Motivational Quotes

Speech

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

Best Quotes about Speech

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

Sophocles

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

Chuang-tzu

Where the speech is corrupted, the mind is also.

Seneca

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

Cioran, E. M.

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

William Shakespeare

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

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

Seneca

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

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

10.

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

Cruise, Tom

11.

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

12.

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

Demosthenes

13.

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

Mark Twain

14.

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

Moralia

15.

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

16.

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

Tiberius

17.

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

W. Somerset Maugham

18.

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

19.

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

Noonan, Peggy

20.

Better pointed bullets than pointed speeches.

Bismarck, Otto Von

21.

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

William Shakespeare

22.

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

23.

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

24.

Be it art or hap, he hath spoken true.

William Shakespeare

25.

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

Stevenson, Robert Louis

26.

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

Hubbard, Kin

27.

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

28.

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

Mann, Thomas

29.

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

30.

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

31.

Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.

Sir Francis Bacon

32.

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

Walter Bagehot

33.

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

Sir William Osler

34.

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

William Shakespeare

35.

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

Hansell B. Duckett

36.

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

37.

Speech is always bolder than action.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

38.

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

Publilius Syrus

39.

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.

40.

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

41.

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

William Shakespeare

42.

Connolly, Cyril

43.

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

Thomas Carlyle