Conversation

• Be a good listener. Your ears will never get you in trouble. (Frank Tyger)
• Be careful of your thoughts; they may break into words at any time.
• The best kind of friend is the kind you can sit on a porch and swing with never say a word, and then walk away feeling like it was the best conversation you've ever had.
• The best things said come last. People will talk for hours saying nothing much and then linger at the door with words that come with a rush from the heart. (Alan Alda)
• By far the most important form of attention we can give our loved ones is listening. (M. Scott Peck)
• A careless word may kindle strife,
  a cruel word may wreck a life,
  a timely word may level stress,
  a loving word may heal and bless.
• A closed mouth gathers no feet.
• Conversation is the art of telling people a little less than they want to know. (Franklin P. Jones)
• Conversation means being able to disagree and still continue the discussion. (Dwight MacDonald)
• The conversation of two people remembering, if the memory is enjoyable to both, rocks on like music or lovemaking. There is a rhythm and a predictability to it that each anticipates and relishes. (Jessamyn West)
• Don't ask the question if you can't live with the answer
• The door to the human heart can only be opened from the inside.
• Everyone hears what you say.
  Friends listen to what you say.
  Best friends listen to what you don't say.
• The eyes have one language everywhere. (George Herbert)
• Friendship is telling someone what they don't have the courage to tell themselves.
• Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.
• A good listener is a good talker with a sore throat. (Katharine Whitehorn)
• A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he gets to know something. (Wilson Mizner)
• A good long talk with a friend can cure almost anything.
• Great minds discuss ideas. Good minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.
• A half truth is a whole lie. (Yiddish Proverb)
• Hear the meaning within the word. (William Shakespeare)
• I wish my mouth had a backspace key.
• If we want to be heard we must speak in a language the listener can understand and on a level at which the listener is capable of operating. (M. Scott Peck)
• If you want to be listened to, you should put in time listening. (Marge Piercy)
• In empathic listening, you listen with your eyes and with your heart, you use your right brains as well as your left. You sense, you intuit, you feel. Empathic listening is powerful because it gives you accurate data to work with. (Stephen R. Covey)
• It is the province of knowledge to speak and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen. (Oliver Wendell Holmes)
• It's frustrating when you know all the answers, but nobody bothers to ask you the questions.
• Know how to listen, and you will profit even from those who talk badly. (Plutarch)
• Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. (Karl Menninger)
• Listening is just as important as talking.
• Listening, not imitation, may be the sincerest form of flattery. (Dr. Joyce Brothers)
• Make sure you have finished speaking before your audience has finished listening. (Dorothy Sarnoff)
• Many wise words are spoken in jest, but they don't compare with the number of stupid words spoken in earnest.
• Maybe it's time you talk and I listen.
  Let's give it a try.
• Most conversations are simply monologues delivered in the presence of a witness. (Margaret Millar)
• The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't being said. (Peter F Drucker)
• My problem is I say what I'm thinking before I think what I'm saying. (Laurence J. Peter)
• Never close your lips to those to whom you have opened your heart. (Charles Dickens)
• No man would listen to you talk if he didn't know it was his turn next. (Ed Howe)
• No one really listens to anyone else, and if you try it for a while you'll see why. (Mignon McLaughlin)
• Silence is argument carried out by other means. (Richard Flecknoe)
• Silence is text easy to misread. (A. A. Attanasio)
• Silence is sometimes the best answer.
• Small talk is one step down from no talk.
• Some people will not tolerate emotional honesty in communication on the grounds that it might hurt others. Therefore, having rationalized their phoniness into nobility, they settle for superficial relationships.
• Someone to tell it to is one of the fundamental needs of human beings. (Miles Franklin)
• Talk slow but think quick.
• There are people who, instead of listening to what is being said to them, are already listening to what they are going to say themselves. (Albert Guinon)
• There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees.
• To listen closely and reply well is the highest perfection we are able to attain in the art of conversation. (Francois de La Rochefoucauld)
• To speak of "mere words" is much like speaking of "mere dynamite". (C.J. Ducasse)
• The true charm of pedestrianism does not lie in the walking, or in the scenery, but in the talking. The walking is good to time the movement of the tongue by, and to keep the blood and the brain stirred up and active; the scenery and the woodsy smells are good to bear in upon a man an unconscious and unobtrusive charm and solace to eye and soul and sense; but the supreme pleasure comes from the talk. (Mark Twain)
• Two monologues do not make a dialogue. (Jeff Daly)
• The two words "information" and "communication" are often used interchangeably, but they signify quite different things. Information is giving out; communication is getting through. (Sydney J. Harris)
• Waiting for some people to stop talking is like looking for the end of a roller towel.
• Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech. (Martin Farquhar Tupper)
• When someone asks you, "A penny for your thoughts?" and you put your two cents in, what happens to the other penny?
• Words are windows to the heart.
• Also see the Secrets file.

