"Public speaker" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it my hearty commendation. It should take its place upon the library shelves of every public speaker; be read carefully, consulted frequently, and held as worthy of faithful obedience. For lack of the useful hints that here abound, many men murder the truth by their method of presenting it."—S. PARKES CADMAN, D.D., ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... thought is of no value until it registers itself and takes a room in the mind. This is why we are told on every hand, that a few books well read are worth more than many books poorly read. The secret of Abraham Lincoln's power as a public speaker lay in his clear reasoning, simple statement, and apt illustration. This secret was secured by Lincoln through his habit of mastering whatever he heard in conversation or reading. "When a mere child," says Lincoln, "I used to get irritated when anybody talked to me in ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... arranged and most of them were occupied. At the further end of the room Pony Rowell stood on a platform or on a box or some elevation, and his pale, earnest face was lighted up with the enthusiasm of the public speaker. He was saying: "On the purity of the ballot, gentlemen, depends the very life of the republic. That every man should be permitted, without interference or intimidation, to cast his vote, and that every vote so cast should be honestly counted ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... passage, and had not slept for two or three nights. His manner in speaking is at once incomparably dignified and graceful. Gestures more admirable and effective, and a play of countenance more expressive and magnetic, we remember in no other public speaker. He stands quite erect, and does not bend forward like some orators, to give emphasis to a sentence. His posture and appearance in repose are imposing, not only from their essential grace and dignity, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... grow by what they fed on. His power of persuasion, which had always been marked, was developed to an extraordinary degree, now that he became engaged in congenial questions and subjects. Little by little he rose to prominence at the Bar, and became the most effective public speaker in the West. Not that he possessed any of the graces of the orator; but his logic was invincible, and his clearness and force of statement impressed upon his hearers the convictions of his honest mind, while his broad ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... was eminently social and was blessed with unusual conversational powers, and gave to others and won from them to himself strong personal friendships. As a public speaker he was earnest, animated and eloquent, and was gladly welcomed in the pulpit and in the meetings of Associations and Conferences. His leading characteristic was that of an organizer. He was perpetually devising plans for active work and was diligent and untiring in ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 39, No. 03, March, 1885 • Various
... he did it with one of the bursts which have made his fame as a public speaker. She sat, either quite thunderstruck, or quite fascinated—I don't know which—without even making an effort to put his arms back where his arms ought to have been. As for me, my sense of propriety was completely bewildered. I was so painfully uncertain whether it was my first duty to close ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... have to excuse me, Mrs. Holt. I'm a rather busy man, and nothing of a public speaker, and it is rarely I get off in ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... appeared on the platform he took off his hat, and leaned with both hands on the railing to give a look around. The attitude suggested a public speaker. His big gray head was conspicuous in the light of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... well known that the spectators pronounced judgment upon the efforts of the gladiators and combatants of the arena by silently turning their thumbs up or down, decreeing death in the one case and life in the other. Hissing, however, even at this time, was the usual method of condemning the public speaker of distasteful opinions. In one of Cicero's letters there is record of the orator Hortensius, "who attained old age without once incurring the disgrace of being hissed." The prologues of Ben Jonson and Beaumont and Fletcher frequently deprecate ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... world at the present day. He was generous, open-hearted, and if he had a temper, a trifle explosive at times, nobody for whom he cared ever really suffered from it, and occasionally it did him good service. The chief obituary notice of him declared with truth that he was the best public speaker Bedford ever had, and the committee of the well-known public library resolved unanimously "That this institution records with regret the death of Mr. W. White, formerly and for many years an active and most valuable member ...
— The Early Life of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... great muscular power, and amazing command of language and of himself, astonished and delighted me. I could not but exclaim, "There speaks a black Demosthenes!" This man, strange to say, is the pastor of a Congregational church of white people in the State of New York. As a public speaker he seemed superior to Frederick Douglass. It was pleasing at those anti-slavery meetings to see how completely intermingled were ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... two more glasses quickly, one after the other; and every one looked at me with their faces very bright all of a sudden—and the room itself grown brighter—and to my astonishment I heard them calling upon me in English for a speech. Whereby, being no public speaker, I excused myself and walked out into the village street, which was bright as day with the moon well over the cliffs on the other side of the gorge, and (to my surprise) crowded with people so that I couldn't have believed the whole City of London held half the number, ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... a lawyer that Lincoln was famous. Nor as a public speaker would he compare with Douglas in eloquence or renown. As a member of Congress it is not probable that he would ever have taken a commanding rank, like Clay or Webster or Calhoun, or even like Seward. His great fame rests on his moral character, his identification with a great cause, his marvellous ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... public affairs, Atkinson was distinguished as a public speaker. At the general election, subsequent to the passing of the Reform Bill, he was invited to become a candidate in the liberal interest for the parliamentary representation of the Stirling burghs, in opposition to Lord Dalmeny, who was returned. Naturally of a sound constitution, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... minister, Susan was unprepared to find that the pleasing young woman in the pulpit on the first day of the conference, holding her audience spellbound with her oratory, was Anna Howard Shaw. Here was a warm personality, a crusader eager to right human wrongs, and above all a matchless public speaker. Anna too had heard much criticism of Susan and had formed a distorted opinion of her which was quickly dispelled as she watched her preside. They liked each other the moment ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... towards the opposite, but not very distant, extreme of Jacobinism. At these gatherings we may easily imagine that, with his native eloquence, his debating power, trained in the Tarbolton Club, and his ambition to shine as a public speaker, the voice of Burns would be the loudest and most vehement. