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

Do you know that conversation is one of the greatest pleasures in life? But it wants leisure.

We do not talk-we bludgeon one another with facts and theories gleaned from cursory readings of newspapers, magazines and digests.

For table-talk, I prefer the pleasant and witty before the learned and the grave; in bed, beauty before goodness.

I withheld a riposte that would have seared him if I had been able to think of it, and followed him into the office.

The more the pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and charm of conversation.

In a conversation, keep in mind that you're more interested in what you have to say than anyone else is.

Whoever interrupts the conversation of others to make a display of his fund of knowledge, makes notorious his own stock of ignorance.

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.

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