The habit of common and continuous speech is a symptom of mental deficiency. It proceeds from not knowing what is going on in other people's minds.
I prefer tongue-tied knowledge to ignorant loquacity.
No man ever listened himself out of a job.
What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.
Well, well, perhaps I am a bit of a talker. A popular fellow such as I am -- my friends get round me -- we chaff, we sparkle, we tell witty stories -- and somehow my tongue gets wagging. I have the gift of conversation. I've been told I ought to have a salon, whatever that may be.
We never say so much as when we do not quite know what we want to say. We need few words when we have something to say, but all the words in all the dictionaries will not suffice when we have nothing to say and want desperately to say it.
How ironical that it is by means of speech that man can degrade himself below the level of dumb creation -- for a chatterbox is truly of a lower category than a dumb creature.
My great-grandfather used to say to his wife, my great-grandmother, who in turn told her daughter, my grandmother, who repeated it to her daughter, my mother, who used to remind her daughter, my own sister, that to talk well and eloquently was a very great art, but that an equally great one was to know the right moment to stop.
I think one's feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions which bring results.
They never taste who always drink; they always talk who never think.
To talk without thinking is to shoot without aiming.
The more you know the less you need to say.
A good old man, sir. He will be talking. As they say, when the age is in, the wit is out.
I don't mind how much my ministers talk -- as long as they do what I say.
I like to do all the talking myself. It saves time, and prevents arguments.