Speech Quotes - Page 20

• That excitement about Kossuth, consider how characteristic, but superficial, it was!--only another kind of politics or dancing. Men were making speeches to him all over the country, but each expressed only the thought, or the want of thought, of the multitude. No man stood on truth. They were merely banded together, as usual one leaning on another, and all together on nothing.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Education, Country, Truth

  Henry David Thoreau (2007). “My Thoughts Are Murder to the State: Thoreau's Essays on Political Philosophy”, p.177, David M Gross

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• What other words, we may almost ask, are memorable and worthy to be repeated than those which love has inspired? It is wonderful that they were ever uttered. They are few and rare indeed, but, like a strain of music, they are incessantly repeated and modulated by the memory. All other words crumble off with the stucco which overlies the heart. We should not dare to repeat these now aloud. We are not competent to hear them at all times.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Memories, Memorable, Heart

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.637, Simon and Schuster

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• The orator puts off his individuality, and is then most eloquent when most silent. He listens while he speaks, and is a hearer along with his audience.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Silence, Individuality, Hearing

  Henry David Thoreau, John C. Broderick, Robert Sattelmeyer (1981). “Journal”, p.114, Princeton University Press

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• The most attractive sentences are, perhaps, not the wisest, but the surest and roundest. They are spoken firmly and conclusively,as if the speaker had a right to know what he says, and if not wise, they have at least been well learned.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Wise, Style, Oratory

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.516, Simon and Schuster

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• What is called eloquence in the forum is commonly found to be rhetoric in the study. The orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion, and speaks to the mob before him, to those who can hear him; but the writer, whose more equable life is his occasion, and who would be distracted by the event and the crowd which inspire the orator, speaks to the intellect and heart of mankind, to all in any age who can understand him.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Inspiration, Heart, Yield

  Henry David Thoreau (2015). “Walden”, p.88, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• It is a ridiculous demand which England and America make, that you shall speak so that they can understand you. Neither men nor toadstools grow so.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, America, Toadstools

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.190, Graphic Arts Books

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• As the truest society approaches always nearer to solitude, so the most excellent speech finally falls into Silence. Silence is audible to all men, at all times, and in all places. She is when we hear inwardly, sound when we hear outwardly. Creation has not displaced her, but is her visible framework and foil. All sounds are her servants, and purveyors, proclaiming not only that their mistress is, but is a rare mistress, and earnestly to be sought after.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Fall, Men, Silence

  Henry David Thoreau (1977). “The portable Thoreau”, Penguin

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• In the learned journal, in the influential newspaper, I discern no form; only some irresponsible shadow; oftener some monied corporation, or some dangler, who hopes, in the mask and robes of his paragraph, to pass for somebody. But through every clause and part of speech of the right book I meet the eyes of the most determined men; his force and terror inundate every word: the commas and dashes are alive; so that the writing is athletic and nimble,--can go far and live long.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Writing, Eye

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• I learn immediately from any speaker how much he has already lived, through the poverty or the splendor of his speech. Life lies behind us as the quarry from whence we get tiles and copestones for the masonry of today. This is the way to learn grammar. Colleges and books only copy the language which the field and the work-yard made.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Education, Lying, Book

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Essays and English Traits by Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.14, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Donald Trump announced that he's running for president. During his speech he told the crowd that if elected he would be 'the greatest jobs president that God ever created.' Then God said, 'Hey, don't drag me into this publicity stunt.'

  Jimmy Fallon

  Running, Jobs, President

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• President Bush delivered a commencement speech at a university in Wisconsin. A very inspirational speech. Apparently Bush told the students, 'You can do anything in life if your parents work hard enough.'

  Conan O'Brien

  Hard Work, Parent, President

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• Silence is an ocean. Speech is a river. When the ocean is searching for you, don't walk into the river. Listen to the ocean.

  Rumi

  Ocean, Rivers, Silence

  "The Essential Rumi". Book translated by Coleman Barks with John Moyne, A. J. Arberry and Reynold Nicholson. Chapter 18: "The Three Fish", p. 196, 1995.

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• What are men celebrating? They are all on a committee of arrangements, and hourly expect a speech from somebody. God is only the president of the day, and Webster is his orator.

  Henry David Thoreau

  God, Integrity, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2015). “Walden”, p.276, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Therefore all just persons are satisfied with their own praise. They refuse to explain themselves, and are content that new actions should do them that office. They believe that we communicate without speech, and above speech, and that no right action of ours is quite unaffecting to our friends, at whatever distance; for the influence of action is not to be measured by miles.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Distance, Believe, Office

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1937). “Essays, First and Second Series”, p.143, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Some subjects come up suddenly in our speech and cannot be silenced.

  Mason Cooley

  Talking, Silence, Come Up

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• It is the beginning of all true criticism of our time to realize that it has really nothing to say, at the very moment when it has invented so tremendous a trumpet for saying it.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Power, Criticism, Realizing

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• And I will add this point of merely personal experience of humanity: when men have a real explanation they explain it, eagerly and copiously and in common speech, as Huxley freely gave it when he thought he had it. When they have no explanation to offer, they give short dignified replies, disdainful of the ignorance of the multitude.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Real, Ignorance, Men

  "Doubts About Darwinism". The Illustrated London News, July 17, 1920.

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• There are many prices we pay for freedoms secured by the First Amendment; the risk of undue influence is one of them, confirming what we have long known: Freedom is hazardous, but some restraints are worse.

  Warren E. Burger

  Long, Risk, Pay

  "Open The System, Don't Close It" by Edward H. Crane, www.cnn.com. November 25, 1996.

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• My music must be an artistic reproduction of human speech in all its finest shades. That is, the sounds of human speech, as the external manifestations of thought and feeling must, without exaggeration or violence, become true, accurate music.

  Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky

  Feelings, Sound, Shade

  Letter to Lyudmila Shestakova on July 30, 1868. "The Musorgsky Reader: A Life of Modeste Petrovich Musorgsky in Letters and Documents", p. 113, 1947.

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• The virtue of a democratic system with a [constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech] is that it readily enables the people, over time, to be persuaded that what they took for granted is not so, and to change their laws accordingly.

  Antonin Scalia

  Law, Justice, People

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• Allegory dwells in a transparent palace.

  Antoine-Marin Lemierre

  Palaces, Allegory, Transparent

  "La Peinture". Poem by Antoine-Marin Lemierre, 1769.

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• Real speech can only come from complete silence. Incomplete silence is as fussy as deliberate conversation.

  Dorothy Richardson

  Real, Silence, Conversation

  Dorothy Miller Richardson (1967). “Pilgrimage”

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• Clear thought makes clear speech.

  Dorothy Richardson

  Thinking, Clear

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• Lying is a false significance of speech, with a will to deceive, which cannot be cured but by shame and reason; it is a monstrous and wicked evil, that filthily depraved and defileth the tongue of man.

  Jon Jones

  Lying, Men, Evil

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• What is the short meaning of the long speech?

  Friedrich Schiller

  Long, Long Speeches

  "Wallenstein". Book by Friedrich Schiller translated by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Part I, Act I, Scene II), 1798.

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