The poetry of speech. [ Byron ]

Continued eloquence wearies. [ Pascal ]

Her tears her only eloquence. [ Rogers ]

Dog (i.e. snarling) eloquence. [ Appius ]

True eloquence scorns eloquence. [ Pascal ]

Eloquence is vehement simplicity. [ Burleigh or Cecil ]

Eloquence is the poetry of prose. [ Bryant ]

Poetry is the eloquence of verse. [ Bryant ]

Love and business teach eloquence. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

The glorious burst of winged words! [ Tupper ]

Eloquence is the language of Nature. [ Colton ]

Silence is more eloquent than words. [ Carlyle ]

Earnestness is the salt of eloquence. [ Victor Hugo ]

Every word he speaks is a syren's note
To draw the careless hearer. [ Beaumont ]

Rhetoric is the quackery of eloquence. [ Colton ]

O! as a bee upon the flower, I hang
Upon the honey of thy eloquent tongue. [ Bulwer ]

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

Brevity is a great praise of eloquence. [ Cicero ]

Here rills of oily eloquence in soft
Meanders lubricate the course they take. [ Cowper ]

No words suffice the secret soul to show,
For truth denies all eloquence to woe. [ Byron ]

O let my books be then the eloquence
And dumb presagers of my speaking breast. [ Browning ]

It is the heart which inspires eloquence. [ Quinct ]

Silence that spoke, and eloquence of eyes. [ Homer ]

In an easy matter any man may be eloquent. [ Ovid ]

Every tongue that speaks
But Romeo's name speaks heavenly eloquence. [ William Shakespeare ]

Eloquence the soul, song charms the senses. [ Milton ]

Words sweetly placed and modestly directed. [ William Shakespeare ]

Rapt with zeal, pathetic, bold, and strong,
Roll'd the full tide of eloquence along. [ Falconer ]

Silence that wins, where eloquence is vain. [ William Hayley ]

Bright-eyed fancy, hovering over.
Scatters from her pictured urn.
Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn. [ Gray ]

Wisdom and eloquence are not always united. [ Victor Hugo ]

Philosophy may be feigned, eloquence cannot. [ Quinct ]

To him who in the love of nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. [ Bryant ]

Your Words are like the notes of dying swans,
Too sweet to last. [ Dryden ]

Silence is the consummate eloquence of sorrow. [ W. Winter ]

When he spoke, what tender words he used!
So softly, that like flakes of feathered snow.
They melted as they fell. [ Dryden ]

The charm of eloquence - the skill
To wake each secret string,
And from the bosom's chords at will
Life's mournful music bring;
The overmastering strength of mind, which sways
The haughty and the free,
Whose might earth's mightiest ones obey
This charm was given to thee. [ Mrs. Embury ]

Her words were like a stream of honey fleeting.
That which doth softly trickle from the hive,
Able to melt the hearer's heart unweeting,
And eke to make the dead again alive. [ Spenser ]

'Tis good nature only wins the heart;
It moulds the body to an easy grace
And brightens every feature of the face;
It smoothes the unpolish'd tongue with eloquence
And adds persuasion to the finest sense. [ Stillingfleet ]

Power above powers!
O heavenly eloquence!
That with the strong rein of commanding words,
Dost manage, guide, and master the eminence
Of men's affections, more than all their swords! [ Daniel ]

Say that she rail; why then I'll tell her plain.
She sings as sweetly as a nightingale;
Say that she frown; I'll say she looks as clear
As morning roses, newly washed with dew;
Say she be mute and will not speak a word,
Then I'll commend her volubility
And say she uttereth piercing eloquence. [ William Shakespeare ]

His eloquence is classic in its style,
Not brilliant with explosive coruscations
Of heterogeneous thoughts, at random caught.
And scattered like a shower of shooting stars,
That end in darkness: no; - his noble mind
Is clear, and full, and stately, and serene.
His earnest and undazzled eye he keeps
Fixed on the sun of Truth, and breathes his words
As easily as eagles cleave the air,
And never pauses till the height is won;
And all who listen follow where he leads. [ Mrs. Hale ]

Eloquence is in the assembly, not in the speaker. [ Wm. Pitt ]

