Eloquence Quotes - Page 13

• Advertisements are now so numerous that they are very negligently perused, and it is therefore become necessary to gain attention by magnificence of promises, and by eloquence sometimes sublime and sometimes pathetic.

  Samuel Johnson

  Gossip, Sublime, Promise

  Samuel Johnson, Elizabeth Carter, Samuel Richardson, Catherine Talbot (1825). “The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752”

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• Seldom do people discern eloquence under a threadbare cloak

  Juvenal

  People, Poverty, Poor

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• One who has accumulated virtue will certainly also possess eloquence; but he who has eloquence doe not necessarily possess virtue.

  Confucius

  Doe, Virtue

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• Music can noble hints impart, Engender fury, kindle love, With unsuspected eloquence can move, And manage all the man with secret art.

  Joseph Addison

  Music, Art, Moving

  Joseph Addison (1868). “The Works of Joseph Addison”, p.425

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• [T]here are, at bottom, basically two ways to order social affairs, Coercively, through the mechanisms of the state - what we can call political society. And voluntarily, through the private interaction of individuals and associations - what we can call civil society. ... In a civil society, you make the decision. In a political society, someone else does. ... Civil society is based on reason, eloquence, and persuasion, which is to say voluntarism. Political society, on the other hand, is based on force.

  Ed Crane

  Two, Hands, Order

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• Whatever capital you divert to the support of a shiftless and good-for-nothing person is so much diverted from some other employment, and that means from somebody else. I would spend any conceivable amount of zeal and eloquence if I possessed it to try to make people grasp this idea. Capital is force. If it goes one way it cannot go another. If you give a loaf to a pauper you cannot give the same loaf to a laborer. Now this other man who would have got it but for the charitable sentiment which bestowed it on a worthless member of society is the Forgotten Man.

  William Graham Sumner

  Mean, Men, Ideas

  William Graham Sumner (1971). “Sumner today: selected essays of William Graham Sumner, with comments by American leaders”

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• The Lord is no respector of persons, and will give success to all who work for it. If l can only impress upon the minds of the youth of Zion the eloquence, the inexpressible eloquence of work, I shall feel fully repaid.

  Heber J. Grant

  Work, Zion, Giving

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• A thunder-storm!—the eloquence of heaven, When every cloud is from its slumber riven, Who hath not paused beneath its hollow groan, And felt Omnipotence around him thrown? With what a gloom the ush’ring scene appears! The leaves all shiv’ring with instinctive fears, The waters curling with a fellow dread, A veiling fervour round creation spread, And, last, the heavy rain’s reluctant shower, With big drops patt’ring on the tree and bower, While wizard shapes the bowing sky deform,— All mark the coming of the thunder-storm!

  Robert Montgomery

  Rain, Omnipotence, Sky

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• Finally, everybody agrees that no one pursuit can be successfully followed by a man who is preoccupied with many things-eloquence cannot, nor the liberal studies-since the mind, when distracted, takes in nothing very deeply, but rejects everything that is, as it were, crammed into it. There is nothing the busy man is less busied with than living: there is nothing that is harder to learn.

  Seneca the Younger

  Men, Mind, Study

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• [That form of] eloquence, the foster-child of licence, which fools call liberty.
  [Lat., Eloquentia, alumna licentiae, quam stulti libertatem vocabant.]

  Tacitus

  Children, Liberty, Fool

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• Silence is one great art of conversation. He is not a fool who knows when to hold his tongue; and a person may gain credit for sense, eloquence, wit, who merely says nothing to lessen the opinion which others have of these qualities in themselves.

  William Hazlitt

  Art, Silence, Quality

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1472, Delphi Classics

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• Poetry is the eloquence of verse.

  William C. Bryant

  Poetry, Poetry Is, Verses

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• Spirituality is best manifested on the ground, not in the air. Rapturous day-dreams, flights of heavenly fancy, longings to see the Invisible, are less expensive and less expressive than the plain doing of duty. To have bread excite thankfulness and a drink of water send the heart to God is better than sighs for the unattainable. To plow a straight furrow on Monday or dust a room well on Tuesday or kiss a bumped forehead on Wednesday is worth more than the most ecstatic thrill under Sunday eloquence. Spirituality is seeing God in common things, and showing God in common tasks.

