Motivational Quotes

Speech

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

- Proverb, Arabian

Best Quotes about Speech

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

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

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

Thomas Carlyle

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

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

Cioran, E. M.

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

Mann, Thomas

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

Mark Twain

Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen.

Bob Marley

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

10.

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

11.

Better pointed bullets than pointed speeches.

Bismarck, Otto Von

12.

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

Raphael, Frederic

13.

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.

14.

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

15.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

16.

Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.

Sir Francis Bacon

17.

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

18.

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

19.

Thought is the fountain of speech.

Chrysippus

20.

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

21.

Where the speech is corrupted, the mind is also.

Seneca

22.

Weighest thy words before thou givest them breath.

William Shakespeare

23.

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

24.

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

25.

A long tongue shortens life.

26.

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

27.

Things are often spoke and seldom meant.

William Shakespeare

28.

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

29.

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

Proverb, Arabian

30.

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

William Shakespeare

31.

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

Cruise, Tom

32.

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

Moralia

33.

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

Hesse, Hermann

34.

Be it art or hap, he hath spoken true.

William Shakespeare

35.

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

Chuang-tzu

36.

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

Syrus, Publilius

37.

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

William Shakespeare

38.

Men of few words are the best men.

William Shakespeare

39.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

40.

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

Seneca

41.

Wherever the relevance of speech is at stake, matters become political by definition, for speech is what makes man a political being.

Arendt, Hannah

42.

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

Demosthenes

43.

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

W. Somerset Maugham

44.

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

Publilius Syrus

45.

Tears at times have all the weight of speech.

Ovid

46.

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

47.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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