Leslie Stephen Quotes

There is only one excuse for a speaker's asking the attention of his audience: he must have either truth or entertainment for them.

A speaker who does not strike oil in ten minutes should stop boring.

Giving his lecture for the third time freed Dr. Lionel Gift from paying much attention to it. He had a naturally expressive style of delivery, hones over the years in elementary-econ lecture halls. He knew, without even thinking, to address the middle rows of the hall, but to occasionally "shoot" the listeners in the back corners. He knew how to make eye contact and solicit the attention of those who were thinking of other things.

Whether one talks well depends very much upon whom he has to talk to.

I think nobody wants to hear a sermon. Well, some people do, but maybe not through music or not with me. No one wants to hear me give a speech that way.

I listen to the audience and try and bounce with them. All audiences are different. But they are all homo sapiens.

I'm reasonably good at talking onstage, but actually holding court in a pub is all to do with power dynamics which I don't think has anything to do with fiction.

You have to be aware of who you're talking to in an audience.

There is only one rule for being a good talker - learn to listen.

Extemporaneous speaking should be practiced and cultivated. It is the lawyer's avenue to the public. However able and faithful he may be in other respects, people are slow to bring him business if he cannot make a speech.

It's essential that you make eye contact with your audience. You've got to know what's happening out there.

You could be the World's greatest orator and if you don't say anything while orating, they are going to walk out on you after a while.

I'm a better talker than writer.

Public Speaking is a skill that can be studied, polished, perfected. Not only can you get good at it, you can get damn good at it and it makes a heck of a difference.

When you have a great audience, you can just keep going and finding new things.

Why would you get up there and bore people? I never have figured that out. These people are supposedly in the entertainment industry, and they finally get up there to that podium and they become the most boring people in the world.

If you want to be a good conversationalist, be a good listener. To be interesting, be interested.

An orator can hardly get beyond commonplaces: if he does he gets beyond his hearers.

The mark of a good conversationalist is not that you can talk a lot. The mark is that you can get others to talk a lot. Thus, good schmoozer's are good listeners, not good talkers.

Occasionally, once a speaker is on his feet, it is difficult to get him to sit down. ... If and when he returns to earth, he notices half of the room is paging the other half and a few are playing with the melted candles.

When Demosthenes was asked what were the three most important aspects of oratory, he answered, 'Action, Action, Action.'

Great communicators leave their audiences with great clarity.

An orator is a good man who is skilled in speaking.

You don't have to be a preacher to talk about what matters, and you don't have to drop the pleasures of style

The talking shows allow me to come out of my cave and that's why those shows go on for so long. I hate walking off stage. Sometimes I walk off and I miss them as I'm walking off the stage. I wonder if they'll let me go another hour. That's why I do it: to communicate, to get points across.