Motivational Quotes

Speech

Speech has been given to man to disguise his thoughts.

- Talleyrand, Charles Maurice De

Best Quotes about Speech

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

William Shakespeare

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

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

Noonan, Peggy

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

Thomas Carlyle

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

Weighest thy words before thou givest them breath.

William Shakespeare

Speech has been given to man to disguise his thoughts.

Talleyrand, Charles Maurice De

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

10.

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

Sophocles

11.

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

Sir William Osler

12.

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

Stevenson, Robert Louis

13.

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

Proverb, Arabian

14.

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

Moralia

15.

There are remarks that sow and remarks that reap.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

16.

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

17.

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

18.

Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.

Sir Francis Bacon

19.

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

20.

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

William Shakespeare

21.

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

22.

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

Chuang-tzu

23.

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

24.

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

Cioran, E. M.

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Mark Twain

29.

Where the speech is corrupted, the mind is also.

Seneca

30.

Men of few words are the best men.

William Shakespeare

31.

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

Mann, Thomas

32.

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

Seneca

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

Raphael, Frederic

38.

Tears at times have all the weight of speech.

Ovid

39.

A long tongue shortens life.

40.

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

41.

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

William Shakespeare

42.

Readiness of speech is often inability to hold the tongue.

Jean Baptiste Rousseau

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

Publilius Syrus

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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

Jefferson, Thomas