Motivational Quotes

Speech

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

Best Quotes about Speech

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

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

Hubbard, Kin

Be it art or hap, he hath spoken true.

William Shakespeare

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

Walter Bagehot

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

Moralia

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

Thought is the fountain of speech.

Chrysippus

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 of yourself ought to be seldom and well chosen.

Bacon, Francis

10.

Speech has been given to man to disguise his thoughts.

Talleyrand, Charles Maurice De

11.

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

12.

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

Raphael, Frederic

13.

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

Syrus, Publilius

14.

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

15.

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

Thomas Carlyle

16.

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

17.

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

Cruise, Tom

18.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

19.

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

Chuang-tzu

20.

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

Sir William Osler

21.

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

Publilius Syrus

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

W. Somerset Maugham

25.

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

Seneca

26.

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

27.

Men of few words are the best men.

William Shakespeare

28.

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

29.

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

Cato The Elder

30.

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

Sophocles

31.

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

William Shakespeare

32.

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

33.

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

Noonan, Peggy

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

Tiberius

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

41.

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.

42.

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

43.

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

Demosthenes

44.

Speech is always bolder than action.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

45.

Weighest thy words before thou givest them breath.

William Shakespeare