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Oratory Quotes

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Oratory Quotes

“In the campaign of 1876, Robert G. Ingersoll came to Madison to speak. I had heard of him for years; when I was a boy on the farm a relative of ours had testified in a case in which Ingersoll had appeared as an attorney and he had told the glowing stories of the plea that Ingersoll had made. Then, in the spring of 1876, Ingersoll delivered the Memorial Day address at Indianapolis. It was widely published shortly after it was delivered and it startled and enthralled the whole country. I remember that it was printed on a poster as large as a door and hung in the post-office at Madison. I can scarcely convey now, or even understand, the emotional effect the reading of it produced upon me. Oblivious of my surroundings, I read it with tears streaming down my face. It began, I remember: "The past rises before me like a dream. Again we are in the great struggle for national life.We hear the sounds of preparation--the music of boisterous drums--the silver voices of heroic bugles. We see the pale cheeks of women and the flushed faces of men; and in those assemblages we see all the dead whose dust we have covered with flowers..." I was fairly entranced. he pictured the recruiting of the troops, the husbands and fathers with their families on the last evening, the lover under the trees and the stars; then the beat of drums, the waving flags, the marching away; the wife at the turn of the lane holds her baby aloft in her arms--a wave of the hand and he has gone; then you see him again in the heat of the charge. It was wonderful how it seized upon my youthful imagination. When he came to Madison I crowded myself into the assembly chamber to hear him: I would not have missed it for every worldly thing I possessed. And he did not disappoint me. A large handsome man of perfect build, with a face as round as a child's and a compelling smile--all the arts of the old-time oratory were his in high degree. He was witty, he was droll, he was eloquent: he was as full of sentiment as an old violin. Often, while speaking, he would pause, break into a smile, and the audience, in anticipation of what was to come, would follow him in irresistible peals of laughter. I cannot remember much that he said, but the impression he made upon me was indelible. After that I got Ingersoll's books and never afterward lost an opportunity to hear him speak. He was the greatest orater, I think, that I have ever heard; and the greatest of his lectures, I have always thought, was the one on Shakespeare. Ingersoll had a tremendous influence upon me, as indeed he had upon many young men of that time. It was not that he changed my beliefs, but that he liberated my mind. Freedom was what he preached: he wanted the shackles off everywhere. He wanted men to think boldly about all things: he demanded intellectual and moral courage. He wanted men to follow wherever truth might lead them. He was a rare, bold, heroic figure.”

TruthReadingImaginationFreedomPerfectEmotionCourageInfluenceTearsHonorSpeechLaughterRespectPraiseLiberationAdmirationHeroicThinkHandsomeMemorialShakespeareEloquentOratoryGreatestWilliam ShakespeareRareSentimentIngersollRobert G IngersollRobert IngersollRobert Green Ingersoll
Book:La Follette's Autobiography: A Personal Narrative of Political Experiences
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“The name of Robert G. Ingersoll is in the pantheon of the world. More than any other man who ever lived he destroyed religious superstition. He was the Shakespeare of oratory -- the greatest that the world has ever known. Ingersoll lived and died far in advance of his time. He wrought nobly for the transformation of this world into a habitable globe; and long after the last echo of destruction has been silenced, his name will be loved and honored, and his fame will shine resplendent, for his immortality is fixed and glorious. {Debbs had this much respect for Ingersoll, despite their radically different political views. This statement was made at Ingersoll's funeral}”

