Talk

To talk is to engage in the act of speech, generally with another person in the course of a conversation.

• It would talk;
  Lord, how it talked!
  • Beaumont and Fletcher, The Scornful Lady (c. 1613; printed 1616), Act IV, scene 1.

• DISCUSSION, n. A method of confirming others in their errors.
  • Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic's Dictionary (1906); republished as The Devil's Dictionary (1911).

• Whereas some ascetics and Brahmins remain addicted to such unedifying conversation as about kings, robbers, ministers, armies, dangers, wars, food, drink, clothes, beds, garlands, perfumes, relatives, carriages, villages, towns and cities, countries, women, heroes, street- and well-gossip, talk of the departed, desultory chat, speculations about land and sea, talk about being and non-being, the ascetic Gotama refrains from such conversation.
  • Gautama Buddha, Digha Nikaya, M. Walshe, trans. (1987), Sutta 1, verse 1.17, p. 70.

• When a monk abides [in equanimity], if his mind inclines to talking, he resolves: ‘Such talk as is low, vulgar, coarse, ignoble, unbeneficial, and which does not lead to disenchantment, dispassion, cessation, peace, direct knowledge, enlightenment, and Nibbāna, that is, talk of kings, robbers, ministers, armies, dangers, battles, food, drink, clothing, beds, garlands, perfumes, relatives, vehicles, villages, towns, cities, countries, women, heroes, streets, wells, the dead, trivialities, the origin of the world, the origin of the sea, whether things are so or are not so: such talk I shall not utter.’
  • Gautama Buddha, Mahasuññata Sutta, Majjhima Nikaya, as translated by Bhikkhu Ñāṇamoli and Bhikkhu Bodhi (Wisdom Publications: 1995), p. 974.

• A disciple should not seek the Teacher’s company for the sake of discourses, stanzas, and expositions. ... But such talk as deals with effacement, as favors the mind’s release, and which leads to complete disenchantment, dispassion, cessation, peace, direct knowledge, enlightenment, and Nibbāna, that is, talk on wanting little, on contentment, seclusion, aloofness from society, arousing energy, virtue, collectedness, wisdom, deliverance, knowledge and vision of deliverance: for the sake of such talk a disciple should seek the Teacher’s company even if he is told to go away.
  • Gautama Buddha, Mahasuññata Sutta, Majjhima Nikaya, as translated by Bhikkhu Ñāṇamoli and Bhikkhu Bodhi (Wisdom Publications: 1995), p. 976.

• But still his tongue ran on, the less
  Of weight it bore, with greater ease.
  • Samuel Butler, Hudibras, Part III (1678), Canto II, line 443.

• With vollies of eternal babble.
  • Samuel Butler, Hudibras, Part III (1678), Canto II, line 453.

• The Age that admires talk so much can have little discernment for inarticulate work, or for anything that is deep and genuine. Nobody, or hardly anybody, having in himself an earnest sense for truth, how can anybody recognize an inarticulate Veracity, or Nature-fact of any kind; a Human Doer especially, who is the most complex, profound, and inarticulate of all Nature's Facts? Nobody can recognize him: till once he is patented, get some public stamp of authenticity, and has been articulately proclaimed, and asserted to be a Doer. To the worshipper of talk, such a one is a sealed book. An excellent human soul, direct from Heaven,—how shall any excellence of man become recognizable to this unfortunate? Not except by announcing and placarding itself as excellent,—which, I reckon, it above other things will probably be in no great haste to do.
  • Thomas Carlyle, Latter-Day Pamphlets, Stump-Orator 1850

• Words learn'd by rote a parrot may rehearse,
  But talking is not always to converse,
  Not more distinct from harmony divine
  The constant creaking of a country sign.
  • William Cowper, Conversation (1782), line 7.

• But far more numerous was the herd of such,
  Who think too little, and who talk too much.
  • John Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel (1681), Part I, line 533.

