Quotes About Eloquence

I'm not very good at standard English.

. . . if [writing] lift you from your feet with the great voice of eloquence, then the effect is to be wide, slow, permanent, over the minds of men; . . .

The eloquent man is he who is no beautiful speaker, but who is inwardly and desperately drunk with a certain belief.

Men of great conversational powers almost universally practise a sort of lively sophistry and exaggeration which deceives for the moment both themselves and their auditors.

The simplest man with passion will be more persuasive than the most eloquent without.

The man who can speak acceptably is usually given credit for an ability out of all proportion to what he really possesses.

A man will be eloquent if you give him good wine.

Words are more ardent if a man must struggle to find them.

Pow'r above pow'rs! O heavenly eloquence! That with the strong rein of commanding words, Dost manage, guide, and master th' eminence Of men's affections, more than all their swords!

When a man gets talking about himself, he seldom fails to be eloquent and often reaches the sublime.

Every man is eloquent once in his life.

Talking and eloquence are not the same: to speak and to speak well are two things. A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks.

Any man who makes a speech more than six times a year is bound to repeat himself, not because he has little to say, but because he wants applause and the old stuff gets it.

Words give wings to the mind and make a man soar to heaven.

With words we govern men.

No man was ever eloquent by trying to be eloquent, but only by being so.

Ah! The English language was a wonderful thing! You could always find the right word. He only wished he could speak the language.

The one, more Latin, more Roman, closer to eloquence than to the literal word, aims at a certain effect, at magic. The other, more Greek, more Hellenistic, seeks transparency flowing from the source.

The lips of the wise are as the doors of a cabinet; no sooner are they opened, but treasures are poured out before thee. Like unto trees of gold arranged in beds of silver, are wise sentences uttered in due season.

Now begins a torrent of words and a trickling of sense.

in the writing of good English is indispensable to any learned man who expects to make his learning count for what it ought to count in the effect on his fellow men.

The object of oratory alone in not truth, but persuasion.

The laurels of an orator who is not a master of literary art wither quickly.

Can there be a more horrible object in existence than an eloquent man not speaking the truth?