Eloquence shows the power and possibility of man. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Manner, as much as matter, constitutes eloquence. [ Francois Delsarte ]

His words seem'd oracles
That pierced their bosoms; and each man would turn
And gaze in wonder on his neighbour's face,
That with the like dumb wonder answer'd him.
You could have heard
The beating of your pulses while he spoke. [ George Croly ]

Those who would make us feel must feel themselves. [ Churchill ]

Eloquence is to the sublime as a whole to its part. [ La Bruyère ]

Eloquence is a pictorial representation of thought. [ Pascal ]

Whenever he speaks, Heaven, how the listening throng
Dwell on the melting music of his tongue!
His arguments are emblems of his mien,
Mild but not faint, and forcing, though serene:
And when the power of eloquence he'd try,
Here lightning strikes you, there soft breezes sigh. [ Garth ]

Eloquence must be grounded on the plainest narrative. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

The spell is thine that reaches
The heart, and makes the wisest head its sport;
And there's one rare, strange virtue in thy speeches,
The secret of their mastery - they are short. [ Halleck ]

And when she spake, Sweete words,
like dropping honey, she did shed;
And 'twixt the perles and rubies softly brake
A silver sound, that heavenly musicke seem'd to make. [ Spenser ]

Fine eyes are to the face what eloquence is to speech.

There is no eloquence which does not agitate the soul. [ Landor ]

Great eloquence we cannot get, except from human genius. [ Thomas Starr King ]

Eloquence is to the sublime what the whole is to its part. [ La Bruyere ]

There's a charm in delivery, a magical art,
That thrills like a kiss from the lip to the heart;
It is the glance - the expression - the well-chosen word -
By whose magic the depths of the spirit are stirred.
The lip's soft persuasion - its musical tone:
Oh! such were the charms of that eloquent one! [ Mrs. Welby ]

False eloquence is exaggeration, true eloquence is emphasis. [ W. R. Alger ]

He has oratory who ravishes his hearers while he forgets himself. [ Lavater ]

To many a torrent flow of speech and their own eloquence is fatal. [ Juv ]

Eloquence is the appropriate organ of the highest personal energy. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

An innocent man needs no eloquence; his innocence is instead of it. [ Ben Jonson ]

It is but poor eloquence which only shows that the orator can talk. [ Sir Joshua Reynolds ]

Silence, when nothing need be said, is the eloquence of discretion. [ Bovee ]

There was speech in their dumbness, language in their very gesture. [ William Shakespeare ]

That besotting intoxication which verbal magic brings upon the mind. [ South ]

What manly eloquence could produce such an effect as woman's silence? [ Michelet ]

But for your words, they rob the Hybla bees, and leave them honeyless. [ William Shakespeare ]

The art of clothing the thought in apt, significant and sounding words. [ Dryden ]

True eloquence consists in saying all that is proper, and nothing more. [ La Roche ]

Talking and eloquence are not the same; and to speak well are two things. [ Ben Jonson ]

Eloquence is the language of nature, and cannot be learned in the schools. [ Colton ]

As the grace of man is in the mind, so the beauty of the mind is eloquence. [ Cicero ]

Beautiful eyes in the face of a handsome woman are like eloquence to speech. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

Kindness has converted more sinners than either zeal, eloquence, or learning. [ F. W. Faber ]

Pour the full tide of eloquence along, serenely pure, and yet divinely strong. [ Pope ]

Eloquence flourished most in Rome when its affairs were in the worst condition. [ Montaigne ]

Men are more eloquent than women made; but women are more powerful to persuade. [ Thomas Randolph ]

There is no talent so pernicious as eloquence to those who have it under command. [ Addison ]

The inexhaustible talk that was the flow of a golden sea of eloquence and wisdom. [ William Winter ]

Honesty is one part of eloquence. We persuade others by being in earnest ourselves. [ Hazlitt ]

Small-pot-soon-hot style of eloquence is what our county conventions often exhibit. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Action is eloquence, and the eyes of the ignorant are more learned than their ears. [ William Shakespeare ]

Verily, O man, with truth for thy theme, eloquence shall throne thee with archangels. [ Tupper ]

Were we as eloquent as angels, we should please some more by listening than by talking. [ Colton ]

Eloquence dwells quite as much in the hearts of the hearers as on the lips of the orator. [ Lamartine ]

Such was the force of his eloquence, to make the hearers more concerned than he that spake. [ Denham ]

True eloquence consists in saying all that is necessary, and nothing but what is necessary. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

O Eloquence! thou violated fair, how thou art wooed and won to either bed of right or wrong! [ Havard ]

The hearts of men are their books, events are their tutors, great actions are their eloquence. [ Macaulay ]

An orator of past times declared that his calling was to make small things appear to be grand. [ Montaigne ]

The acclaim of a happy people is the only eloquence which ought to speak in the behalf of kings.

