Best 95 quotes in «eloquence quotes» category

I try to think of things to say but nothing comes, and if something did come I probably couldn't say it. This is my great obstacle, the biggest of all the boulders littering my path. In my mind I am eloquent; I can climb intricate scaffolds of words to reach the highest cathedral ceilings and paint my thoughts. But when I open my mouth, it all collapses.

I've just come to my room, Livy darling, I guess this was the memorable night of my life. By George, I never was so stirred since I was born. I heard four speeches which I can never forget... one by that splendid old soul, Col. Bob Ingersoll, — oh, it was just the supremest combination of English words that was ever put together since the world began... How handsome he looked, as he stood on that table, in the midst of those 500 shouting men, and poured the molten silver from his lips! What an organ is human speech when it is played by a master! How pale those speeches are in print, but how radiant, how full of color, how blinding they were in the delivery! It was a great night, a memorable night. I doubt if America has seen anything quite equal to it. I am well satisfied I shall not live to see its equal again... Bob Ingersoll’s music will sing through my memory always as the divinest that ever enchanted my ears. And I shall always see him, as he stood that night on a dinner-table, under the flash of lights and banners, in the midst of seven hundred frantic shouters, the most beautiful human creature that ever lived... You should have seen that vast house rise to its feet; you should have heard the hurricane that followed. That's the only test! People might shout, clap their hands, stamp, wave their napkins, but none but the master can make them get up on their feet. {Twain's letter to his wife, Livy, about friend Robert Ingersoll's incredible speech at 'The Grand Banquet', considered to be one of the greatest oratory performances of all time}

I want to hear you wound my lovely language with your rough barbarian tongue.

Meaningful prayer is a matter of the heart, not the eloquence of the words.

Radite na tome da budete elokventni. Vecina njih zna samo da prica, mnogo vise nego sto treba.

poets. have the toughest job in the universe- of turning silence into eloquence.

Melodiousness rolled over her tongue and out of her mouth whenever she spoke. Her eloquence equaled her elegance.

Nam eloquentiam quae admirationem non habet nullam iudico

No institution of learning of Ingersoll's day had courage enough to confer upon him an honorary degree; not only for his own intellectual accomplishments, but also for his influence upon the minds of the learned men and women of his time and generation. Robert G. Ingersoll never received a prize for literature. The same prejudice and bigotry which prevented his getting an honorary college degree, militated against his being recognized as 'the greatest writer of the English language on the face of the earth,' as Henry Ward Beecher characterized him. Aye, in all the history of literature, Robert G. Ingersoll has never been excelled -- except by only one man, and that man was -- William Shakespeare. And yet there are times when Ingersoll even surpassed the immortal Bard. Yes, there are times when Ingersoll excelled even Shakespeare, in expressing human emotions, and in the use of language to express a thought, or to paint a picture. I say this fully conscious of my own admiration for that 'intellectual ocean, whose waves touched all the shores of thought.' Ingersoll was perfection himself. Every word was properly used. Every sentence was perfectly formed. Every noun, every verb and every object was in its proper place. Every punctuation mark, every comma, every semicolon, and every period was expertly placed to separate and balance each sentence. To read Ingersoll, it seems that every idea came properly clothed from his brain. Something rare indeed in the history of man's use of language in the expression of his thoughts. Every thought came from his brain with all the beauty and perfection of the full blown rose, with the velvety petals delicately touching each other. Thoughts of diamonds and pearls, rubies and sapphires rolled off his tongue as if from an inexhaustible mine of precious stones. Just as the cut of the diamond reveals the splendor of its brilliance, so the words and construction of the sentences gave a charm and beauty and eloquence to Ingersoll's thoughts. Ingersoll had everything: The song of the skylark; the tenderness of the dove; the hiss of the snake; the bite of the tiger; the strength of the lion; and perhaps more significant was the fact that he used each of these qualities and attributes, in their proper place, and at their proper time. He knew when to embrace with the tenderness of affection, and to resist and denounce wickedness and tyranny with that power of denunciation which he, and he alone, knew how to express.

Our relationship was convoluted and was mired in cross-cultural vicissitude.Our promising friendship faltered after she became a supermodel.What prejudice could not destroy was extinguished by fame and a lucrative modeling contract.

Past the entrance to the cloisters (in the church of Santa Croce in Florence) is Rossellino's funerary monument to the humanist chancellor Leonardo Bruni, He was chancellor of Florence from 1427 until his death in 1444. He is shown resting on his bier, as if asleep, holding his History of Florence. His epitaph is one of the most moving ever recorded: "Historia luget, eloquentia muta est," "History herself is in mourning, and eloquence has been silenced.

