Loquacity Quotes

Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact. ~ George Eliot

If human nature were not base, but thoroughly honourable, we should in every debate have no other aim than the discovery of truth; we should not in the least care whether the truth proved to be in favour of the opinion which we had begun by expressing, or of the opinion of our adversary. That we should regard as a matter of no moment, or, at any rate, of very secondary consequence; but, as things are, it is the main concern. Our innate vanity, which is particularly sensitive in reference to our intellectual powers, will not suffer us to allow that our first position was wrong and our adversary's right. The way out of this difficulty would be simply to take the trouble always to form a correct judgment. For this a man would have to think before he spoke. But, with most men, innate vanity is accompanied by loquacity and innate dishonesty. They speak before they think; and even though they may afterwards perceive that they are wrong, and that what they assert is false, they want it to seem thecontrary. The interest in truth, which may be presumed to have been their only motive when they stated the proposition alleged to be true, now gives way to the interests of vanity: and so, for the sake of vanity, what is true must seem false, and what is false must seem true. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

Loquacity, n. A disorder which renders the sufferer unable to curb his tongue when you wish to talk. ~ Ambrose Bierce

Surely in much talk there cannot choose but be much vanity. Loquacity is the fistula of the mind,
ever-running and almost incurable, let every man, therefore, be a Phocion or Pythagorean, to speak briefly to the point or not at all; let him labor like them of Crete, to show more wit in his discourse than words, and not to pour out of his mouth a flood of the one, when he can hardly wring out of his brains a drop of the other. ~ Herbert Spencer

A book is good company. It is full of conversation without loquacity. It comes to your longing with full instruction, but pursues you never. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

I prefer tongue-tied knowledge to ignorant loquacity. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

The eloquence of one stimulates all the rest, some up to the speaking-point, and all others to a degree that makes them good receivers and conductors, and they avenge themselves for their enforced silence by increased loquacity on their return. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Why, Mrs. Piper has a good deal to say, chiefly in parentheses and without punctuation, but not much to tell. ~ Charles Dickens

Loquacity storms the ear, but modesty takes the heart. ~ Robert South

If there are two definitive features of ancient Greek civilization, they are loquacity and competition. ~ Aristotle.

Gertrude Stein, all courage and will, is a soldier of minimalism. Her work, unlike the resonating silences in the art of Samuel Beckett, embodies in its loquacity and verbosity the curious paradox of the minimalist form. This art of the nuance in repetition and placement she shares with the orchestral compositions of Philip Glass. ~ Elizabeth Hardwick

Loquacity with tongue or pen is its own reward
or, punishment. ~ George Eliot

The folk of a Celtic type, whether pre-Celtic, Celtic, or Norse, have all spoken a Celtic language and exhibit the same old Celtic characteristics - vanity, loquacity, excitability, fickleness, imagination, love of the romantic, fidelity, attachment to family ties, sentimental love of their country, religiosity passing over easily to superstition, and a comparatively high degree of sexual morality. ~ John Arnott MacCulloch

When they had ended their prayers, the Angel of Death recovered his loquacity and his gayety and ascending the chariot again, preceded by Gil Gil, spoke as follows.

'The village you see on that mountain is Gethsemane. In it was the Garden of Olives. On the other side you can distinguish an eminence crowned by a temple which stands out against a starry sky - that is Golgotha. There I passed the greatest day of my existence. I thought I had vanquished God himself - and vanquished he was for some hours. But, alas! on that mount, too, it was that three days later I saw myself disarmed and my power brought to naught on the morning of a certain Sunday. Jesus had risen from the dead. There, too, took place on the same occasion my great single combat with Nature. There took place my duel with her, that terrible duel (at the third hour of the day, I remember it well), when, as soon as she saw me thrust the lance of Longinus in the breast of the Saviour she began to throw stones at me, to upturn the cemeteries, to bring the dead to life, and I know not what besides. I thought poor Nature had lost her senses.'

The Angel of Death seemed to reflect for a moment... ("The Friend of Death") ~ Pedro Antonio De Alarcón

Try to be brief, will you, Tru?" Tse-Mallory asked his companion. "If there is one among us who is guilty of persistent loquacity," came the reply smoothly, "it is not I." "Debatable" was Tse-Mallory's simple retort, as he followed September up the steps leading out of the temple. "Not without being guilty of the crime of debating!" shouted Truzenzuzex, ~ Alan Dean Foster

Poetry teaches the enormous force of a few words, and, in proportion to the inspiration, checks loquacity. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

[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

All is a-swarm with commentaries: of authors there is a dearth. ~ Michel De Montaigne

One learns taciturnity best among people without it, and loquacity among the taciturn. ~ Jean Paul Richter

Dirk was, for one of the few times in a life of exuberantly prolific loquacity, wordless. ~ Douglas Adams