Over 40,000 Famous Quotes Sorted By Topic and Author

Solon wished everybody to be ready to take everybody else's part; but surely Chilo was wiser in holding that public affairs go best when the laws have much attention and the orators none.

Whatever we conceive well we express clearly, and words flow with ease.

For rhetoric, he could not ope His mouth, but out there flew a trope.

The Orator persuades and carries all with him, he knows not how; the Rhetorician can prove that he ought to have persuaded and carried all with him.

Its Constitution--the glittering and sounding generalities of natural right which make up the Declaration of Independence.

He mouths a sentence as curs mouth a bone.

I asked of my dear friend Orator Prig: "What's the first part of oratory?" He said, "A great wig." "And what is the second?" Then, dancing a jig And bowing profoundly, he said, "A great wig." "And what is the third?" Then he snored like a pig, And puffing his cheeks out, he replied, "A great wig."

We fear that the glittering generalities of the speaker have left an impression more delightful than permanent. - Franklin J. Dickman,

There is no true orator who is not a hero.

Glittering generalities! They are blazing ubiquities.

You'd scarce expect one of my age To speak in public on the stage; And if I chance to fall below Demosthenes or Cicero, Don't view me with a critic's eye, But pass my imperfections by. Large streams from little fountains flow, Tall oaks from little acorns grow.

Yet through delivery orators succeed, I feel that I am far behind indeed.

With little art, clear wit and sense Suggest their own delivery.

It makes a great difference whether Davus or a hero speaks.

The passions are the only orators that always persuade: they are, as it were, a natural art, the rules of which are infallible; and the simplest man with passion is more persuasive than the most eloquent without it.

The object of oratory alone is not truth, but persuasion.

Thence to the famous orators repair, Those ancient, whose resistless eloquence Wielded at will that fierce democratie, Shook the Arsenal, and fulmined over Greece, To Macedon, and Artaxerxes' throne.

The capital of the orator is in the bank of the highest sentimentalities and the purest enthusiasms.

Besides, as is usually the case, we are much more affected by the words which we hear, for though what you read in books may be more pointed, yet there is something in the voice, the look, the carriage, and even the gesture of the speaker, that makes a deeper impression upon the mind.

When Demosthenes was asked what was the first part of Oratory, he answered, "Action," and which was the second, he replied, "action," and which was the third, he still answered "Action."