People call eloquence the facility that some have in speaking alone and for a great length of time. [ Pascal ]

Eloquence is the child of knowledge. When the mind is full, like a wholesome river, it is also clear. [ Benjamin Disraeli ]

Eloquence is like flame: it requires matter to feed on, motion to excite it, and it brightens as it burns. [ Tac ]

Copiousness of words is always false eloquence, though it will ever impose on some sort of understandings. [ Montagu ]

Eloquence is the power to translate a truth into language perfectly intelligible to the person to whom you speak. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

It is of eloquence as of a flame; it requires matter to feed it, motion to excite it, and it brightens as it burns. [ Tacitus ]

His tongue dropped manna, and could make the worse appear the better reason, to perplex and dash maturest counsels. [ Milton ]

Profane eloquence is transferred from the bar, where it formerly reigned, to the pulpit, where it never ought to come. [ Bruyere ]

There are men whose tongues are more eloquent than those of women, but no man possesses the eloquence of a woman's eye. [ C. Weber ]

There is as much eloquence in the tone of the voice, in the eyes, and in the air of a speaker as in his choice of words. [ Rochefoucauld ]

Discretion is more necessary to women than eloquence, because they have less trouble to speak well than to speak little. [ Father Du Bosc ]

There are men the eloquence of whose tongues surpasses that of women, but no man possesses the eloquence of women's eyes. [ Weber ]

The nature of our constitution makes eloquence more useful and more necessary in this country than in any other in Europe. [ Chesterfield ]

Talking and eloquence are not the same: to speak and to speak well are two things. A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks. [ Ben Jonson ]

There are attractions in modest diffidence above the force of words. A silent address is the genuine eloquence of sincerity. [ Goldsmith ]

There should be in eloquence that which is pleasing and that which is real; but that which is pleasing should itself be real. [ Pascal ]

The preacher aims by his eloquence at an archbishopric, the apostle makes converts; he deserves to get what the other aims at. [ La Bruyère ]

He is an eloquent man who can speak of low things acutely, and of great things with dignity, and of moderate things with temper. [ Cicero ]

The manner of your speaking is full as important as the natter, as more people have ears to be tickled than understandings to judge. [ Chesterfield ]

Eloquence may be found in conversation and all kinds of writings; it is rarely where we seek it, and sometimes where it is least expected. [ La Bruyere ]

Eloquence is the painting of thought; and thus, those who, after having painted it, still add to it, make a picture instead of a portrait. [ Pascal ]

No man can make a speech alone. It is the great human power that strikes up from a thousand minds that acts upon him, and makes the speech. [ James A. Garfield ]

By a certain fate, great acts, and great eloquence have most commonly gone hand in hand, equalling and honoring each other in the same ages. [ Milton ]

The art of declamation has been sinking in value from the moment that speakers were foolish enough to publish, and hearers wise enough to read. [ Colton ]

Many are ambitious of saying grand things, that is, of being grandiloquent. Eloquence is speaking out - a quality few esteem, and fewer aim at. [ Hare ]

Rhetoric is the creature of art, which he who feels least will most excel in; it is the quackery of eloquence, and deals in nostrums, not in cures. [ Colton ]

There is something irresistibly pleasing in the conversation of a fine woman; even though her tongue be silent, the eloquence of her eyes teach wisdom. [ Goldsmith ]

God gave you that gifted tongue of yours, and set it between your teeth, to make known your true meaning to us, not to be rattled like a muffinman's bell. [ Carlyle ]

No man ever did or ever will become truly eloquent without being a constant reader of the Bible, and an admirer of the purity and sublimity of its language. [ Fisher Ames ]

