting his company. [ Thomas Fuller ]

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. [ 0. A. Sala ]

The perfection of conversation is not to play a regular sonata, but, like the Aeolian harp, to await the inspiration of the passing breeze. [ Burke ]

The conversation of women in society resembles the straw used in packing china: it is nothing, yet, without it, everything would be broken. [ Mme. de Salm ]

Perpetual solitude, in a place where you see nothing to raise your spirits, at length wears them out, and conversation falls into dull and insipid. [ Lady Montagu ]

Books give the same turn to our thoughts that company does to our conversation, without loading our memories, or making us even sensible of the change. [ Swift ]

Little-minded people's thoughts move in such small circles that five minutes' conversation gives you an arc long enough to determine their whole curve. [ Oliver Wendell Holmes ]

There is something irresistibly pleasing in the conversation of a fine woman; even though her tongue be silent, the eloquence of her eyes teach wisdom. [ Goldsmith ]

Equality is the life of conversation; and he is as much out who assumes to himself any part above another, as he who considers himself below the rest of the society. [ Steele ]

I do not say a proverb is amiss when aptly and seasonably applied; but to be forever discharging them, right or wrong, hit or miss, renders conversation insipid and vulgar. [ Cervantes ]

Lord Melbourne was so accustomed to garnish his conversation in this way that Sydney Smith once said to him, We will take it for granted that everybody is damned, and now proceed with the subject. [ L'Estrange ]

Sympathy wanting, all is wanting; its personal magnetism is the conductor of the sacred spark that lights our atoms, puts us in human communion, and gives us to company, conversation, and ourselves. [ A. B. Alcott ]

To write a genuine familiar or truly English style is to write as anyone would speak in common conversation, who had a thorough command and choice of words, or who could discourse with ease, force, and perspicuity, setting aside all pedantic and oratorical flourishes. [ Hazlitt ]

Good-nature is more agreeable in conversation than wit, and gives a certain air to the countenance which is more amiable than beauty. It shows virtue in the fairest light; takes off in some measure from the deformity of vice; and makes even folly and impertinence supportable. [ Addison ]

Much that is published as a novel is only anonymous biography. Many a man who is a bore in conversation may have qualities which give indescribable charms to narrative; and the egotist, if he only have the art to conceal his identity, can then hold the reader by the powerful grasp of sympathy. [ R. S. Mackenzie ]

Wise, cultivated, genial conversation is the best flower of civilisation, and the best result which life has to offer us--a cup for gods, which has no repentance. Conversation is our account of ourselves. All we have, all we can, all we know is brought into play, and as the reproduction, in finer form, of all our havings. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

As the health and strength or weakness of our bodies is very much owing to their methods of treating us when we were young, so the soundness or folly of our minds is not less owing to those first tempers and ways of thinking which we eagerly received from the love, tenderness, authority, and constant conversation of our mothers. [ E. Law ]

An inoffensive pleasantness is a good quality to improve friendship. It enlivens conversation, relieves melancholy, and conveys advice with better success than naked reprehension. This gilding the pill reconciles the palate to the prescription, without weakening the force of the ingredients, and he who can cure by recreation, and make pleasure the vehicle of health, is a doctor in good earnest. [ R. Hall ]

If I were to choose the people with whom I would spend my hours of conversation, they should be certainly such as labored no further than to make themselves readily and clearly apprehended, and would have patience and curiosity to understand me. To have good sense and ability to express it are the most essential and necessary qualities in companions. When thoughts rise in us fit to utter among familiar friends, there needs but very little care in clothing them. [ Steele ]

If a man were only to deal in the world for a day, and should never have occasion to converse more with mankind, never more need their good opinion or good word, it were then no great matter (speaking as to the concernments of this world), if a man spent his reputation all at once, and ventured it at one throw; but if he be to continue in the world, and would have the advantage of conversation while he is in it, let him make use of truth and sincerity in all his words and actions; for nothing but this will last and hold out to the end. [ Tillotson ]