Charles Caleb Colton Quotes

Of all the talents bestowed upon men, none is so precious as the gift of oratory !!

Eloquence wins its great and enduring fame quite as much from the benches of our opponents as from those of our friends.

It really is true that an orator is simply a good man who speaks well.

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

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.

I think, for me, one of the things I've been blessed with is the ability to speak with clarity.

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.

Eloquence is vehement simplicity.

The ability to speak well is the shortcut to distinction.

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.

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.

Great eloquence we cannot get, except from human genius.

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 logic on fire.

No amount of facts in his head can compensate for the lack of fire on his lips.

The subject is said to have the property of making dull men eloquent.

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.

The orator is thereby an orator that keeps his feet ever on a fact.

You have no right to go before a public without an adequate technique, just because you feel. Anything feels - a leaf feels, a storm feels - what right have you to do that? You have to have speech, and it's a cultivated speech.

There is something in the eloquence of the pulpit, when it is really eloquence, which is entitled to the highest praise and honour. The preacher who can touch and affect such an heterogeneous mass of hearers, on subjects limited, and long worn thread-bare in all common hands; who can say any thing new or striking, any thing that rouses the attention, without offending the taste, or wearing out the feelings of his hearers, is a man whom one could not (in his public capacity) honour enough.

If it is naturally in you to be a good orator, a notable orator you will be when you have acquired knowledge and practice.

In oratory the greatest art is to hide art.

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

Cicero said loud-bawling orators were driven by their weakness to noise, as lame men to take horse.