Motivational Quotes

Speech

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

Best Quotes about Speech

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

Benjamin Disraeli

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

Cruise, Tom

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

William Shakespeare

Better pointed bullets than pointed speeches.

Bismarck, Otto Von

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

W. Somerset Maugham

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

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

Publilius Syrus

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

Thomas Carlyle

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

10.

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

11.

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

12.

There are remarks that sow and remarks that reap.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

13.

Men of few words are the best men.

William Shakespeare

14.

In anger we should refrain both from speech and action.

Pythagoras

15.

Speech is always bolder than action.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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.

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.

Do not fight verbosity with words: speech is given to all, intelligence to few.

Moralia

21.

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

22.

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

William Shakespeare

23.

Readiness of speech is often inability to hold the tongue.

Jean Baptiste Rousseau

24.

Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.

Sir Francis Bacon

25.

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

Tiberius

26.

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

Mark Twain

27.

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

28.

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

Sophocles

29.

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

30.

Be it art or hap, he hath spoken true.

William Shakespeare

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Mann, Thomas

34.

Tears at times have all the weight of speech.

Ovid

35.

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

Cato The Elder

36.

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

Noonan, Peggy

37.

Thought is the fountain of speech.

Chrysippus

38.

Speech has been given to man to disguise his thoughts.

Talleyrand, Charles Maurice De

39.

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

40.

Things are often spoke and seldom meant.

William Shakespeare

41.

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

Raphael, Frederic

42.

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

Cioran, E. M.

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

William Shakespeare

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

50.

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