Paul Verlaine Quotes

Eloquence, n. The art of orally persuading fools that white is the color that it appears to be. It includes the gift of making any color appear white.

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

Glibness will get your anywhere.

Much speech is one thing, well-timed speech is another.

Nothing is so difficult to believe that oratory cannot make it acceptable …

As reason is the glory of man, so the lamp of reason is eloquence.

It lies deep in our habits, confirmed by all manner of educational and other arrangements for several centuries back, to consider human talent as best of all evincing itself by the faculty of eloquent speech.

… sledgehammer eloquence...

Slogans can be worse than swords if they are only put in the right mouths.

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

we have let rhetoric do the job of poetry.

Eloquence is the language of nature, and cannot be learned in the schools; but rhetoric is the creature of art, which he who feels least will most excel in.

Romans, countrymen, and lovers, hear me for my cause, and be silent, that you may hear.

From his tongue flowed speech sweeter than honey.

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.

Language upon a silvered tongue affords enchantment enough.

Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel. It is to bring another out of his bad sense into your good sense.

The speeches to be wary of are those that begin with I'm just going to say a few words.

Everyone knows how to talk, and no one knows what to say.

There's one word that exists in every language on the face of the Earth and in every society since man began to speak. And the word is truth. And in every language it means exactly the same thing. Truth is . . . what you get other people to believe.

Sometimes speech is no more than a device for saying nothing - and a neater one than silence.

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

Speech is the best show a man puts on.

A man who is furnished with arguments from the mint will convince his antagonist much sooner than one who draws them from reason and philosophy.