  Maltbie Davenport Babcock

  Dream, Monday, Heart

  Maltbie Davenport Babcock (1901). “Thoughts for Every-day Living from the Spoken and Written Words of Maltbie Davenport Babcock”

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• If our eloquence be directed above the heads of our hearers, we shall do no execution. By pointing our arguments low, we stand a chance of hitting their hearts as well as their heads. In addressing angels, we could hardly raise our eloquence too high; but we must remember that men are not angels.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Heart, Angel, Men

  Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.147

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• In pulpit eloquence, the grand difficulty lies here--to give the subject all the dignity it so fully deserves, without attaching any importance to ourselves. The Christian messenger cannot think too highly of his prince, nor too humbly of himself.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Christian, Lying, Thinking

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.44

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• It's not 'natural' to speak well, eloquently, in an interesting, articulate way. People living in groups, families, communes say little - have few verbal means. Eloquence - thinking in words - is a byproduct of solitude, deracination, a heightened painful individuality. In groups, it's more natural to sing, to dance, to pray: given, rather than invented (individual) speech.

  Susan Sontag

  Mean, Thinking, Interesting

  Susan Sontag (2012). “As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh: Diaries 1964-1980”, p.351, Penguin UK

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• In our country and in our times no man is worthy the honored name of statesman who does not include the highest practicable education of the people in all his plans of administration. He may have eloquence, he may have a knowledge of all history, diplomacy, jurisprudence; and by these he might claim, in other countries, the elevated rank of a statesman: but unless he speaks, plans, labors, at all times and in all places, for the culture and edification of the whole people, he is not, he cannot be, an American statesman.

  Horace Mann

  Country, Men, Names

  Horace Mann (1845). “Lectures on Education”, p.162

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• What is the average type of a counterfeit church? A hammock, attached on one side to the cross, and, on the other, held and swung to and fro by the forefinger of Mammon; its freight of nominal Christians elegantly moaning meanwhile over the evils of the times, and not at ease unless fanned by eloquence and music, and sprinkled by social adulations into perfumed, unheroic slumber.

  Joseph Cook

  Christian, Average, Evil

  Joseph Cook (1881). “Scepticism and Rationalism: Elective Affinities and Hereditary Descent”

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• Previous technologies have expanded communication. But the last round may be contracting it. The eloquence of letters has turned into the unnuanced spareness of texts; the intimacy of phone conversations has turned into the missed signals of mobile phone chat ... ('you're breaking up' is the cry of our time).

  Rebecca Solnit

  Communication, Technology, Phones

  Rebecca Solnit (2014). “The Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness”, p.258, Trinity University Press

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

  William Zinsser

  Transactions, Invites

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• A genial and cultured Arab, Ameen Rihani, whose English is perfect and whose eloquence is astounding. He will discuss with equal eagerness and knowledge the merits of Picasso or Van Gogh, or the Zionist question, or the British achievements in Arabia.

  Kenneth Williams

  Perfect, Achievement, Merit

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• A man of distinguished, beautiful eloquence, and persistent, over pressing thought... Ameen Rihani was one of the foremost pioneers of modern illumination. He firmly believed in the significance of reviving the Arab spirit and protecting the freedom of thought and the freedom of human conscience.

  Mikhail Naimy

  Beautiful, Men, Illumination

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• In the modesty of fearful duty, I read as much as from the rattling tongue of saucy and audacious eloquence.

  William Shakespeare

  Tongue, Modesty, Duty

  'A Midsummer Night's Dream' (1595-6) act 5, sc. 1, l. 100

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• I grew intoxicated with my own eloquence.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Grew, Intoxicated, My Own

  Benjamin Disraeli (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Benjamin Disraeli (Illustrated)”, p.898, Delphi Classics

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• true influence over another comes not from a moments eloquence nor from any happily chosen word, but from the accumulation of a lifetime's thoughts stored up in the eyes...the secret smile in the eyes of a friend

  Thornton Wilder

  Eye, Secret, Influence

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