Speech Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

I am sorry to say that I have a long speech fermenting in me, and I feel as a loaf might in the oven.

William Ewart Gladstone

Slavery tolerates no freedom of the press, no freedom of speech, no freedom of opinion.

Hinton R. Helper

Language, as well as the faculty of speech, was the immediate gift of God.

Those who talk about the future are scoundrels. It is the present that matters. To evoke one's posterity is to make a speech to maggots.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

When the Lord is your confidence you will never find yourself at all deceived by the ways and speech of men and women, though they be very brilliant, if they speak outside of the Principle that demonstrates healing and goodness and life.

Emma Curtis Hopkins

And Thought leap'd out to wed with Thought Ere Thought could wed itself with Speech.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

The language of birds is very ancient, and, like other ancient modes of speech, very elliptical: little is said, but much is meant and understood.

Our normal tendency is to feel dissatisfied and to criticize our body, speech, and mind - My body is out of shape; my voice is unpleasant; my mind is confused. - We are so caught up in this pointless, neurotic habit of criticism that we disparage others as well as ourselves. This is extremely damaging.

He's no politician. He's a businessman. He knows how to talk. He can give an hour speech without notes... He's blunt.

With our financial house on fire, Obama makes clear both in in his speech and his budget that the essence of his presidency will be the transformation of health care, education and energy.

Charles Krauthammer

The modes of speech are scarcely more variable than the modes of silence.

I think the Negro people should feel secure enough by now to face a reasonable ridicule without terror. I am unalterably opposed to all efforts to put down free speech, whatever the excuse.

A film in which the speech and sound effects are perfectly synchronized and coincide with their visual image on the screen is absolutely contrary to the aims of cinema. It is a degenerate and misguided attempt to destroy the real use of the film and cannot be accepted as coming within the true boundaries of the cinema.

Short of a small range of physical acts-a fight, murder, lovemaking-dialogue is the most vigorous and visible inter-action of which characters in a novel are capable. Speech is what characters do to each other.

Elizabeth Bowen

How can I teach your children gentleness and mercy to the weak, and reverence for life, which in its nakedness and excess, is still a gleam of God's omnipotence, when by your laws, your actions and your speech, you contradict the very things I teach?

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

In holy music's golden speech Remotest notes to notes respond: Each octave is a world; yet each Vibrates to worlds beyond its own.

Aubrey Thomas de Vere

Of Obama's speech on terrorism:

I'm going to have noise-cancellation headphones ready for when an agent of Obama or any Democrat speaks again... The idiocy in this nation...

In the movement of the proteron te phusei may be found the heart of thought, that which remains veiled in what thought says and which speaking obeys as some secret command. But already, when it speaks, thought no longer speaks what moves it. It no longer retains that emotion even as a fault of speech, as a dark night out of which it would expect to burst forth. Thought excludes the heart that moves it. That which makes thought live is spoiled, set outside of it. But it does not know this.

The endless cycle of idea and action, / Endless invention, endless experiment, / Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness; / Knowledge of speech, but not of silence; / Knowledge of words, and ignorance of The Word.

suppose Odin to have been the inventor of Letters, as well as "magic," among that people! It is the greatest invention man has ever made! this of marking down the unseen thought that is in him by written characters. It is a kind of second speech, almost as miraculous as the first.

Will was making a speech, something about having been young and careless once, the sort of thing old-timers said when they issued a deathblow, as if they thought their sanctimonious ramblings disguised as empathy would be welcomed, but Evie was only half listening.

Trust the man who hesitates in his speech and is quick and steady in action, but beware of long arguments and long beards.

George Santayana

Even the Quran, which Sufis respect as the direct speech of God, lacks the capacity to shed light upon God's essence. As one Sufi master has argued, why spend time reading a love letter (by which he means the Quran) in the presence of the Beloved who wrote it?

From the beginning of the year to the end, day and night, morning and evening, in action and repose, in speech and in silence, the warrior must keep death constantly before him and have ever in mind that the one death [which he has to give] should not be suffered in vain. In other words [he must have perfect control over his own death] just as if he were holding an intemperate steed in rein. Only he who truly keeps death in mind this way can understand what is meant by [Yamaga Soko's maxim of] "preparedness."

In the spiritual body moreover, man appears such as he is with respect to love and faith, for everyone in the spiritual world is the effigy of his own love, not only as to the face and the body, but also as to the speech and the actions.

Emanuel Swedenborg