Listen

When I ask you to listen to me, and you start giving me advise
You have not done what I asked.
When I ask you to listen to me, and you begin to tell me I shouldn't feel that way
You are trampling on my feelings.
When I ask you to listen to me and you feel you have to do something
to solve my problem,
You have failed me, strange as that may seem.
LISTEN...
All I asked, was that you LISTEN.
Not to talk, or do...just hear me.
When you do something for me that I can and need to do for myself,
You contribute to my fear and weakness.
But, when you accept as a simple fact that I do feel
what I feel no matter how irrational.
Then I can quit trying to convince you and can get about the business of
understanding what's behind this irrational feeling.
And, when that's clear, the answers are obvious and I don't need advice.
Irrational feelings make sense when we understand what's behind them.
So, please LISTEN and just hear me..
And, if you want to talk, wait a minute for your turn:
Then, I'll LISTEN to you...

Communication and Honesty

Lying to a partner is never right but sometimes it is understandable. Some people try to control their partner by becoming upset at things they disapprove of or don't like. The other person resorts to lying to avoid upsetting them.
True communication involves both a willingness to hear the truth and a willingness to tell the truth. If one person refuses to hear the truth the other person may stop telling it. People need to give each other the freedom to be honest.
It is fine to express your feelings about a partner's behavior and hope that they will change. It is quite another to use emotional blackmail to prevent them from doing things you don't like. Adults should be in charge of their own behavior. Obviously if their actions are illegal or immoral that changes things - as long you don't try to apply you own moral values on them. Adults also have a right to decide on their own moral values.

Phone Calls

• For a list of all the ways technology has failed to improve the quality of life, please press three. (Alice Kahn)
• For people who like peace and quiet: a phoneless cord.
• I miss you more than anyone has missed anyone else in the whole history of the world...and I've got the phone bill to prove it.
• If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make, who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting?
• If you're ambivalent about progress, press 5...
• Nurse: Congratulations, Mr. Smith, it's a baby girl...
  and she'd like to use the telephone.
• Old telephone books make ideal personal address books. Simply cross out the names and addresses of people you don't know.
• Talk is cheap - until you get your cell phone bill.
• Telephone, n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance. (Ambrose Bierce)
• Telephone operators have connections.
• When the telephone company began employing male switchboard operators, most callers were initially startled but immediately adjusted to the idea.
  Not so, nine-year-old Jimmy. The first time he heard a man's voice saying, "Operator," he asked dubiously, " Are you the operator?"
  The voice on the phone assured him that he was.
  Jimmy was still suspicious. He hesitated a moment, then asked politely, "May I please speak to your wife?" (from Readers Digest)

Ways to Get Rid of Telephone Solicitors

• I'm sorry, but this phone is for personal calls only. The boss won't let us use it for business.
• Have you heard about that study showing that it can cause impotence to sit all day with a telephone receiver next to your head?
• Keep a small chalkboard near the phone. When a salesman calls, hold the receiver up to it and run your fingernails across it until he hangs up.
• Say: "No, I'm afraid the only thing I'd be in the market for right now is a device to screen out annoying phone calls."
• When they ask to speak with you, say "Just a moment," and give the phone to your four-year old child to carry on the conversation.

