A database of quotes
The reading of all good books is indeed like a conversation with the noblest men of past centuries who were the authors of them, nay a carefully studied conversation, in why they revel to us none but the best of their thoughts.
Reading good books is like having a conversation with the highly worthy persons of the past who wrote them; indeed, it is like having a prepared conversation in which those persons disclose to us only their best thinking.
William Temple, fully Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet
The first ingredient in conversation is truth; the next, good sense; the third, good humor; and the fourth, wit.
William Temple, fully Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet
The first ingredient in conversation is truth, the next good sense, the third good humor, and the fourth with.
Conversation | Good | Humor | Sense | Truth |
Education begins a Gentlemen, Conversation completes him.
The best kind of conversation is that which may be called thinking aloud.
Conversation | Thinking |
The art of conversation is the art of hearing as well as of being heard.
Art | Conversation | Art |
True conversation is an interpenetration of worlds, a genuine intercourse of souls, which doesn’t have to be self-consciously profound but does have to touch matters of concern to the soul... Conversation may also relive us from the pressures of everyday activity and decision-making, opening us up to undisclosed levels of our experience. Soul resides in the overtones and undertones, not in the flat body of literal events. Conversation performs a pleasurable and gentle alchemy on experience, sublimating it into forms that can be examined. Experience itself takes wing from conversation... Conversation is the sex act of the soul, and as such it is supremely conducive to the cultivation of intimacy.
Alchemy | Body | Conversation | Cultivation | Decision | Events | Experience | Self | Soul |
Cowardice is not synonymous with prudence. It often happens that the better part of discretion is valour.
Better | Cowardice | Discretion | Prudence | Prudence |
Edgar Degas, born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas
What a delightful thing is the conversation of specialists! One understands absolutely nothing and it's charming.
Conversation | Nothing |
Emmanuel Lévinas , originally Emanuelis Lévinas
To approach the Other in conversation is to welcome his expression, in which at each instant he overflows the idea a thought would carry away from it. It is therefore to receive from the Other beyond the capacity of the I, which means exactly: to have the idea of infinity. But this also means: to be taught. The relation with the Other, or Conversation, is a non-allergic relation, an ethical relation; but inasmuch as it is welcomed this conversation is a teaching. Teaching is not reducible to maieutics; it comes from the exterior and brings me more than I contain. In its non-violent transitivity the very epiphany of the face is produced.
Capacity | Conversation | Epiphany | Means | Receive | Thought | Thought |
Ideal conversation must be an exchange of thought, and not, as many of those who worry most about their shortcomings believe, an eloquent exhibition of wit or oratory.
Conversation | Wit | Worry |
Harry Blackmun, fully Harold "Harry" Andrew Blackmun
By placing discretion in the hands of an official to grant or deny a license, such a statute creates a threat of censorship that by its very existence chills free speech.
Discretion | Existence |
If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the general welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one subject to particular exceptions.
Discretion | Government | Will | Government |
In self-examination, take no account of yourself by your thoughts and resolutions in the days of religion and solemnity; examine how it is with you in the days of ordinary conversation and in the circumstances of secular employment.