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, these were words which must have found an echo in his inmost heart. But it was not only the abstract rights of man, but the concrete ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... As a public speaker the author admits, that how to get a grip on his hearers outweighed the grammar of language; that the ring of sincerity and truth in presenting a proposition appealed to him more than relation of pronoun or preposition; ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... and Bucktail, his name was regarded with much favour in 1825 as the successor of Rufus King in the United States Senate. Tracy was a man of marked ability. Though neither brilliant nor distinguished as a public speaker, he was a skilful advocate, easy and natural; with the help of a marvellous memory, and a calm, philosophic temperament, he ranked among the foremost lawyers of his day. Like James Tallmadge, he was inordinately ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... Rowland of New Bedford, much prized and trusted as a public speaker among Friends, and a model of taste and quiet beauty in costume, delighted the young girls at a Newport Yearly Meeting, a few years since, by boldly declaring that she thought God meant women to make the world beautiful, ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... else than as a matter of literary relaxation. The tellers of the Bible stories tell the stories and stop. "He builded him a city"—"he smote the Philistines"—"he took her to his mother's tent." You are not wearied to death by the details. Go into any audience addressed by a public speaker, and you will perceive that his hearers' interest depends on whether he is getting to the point. "Well, why doesn't he get to the point," is the common expression in public assemblages. The Bible "gets ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... of six weeks our illustrious victim made her first appearance as a public speaker. This was at Faneuil Hall, Boston. She was supported on that memorable occasion by a young and fascinating lady by the name of ANTHONY (SUSAN.) SUSIE prophesied then, it will be remembered, that the fair oratress would yet live to be President of the United States ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 25, September 17, 1870 • Various
... in all." And in his estimates of other men, I think,—though he was more charitable in his judgments than any man I have ever known,—he always had latent the feeling that men could do almost anything they really resolved to do. You could never persuade him that a public speaker could not learn to speak well. He did not pretend that all men could speak equally well, but he really thought that it was the duty of a man, who meant to speak in public, to train himself, in voice, in intonation, in emphasis, so as to speak simply, and without ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... and doubted him from the start. The fellow was almost foppish;—could anybody who wore such good clothes have also good motives and good principles? Abner disdained him too as a public speaker;—what could a man hope to accomplish by a few quiet colloquial remarks delivered in his ordinary voice? The man who expected to get attention should claim it by the strident shrillness of his tones, should be able to bend his two knees in eloquent unison, and ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... sounding brass? Is it so much to be a fiddle?" This thought was, "as it were, a maul on the head of the pride and vainglory" which he found "easily blown up at the applause and commendation of every unadvised christian." His experiences, like those of every public speaker, especially the most eloquent, were very varied, even in the course of the same sermon. Sometimes, he tells us, he would begin "with much clearness, evidence, and liberty of speech," but, before he had done, ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... Brown at the Peace Congress in Paris was most flattering. In a company, comprising a large portion of the elite of Europe, he admirably maintained his reputation as a public speaker. His brief address, upon that "war spirit of America which holds in bondage three million of his brethren," produced a profound sensation. At its conclusion the speaker was warmly greeted by Victor Hugo, the Abbe Duguerry, Emile de Girardin, ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... the cast-iron figure posed stiffly with outstretched arm in the attitude of a public speaker, Dan asked: "Is that ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... had left no mark on legislation. If he had retired from Congress at the end of his term his name would have existed only in the old Congressional directories, like that of a thousand others. As a public speaker he had said nothing that anybody could remember. He had passed through a Great War and left no mark on it. He had shared in a fierce debate upon the peace that followed the war but though you can recall small persons like McCumber and Kellogg and Moses and McCormick in ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... condemn the form, but the sense and spirit of the work is too subtle for their authority: too much has still been done to recede, too little to attain your end: you must therefore proceed. If you establish a censorship of the press, the tongue of the public speaker will still make itself heard, and you have only increased the mischief. The powers of thought do not rely, like the powers of physical strength, upon the number of their mechanical agents, nor can a host of authors be reckoned like the troops which compose an army; on the contrary, the authority ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... glorious chance to "holler," and I have never since heard any public speaker on the stump or at camp-meeting who could make more noise. I have often thought it fortunate that the amount of noise in a boy does not increase in proportion to his size; if it did, the world could not ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of Lord Wellesley as a literary man; and towards such a judgment Mr. Pearce has contributed some very pleasing materials. As a public speaker, Lord Wellesley had that degree of brilliancy and effectual vigor, which might have been expected in a man of great talents, possessing much native sensibility to the charms of style, but not led ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... on being made dean of Gloucester in 1885. In 1886 he was elected master of Trinity, Cambridge. His publications include various volumes of sermons, but his reputation rests on his wide scholarship, his remarkable gifts as a public speaker, and his great practical influence both as a headmaster and at Cambridge. He married first (1861), Georgina Elliot, and secondly (1888) Agneta Frances Ramsay (who in 1887 was senior classic at Cambridge), and had five ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various |
