Motivational Quotes

Speech

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

Best Quotes about Speech

In anger we should refrain both from speech and action.

Pythagoras

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

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

William Shakespeare

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

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

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

Moralia

A long tongue shortens life.

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

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

10.

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

11.

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

William Shakespeare

12.

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

13.

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

Mark Twain

14.

Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.

Sir Francis Bacon

15.

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

Cato The Elder

16.

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

Sir William Osler

17.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

18.

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

William Shakespeare

19.

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

Thomas Carlyle

20.

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.

21.

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

22.

There are remarks that sow and remarks that reap.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

23.

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

William Shakespeare

24.

Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen.

Bob Marley

25.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

26.

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

Syrus, Publilius

27.

Readiness of speech is often inability to hold the tongue.

Jean Baptiste Rousseau

28.

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

Chuang-tzu

29.

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

Noonan, Peggy

30.

Things are often spoke and seldom meant.

William Shakespeare

31.

Speech is always bolder than action.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

32.

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

Seneca

33.

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

34.

Speech of yourself ought to be seldom and well chosen.

Bacon, Francis

35.

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

Sophocles

36.

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

Publilius Syrus

37.

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

W. Somerset Maugham

38.

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

39.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

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.

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

42.

Weighest thy words before thou givest them breath.

William Shakespeare

43.

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

Hansell B. Duckett

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Cruise, Tom

47.

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.

48.

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

49.

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

Stevenson, Robert Louis

50.

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

Mann, Thomas