William Rounseville Alger Quotes

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

Writing is learning to say nothing, more cleverly each day.

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

Eloquence is the power to translate a truth into language perfectly intelligible to the person to whom you speak.

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

There are people who have tremendously important things to say, but they say it so poorly that nobody would ever want to read it.

To speak as the common people do, to think as wise men do is style.

Talking and eloquence are not the same.

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.

I used to tell my husband that, if he could make me understand something, it would be clear to all the other people in the country.

The only kind of statement worth making is an overstatement.

We love eloquence for its own sake, and not for any truth which it may utter, or any heroism it may inspire

Great speech is impassioned; small speech cantankerous.

Accent [emphasis] is the soul of speech; it gives it feeling and truth.

We need to become more acutely conscious that words matter. None of us would deny that ideas and opinions matter, but we can sometimes be careless about how we express them. The words we choose to advance an idea, opinion, or point of view have a huge impact on how people react and respond to that view. When we use hyperbole, we increase the chances of being misunderstood and of promoting equally exaggerated counter-reactions, especially when people are reacting almost instantaneously.

Hyperbole engaged in consciously to achieve a desired effect can be, as we have noted, a useful rhetorical tool. Indeed, its use in this manner is sometimes called "exaggeration in the service of truth." However, there's much to be said for restraint of tongue and pen, and restraint refers not only to what we say but also to how we say it. It is possible, believe it or not, to be emphatic without indulging in overstatement; it is possible to be forceful without exaggerating.

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

I promised myself that I would write as well as I can, tell the truth, not to tell everything I know, but to make sure that everything I tell is true, as I understand it. And to use the eloquence which my language affords me.

Eloquence is the child of knowledge.

The ability to speak well is the shortcut to distinction.

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

It is not sufficient to know what one ought to say, but one must also know how to say it.

Those orators who give us much noise and many words, but little argument and less wit, and who are the loudest when least lucid, should take a lesson from the great volume of nature; she often gives us the lightning without the thunder, but never the thunder without the lightning.

Why do we embroider everything we say with special emphasis when all we really need to do is simply say what needs to he said? Of course the fact is that there is very little that needs to be said.

Because a thing is eloquently expressed it should not be taken to be as necessarily true; nor because it is uttered with stammering lips should it be supposed false.