Elocution Quotes

• I took acting and elocution lessons, to get rid of my Sicilian accent.

  Maria Grazia Cucinotta

  Acting, Lessons, Accents

  87 Copy quote

• I loved fencing and dancing and elocution.

  Vivien Leigh

  Dancing, Fencing

  86 Copy quote

• Ordinary people who know nothing of phonetics or elocution have difficulties in understanding slow speech composed of perfect sounds, while they have no difficulty in comprehending an imperfect gabble if only the accent and rhythm are natural.

  Alexander Graham Bell

  Communication, People, Perfect

  81 Copy quote

• We have this wonderful language and we don't appreciate it. That's old-fashioned me, but when I went to school, everyone had elocution lessons, not to sound posh but so you could be understood.

  Penelope Keith

  School, Appreciate, Sound

  25 Copy quote

• The vulgar look upon a man, who is reckoned a fine speaker, as a phenomenon, a supernatural being, and endowed with some peculiargift of Heaven; they stare at him, if he walks in the park, and cry, that is he. You will, I am sure, view him in a juster light, and nulla formidine. You will consider him only as a man of good sense, who adorns common thoughts with the graces of elocution, and the elegancy of style. The miracle will then cease.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Men, Supernatural Beings, Light

  16 Copy quote

• Literature, the study of literature in English in the 19th century, did not belong to literary studies, which had to do with Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, but instead with elocution and public speaking. So when people read literature, it was to memorize and to recite it.

  Robert Hass

  Latin, People, Greek

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  8 Copy quote

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• [On the United States:] A nation which does not appreciate that the simple elocution exercise 'Merry Mary married hairy Harry' contains not one but three vowel sounds.

  Jessica Mitford

  Exercise, Simple, Appreciate

  12 Copy quote

• ... I had a latent impression that there was something decidedly fine in Mr. Wopsle's elocution - not for old associations' sake, I am afraid, but because it was very slow, very dreary, very up-hill and down-hill, and very unlike any way in which any man in any natural circumstances of life or death ever expressed himself about anything.

  Charles Dickens

  Funny, Humorous, Men

  Charles Dickens (2017). “THE GREATEST DICKENS CLASSICS (Illustrated Edition): Oliver Twist, The Pickwick Papers, Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, Hard Times, David Copperfield, A Christmas Carol, Bleak House, Little Dorrit, Our Mutual Friend, The Life of Dickens”, p.239, e-artnow

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• I took movement classes that I wore my double-breasted suits to. I worked on my elocution because people spoke differently then. I was really trying to toe the line. I think that if I had spoken exactly the way that people spoke back then, it probably would have alienated people.

  Matt Bomer

  Thinking, Class, People

  Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. June 28, 2016.

  5 Copy quote

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