Motivational Quotes

Speech

Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.

- Sir Francis Bacon

Best Quotes about Speech

I do not speak to thee in drink but in tears, not in pleasure but in passion, not in words only, but in woes also.

William Shakespeare

Listening to someone talk isn't at all like listening to their words played over on a machine. What you hear when you have a face before you is never what you hear when you have before you a winding tape.

Fallaci, Oriana

Be check'd for silence, but never tax'd for speech.

William Shakespeare

Look wise, say nothing, and grunt. Speech was given to conceal thought.

Sir William Osler

Today's public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can't read them either.

Gore Vidal

Man does not speak because he thinks; he thinks because he speaks. Or rather, speaking is no different than thinking: to speak is to think.

Paz, Octavio

There are remarks that sow and remarks that reap.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

Men of few words are the best men.

William Shakespeare

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.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

10.

In anger we should refrain both from speech and action.

Pythagoras

11.

Wherever the relevance of speech is at stake, matters become political by definition, for speech is what makes man a political being.

Arendt, Hannah

12.

The habit of common and continuous speech is a symptom of mental deficiency.

Walter Bagehot

13.

Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead: therefore we must learn both arts.

Thomas Carlyle

14.

Though thou speak'st truth, methink thou speak'st not well.

William Shakespeare

15.

Thought is the fountain of speech.

Chrysippus

16.

All speech is vain and empty unless it be accompanied by action.

Demosthenes

17.

A long tongue shortens life.

18.

A talk is like a woman's dress. Long enough to cover the subject, but short enough to be interesting.

19.

If nobody spoke unless he had something to say, the human race would very soon lose the use of speech.

W. Somerset Maugham

20.

Tears at times have all the weight of speech.

Ovid

21.

Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man. [Colossians 4:6]

Bible

22.

Bore: one who has the power of speech but not the capacity for conversation.

Benjamin Disraeli

23.

Never try to impress people with the profundity of your thought by the obscurity of your language. Whatever has been thoroughly thought through can be stated simply.

24.

We have as many planes of speech as does a painting planes of perspective which create perspective in a phrase. The most important word stands out most vividly defined in the very foreground of the sound plane. Less important words create a series of deeper planes.

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

25.

They that are loudest in their threats are the weakest in the execution of them. It is probable that he who is killed by lightning hears no noise; but the thunder-clap which follows, and which most alarms the ignorant, is the surest proof of their safety.

Colton, Charles Caleb

26.

Speeches that are measured by the hour will die with the hour.

Jefferson, Thomas

27.

Everything becomes a little different as soon as it is spoken out loud.

Hesse, Hermann

28.

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

Sophocles

29.

The mind is a wonderful thing. It starts working the minute you're born and never stops working until you get up to speak in public.

Ball, Patricia Ann

30.

Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.

Sir Francis Bacon

31.

The world does not speak. Only we do. The world can, once we have programmed ourselves with a language, cause us to hold beliefs. But it cannot propose a language for us to speak. Only other human beings can do that.

Rorty, Richard

32.

Sweet Benjamin, since thou art young, and hast not yet the use of tongue, make it thy slave, while thou art free; Imprison it, lest it do thee.

Hoskins, John

33.

It's better to keep your mouth shut and give the impression that you're stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.

Belson, Rami

34.

Speech is a mirror of the soul: as a man speaks, so is he.

Publilius Syrus

35.

Speech of yourself ought to be seldom and well chosen.

Bacon, Francis

36.

Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen.

Bob Marley

37.

Talkers are no good doers; be assur'd we come to use our hands and not our tongues.

William Shakespeare

38.

Speech is the gift of all, but the thought of few.

Cato The Elder

39.

Speeches are not magic and there is no great speech without great policy.

Noonan, Peggy

40.

Be it art or hap, he hath spoken true.

William Shakespeare

41.

Weighest thy words before thou givest them breath.

William Shakespeare

42.

Language is legislation, speech is its code. We do not see the power which is in speech because we forget that all speech is a classification, and that all classifications are oppressive.

Barthes, Roland

43.

Things are often spoke and seldom meant.

William Shakespeare

44.

I have always been among those who believed that the greatest freedom of speech was the greatest safety, because if a man is a fool the best thing to do is to encourage him to advertise the fact by speaking.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

45.

All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer.

Stevenson, Robert Louis

46.

What has influenced my life more than any other single thing has been my stammer. Had I not stammered I would probably... have gone to Cambridge as my brothers did, perhaps have become a don and every now and then published a dreary book about French literature.

Maugham, W. Somerset

47.

Speech is the mirror of the soul; as a man speaks, so he is.

Syrus, Publilius

48.

The stroke of the whip maketh marks in the flesh: but the stroke of the tongue breaketh the bones. Many have fallen by the edge of the sword: but not so many as have fallen by the tongue. [Ecclesiasticus 28:17 --18]

Bible

49.

Readiness of speech is often inability to hold the tongue.

Jean Baptiste Rousseau

50.

I've decided to discontinue my long talks. It's because of my throat. Someone threatened to cut it.