Precision of communication is important, more important than ever in our era of hair-trigger balances, when a false, or misunderstood, word may create as much disaster as a sudden thoughtless act.                                                  ––James Thurber

Use what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are.                                          ––Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every improvement in communication makes the bore more terrible.                                                        ––Frank Moore Colby

A conversation is a dialogue, not a monologue. That’s why there are so few good conversations: due to scarcity, two intelligent talkers seldom meet.                                 ––Truman Capote

Too much agreement kills a chat.                 ––Eldridge Cleaver

Argument is the worst sort of conversation.      

 ––Jonathan Swift

The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.

 ––Hubert Humphrey

Words, of course, are the most powerful drug used by mankind.

––Rudyard Kipling

Don’t know the weather; nine-tenths of the people couldn’t start a conversation if it didn’t change once in a while.

––Kin Hubbard

It is very hard to say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings –– much harder than to say something fine about them which is not the exact truth.                              

––George Eliot

Be sincere; be brief; be seated.         

 ––Franklin Delano Roosevelt

If you cry “Forward” you must be sure to make clear the direction in which to go. Don’t you see that if you fail to do that and simply call out the word to a monk and a revolutionary, they will go in precisely opposite directions?          

––Anton Chekhov

The whole problem is to establish communication with oneself.

––E.B. White

(Each week this column features quotations gleaned from the readings and experiences of our editors, reporters, readers, and friends. All are invited to submit quotations for inclusion here. They may be sent to Gleanings, c/o The Newtown Bee, 5 Church Hill Road, Newtown, CT 06470 or emailed to editor@thebee.com.)