• You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts.
  • Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

• Can you hear them? They talk about us, telling lies. Well, that's no surprise.
  • The Go-Go's, "Our Lips Are Sealed", Beauty and the Beat (8 July 1981), I.R.S. Records

• Chi parla troppo non può parlar sempre bene.
  • He who talks much cannot always talk well.
  • Carlo Goldoni, Pamela (c. 1750), I. 6.

• "Minister," said Mr. Slick, "come, cheer up, it makes me kinder dismal to hear you talk so. When Captain McKenzie hanged up them three free and enlightened citizens of ours on board of the—Somers—he gave 'em three cheers. We are worth half a dozen dead men yet, so cheer up. Talk to these friends of ourn, they might think you considerable starch if you don't talk, and talk is cheap, it don't cost nothin' but breath, a scrape of your hind leg, and a jupe of the head, that's a fact.
  • T.C. Haliburton, Attaché, 1843.

• Talk often, but not long. The talent of haranguing in private company is insupportable.
  • George Horne Olla Podrida, No. 7.

• Lugalbanda lies idle in the mountains, in the faraway places; he has ventured into the Zabu mountains. No mother is with him to offer advice, no father is with him to talk to him. No one is with him whom he knows, whom he values, no confidant is there to talk to him. In his heart he speaks to himself.
  • In Lugalbanda and the Anzud Bird, Ur III Period (21st century BCE).[1]

• Talk can be cheap, very cheap. It can also be costly. "Speak out!" we say. "Why are you afraid to speak out?" we say. In dictatorships, it can be very, very hard to speak out. Many people have been imprisoned or worse for talk. But even in democratic societies, talk can be hard. It can be hard not only in politics but also in high schools and families and churches and professional communities and other arenas. But even in democratic societies, talk can be hard. It can be hard not only in politics but also in high schools and families and churches and professional communities and other arenas... One more word on talking, before I stop talking, at least about this subject: You or I may not like the talker, but talk matters, much of the time. It is especially significant when the talker is lonely — when most around him are keeping mum.
  • Jay Nordlinger, "Some Talk about Talk" (4 September 2018), National Review Online

• What doesn't slumber under the shells of us all? One just needs courage to uncover it and be oneself. Or at least to discuss it. There isn't enough discussion in the world.
  • Cesare Pavese, The Beach.

• Where there is much talk there will be no end to sin, but he who keeps his mouth shut does wisely.
  • Proverbs 10:19, Bible in Basic English

• In all labor there is profit, ​But idle chatter leads only to poverty.
  • Proverbs 14:23; New King James Version

• I've always believed that a lot of the trouble in the world would disappear if we were talking to each other instead of about each other.
  • Ronald Reagan, as quoted in "We used to be political rivals. We disagreed on the campaign trail, but we never called each other 'fake'" (4 September 2018), by Robert Shrum and Mike Murphy, The Los Angeles Times

• I prythee, take the cork out of thy mouth that I may drink thy tidings.
  • William Shakespeare, As You Like It (c.1599-1600), Act III, scene 2, line 12.

• If I chance to talk a little wild, forgive me;
  I had it from my father.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry VIII (c. 1613), Act I, scene 4, line 26.

• The red wine first must rise
  In their fair cheeks, my lord; then we shall have 'em
  Talk us to silence.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry VIII (c. 1613), Act I, scene 4, line 43.

• What cracker is this same that deafs our ears
  With this abundance of superfluous breath?
  • William Shakespeare, King John (1598), Act II, scene 1, line 147.

• No, pray thee, let it serve for table-talk;
  Then, howsoe'er thou speak'st, 'mong other things
  I shall digest it.
  • William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice (late 1590s), Act III, scene 5, line 93.

• Talk with a man out at a window—a proper saying.
  • William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing (1598-99), Act IV, scene 1, line 190.

• My lord shall never rest:
  I'll watch him, tame and talk him out of patience:
  His bed shall seem a school, his board a shrift.
  • William Shakespeare, Othello (c. 1603), Act III, scene 3, line 22.

• Talkers are no good doers; be assur'd
  We come to use our hands and not our tongues.
  • William Shakespeare, Richard III (c. 1591), Act I, scene 3, line 352.

