If other people are going to talk, conversation becomes impossible.

I maintain that two and two would continue to make four, in spite of the whine of the amateur for three, or the cry of the critic for five.

The vast majority of English folk cannot and will not consider a picture as a picture, apart from any story which it may be supposed to tell.

Work alone will efface the footsteps of work.

I can't tell you if genius is hereditary, because heaven has granted me no offspring.

You shouldn't say it is not good. You should say, you do not like it; and then, you know, you're perfectly safe.

An artist's career always begins tomorrow.

An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.

I am not arguing with you - I am telling you.

To say to the painter that Nature is to be taken as she is, is to say to the player that he may sit on the piano.

If other people are going to talk, conversation becomes impossible.

It takes a long time for a man to look like his portrait.

The rare few, who, early in life have rid themselves of the friendship of the many.

I just use my muscles as a conversation piece, like someone walking a cheetah down 42nd Street.

Food was a constant topic of conversation in our household.

A sudden silence in the middle of a conversation suddenly brings us back to essentials: it reveals how dearly we must pay for the invention of speech.

Don't knock the weather; nine-tenths of the people couldn't start a conversation if it didn't change once in a while.

What I think we need to do to engage the American people in a conversation about entitlement reform is to have a bipartisan group of people who come together and put every solution on the table, every alternative on the table. And then we ought to engage in a long conversation with the American people so they understand the choices.

It was impossible to get a conversation going, everybody was talking too much.

If you're interested in how people behave, if you're interested in the way they talk about themselves, the way the conceive of themselves, it's very hard to ignore drugs nowadays, because that is so much part of the conversation.

No animal should ever jump up on the dining-room furniture unless absolutely certain that he can hold his own in the conversation.

Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food.

Those who decide to use leisure as a means of mental development, who love good music, good books, good pictures, good plays, good company, good conversation - what are they? They are the happiest people in the world.

Although there exist many thousand subjects for elegant conversation, there are persons who cannot meet a cripple without talking about feet.

I've been in a serious conversation with one of my children, and a fan has come up. I've been in a public bathroom and had the hand come under the stall with a paper and pen. That sort of thing anybody can live without.

Tonight was a great opportunity to take on the political status quo that has given us trillion dollar deficits and put millions out of work. Our objective was to inject some common sense into the conversation among Republicans at a time when business-as-usual simply won't work.

Marriage is one long conversation, chequered by disputes.

I can wear a hat or take it off, but either way it's a conversation piece.

The difficulty with this conversation is that it's very different from most of the ones I've had of late. Which, as I explained, have mostly been with trees.

A good pun may be admitted among the smaller excellencies of lively conversation.

I spend a good portion of my dinner-party conversation defending America because no matter what the political agenda, it's still a fantastic, amazing place.

Well, my closest friends are still the ones that I went to school with, but it's nice to go to work, at the studios, and have people there that you're willing to talk to and have a good conversation with.

There was a sense of all the things that go on on the street, particularly in New York, that you are just completely unaware of, that that conversation could be happening at any time. I loved the instability of the camera. It's just an unstable world.

For most women, the language of conversation is primarily a language of rapport: a way of establishing connections and negotiating relationships.

If you are ever at a loss to support a flagging conversation, introduce the subject of eating.

The dining room in my old house was truly magnificent, but by far the worst room for conversation. I'd get up from the table, a very long table, and somebody would always say, Paul, I never got to talk to you.

His struggle for a bare living left him no time to take advantage of the public evening school. In time he learned to read, to follow a conversation or lecture; but he never learned to write correctly; and his pronunciation remains extremely foreign to this day.

When I spoke, I was listened to; and I was at a loss to know how I had so easily acquired the art of commanding attention, and giving the tone to the conversation.

You can pick out actors by the glazed look that comes into their eyes when the conversation wanders away from themselves.

I cannot forget a conversation that I had with an elderly couple from the tribe. They asked me whether I would kill them after I had finished. When I asked them why they asked that, they replied, Because you white men always do!

A conversation goes sometimes into personal things and that's nicer. You look to each other and you have a different picture, you get into a relationship.

Conversation would be vastly improved by the constant use of four simple words: I do not know.

Mistresses are like books; if you pore upon them too much, they doze you and make you unfit for company; but if used discreetly, you are the fitter for conversation by em.

I consider myself a religious person. God is something very personal with me and I don't flaunt religion in conversation with others.

In conversation, humor is worth more than wit and easiness more than knowledge.

I'm smart and I can be really funny and interesting and I can go toe-to-toe with anybody in a conversation.

She had lost the art of conversation but not, unfortunately, the power of speech.

The primary use of conversation is to satisfy the impulse to talk.

A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years mere study of books.