Power above powers! O heavenly eloquence! that, with the strong reign of commanding words, dost manage, guide and master the high eminence of men's affections! [ Daniel ]

Go on, spare no invectives, but open the spout of your eloquence, and see with what a calm, connubial resignation I will both hear and bow to the chastisement. [ Colley Cibber ]

Eloquence is relative. One can no more pronounce on the eloquence of any composition than the wholesomeness of a medicine, without knowing for whom it is intended. [ Whately ]

Eloquence is an engine invented to manage and wield at will the fierce democracy, and, like medicine to the sick, is only employed in the paroxysms of a disordered state. [ Montaigne ]

The art of saying well what one thinks is different from the faculty of thinking. The latter may be very deep and lofty and far-reaching, while the former is altogether wanting. [ Joubert ]

Great is the power of Eloquence; but never is it so great as when it pleads along with nature, and the culprit is a child strayed from his duty, and returned to it again with tears. [ Sterne ]

In oratory, affectation must be avoided; it being better for a man by a native and clear eloquence to express himself than by those words which may smell either of the lamp or inkhorn. [ Lord Herbert ]

A cold-blooded learned man might, for anything I know, compose in his closet an eloquent book; but in public discourse, arising out of sudden occasions, he could by no possibility be eloquent. [ Erskine ]

Eloquence, at its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection, but addresses itself entirely to the fancy or the affections, captivates the willing hearers, and subdues their understanding. [ Hume ]

The pleasure of eloquence is in greatest part owing often to the stimulus of the occasion which produces it - to the magic of sympathy, which exalts the feeling of each by radiating on him the feeling of all. [ Emerson ]

In public affairs, we may usually infer the weakness of the cause by the excessive price that ministers have freely paid to those whose eloquence, or whose sophistry, has enabled them to make that weakness triumph. [ Colton ]

Logic is the art of convincing us of some truth; and eloquence a gift of the mind, which makes us master of the heart and spirit of others; which enables us to inspire them with, or persuade them of whatever we please. [ Bruyere ]

Enthusiasm begets enthusiasm, eloquence produces conviction for the moment; but it is only by truth to Nature and the everlasting institutions of mankind that those abiding influences are won that enlarge from generation to generation. [ Lowell ]

Fine declamation does not consist in flowery periods, delicate allusions of musical cadences, but in a plain, open, loose style, where the periods are long and obvious, where the same thought is often exhibited in several points of view. [ Goldsmith ]

The Bible contains more true sublimity, more exquisite beauty, more pure morality, more important history, and finer strains of poetry and eloquence than can be collected from all other books, in whatever age or language they have been written. [ Sir William Jones ]

I have often heard it said, and I believe it to be true, that even the most eloquent man living, and however deeply impressed with the subject, could scarcely find utterance if he were to be standing up alone, and speaking only against a dead wall. [ Erskine ]

Eloquence, when at its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection, but addresses itself entirely to the fancy or the affections, captivates the willing hearers, and subdues their understanding. Happily, this pitch it seldom attains. [ Hume ]

As the mind of Johnson was robust, but neither nimble nor graceful, so his style was void of all grace and ease, and, being the most unlike of all styles to the natural effusion of a cultivated mind, had the least pretension to the praise of eloquence. [ Sir J. Mackintosh ]

Eloquence, to produce her full effect, should start from the head of the orator, as Pallas from the brain of Jove, completely armed and equipped. Diffidence, therefore, which is so able a mentor to the writer, would prove a dangerous counsellor for the orator. [ Colton ]

Intellect alone, however exalted, without strong feelings - without even, irritable sensibility - would be only like an immense magazine of powder, if there were no such element as fire in the natural world. It is the heart which is the spring and fountain of all eloquence. [ Lord Erskine ]

This is that eloquence the ancients represented as lightning, bearing down every opposer; this the power which has turned whole assemblies into astonishment, admiration and awe that is described by the torrent, the flame, and every other instance of irresistible impetuosity. [ Goldsmith ]

The eye speaks with an eloquence and truthfulness surpassing speech. It is the window out of which the winged thoughts often fly unwittingly. It is the tiny magic mirror on whose crystal surface the moods of feeling fitfully play, like the sunlight and shadow on a still stream. [ Tuckerman ]

