Motivational Quotes

Speech

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

Best Quotes about Speech

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

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

Publilius Syrus

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

Speeches are not magic and there is no great speech without great policy.

Noonan, Peggy

Tears at times have all the weight of speech.

Ovid

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

Benjamin Disraeli

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

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

Hubbard, Kin

Where the speech is corrupted, the mind is also.

Seneca

10.

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

Chuang-tzu

11.

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

12.

What has influenced my life more than any other single thing has been my stammer. Had I not stammered I would probably... have gone to Cambridge as my brothers did, perhaps have become a don and every now and then published a dreary book about French literature.

Maugham, W. Somerset

13.

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

14.

Speech of yourself ought to be seldom and well chosen.

Bacon, Francis

15.

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

W. Somerset Maugham

16.

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

Hansell B. Duckett

17.

A long tongue shortens life.

18.

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

Thomas Carlyle

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

22.

Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.

Sir Francis Bacon

23.

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

Raphael, Frederic

24.

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

25.

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

Stevenson, Robert Louis

26.

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

William Shakespeare

27.

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

Cato The Elder

28.

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

Mark Twain

29.

Men of few words are the best men.

William Shakespeare

30.

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

Seneca

31.

Speech has been given to man to disguise his thoughts.

Talleyrand, Charles Maurice De

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

35.

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

36.

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

Walter Bagehot

37.

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

Proverb, Arabian

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

Mann, Thomas

43.

Readiness of speech is often inability to hold the tongue.

Jean Baptiste Rousseau

44.

There are remarks that sow and remarks that reap.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

45.

Talkers are no good doers; be assur'd we come to use our hands and not our tongues.

William Shakespeare

46.

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

Sir William Osler

47.

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

Cioran, E. M.

48.

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

William Shakespeare

49.

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

50.

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