Motivational Quotes

Speech

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

Best Quotes about Speech

Bigotry and intolerance, silenced by argument, endeavors to silence by persecution, in old days by fire and sword, in modern days by the tongue.

Simmons, Charles

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

Weighest thy words before thou givest them breath.

William Shakespeare

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

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

Jefferson, Thomas

Where the speech is corrupted, the mind is also.

Seneca

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

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

Publilius Syrus

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

Stevenson, Robert Louis

10.

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

Seneca

11.

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

12.

Readiness of speech is often inability to hold the tongue.

Jean Baptiste Rousseau

13.

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

William Shakespeare

14.

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

Sir William Osler

15.

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

Hesse, Hermann

16.

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

17.

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

Arendt, Hannah

18.

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

Sophocles

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

23.

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

24.

A long tongue shortens life.

25.

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

W. Somerset Maugham

26.

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

27.

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

28.

Speech has been given to man to disguise his thoughts.

Talleyrand, Charles Maurice De

29.

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

Proverb, Arabian

30.

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

31.

In anger we should refrain both from speech and action.

Pythagoras

32.

Speech is the gift of all, but the thought of few.

Cato The Elder

33.

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

William Shakespeare

34.

Be it art or hap, he hath spoken true.

William Shakespeare

35.

There are remarks that sow and remarks that reap.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

36.

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

Mark Twain

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.

Tears at times have all the weight of speech.

Ovid

39.

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

Cioran, E. M.

40.

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

41.

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

42.

Things are often spoke and seldom meant.

William Shakespeare

43.

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.

44.

Speech of yourself ought to be seldom and well chosen.

Bacon, Francis

45.

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

William Shakespeare

46.

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

Raphael, Frederic

47.

Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen.

Bob Marley