Orators Quotes - Page 5

• Just as the orator marks his good things by a dramatic pause, or by raising and lowering his voice, or by gesture, so the writer marks his epigrams with italics, setting the little gem, so to speak, like a jeweler.

  Oscar Wilde

  Voice, Gestures, Littles

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• God is only the president of the day, and Webster is his orator.

  Henry David Thoreau

  President

  Henry David Thoreau (2004). “Walden: 150th Anniversary Illustrated Edition of the American Classic”, p.321, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I don't profess to be a healer, a minister, a priest. I feel as an entertainer I can do more good for the world than I would if I were a soapbox orator or a self-made politician.

  Liberace

  Self, Soapbox, World

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• Memorial Day orators will say that a G.I.'s life is priceless. Don't believe it. I know what value the U.S. government assigns to a soldier's life: I've been handed the check. It's roughly what the Yankees will pay Roger Clemens per inning once he starts pitching next month.

  Andrew Bacevich

  Memorial Day, Believe, Yankees

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• Christopher Hitchens is perhaps the greatest orator ever. He's such a famous atheist.

  Michael Buble

  Atheist

  "Michael Bublé leaves his comfort zone". Interview with Elio Iannacci, www.macleans.ca. October 6, 2016.

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• The orator puts off his individuality, and is then most eloquent when most silent. He listens while he speaks, and is a hearer along with his audience.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Silence, Individuality, Speech

  Henry David Thoreau, John C. Broderick, Robert Sattelmeyer (1981). “Journal”, p.114, Princeton University Press

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• What is called eloquence in the forum is commonly found to be rhetoric in the study. The orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion, and speaks to the mob before him, to those who can hear him; but the writer, whose more equable life is his occasion, and who would be distracted by the event and the crowd which inspire the orator, speaks to the intellect and heart of mankind, to all in any age who can understand him.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Inspiration, Heart, Yield

  Henry David Thoreau (2015). “Walden”, p.88, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• What are men celebrating? They are all on a committee of arrangements, and hourly expect a speech from somebody. God is only the president of the day, and Webster is his orator.

  Henry David Thoreau

  God, Integrity, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2015). “Walden”, p.276, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• There are prating coxcombs in the world who would rather talk than listen, although Shakespeare himself were the orator, and human nature the theme!

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Talking, World, Human Nature

  Charles Caleb Colton (1823). “Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan”, p.169

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• The orator, who may be silent without danger, may praise without difficulty and without reluctance; and posterity will confess that the character of Theodosius might furnish the subject of a sincere and ample panegyric. The wisdom of his laws and the success of his arms rendered his administration respectable in the eyes both of his subjects and of his enemies. He loved and practised the virtues of domestic life, which seldom hold their residence in the palaces of kings.

  Edward Gibbon

  Kings, Eye, Character

  Edward Gibbon (2000). “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume II: A.D. 395 to A.D. 1185 (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.47, Modern Library

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• Of old, the demagogue was also a general, and then democracies changed into tyrannies. Most of the ancient tyrants were originally demagogues. They are not so now, but they were then; and the reason is that they were generals and not orators, for oratory had not yet come into fashion.

  Aristotle

  Fashion, Tyrants, Government

  Aristotle, (2014). “Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation”, p.2072, Princeton University Press

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• H.L.Mencken's war aims, according to the handful of observers who deigned to notice his conflict, were the overthrow of American Democracy, the Christian religion, and the YMCA. He was also credited with trying to wipe out poets and luncheon orators.

  Ben Hecht

  Christian, Art, War

  Ben Hecht (1964). “Letters from Bohemia”

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• The cello is a hero because of its register - its tenor voice. It is a masculine instrument, whereas the violin is feminine because of its soprano pitch. When the cello enters in the Dvorak Concerto, it is like a great orator.

  Mstislav Rostropovich

  Hero, Voice, Violin

  "Why the cello is a hero". Interview With Julian Lloyd Webber, www.telegraph.co.uk. October 28, 2004.

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• The greatest and truest models for all oratorsis Demosthenes. One who has not studied deeply and constantly all the great speeches of the great Athenian, is not prepared to speak in public. Only as the constant companion of Demosthenes, Burke, Fox, Canning and Webster, can we hope to become orators.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Oratory, Speech, Foxes

  Woodrow Wilson, Arthur Stanley Link, Woodrow Wilson Foundation, Princeton University (1994). “Papers”

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• Let arms yield to the toga, let the [victor's] laurel yield to the [orator's] tongue.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Peace, War, Yield

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• No living orator would convince a grocer that coffee should be sold without chicory; and no amount of eloquence will make an English lawyer think that loyalty to truth should come before loyalty to his client.

  Anthony Trollope

  Loyalty, Coffee, Thinking

  Anthony Trollope (1862). “Orley Farm”, p.130

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• The prostitute is the scapegoat for everyone's sins, and few people care whether she is justly treated or not. Good people have spent thousands of pounds in efforts to reform her, poets have written about her, essayists and orators have made her the subject of some of their most striking rhetoric; perhaps no class of people has been so much abused, and alternatively sentimentalized over as prostitutes have been but one thing they have never yet had, and that is simple legal justice.

  Alison Roberta Noble Neilans

  Simple, Class, Justice

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• However much we admire the orator's occasional bursts of eloquence, the noblest written words are commonly as far behind or abovethe fleeting spoken language as the firmament with its stars is behind the clouds.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Stars, Clouds, Fleeting

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.68, Graphic Arts Books

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• No man with a genius for legislation has appeared in America. They are rare in the history of the world. There are orators, politicians, and eloquent men, by the thousand; but the speaker has not yet opened his mouth to speak who is capable of settling the much-vexed questions of the day. We love eloquence for its own sake, and not for any truth which it may utter, or any heroism it may inspire. Our legislators have not yet learned the comparative value of free trade and of freedom, of union, and of rectitude, to a nation.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Truth, Men, America

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.301, Simon and Schuster

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• Yet through delivery orators succeed, I feel that I am far behind indeed.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Oratory, Succeed, Delivery

  BookCaps, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2012). “Faust in Plain and Simple English: First Part of the Tragedy: (A Modern Translation and the Original Version): BookCaps Study Guide”, p.50, BookCaps Study Guides

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• You write because you don't talk very well, and maybe one of the reasons that I was determined to write was that I wasn't an orator, unlike my mother and my grandfather, who both spoke beautifully and spoke all the time. Maybe I grew up with too many voices around me, as a matter of fact.

  John Updike

  Mother, Writing, Voice

  Source: www.achievement.org

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• Now all orators effect their demonstrative proofs by allegation either of enthymems or examples, and, besides these, in no other way whatever.

  Aristotle

  Example, Way, Proof

  Aristotle, Thomas Hobbes (1833). “Aristotle's Treatise on Rhetoric”, p.14

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• To feminine eyes a man's prestige, or his fame, envelops him in a luminous haze which obscures his faults. The triumphs of an aviator, an actor, a football player, an orator are often responsible for the beginning of a love affair.

  Andre Maurois

  Football, Eye, Player

  "The Art of Living". Book by Andre Maurois, 1939.

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• Cicero said loud-bawling orators were driven by their weakness to noise, as lame men to take horse.

  Plutarch

  Horse, Men, Weakness

  "Roman Apophthegms". Cicero. "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th edition", 1919.

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• Like a rough orator, that brings more truth Than rhetoric, to make good his accusation.

  Philip Massinger

  Accusation, Rhetoric, Rough

  Philip Massinger (1830). “The plays of Philip Massinger: adapted for family reading, and the use of young persons, by the omission of objectionable passages”, p.200

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