Solicitude is the audience-chamber of God. [ Walter Savage Landor ]

The best way to make the audience laugh is by first laughing yourself. [ Goldsmith ]

Comedies acted on life's stage, behind the scenes, are much more spirited than those acted in sight of the audience. [ De Finod ]

The old prose writers wrote as if they were speaking to an audience; while, among us, prose is invariably written for the eye alone. [ Niebuhr ]

In an audience of rough people a generous sentiment always brings down the house. In the tumult of war both sides applaud an heroic deed. [ T. W. Higginson ]

Oratory, like the drama, abhors lengthiness; like the drama, it must keep doing. It avoids, as frigid, prolonged metaphysical soliloquy. Beauties themselves, if they delay or distract the effect which should be produced on the audience, become blemishes. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

Extemporaneous and oral harangues will always have this advantage over those that are read from a manuscript: every burst of eloquence or spark of genius they may contain, however studied they may have been beforehand, will appear to the audience to be the effect of the sudden inspiration of talent. [ Colton ]

Under the influence of music we are all deluded in some way; we imagine that the performers must dwell in the regions to which they lift their hearers; we are reluctant to admit that a man may blow the most soul-animating strains from his trumpet and yet be a coward; or melt an audience to tears with his violin, and yet be a heartless profligate. [ H. W. Hillard ]

I never had the courage to talk across a long, narrow room I should be at the end of the room facing all the audience. If I attempt to talk across a room I find myself turning this way and that, and thus at alternate periods I have part of the audience behind me. You ought never to have any part of the audience behind you; you never can tell what they are going to do. [ Mark Twain, from his speech Courage ]