Motivational Quotes

Speech

The stroke of the whip maketh marks in the flesh: but the stroke of the tongue breaketh the bones. Many have fallen by the edge of the sword: but not so many as have fallen by the tongue. [Ecclesiasticus 28:17 --18]

- Bible

Best Quotes about Speech

The habit of common and continuous speech is a symptom of mental deficiency.

Walter Bagehot

It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.

Mark Twain

Bible

Speech is the mirror of the mind. (Imago Animi Sermo Est)

Seneca

There are remarks that sow and remarks that reap.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

Today's public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can't read them either.

Gore Vidal

Speech and silence. We feel safer with a madman who talks than with one who cannot open his mouth.

Cioran, E. M.

Great wisdom is generous; petty wisdom is contentious. Great speech is impassioned, small speech cantankerous.

Chuang-tzu

Do not fight verbosity with words: speech is given to all, intelligence to few.

Moralia

10.

When you have spoken the word, it reigns over you. When it is unspoken you reign over it.

Proverb, Arabian

11.

Speech is human nature itself, with none of the artificiality of written language.

Whitehead, Alfred North

12.

A talk is like a woman's dress. Long enough to cover the subject, but short enough to be interesting.

13.

Listening to someone talk isn't at all like listening to their words played over on a machine. What you hear when you have a face before you is never what you hear when you have before you a winding tape.

Fallaci, Oriana

14.

Look wise, say nothing, and grunt. Speech was given to conceal thought.

Sir William Osler

15.

The mind is a wonderful thing. It starts working the minute you're born and never stops working until you get up to speak in public.

Ball, Patricia Ann

16.

Where the speech is corrupted, the mind is also.

Seneca

17.

They that are loudest in their threats are the weakest in the execution of them. It is probable that he who is killed by lightning hears no noise; but the thunder-clap which follows, and which most alarms the ignorant, is the surest proof of their safety.

Colton, Charles Caleb

18.

Speech is the mirror of the soul; as a man speaks, so he is.

Syrus, Publilius

19.

Men of few words are the best men.

William Shakespeare

20.

The basic rule of human nature is that powerful people speak slowly and subservient people quickly --because if they don't speak fast nobody will listen to them.

Caine, Michael

21.

Talk is over-rated as a means of settling disputes.

Cruise, Tom

22.

Everything becomes a little different as soon as it is spoken out loud.

Hesse, Hermann

23.

Be it art or hap, he hath spoken true.

William Shakespeare

24.

If you don't want to read it, see it or hear it, don't say it.

25.

Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man. [Colossians 4:6]

Bible

26.

From my earliest days I have enjoyed an attractive impediment in my speech. I have never permitted the use of the word stammer. I can't say it myself.

Campbell, Patrick

27.

Let us speak, though we show all our faults and weaknesses, --for it is a sign of strength to be weak, to know it, and out with it -- not in a set way and ostentatiously, though, but incidentally and without premeditation.

Melville, Herman

28.

Speech of yourself ought to be seldom and well chosen.

Bacon, Francis

29.

A long tongue shortens life.

30.

It's better to keep your mouth shut and give the impression that you're stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.

Belson, Rami

31.

It's a damn shame we have this immediate ticking off in the mind about how people sound. On the other hand, how many people really want to be operated upon by a surgeon who talks broad cockney?

Aitkins, Eileen

32.

I do not speak to thee in drink but in tears, not in pleasure but in passion, not in words only, but in woes also.

William Shakespeare

33.

Speech is a mirror of the soul: as a man speaks, so is he.

Publilius Syrus

34.

Readiness of speech is often inability to hold the tongue.

Jean Baptiste Rousseau

35.

Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.

Sir Francis Bacon

36.

Better pointed bullets than pointed speeches.

Bismarck, Otto Von

37.

Many great writers have been extraordinarily awkward in daily exchange, but the greatest give the impression that their style was nursed by the closest attention to colloquial speech.

Wilder, Thornton

38.

How absolute the knave is! we must speak by the card, or equivocation will undo us.

William Shakespeare

39.

Bore: one who has the power of speech but not the capacity for conversation.

Benjamin Disraeli

40.

Tears at times have all the weight of speech.

Ovid

41.

All speech is vain and empty unless it be accompanied by action.

Demosthenes

42.

Wherever the relevance of speech is at stake, matters become political by definition, for speech is what makes man a political being.

Arendt, Hannah

43.

For mankind, speech with a capital S is especially meaningful and committing, more than the content communicated. The outcry of the newborn and the sound of the bells are fraught with mystery more than the baby's woeful face or the venerable tower.

Goodman, Paul

44.

Sweet Benjamin, since thou art young, and hast not yet the use of tongue, make it thy slave, while thou art free; Imprison it, lest it do thee.

Hoskins, John

45.

We have as many planes of speech as does a painting planes of perspective which create perspective in a phrase. The most important word stands out most vividly defined in the very foreground of the sound plane. Less important words create a series of deeper planes.

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

46.

I've decided to discontinue my long talks. It's because of my throat. Someone threatened to cut it.

47.

Speech is civilization itself. The word... preserves contact -- it is silence which isolates.

Mann, Thomas

48.

Speeches that are measured by the hour will die with the hour.

Jefferson, Thomas

49.

The world does not speak. Only we do. The world can, once we have programmed ourselves with a language, cause us to hold beliefs. But it cannot propose a language for us to speak. Only other human beings can do that.

Rorty, Richard

50.

The only happy talkers are dandies who extract pleasure from the very perishability of their material and who would not be able to tolerate the isolation of all other forms of composition; for most good talkers, when they have run down, are miserable; they know that they have betrayed themselves, that they have taken material which should have a life of its own, to dispense it in noises upon the air.

Connolly, Cyril