Better pointed bullets than pointed speeches. [ Bismarck ]

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 ]

The smooth speeches of the wicked are full of treachery. [ Phaedrus ]

My name and memory I leave to men's charitable speeches, to foreign nations, and to the next age. [ Bacon ]

And there's one rare strange virtue in their speeches, The secret of their mastery - they are short. [ Halleck ]

Oh, never will I trust to speeches penned! * * * taffeta phrases, silken terms precise, three-piled hyperboles. [ William Shakespeare ]

Fine speeches are the instruments of fools or knaves, who use them when they want good sense; but honesty needs no disguise or ornament. [ Otway ]

A sentence well couched takes both the sense and the understanding. I love not those cart-rope speeches that are longer than the memory of man can fathom. [ Feltham ]

Every man should study conciseness in speaking; it is a sign of ignorance not to know that long speeches, though they may please the speaker, are the torture of the hearer. [ Feltham ]

Good words do more than hard speeches; as the sunbeams, without any noise, will make the traveller cast off his cloak, which all the blustering winds could not do, but only make him bind it closer to him. [ Leighton ]

The flowery style is not unsuitable to public speeches or addresses, which amount only to compliment. The lighter beauties are in their place when there is nothing more solid to say: but the flowery style ought to be banished from a pleading, a sermon, or a didactic work. [ Voltaire ]