LoveInspirationalGreatnessHonorRespectPraiseAdmirationSuperstitionShakespeareLegendaryOratoryWilliam ShakespearePantheonIngersollRobert G IngersollRobert IngersollRobert Green IngersollReligious Superstition
Author:Eugene Victor Debs
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“I heard Mr. Ingersoll many years ago in Chicago. The hall seated 5,000 people; every inch of standing-room was also occupied; aisles and platform crowded to overflowing. He held that vast audience for three hours so completely entranced that when he left the platform no one moved, until suddenly, with loud cheers and applause, they recalled him. He returned smiling and said: 'I'm glad you called me back, as I have something more to say. Can you stand another half-hour?' 'Yes: an hour, two hours, all night,' was shouted from various parts of the house; and he talked on until midnight, with unabated vigor, to the delight of his audience. This was the greatest triumph of oratory I had ever witnessed. It was the first time he delivered his matchless speech, 'The Liberty of Man, Woman, and Child'. I have heard the greatest orators of this century in England and America; O'Connell in his palmiest days, on the Home Rule question; Gladstone and John Bright in the House of Commons; Spurgeon, James and Stopford Brooke, in their respective pulpits; our own Wendell Phillips, Henry Ward Beecher, and Webster and Clay, on great occasions; the stirring eloquence of our anti-slavery orators, both in Congress and on the platform, but none of them ever equalled Robert Ingersoll in his highest flights. {Stanton's comments at the great Robert Ingersoll's funeral}”

AmericaRightsHonorSpeechRespectEnglandPraiseSmileDelightEqualityTriumphAdmirationChicagoOratoryIngersollRobert G IngersollRobert IngersollRobert Green IngersollLiberty Of Man Woman And ChildMatchless
Author:Elizabeth Cady Stanton
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“In my opinion, it was chiefly owing to their deep contemplation in their silent retreats in the days of youth that the old Indian orators acquired the habit of carefully arranging their thoughts. They listened to the warbling of birds and noted the grandeur and the beauties of the forest. The majestic clouds—which appear like mountains of granite floating in the air—the golden tints of a summer evening sky, and the changes of nature, possessed a mysterious significance. All of this combined to furnish ample matter for reflection to the contemplating youth.”

WisdomNatureSilenceEloquenceNative American WisdomOratory
Author:Francis Assikinack (Blackbird)
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“He was the vilest speaker I ever heard: vulgar, ignorant, not seeking to teach his hearers, but rather to stir in men as vulgar as himself the irrational excesses to which such people are prone; a whore among orators. Yet, when he denounced the men who were putting the City in fear, there was a kind of flame in him. He was a man so ignoble that if he remembered anything of the nature of excellence, excellence, I should think it was only so that he could taunt someone with the lack of it. He lived in spite and hate. And now he only invoked the good in the name of hatred; yet for a moment nobility glanced back at him, and made him brave. It was like seeing some mangy cur, who for years has lived on scraps and filth about the market, raising his hackles at a pack of wolves.”

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Book:The Last of the Wine
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“At Gabriel College there was a very holy object on the high altar of the Oratory, covered with a black velvet cloth... At the height of the invocation the Intercessor lifted the cloth to reveal in the dimness a glass dome inside which there was something too distant to see, until he pulled a string attached to a shutter above, letting a ray of sunlight through to strike the dome exactly. Then it became clear: a little thing like a weathervane, with four sails black on one side and white on the other, began to whirl around as the light struck it. It illustrated a moral lesson, the Intercessor explained, for the black of ignorance fled from the light, whereas the wisdom of white rushed to embrace it. {Alluding to William Crookes's radiometer.}”

WisdomScienceIgnoranceHolyOratoryAltarMoral LessonCrookesWilliam Crookes
Book:Northern Lights: Oxford
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“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}”

LoveFriendshipMusicWifeHonorSpeechRespectPerfectionPraiseWordsMemorySupremeMemorableAdmirationEloquenceMasterOratoryIngersollRobert G IngersollRobert IngersollRobert Green IngersollEnchantBob IngersollThe Grand Banquet
Book:Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings
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“None but those who have loved can be supposed to understand the oratory of the eye, the mute eloquence of a look, or the conversational powers of the face. Love's sweetest meanings are unspoken; the full heart knows no rhetoric of words, and resorts to the pantomime of sighs and glances.”

KnowsLoveLooksHeartEyeFacesRhetoricGlancesSighResortsSweetestEloquenceUnspokenMuteOratoryPantomimeFull Hearts
Book:Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
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“Literature is the noblest of all the arts. Music dies on the air, or at best exists only as a memory; oratory ceases with the effort; the painter's colors fade and the canvas rots; the marble is dragged from its pedestal and is broken into fragments.”