• A gentleman, nurse, that loves to hear himself talk, and will speak more in a minute than he will stand to in a month.
  • William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (1597), Act II, scene 4, line 155.

• Talk is cheap, motherfucker!
  • Earl Simmons, "Ruff Ryders' Anthem" (1998), It's Dark and Hell Is Hot

• Talking endlessly is what humankind has most on its mind.
  • Sumerian proverb from Nibru, Text online at The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, 3rd millennium BCE.

• Never does one open the discussion by coming right to the heart of the matter. For the heart of the matter is always somewhere else than where it is supposed to be.
  • Trinh T. Minh-ha, Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism. Indiana University Press. 1989. p. 1. ISBN 978-0-253-36603-0. 

• At this Helen laughed outright. "Nonsense," she said. "You're not a Christian. You've never thought what you are.—And there are lots of other questions," she continued, "though perhaps we can't ask them yet." Although they had talked so freely they were all uncomfortably conscious that they really knew nothing about each other.
  "The important questions," Hewet pondered, "the really interesting ones. I doubt that one ever does ask them."
  Rachel, who was slow to accept the fact that only a very few things can be said even by people who know each other well, insisted on knowing what he meant.
  "Whether we've ever been in love?" she enquired. "Is that the kind of question you mean?"
  • Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out (1920), Chapter XI

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 777-78.

• "The time has come," the Walrus said,
  "To talk of many things:
  Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—
  Of cabbages—and kings—
  And why the sea is boiling hot—
  And whether pigs have wings.
  • Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass, Chapter III.

• Persuasion tips his tongue whene'er he talks.
  • Colley Cibber, parody on Pope's lines.

• Whose talk is of bullocks.
  • Ecclesiasticus, XXXVIII. 25.

• My tongue within my lips I rein;
  For who talks much must talk in vain.
  • John Gay, introduction to the Fables, Part I, line 57.

• Stop not, unthinking, every friend you meet
  To spin your wordy fabric in the street;
  While you are emptying your colloquial pack,
  The fiend Lumbago jumps upon his back.
  • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Urania, A Rhymed Lesson, line 439.

• No season now for calm, familiar talk.
  • Homer, The Iliad, Book XXII, line 169. Pope's translation.

• Talk to him of Jacob's ladder, and he would ask the number of the steps.
  • Douglas Jerrold, A Matter-of-Fact Man.

• And the talk slid north, and the talk slid south
  With the sliding puffs from the hookah-mouth;
  Four things greater than all things are—
  Women and Horses and Power and War.
  • Rudyard Kipling, Ballad of the King's Jest.

• Then he will talk—good gods, how he will talk!
  • Nathaniel Lee, Alexander the Great, Act I, scene 1.

• In general those who nothing have to say
  Contrive to spend the longest time in doing it.
  • James Russell Lowell, An Oriental Apologue, Stanza 15.

• Oft has it been my lot to mark
  A proud, conceited, talking spark.
  • James Merrick, The Chameleon.

• His talk was like a stream which runs
  With rapid change from rock to roses;
  It slipped from politics to puns;
  It passed from Mahomet to Moses;
  Beginning with the laws that keep
  The planets in their radiant courses,
  And ending with some precept deep
  For dressing eels or shoeing horses.
  • Winthrop Mackworth Praed, The Vicar.

• They never taste who always drink;
  They always talk who never think.
  • Matthew Prior, Upon a Passage in the Scaligerana.

• She sits tormenting every guest,
  Nor gives her tongue one moment's rest,
  In phrases batter'd, stale, and trite,
  Which modern ladies call polite.
  • Jonathan Swift, The Journal of a Modern Lady.

• Good talkers are only found in Paris.
  • François Villon, Des Femmes de Paris, II.

• Le secret d'ennuyer est celui de tout dire.
  • The secret of being tiresome is in telling everything.
  • Voltaire, Discours Preliminaire.

• Little said is soonest mended.
  • George Wither, The Shepherd's Hunting.

• Communication
• Message
• Messenger
• Mouth
• Speech
• Voice