Lyman Beecher Quotes

There is nothing in the world like persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus.

There is no power like oratory. Caesar controlled men by exciting their fears, Cicero by . . . swaying their passions. The influence of the one perished; that of the other continues to this day.

The manner of your speaking is full as important as the matter, as more people have ears to be tickled than understandings to judge.

Eloquence is to the sublime what the whole is to the part.

Eloquence, to produce her full effect, should start from the head of the orator, as Pallas from the brain of Jove, completely armed and equipped. Diffidence, therefore, which is so able a mentor to the writer, would prove a dangerous counsellor for the orator.

Brevity is a great charm of eloquence.

In oratory the will must predominate.

… a style of oratory that I never heard equaled in this or any other country

The gifts of nature are necessary; but they are not sufficient to make a complete orator without art and study.

He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.

Don't talk to me of your Archimedes' lever. He was an absentminded person with a mathematical imagination. Mathematics commands all my respect, but I have no use for engines. Give me the right word and the right accent and I will move the world.

Use your logick, and then your rhetorick. Rhetorick without logick, is like a tree with leaves and blossoms, but no root; yet I confess more are taken with rhetorick than logick, because they are catched with a free expression, when they understand not reason. Logick must be natural, or it is worth nothing at all: Your rhetorick figures may be learned.

Great speech is impassioned; small speech cantankerous.

This fellow has a silver tongue

A good orator is pointed and impassioned.

If all our agents would abridge their speeches one half, I am satisfied the effect produced would be much greater. The 'art of leaving off' at the right time, and in the right place, is one of the most difficult things to learn.

It is said that Obama speaks 'professorially,' a fact that understates the quickness and agility of his mind.

Eloquence is the art of saying as little as possible but making it sound as much as possible.

Eloquence is vehement simplicity.

If our eloquence be directed above the heads of our hearers, we shall do no execution. By pointing our arguments low, we stand a chance of hitting their hearts as well as their heads. In addressing angels, we could hardly raise our eloquence too high; but we must remember that men are not angels.

There is no talent so pernicious as eloquence to those who have it under command.

who can Perswade more Powerfully than Poets?

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

It is true that despite occasional gleams of Churchillian eloquence he [Gen. Douglas MacArthur] usually spoke poorly. He was far more effective in conversations a deux. But those who dismiss him as shallow because his rhetoric was fustian err.

Eloquence is an engine invented to manage and wield at will the fierce democracy, and, like medicine to the sick, is only employed in the paroxysms of a disordered state.