Quotes About Oratory

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

Ideal conversation must be an exchange of thought, and not, as many of those who worry most about their shortcomings believe, an eloquent exhibition of wit or oratory.

Whitefield had had the same powers, the same ability to hold many thousands rapt, convinced that if they turned away for a moment they would miss something.

Everyone who ever heard him seems to have agreed that the exceeding excellence of Wilberforce's speaking ability was less in what he said than in how he said it.

Ideal conversation must be an exchange of thought, and not, as many of those who worry most about their shortcomings believe, an eloquent exhibition of wit or oratory.

I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.

What the people call eloquence is the facility some persons have of speaking alone and for a long time, aided by extravagant gestures, a loud voice, and powerful lungs.

What I mean is that public speaking and oratory were not merely things that ancient women didn't do: they were exclusive practices and skills that defined masculinity as a gender.

contó cuál era la fórmula de su oratoria: «Generalmente comienzo con un chiste o con una historia para captar la atención de la gente: luego les cuento lo que voy a decirles, se lo digo, y después les digo lo que acabo de decirles».

Neither rings, bright chains, nor bracelets, perfumes, flowers, nor well-trimmed hair, Grace a man like polished language, th' only jewel he should wear.

Obama's gift for delivering set-piece oratorical tours de force had special resonance to Americans fed up with a president who could hardly string two words together without a collision of syntax and whose idea of clever was the single entendre.

Altogether, the American Rhodes Scholars, with their splendid native gift of oratory, and their modest desire to please, and their not less evident feeling that they ought merely to edify, and their constant delight in all that of Oxford their English brethren don't notice, and their constant fear that they are being corrupted, are a noble, rather than a comfortable, element in the social life of the University.

It is the mark of an educated mind to expect that amount of exactness which the nature of the particular subject admits. It is equally unreasonable to accept merely probable conclusions from a mathematician and to demand strict demonstration from an orator.

As all Members of Parliament know, the ease and flow of making a speech outside the House is not at all the same as that required in the Chamber.

El banquete fue una especie de quintaesencia de lo colombiano y de Colombia, este país donde todo el mundo —quiero decir: todo el mundo— es poeta, y el que no es poeta es orador.

When we preach or teach the Scriptures, we open the door for the Holy Spirit to do His work. God has not promised to bless oratory or clever preaching. He has promised to bless His Word.

Too often we use petty little petitions, oratorical exercises, or the words of others rather than the cries of our inmost being. When you pray, pray!

He was always willing to be the text of his own oratory.

It is a difficult task Oh citizens to make speeches to the belly which has no ears.

I don't have any oratory skills. But I would not use them if I had.

Accuracy and diligence are much more necessary to a Lawyer, than great comprehension of mind, or brilliancy of talents," Daniel Webster argued, for the lawyer's "business is to refine, define, and split hairs…. A man can never gallop over the fields of Law on Pegasus, nor fly across them on the wing of oratory. If he would stand on terra firma he must descend."25

Report of Daniel Webster's Speech in the U.S. Senate

A podium is something you walk up to, you say what you want to say and when you're finished, you leave.

Only hidden and undetected oratory is really insidious. What reaches the heart without going through the mind is likely to bounce back and put the mind out of business.