Blaise Pascal Quotes

He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument.

Continuous eloquence is tedious.

What orators lack in depth they make up for in length.

Almost all human affairs are tedious. Everything is too long. Visits, dinners, concerts, plays, speeches, pleadings, essays, sermons, are too long. Pleasure and business labor equally under this defect, or, as I should rather say, this fatal super-abundance.

As great minds have the faculty of saying a great deal in a few words, so lesser minds have a talent of talking much, and saying nothing.

We know that he has, more than any other man, the gift of compressing the largest amount of words into the smallest amount of thought.

This trial has developed in the most remarkable manner, the insane love of speaking among public men. We are wading knee deep in words, words, words ….

I've been delivering these little homilies since 1980 - that's 37 years - and altogether, NPR statisticians tell me, my bloviation total is 1,656 commentaries - and I trust you've hung onto every word.

Copiousness of words, however ranged, is always false eloquence, though it will ever impose on some sort of understandings.

There is such a torture, happily unknown to ancient tyranny, as talking a man to death. Marcus Aurelius advises to assent readily to great talkers--in hopes, I suppose, to put an end to the argument.

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

We oftener say things because we can say them well, than because they are sound and reasonable.

Of all the classes of men, I dislike the most those who make their livings by talking - actors, clergymen, politicians, pedagogues, and so on. .... It is almost impossible to imagine a talker who sticks to the facts. Carried away by the sound of his own voice and the applause from the groundlings, he makes inevitably the jump from logic to mere rhetoric.

The ability to speak well is the shortcut to distinction.

A sophisticated rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity.

It is tedious to tell again tales already plainly told.

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

The vulgar look upon a man, who is reckoned a fine speaker, as a phenomenon, a supernatural being, and endowed with some peculiargift of Heaven; they stare at him, if he walks in the park, and cry, that is he. You will, I am sure, view him in a juster light, and nulla formidine. You will consider him only as a man of good sense, who adorns common thoughts with the graces of elocution, and the elegancy of style. The miracle will then cease.

It seemed silly to wash one day when I would only have to wash again the next. It made me tired just to think of it.

The longer I live, the more I have come to value the gift of eloquence. Every American youth, if he desires for any purpose to get influence over his countrymen in an honorable way, will seek to become a good public speaker.

Very good orators, when they are out, they will spit; and for lovers, lacking--God warn us!--matter, the cleanliest shift is to kiss.

As usual, it occurred to me that words were the only thing that could possibly save me from this situation. This was a characteristic misunderstanding on my part. When action was needed, I was absorbed in words; for words proceeded with such difficulty from my mouth that I was intent on them and forgot all about action. It seemed to me that actions, which are dazzling, varied things, must always be accompanied by equally dazzling and equally varied words.

People who have nothing to say are never at a loss in talking.

Each man reserves to himself alone the right of being tedious.

A politician is a man who can be verbose in fewer words than anyone else.