“Your fair discourse hath been as sugar, making the hard way sweet and delectable.”
William Shakespeare
ConversationFriendship
Communication Quotes
200 FAMOUS QUOTES · COMMUNICATION
Communication Quotes
Read 200 of the best communication quotes about listening, speaking, words, silence and conversation, from Shakespeare, Confucius, Mark Twain and more.
“Be check'd for silence, but never tax'd for speech.”
William Shakespeare
SilenceCaution
“Have more than thou showest, speak less than thou knowest.”
William Shakespeare
WisdomHumility
“It is good in discourse to vary and intermingle speech of the present occasion with arguments, tales with reasons, asking of questions with telling of opinions, and jest with earnest.”
Francis Bacon
ConversationBalance
“The most fruitful and natural exercise of our minds is, in my opinion, conversation.”
Michel de Montaigne
ConversationLearning
“Confidence contributes more to conversation than wit.”
François de La Rochefoucauld
ConfidenceConversation
“Kind words do not cost much. Yet they accomplish much.”
Blaise Pascal
KindnessWords
“Be silent always when you doubt your sense.”
Alexander Pope
SilenceHumility
“Men must be taught as if you taught them not, and things unknown proposed as things forgot.”
Alexander Pope
TeachingTact
“What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.”
Samuel Johnson
WritingEffort
“Never seem more learned than the people you are with.”
Lord Chesterfield
HumilityManners
“Every word was once a poem.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
LanguagePoetry
“Language is fossil poetry.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
LanguageHistory
“Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours.”
Benjamin Disraeli
ConversationHuman Nature
“It is a thing of no great difficulty to raise objections against another man's oration; but to produce a better in its place is a work extremely troublesome.”
Plutarch
CriticismSpeaking
“Conversation should be easy and not in the least dogmatic; it should have the spice of wit.”
Cicero
ConversationHumor
“Full oft in game a sooth I have heard say.”
Geoffrey Chaucer
HumorTruth
“The first virtue, son, if thou wilt learn, is to restrain and keep well thy tongue.”
Geoffrey Chaucer
Self-ControlWisdom
“Speak fitly, or be silent wisely.”
George Herbert
SilenceWisdom
“Talk much, and err much.”
Thomas Fuller
CautionSpeaking
“The art of conversation is the art of hearing as well as of being heard.”
William Hazlitt
ListeningConversation
“The right word is always a power, and communicates its definiteness to our action.”
George Eliot
Power Of WordsAction
“All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer.”
Robert Louis Stevenson
ListeningLanguage
“Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.”
Rudyard Kipling
Power Of WordsInfluence
“It is the province of knowledge to speak, and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
ListeningWisdom