Bore: one who has the power of speech but not the capacity for conversation.

Benjamin Disraeli (1804 - 1881)

Talking with you is sort of the conversational² equivalent of an out of body experience.

Bill Watterson (1958 - ), Calvin & Hobbes

Saying what we think gives us a wider conversational range than saying what we know.

Cullen Hightower

Each person's life is lived as a series of conversations.

Deborah Tannen

The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the right place but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting³ moment.

Dorothy Nevill

Education begins a gentleman, conversation completes him.

Dr. Thomas Fuller (1654 - 1734), Gnomologia, 1732

Few are agreeable in conversation, because each thinks more of what he intends to say than of what others are saying, and listens no more when he himself has a chance to speak.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld (1613 - 1680)

To listen closely and reply well is the highest perfection we are able to attain⁴ in the art of conversation.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld (1613 - 1680)

I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.

George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

Anecdotes⁵ and maxims⁶ are rich treasures to the man of the world, for he knows how to introduce the former at fit place in conversation.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832)

One of the best rules in conversation is, never to say a thing which any of the company can reasonably wish had been left unsaid.

Jonathan Swift (1667 - 1745)

Let us make a special effort to stop communicating with each other, so we can have some conversation.

Judith Martin, (Miss Manners)

Don't knock the weather. If it didn't change once in a while, nine out of ten people couldn't start a conversation.

Kin¹ Hubbard (1868 - 1930)

Most conversations are simply monologues⁷ delivered in the presence of witnesses.

Margaret Millar

The character of a man is known from his conversations.

Menander (342 BC - 292 BC)

Conversation is food for the soul.

Mexican Proverb

You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.

Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for his competitors, for it is that which all are practising every day while they live.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)

There isn’t much better in this life than finding a way to spend a few hours in conversation with people you respect and love. You have to carve this time out of your life because you aren’t really living without it.

Real Live Preacher, RealLivePreacher.com Weblog, August 27, 2003

I don't know how to have casual conversation. You think you're talking about one thing, and either you are and it's incredibly boring, or you're not because it's subtext and you need a decoder ring.

Sara B. Cooper, House M.D., Love Hurts, 2004

Your ignorance, cramps⁸ my conversation.

Sir Anthony Hawkins (1863 - 1933)

He had occasional flashes of silence, that made his conversation perfectly⁹ delightful¹⁰.

Sydney Smith (1771 - 1845), referring to Macaulay

Silence is one of the great arts of conversation, as allowed by Cicero himself, who says, 'there is not only an art, but an eloquence¹¹ in it.' A well bred woman may easily and effectually promote the most useful and elegant conversation without speaking a word. The modes of speech are scarcely more variable than the modes of silence.

Tom Blair

It's always difficult to make conversation with a drunk, and there's no denying it, the sober are at a disadvantage with him.

W. Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965), The Razor's Edge, 1943

Conversation should be pleasant without scurrility¹², witty¹³ without affectation, free without indecency, learned without conceitedness¹⁴, novel without falsehood.

William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)