Idle Chatter Quotes

• I have a scholar's love of silence and solitude. To sit and pass hour after hour in idle chatter with a roomful of strangers is to me the worst sort of torment.

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  Susanna Clarke

  Silence   Solitude   After Hours  

  Susanna Clarke (2009). “Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell”, p.66, Bloomsbury Publishing

  1623

• It may be true that people who are merely mathematicians have certain specific shortcomings; however that is not the fault of mathematics, but is true of every exclusive occupation. Likewise a mere linguist, a mere jurist, a mere soldier, a mere merchant, and so forth. One could add such idle chatter that when a certain exclusive occupation is often connected with certain specific shortcomings, it is on the other hand always free of certain other shortcomings.

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  Carl Friedrich Gauss

  Science   Hands   People  

  2575

• An unauthentic word, one which is unable to transform reality, results when dichotomy is imposed upon its constitutive elements. When a word is deprived of its dimension of action, reflection automatically suffers as well; and the word is changed into idle chatter, into verbalism, into an alienated and alienating “blah.” It becomes an empty word, one which cannot denounce the world, for denunciation is impossible without a commitment to transform, and there is no transformation without action.

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  Paulo Freire

  Commitment   Reality   Reflection  

  4558

• This is a most unfortunate affair, and will probably be much talked of. But we must stem the tide of idle chatter, and pour into our wounded bosoms the soothing balm of vengeance.

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  Seth Grahame-Smith

  Idle Chatter   Tides   Vengeance  

  Seth Grahame-Smith, Jane Austen, Roberto Parada (2009). “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance--now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem”, p.262, Chronicle Books

  1418

• You must lie upon the daisies and discourse in novel phrases of complicated state of mind. The meaning doesn't matter if it's only idle chatter of a transcendental kind.

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  W. S. Gilbert

  Lying   Mind   Phrases  

  'Patience' (1881) act 1

  1593

• The things that really matter don't mix with idle chatter.

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  Mose Allison

  Silence   Idle Chatter   Matter  

  "Celebrated Jazz Musician Mose Allison Dies At 89". "All Things Considered" with Robert Siegel, www.npr.org. November 15, 2016.

  885

• We open our mouths and out flow words whose ancestries we do not even know. We are walking lexicons. In a single sentence of idle chatter we preserve Latin, Anglo-Saxon, Norse: we carry a museum inside our heads, each day we commemorate peoples of whom we have never heard.

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  Penelope Lively

  Latin   Museums   Lexicon  

  Penelope Lively (2007). “Moon Tiger”, p.38, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  3464