Motivational Quotes

Speech

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

- Mark Twain

Best Quotes about Speech

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

Cioran, E. M.

Readiness of speech is often inability to hold the tongue.

Jean Baptiste Rousseau

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

Publilius Syrus

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

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

Chuang-tzu

Tears at times have all the weight of speech.

Ovid

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

Hubbard, Kin

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

William Shakespeare

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

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

Cruise, Tom

13.

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

Sophocles

14.

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

15.

There are remarks that sow and remarks that reap.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

16.

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

17.

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

Stevenson, Robert Louis

18.

Speech is always bolder than action.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

19.

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

William Shakespeare

20.

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

Raphael, Frederic

21.

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

Sir William Osler

22.

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

23.

In anger we should refrain both from speech and action.

Pythagoras

24.

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

William Shakespeare

25.

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

Demosthenes

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

29.

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

Walter Bagehot

30.

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

31.

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

Seneca

32.

Where the speech is corrupted, the mind is also.

Seneca

33.

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

34.

Be it art or hap, he hath spoken true.

William Shakespeare

35.

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

Thomas Carlyle

36.

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

Moralia

37.

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

38.

Better pointed bullets than pointed speeches.

Bismarck, Otto Von

39.

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

W. Somerset Maugham

40.

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

Syrus, Publilius

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Hansell B. Duckett

45.

Everything becomes a little different as soon as it is spoken out loud.

Hesse, Hermann

46.

Things are often spoke and seldom meant.