Motivational Quotes

Speech

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

Best Quotes about Speech

I do know of these that... only are reputed wise for saying nothing.

William Shakespeare

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

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

Men of few words are the best men.

William Shakespeare

Better pointed bullets than pointed speeches.

Bismarck, Otto Von

Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen.

Bob Marley

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

Cioran, E. M.

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

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

10.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

11.

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

12.

All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer.

Stevenson, Robert Louis

13.

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

14.

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

Mark Twain

15.

Much speech is one thing, well-timed speech is another.

Sophocles

16.

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

17.

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

18.

Where the speech is corrupted, the mind is also.

Seneca

19.

A long tongue shortens life.

20.

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

21.

Man does not speak because he thinks; he thinks because he speaks. Or rather, speaking is no different than thinking: to speak is to think.

Paz, Octavio

22.

Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead: therefore we must learn both arts.

Thomas Carlyle

23.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

24.

Readiness of speech is often inability to hold the tongue.

Jean Baptiste Rousseau

25.

Though thou speak'st truth, methink thou speak'st not well.

William Shakespeare

26.

Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.

Sir Francis Bacon

27.

Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel. It is to bring another out of his bad sense into your good sense.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

28.

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

29.

There are remarks that sow and remarks that reap.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

30.

Speech of yourself ought to be seldom and well chosen.

Bacon, Francis

31.

People resent articulacy, as if articulacy were a form of vice.

Raphael, Frederic

32.

Be a craftsman in speech that thou mayest be strong, for the strength of one is the tongue, and speech is mightier than all fighting.

Maxims of Ptahhotep

33.

If nobody spoke unless he had something to say, the human race would very soon lose the use of speech.

W. Somerset Maugham

34.

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

35.

Be it art or hap, he hath spoken true.

William Shakespeare

36.

Language is legislation, speech is its code. We do not see the power which is in speech because we forget that all speech is a classification, and that all classifications are oppressive.

Barthes, Roland

37.

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

38.

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

Arendt, Hannah

39.

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

Mann, Thomas

40.

Speech has been given to man to disguise his thoughts.

Talleyrand, Charles Maurice De

41.

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

Sir William Osler

42.

Be check'd for silence, but never tax'd for speech.

William Shakespeare

43.

Speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again.

44.

Tears at times have all the weight of speech.

Ovid

45.

Speech is always bolder than action.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

46.

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

Publilius Syrus

47.

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

48.

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

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.

Thought is the fountain of speech.

Chrysippus