Loquacity Quotes

“Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.”
― George Eliot, Impressions of Theophrastus Such

“Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.”
― William S. Burroughs, The Job: Interviews with William S. Burroughs

“[W]e talk about the tyranny of words, but we like to tyrannise over them too; we are fond of having a large superfluous establishment of words to wait upon us on great occasions; we think it looks important, and sounds well. As we are not particular about the meaning of our liveries on state occassions, if they be but fine and numerous enough, so, the meaning or necessity of our words is a secondary consideration, if there be but a great parade of them. And as individuals get into trouble by making too great a show of liveries, or as slaves when they are too numerous rise against their masters, so I think I could mention a nation that has got into many great difficulties, and will get into many greater, from maintaining too large a retinue of words.”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

“You know you haven't stopped talking since I came here? You must have been vaccinated with a phonograph needle.”
― Groucho Marx

“But far more numerous was the herd of such,
Who think too little, and who talk too much.”
― John Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel

“Why, Mrs. Piper has a good deal to say, chiefly in parentheses and without punctuation, but not much to tell.”
― Charles Dickens, Bleak House

“C'est un parleur étrange, et qui trouve toujours
L'art de ne vous rien dire avec de grands discours.”
― Molière, The Misanthrope

“All is a-swarm with commentaries: of authors there is a dearth.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“After one of the lectures in Philadelphia, a woman asked Chesterton what made women talk so much, to which he replied, briefly, 'God, Madam'.”
― Ian Ker, G.K. Chesterton: A Biography

“I prose on with a facility that wearies you to death.”
― Marie Rabutin-Chantal De Sevigne, The Letters of Madame De Sevigne to Her Daughter and Friends