On every formal visit a child ought to be of the party, by way of provisions for discourse.

-Austen,Jane
Sense and Sensibility, vol.2, ch.6.

Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider.

-Bacon, Francis,Viscount St Albans
  Essays, no.50,'Of Studies'.

Miss not the discourse of the elders: for theyalso learned of their fathers, and of them thou shalt learn understanding, and to give answer as need requireth.

-Bible (Apocrypha)
Ecclesiasticus 8:9.

   And this unpolished rugged verse I chose As fittest for discourse and nearest prose.

-Dryden,John
  Religio Laici, l.453^4.

When either the political or the scientific discourse announces itself as the voice of reason, it is playing God, and should be spanked and stood in the corner.

-Le Guin, Ursula ne¤  e Kroeber
  Commencement address at Bryn Mawr College. Collected in Dancing at the Edge of the World (1989).

Lords and Commons of England, consider what nation it is whereof ye are, and whereof ye are the governors: a nation not slow and dull, but of a quick, ingenious, and piercing spirit, acute to invent, subtle and sinewy to discourse,not beneaththereachofany pointthehighest that human capacity can soar to.

-Milton,John
  Areopagitica: a speech for the liberty of unlicensed printing.

Most of their discourse was about hunting, in a dialect I understand very little.

-Pepys, Samuel
  Diary entry, 22 Nov.