Quotes About Eloquence

Well-timed silence is the most commanding expression.

Tricky was a plain-faced man with a very handsome voice - a voice like the sound of a clarinet, at once liquid and penetrating, and lovely to listen to.

The language must be careful and must appear effortless. It must not sweat. It must suggest and be provocative at the same time.

Once upon a time I was such a good liar; I could talk the fish right into my mouths.

Use the right word, not its second cousin.

If you don't know how to pronounce a word, say it loudly. Do not compound mispronunciation with inaudibility

The pause - that impressive silence, that eloquent silence, that geometrically progressive silence which often achieves a desired effect where no combination of words, howsoever felicitous, could accomplish it.

Eloquence is the essential thing in a speech, not information.

To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement.

This nightmare occupied some ten pages of manuscript and wound up with a sermon so destructive of all hope to non-Presbyterians that it took the first prize. This composition was considered to be the very finest effort of the evening. The mayor of the village, in delivering the prize to the author of it, made a warm speech in which he said that it was by far the most eloquent thing he had ever listened to, and that Daniel Webster himself might well be proud of it.

There is nothing in the world like a persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus.

The best word shakers were the ones who understood the true power of words. They were the ones who could climb the highest. One such word shaker was a small, skinny girl. She was renowned as the best word shaker of her region because she knew how powerless a person could be WITHOUT words.

They were virtuosos of alliteration and didn't know it.

She was renowned as the best word shaker of her region because she knew how powerless a person could be WITHOUT words. That's why she could climb higher than anyone else. She had desire. She was hungry for them.

THE BEST word shakers were the ones who understood the true power of words. They are the ones who could climb the highest.

THE BEST word shakers were the ones who understood the true power of words. They were the ones who could climb the highest.

I came, he said. Good Lord! If there were an orator-of-the-year award, he would be in dire danger of winning it.

she'd stumble over a word

EL-FAYOUMY: Do not bait this great man, lady! He presided over the appeal of Attila the Hun when you were nothing more than a cheap shot of whiskey on your great-great-grandfather's first unpaid bar tab! JUDGE LITTLEFIELD: Well said!

If a thing can be said in ten words, I may be relied upon to take a hundred to say it. I ought to apologize for that. I ought to prune, pare and extirpate excess growth, but I will not. I like words—strike that, I love words—and while I am fond of the condensed and economical use of them in poetry, in song lyrics, in Twitter, in good journalism and smart advertising, I love the luxuriant profusion and mad scatter of them too.

Only library books speak with such wordless eloquence of the power good stories hold over us.

It had that comfortably sprung, lived-in look that library books with a lively circulation always get; bent page corners, a dab of mustard on page 331, a whiff of some reader's spilled after-dinner whiskey on page 468. Only library books speak with such wordless eloquence of the power good stories hold over us, how good stories abide, unchanged and mutely wise, while we poor humans grow older and slower.

Beautiful silence is better than ugly speech.

A good simile,--as concise as a king's declaration of love.