True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in speech. It cannot be brought from far. Labor and learning may toil for it, but they will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshaled in every way, but they cannot compass it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion. [ Webster ]

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. [ Bovee ]

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. [ Colton ]

By eloquence I understand those appeals to our moral perceptions that produce emotion as soon as they are uttered. This is the very enthusiasm that is the parent of poetry. Let the same man go to his closet and clothe in numbers conceptions full of the same fire and spirit, and they will be poetry. [ Bryant ]

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 ]

We may put too high a premium on speech from platform and pulpit; at the bar and in the legislative hall, and pay dear for the whistle of our endless harangues. England, and especially Germany, are less loquacious, and attend more to business. We let the eagle, and perhaps too often the peacock, scream. [ Bartol ]

How often in the halls of legislation does eloquence unmask corruption, expose intrigue, and overthrow tyranny! In the cause of mercy it is omnipotent. It is bold in the consciousness of its superiority, fearless and unyielding in the purity of its motives. All opposition it destroys; all power it defies. [ Henry Melville ]

Remember always in painting, as in eloquence, the greater your strength the quieter will be your manner and the fewer your words; and in painting, as in all the arts and acts of life, the secret of high success will be found, not in a fretful and various excellence, but in a quiet singleness of justly chosen aim. [ Ruskin ]

His eloquent tongue so well seconds his fertile invention that no one speaks better when suddenly called forth. His attention never languishes; his mind is always before his words; his memory has all its stock so turned into ready money that, without hesitation or delay, it supplies whatever the occasion may require. [ Erasmus ]

Discretion of speech is more than eloquence; and to speak agreeably to him with whom we deal, is more than to speak in good words or in good order. A good continued speech, without a good speech of interlocution, shows slowness; and a good reply, or second speech, without a good settled speech, showeth shallowness and weakness. [ Bacon ]

A just and reasonable modesty does not only recommend eloquence, but sets off every great talent which a man can be possessed of. It heightens all the virtues which it accompanies; like the shades of paintings, it raises and rounds every figure, and makes the colors more beautiful, though not so glowing as they would be without it. [ Addison ]

Eloquence is the language of nature, and cannot be learned in the schools; the passions are powerful pleaders, and their very silence, like that of Garrick, goes directly to the soul, but rhetoric is the creature of art, which he who feels least will most excel in; it is the quackery of eloquence, and deals in nostrums, not in cures. [ Colton ]

Method, we are aware, is an essential ingredient in every discourse designed for the instruction of mankind; but it ought never to force itself on the attention as an object - never appear to be an end instead of an instrument; or beget a suspicion of the sentiments being introduced for the sake of the method, not the method for the sentiments. [ Robert Hall ]

The clear conception, outrunning the deductions of logic, the high purpose, the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, informing every feature, and urging the whole man onward, right onward, to his object - this is eloquence, or rather it is something greater and higher than all eloquence - it is action, noble, sublime, godlike action. [ Webster ]

In eloquence, the great triumphs of the art are when the orator is lifted above himself; when consciously he makes himself the mere tongue of the occasion and the hour, and says what cannot but be said. Hence the term abandonment, to describe the self-surrender of the orator. Not his will, but the principle on which he is horsed, the great connection and crisis of events, thunder in the ear of the crowd. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

The receipt to make a speaker, and an applauded one too, is short and easy. Take commonsense quantum sufficit (in sufficient quantity); add a little application to the rules and orders of the House of Commons, throw obvious thoughts in a new light, and make up the whole with a large quantity of purity, correctness and elegancy of style. Take it for granted that by far the greatest part of mankind neither analyze nor search to the bottom; they are incapable of penetrating deeper than the surface. [ Chesterfield ]

Gentlemen, do you know what is the finest speech that I ever in my life heard or read? It is the address of Garibaldi to his Roman soldiers, when he told them: Soldiers, what I have to offer you is fatigue, danger, struggle and death; the chill of the cold night in the free air, and heat under the burning sun; no lodgings, no munitions, no provisions, but forced marches, dangerous watchposts and the continual struggle with the bayonet against batteries; - those who love freedom and their country may follow me. That is the most glorious speech I ever heard in my life. [ Kossuth ]