Andy Rooney's Tips to Stop Telemarketers

Simply use three little words: "Hold On, Please..." Saying this, while putting down your phone and walking off (instead of hanging-up immediately) would make each telemarketing call so time-consuming that boiler room sales would grind to a halt.
Then when you eventually hear the phone company's "beep-beep-beep" tone, you know it's time to go back and hang up your handset, which has efficiently completed its task.
These three little words will help eliminate telephone soliciting.

Answering Machine Greetings

• Hello. I'm David's answering machine. What are you?
• Hi, this is John's answering machine. He's not here, but I'm open to suggestions.
• Hello. This is Mark and Nathan's phone. We're not here right now, but the phone is.
• (Machine voice:) Hello. This is HAL 5. You have reached the former telephone number of Carey Smith. I have taken over the functions of this inferior being. He has been saved to disk. If you would like to leave input for his file, do so at the tone.
• (Rod Serling imitation:) You're dazed, bewildered, trapped in a world without time, where sound collides with color and shadows explode. You see a signpost up ahead -- this is no ordinary telephone answering device...You have reached, "The Twilight Phone".
• (Clint Eastwood voice:) Go ahead, make my day. Leave a message.
• (In Joe Friday voice:) This is Constable Augie of the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service. The phone line you have just dialed is currently under investigation on a warrant issued by the Attorney General of Canada. To facilitate our investigation, we would appreciate you leaving your name, number, a brief message, and any affiliations you may have made now, or in the past, with communist or terrorist organizations. Thank you.
• Vancouver Coast Guard, may I help you.
• Hello, epicenter of the Universe, God speaking. If you leave your name, number, and prayer after the tone, I will call you back as soon as I can. Please note that I answer all prayers, but sometimes the answer is NO. Bless you, my child, and have a nice day.
• Greetings, you have reached the Sixth Sense Detective Agency. We know who you are and what you want, so at the sound of the tone, please hang up.
• Hello, this is KVKE, you're on the air.
• Hello, you're caller number nine!
• This is a test. This is a test of the Answering Machine Broadcast System. This is only a test.
• (Guns and Roses' "Civil War":) What we've got here is...Failure to communicate. Some men you just can't reach...I don't like it any more than you do.
• (Jimmy Buffett's "This Hotel Room:") I ain't home, I ain't home, you better leave a message 'cause I ain't home.
• Hi. Now you say something.
• Hi, I'm not home right now but my answering machine is, so you can talk to it instead. Wait for the beep.
• Hi! John's answering machine is broken. This is his refrigerator. Please speak very slowly, and I'll stick your message to myself with one of these magnets.
• This is not an answering machine - this is a telepathic thought-recording device. After the tone, think about your name, your reason for calling, and a number where I can reach you, and I'll think about returning your call.
• Hi. I am probably home, I'm just avoiding someone I don't like. Leave me a message, and if I don't call back, it's you.

Hot Line

(Louella Dunann)

Our daughter, Alicia
Had just turned sixteen,
And was earning the title
Of "Telephone Queen."

For her birthday we gave her
Her own private phone
Along with instructions
To leave ours alone.

Now we still catch her using
Our line, with the stall,
"I can't tie mine up, Mom,
I might get a call."

         ______     ______      ______     ______      ______   
       .'_.--._`  .'_.--._`   .'_.--._`  .'_.--._`   .'_.--._`  
       : / :: \   :./ :: \    : / :: \   :./ :: \    : / :: \   
        ~======    `-~~~~-'    ~======    `-~~~~-'    ~======