She had this way, when she wasn't talking about foreign politics or global warming, of making sense of all the complex things I never knew how to describe.

The arguments themselves did not appear to me to be any better simply because they were better expressed; eloquence did not make them true." St. Augustine page 85

The Biblical language was so deeply embedded in the great man's mind that it became his normal way of speaking.

The language of life is profane as it is eloquent.

The utmost accolade a writer can receive is that the reader is incognizant of his presence. The writer must put no obstacles in the reader’s way. Therefore I try avoid words that he must puzzle over, or that he cannot gloss from context; and when I make up names, I shun the use of diacritical marks that he must sound out, thus halting the flow; and in general, I try to keep the sentences metrically pleasing, so that they do not obtrude upon the reader’s mind.

The truth is the very definition of excellence.

Why are you here?" "'Here' as in your bedroom, or 'here' as in the great, spiritual question of our purpose here on this planet? If you're asking me whether this is all some cosmic coincidence or if there's a greater meta-ethical purpose to life, well, that's a puzzler for the ages. I mean, modern-day reductionism is clearly a fallacious argument, but-," -"I'm going back to bed." -"I'm here because Hodge reminded me it's your birthday.

True eloquence is irresistible. It charms by its images of beauty, it enforces an argument by its vehement simplicity. Orators whose speeches are "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing," only prevail where truth is not understood, for knowledge and simplicity are the foundation of all true eloquence. Eloquence abounds in beautiful and natural images, sublime but simple conceptions, in passionate but plain words. Burning words appeal to the emotions as well as to the intellect; they stir the soul and touch the heart.

Your goodness must have some edge to it -- else it is none.

You must speak straight so that your words may go as sunlight into our hearts.

You are the king no doubt, but in one respect, at least, I am your equal: the right to reply. I claim that privilege too. I am not your slave. I serve Apollo. I don't need Creon to speak for me in public. So, you mock my blindness? Let me tell you this. You with your precious eyes, you're blind to the corruption in your life, to the house you live in, those you live with- who are your parents? Do you know? All unknowing you are the scourge of your own flesh and blood, the dead below the earth and the living here above, and the double lash of your mother and your father's curse will whip you from this land one day, their footfall treading you down in terror, darkness shrouding your eyes that now can see the light! Soon, soon, you'll scream aloud - what haven won't reverberate? What rock of Cithaeron won't scream back in echo? That day you learn the truth about your marriage, the wedding-march that sang you into your halls, the lusty voyage home to the fatal harbor! And a crowd of other horrors you'd never dream will level you with yourself and all your children. There. Now smear us with insults - Creon, myself and every word I've said. No man will ever be rooted from the earth as brutally as you.

Brevity is a great charm of eloquence.

Abruptness is an eloquence in parting, when spinning out the time is but the weaving of new sorrow.

Continuous eloquence is tedious.

Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.

Earnestness is the salt of eloquence.

Eloquence dwells quite as much in the hearts of the hearers as on the lips of the orator.

Eloquence is a painting of the thoughts.

Eloquence is vehement simplicity.

Eloquence invites us to bring some part of ourselves to the transaction.

Eloquence is the appropriate organ of the highest personal energy.

Eloquence is to the sublime what the whole is to the part.

Eloquence is relative. One can no more pronounce on the eloquence of any composition than the wholesomeness of a medicine, without knowing for whom it is intended.

Eloquence must be grounded on the plainest narrative.

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

Eloquence is the poetry of prose.

Forensics is eloquence and reduction.

Fluency avoids hard thoughts.

He has oratory who ravishes his hearers while he forgets himself.

He spoke with more eloquence than wisdom.

An orator of past times declared that his calling was to make small things appear to be grand.

Fortify yourself against seductive eloquence.

Him of the western dome, whose weighty sense Flows in fit words and heavenly eloquence.

Honesty is one part of eloquence. We persuade others by being in earnest ourselves.

I grew intoxicated with my own eloquence.

I am not as eloquent as Stephane Dion.

In painting as in eloquence, the greater your strength, the quieter your manner.

I would rather have a plain down-right wisdom than a foolish and affected eloquence.

La vraie e loquence se moque de l'e loquence, la vraie morale se moque de la morale. True eloquence has notime foreloquence, true morality has no time for morality.