Quotes about Conversation

The biggest communication problem is we do not listen to understand. We listen to reply.

Most believe that the key to influence is communication—getting your point across clearly and speaking persuasively. In fact, if you think about it, don't you find that, while others are speaking to you, instead of really listening to understand, you are often busy preparing your response?

What we love usually manages to get into our conversation. What is down in the well of the heart will come up in the bucket of the speech.

True happiness arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's self, and in the next, from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions.

Language consists in equal parts of speaking and silence.

I am interested in cultivating the fundamentally holy nature of all language, including most definitely the casual, spontaneous , unselfconscious conversational language.

There is no way that I can preach the gospel to these people if I don't know how they are living, what they are thinking and talking about. Preaching is proclamation, God's word revealed in Jesus, but only when it gets embedded in conversation, in a listening ear and responding tongue, does it become gospel.

The primary practice of language is not in giving out information but being in relationship.

A place of worship is a place for listening—listening to God speak. But it is also a place for answering, responding to what is spoken. God's words initiate a conversation. We come together as a congregation in worship to speak "through prayer and praise" with the God who speaks with us.

The way of Jesus cannot be imposed or mapped — it requires an active participation in following Jesus as he leads us through sometimes strange and unfamiliar territory, in circumstances that become clear only in the hesitations and questionings, in the pauses and reflections where we engage in prayerful conversation with one another and with him.

Speaking to people does not have the same personal intensity as listening to them. The question I put to myself is not 'How many people have you spoken to about Christ this week?' but 'How many people have you listened to in Christ this week?

If one could only teach the English how to talk, and the Irish how to listen, society here would be quite civilized.