Rhetorical Flourish Quotes

The mediocrity of his [Winston Churchill's] thinking is concealed by the majesty of his language.... He mistakes verbal facilities for mental inspiration.

He spoke with more eloquence than wisdom.

If you can say a thing with one stroke, unanswerably you have style; if not, you are at best a marchande de plaisir; a decorative litt

A speech is poetry: cadence, rhythm, imagery, sweep! A speech reminds us that words, like children, have the power to make dance the dullest beanbag of a heart.

Some eloquence is like a magic.

'Liquid Swords' just represents a sharp tongue, sharp words.

Eloquence, when in its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection.

A politician, he knows that the majority cares little for ideals or integrity. What it craves is display.

Phocion compared the speeches of Leosthenes to cypress-trees. "They are tall," said he, "and comely, but bear no fruit."

Shame on all eloquence which leaves us with a taste for itself and not for its substance.

PERORATION, n. The explosion of an oratorical rocket. It dazzles, but to an observer having the wrong kind of nose its most conspicuous peculiarity is the smell of the several kinds of powder used in preparing it.

How beggarly appear arguments before a defiant deed!

Eloquence is the poetry of prose.

The bucolic mind of East Barsetshire took warm delight in the eloquence of the eminent personage who represented them, but was wont to extract more actual enjoyment from the music of his periods than from the strength of his arguments.

Over the years, he [Everett Dirksen] developed a style of infinitely subtle fustian, whose effect can still be remotely approximated by sipping twelve-year-old bourbon, straight, while reading Dickens aloud, in a sort of sepulchral purr.

Take it not amiss, O speech, that I borrow weighty words, and later try hard to make them seem light.

Have it compose a poem -- a poem about a haircut! But lofty, noble, tragic, timeless, full of love, treachery, retribution, quiet heroism in the face of certain doom! Six lines, cleverly rhymed, and every word beginning with the letter s!

Theres a lot of blowhards in the political process, you know, a lot of hot-air artists, people who have got something fancy to say.

Often a purple patch or two is tacked on to a serious work of high promise, to give an effect of colour.

The pleasure of eloquence is in greatest part owing often to the stimulus of the occasion which produces it- - to the magic of sympathy, which exalts the feeling of each by radiating on him the feeling of all.