Boston Globe Quotes

Language is wine upon the lips.

Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion. This is not a function of any other art.

If only I was as eloquent as Demosthenes, I would have to do no more than repeat a single word three times.

Eloquence is the poetry of prose.

Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech.

Eloquence may set fire to reason.

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

An orator is a man who says what he thinks and feels what he says.

Public speaking is the art of diluting a two-minute idea with a two-hour vocabulary.

Language upon a silvered tongue affords enchantment enough.

Eloquence, at its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection, but addresses itself entirely to the desires and affections, captivating the willing hearers, and subduing their understanding.

Similes prove nothing, but yet greatly lighten and relieve the tedium of argument.

The tongue is the only tool that gets sharper with use.

Talking and eloquence are not the same: to speak, and to speak well, are two things.

A great speech is literature.

I am not eloquent.

False eloquence is exaggeration; true eloquence is emphasis.

Eloquence, n. The art of orally persuading fools that white is the color that it appears to be. It includes the gift of making any color appear white.

The art of the parenthesis is one of the greatest secrets of eloquence in Society.

I haven't much opinion of words. They're apt to set fire to a dry tongue, that's what I say.

The rhetoric is the key to the character. It's the verbal music of the piece.

Regan’s greatness as a rhetorician was in his delivery not in the content of what he said as with Churchill and Roosevelt.

Talking and eloquence are not the same.

Some eloquence is like a magic.

I often begin a thought with spirit and finish it with nonsense. The chain of my argument often escapes me, and when lost can seldom be retrieved. These faults are so overpowering that I should sink into perpetual silence were it not that sometimes in ardor of debate, when my feelings are wound up to a high tone, elocution pours itself along with unusual rapidity, and I have passages which would not shame a good speaker; this is the only thing that makes me tolerable to others or to myself.