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Talk

communicate by the use of words with the mouth

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

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
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

Quotes

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  • It would talk;
    Lord, how it talked!
  • 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.
  • 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.’
  • 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.
  • But still his tongue ran on, the less
    Of weight it bore, with greater ease.
  • With vollies of eternal babble.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Talk often, but not long. The talent of haranguing in private company is insupportable.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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
  • What cracker is this same that deafs our ears
    With this abundance of superfluous breath?
  • 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.
  • Talkers are no good doers; be assur'd
    We come to use our hands and not our tongues.
  • A gentleman, nurse, that loves to hear himself talk, and will speak more in a minute than he will stand to in a month.
  • 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.
  • 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?"

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

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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.
  • Persuasion tips his tongue whene'er he talks.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Then he will talk—good gods, how he will talk!
  • In general those who nothing have to say
    Contrive to spend the longest time in doing it.
  • Oft has it been my lot to mark
    A proud, conceited, talking spark.
  • 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.
  • They never taste who always drink;
    They always talk who never think.
  • 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.
  • Good talkers are only found in Paris.
  • 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.

See also

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