Motivational Quotes

Speech

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

- Publilius Syrus

Best Quotes about Speech

Things are often spoke and seldom meant.

William Shakespeare

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

Speech of yourself ought to be seldom and well chosen.

Bacon, Francis

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

Jefferson, Thomas

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

Proverb, Arabian

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

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

Hansell B. Duckett

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

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

10.

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

11.

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

Cruise, Tom

12.

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

Noonan, Peggy

13.

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

14.

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

Cato The Elder

15.

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

16.

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

Demosthenes

17.

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

18.

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

Chuang-tzu

19.

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

20.

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

Hubbard, Kin

21.

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

22.

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

Sir William Osler

23.

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

Cioran, E. M.

24.

Better pointed bullets than pointed speeches.

Bismarck, Otto Von

25.

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

26.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

27.

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

William Shakespeare

28.

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

29.

I have always been among those who believed that the greatest freedom of speech was the greatest safety, because if a man is a fool the best thing to do is to encourage him to advertise the fact by speaking.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

30.

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

31.

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

Arendt, Hannah

32.

Tears at times have all the weight of speech.

Ovid

33.

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

34.

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

Seneca

35.

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

Thomas Carlyle

36.

In anger we should refrain both from speech and action.

Pythagoras

37.

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

Stevenson, Robert Louis

38.

Be it art or hap, he hath spoken true.

William Shakespeare

39.

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

Mann, Thomas

40.

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

41.

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

W. Somerset Maugham

42.

Men of few words are the best men.

William Shakespeare

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

William Shakespeare

46.

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

William Shakespeare

47.

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

48.

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

Walter Bagehot

49.

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

Syrus, Publilius

50.

Weighest thy words before thou givest them breath.

William Shakespeare