A crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but atinkling cymbal, wherethere isno love. See Bible121:9.

-Bacon, Francis,Viscount St Albans
  Essays, no.27,'Of Friendship'.

It seems to be typical of life in America, where opportunities, real and fancied, are thicker than anywhere else on the globe, that the second generation has no time to talk to the first.

-Baldwin,James Arthur
  Notes of a Native Son,'Notes of a Native Son'.

In all labour there is profit: but thetalkof the lips tendeth only to penury.

-Bible (Old Testament)
Proverbs14:23.

Talk, v.t. To commit an indiscretion without temptation, from an impulse without purpose.

-Bierce, Ambrose Gwinett
  The Cynic's Word Book. Retitled  The Devil's Dictionary (1911).

Most business meetings are staged to supply people who'd rather talk than work with people who'd rather listen than work.

-Boyd, L(ouis) M(alcolm)
  'Grab Bag', in the San Francisco Chronicle,7  Apr.

It will be a beautiful family talk, mean and worried and full of sorrow and spite and excitement. I cannot be asked to miss it in my weak state. I should only fret.

-Compton-Burnett, Dame Ivy
  A Family and a Fortune, ch.10.

Their talk was endless, compulsive, and indulgent, sometimes sounding like the remains of the English language after having been hashed over by nuclear war survivors for a few hundred years.

-Coupland, Douglas
Generation X,'It Can't Last'.

   'It's very easy to talk,'said Mrs Mantalini.'Not so easy when one is eating a demnition egg,'replied Mr Mantalini; 'for the yolk runs down the waistcoat, and yolk of egg does not match any waistcoat but a yellow waistcoat, demmit.'

-Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam
^9  Nicholas Nickleby, ch.17.

But far more numerous was the herd of such Who think too little and who talk too much.

-Dryden,John
Absalom and  Achitophel, pt.1, l.533^4.

Talk about those subjects you have had long in your mind, and listen to what others say about subjects you have studied but recently. Knowledge and timber shouldn't be much used till they are seasoned.

-Holmes, Oliver Wendell
^8  The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, ch.6.

It's good to talk.

-Hoskins, Bob
   Advertising slogan for British Telecom.

When I was one-and-twenty I heard a wise man say, 'Give crowns and pounds and guineas But not your heart away; Give pearls away and rubies, But keep your fancy free.' But I was one-and-twenty No use to talk to me.

-Housman, A(lfred) E(dward)
  A Shropshire Lad, no.13.

Most English talk is a quadrille in a sentry box.

-James, Henry
   The Duchess. The Awkward  Age, bk.5, ch.4.

People talk about the conscience, but it seems to me one must just bring it up to a certain point and leave it there.You can let your conscience alone if you're nice to the second housemaid.

-James, Henry
  Nanda Brookenham. The Awkward  Age, bk.6, ch.3.

   You can't learn architecture any more than you can learn a sense of music or of painting.You shouldn't talk about art, you should do it.

-Johnson, Philip Cortelyou
  'The Seven Crutches of  Architecture', informal talk to students, School of  Architectural Design, Harvard University, 7 Dec. Published in Perspecta 3 (1955).

When two Englishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather.

-Johnson, Samuel known as Dr Johnson
  In The Idler, no.11, 24  Jun.

Mydear friend, clear your mind ofcant† You may talk in this manner; it is a mode of talking in Society: but don't think foolishly.

-Johnson, Samuel known as Dr Johnson
  Remark,15 May. Quoted in  James Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.4.

Wenn ichKultur h o« re†entsichere ich meinen Browning! When I hear anyone talk of culture†I take off the safety catch on my Browning!

-Johst, Hanns
  Schlageter, act1, sc.1. The phrase is often attributed to Hermann Goering, in the form'Whenever I hear the word culture, I reach for my gun!'.

To try to talk to the young people who will run the futureöin ten minutesöis a little like trying to put a cantaloupe in a coke bottle.

-Jones,John Paul
   At Claremont College commencement. Reported in the NewYork Times, 29 May.

And the talk slid north, and the talk slid south, With the sliding puffs from the hookah-mouth. Four things greater than all things are,ö Women and Horses and Power and War. Kipling And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die.

-Kipling, (Joseph) Rudyard
  'The Ballad of the King's  Jest'. 1895  The Second Jungle Book,'The Law of the  Jungle'.