Motivational Quotes

Speech

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

- Demosthenes

Best Quotes about Speech

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

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

Speech of yourself ought to be seldom and well chosen.

Bacon, Francis

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

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

Cioran, E. M.

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

W. Somerset Maugham

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

William Shakespeare

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

Raphael, Frederic

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

William Shakespeare

10.

Weighest thy words before thou givest them breath.

William Shakespeare

11.

Men of few words are the best men.

William Shakespeare

12.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

13.

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

Cruise, Tom

14.

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

15.

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

William Shakespeare

16.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

17.

Readiness of speech is often inability to hold the tongue.

Jean Baptiste Rousseau

18.

Things are often spoke and seldom meant.

William Shakespeare

19.

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

20.

In a free state there should be freedom of speech and thought.

Tiberius

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

24.

A long tongue shortens life.

25.

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

Sir William Osler

26.

Where the speech is corrupted, the mind is also.

Seneca

27.

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

Seneca

28.

Why doesn't the fellow who says, I'm no speechmaker let it go at that instead of giving a demonstration?

Hubbard, Kin

29.

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

30.

Better pointed bullets than pointed speeches.

Bismarck, Otto Von

31.

Be it art or hap, he hath spoken true.

William Shakespeare

32.

Speech has been given to man to disguise his thoughts.

Talleyrand, Charles Maurice De

33.

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

Publilius Syrus

34.

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

35.

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

Mark Twain

36.

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

37.

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

38.

Speech is always bolder than action.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

39.

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

40.

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

41.

Tears at times have all the weight of speech.

Ovid

42.

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

Stevenson, Robert Louis

43.

There are remarks that sow and remarks that reap.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

44.

Thought is the fountain of speech.

Chrysippus

45.

What this country needs is more free speech worth listening to.

Hansell B. Duckett

46.

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

Demosthenes

47.

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

48.

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

William Shakespeare

49.

Never try to impress people with the profundity of your thought by the obscurity of your language. Whatever has been thoroughly thought through can be stated simply.

50.

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

Sophocles