ArtDiesLiteratureMemoriesEffortAirColorBrokenCeasePainterFadesCanvasFragmentsMarblePedestalOratoryArt Music
Book:A Thousand & One Epigrams: Selected from the Writings of Elbert Hubbard
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“It is a truism, of course, that in "democratic" states the populace must be encouraged to imagine that it makes important decisions by voting, and must therefore be controlled by suitable propaganda, which implants ideas to which the voters respond as automatically as trained animals respond to words of command in a circus, thus leaving to the masses only a factitious choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledee on the basis of their preference for a certain kind of oratory, a hair-style, or a particular facial expression.”

KindImportantIdeasStatesCertainChoicesCoursesDecisionAnimalImagineStyleParticularExpressionHairMassBasesDemocraticLeavingCommandPropagandaVotingControlledVotersImagine ThatPreferenceCircusSuitableFacialOratoryBe EncouragedImportant DecisionsImplantsTruismFacial Expression
Author:Revilo P. Oliver
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“The purpose of a work of fiction is to appeal to the lingering after-effects in the reader's mind as differing from, say, the purpose of oratory or philosophy which respectively leave people in a fighting or thoughtful mood.”

PeopleMindPhilosophyPurposeFightingFictionEffectsReaderMoodAppealsThoughtfulLingeringOratory
Book:The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald: Novels, Short Stories, Poetry, Articles, Letters, Plays & Screenplays: From the author of The Great Gatsby, The Side of Paradise, Tender Is the Night, The Beautiful and Damned, The Love of the Last Tycoon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and many other notable works
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“The language of the heart--the language which "comes from the heart" and "goes to the heart"--is always simple, always graceful, and always full of power, but no art of rhetoric can teach it. It is at once the easiest and most difficult language--difficult, since it needs a heart to speak it; easy, because its periods though rounded and full of harmony, are still unstudied.”

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Author:Christian Nestell Bovee
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“It is the first rule in oratory that a man must appear such as he would persuade others to be: and that can be accomplished only by the force of his life.”

MenFirstsForceAccomplishedOratory
Book:The Works of Jonathan Swift: Containing Additional Letters, Tracts, and Poems Not Hitherto Published; with Notes, and a Life of the Author
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“Neither can we admit that definition of genius that some would propose--"a power to accomplish all that we undertake;" for we might multiply examples to prove that this definition of genius contains more than the thing defined. Cicero failed in poetry, Pope in painting, Addison in oratory; yet it would be harsh to deny genius to these men.”

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Book:Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
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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.”

IfsMenWellsHeartRememberChanceLowsAngelArgumentRaisesExecutionHittingPointingEloquenceOratory
Book:Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
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“The poet is the nearest borderer upon the orator.”

PoetOratorsOratory
Book:Underwoods. Timber; or, Discoveries made upon men and matter. Horace, Of the art of poetry [with an English translation by Jonson]. The English grammar. Leges convivales, rules for the Tavern Academy. The case is altered
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“[Rhyme is] but the invention of a barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame Meter; ... Not without cause therefore some both Italian and Spanish poets of prime note have rejected rhyme, ... as have also long since our best English tragedies, as... trivial and of no true musical delight; which [truly] consists only in apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another, not in the jingling sound of like endings, a fault avoided by the learned ancients both in poetry and all good oratory.”

LongMatterAgeCausesSoundNumbersPoetFitTragedyFaultsNotesMusicalDelightInventionPrimeItalianQuantityVersesRejectedRhymeWretchedAvoidedMeterLameSyllablesOratory
Author:John Milton
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“I wonder what especial sanctity attaches itself to fifteen minutes. It is always the maximum and the minimum of time which will enable us to acquire languages, etiquette, personality, oratory ... One gathers that twelve minutes a day would be hopelessly inadequate, and twenty minutes a wasteful and ridiculous excess.”

Would BeLanguageWonderLearningMinutesPersonalityTwentiesRidiculousAcquireExcessConventionsTwelveFifteenMinimumMaximumEtiquetteInadequateSanctityOratory
Author:Agnes Repplier
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