"Public speaker" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... right formation of tone, the development of voice as such, the securing of a fixed right vocal habit. Following comes the adapting of this improved voice to the varieties of use, or expressional effect, demanded of the public speaker. After this critical detailed drill, the student is to take the platform, and apply his acquired technique to continued discourse, receiving criticism after each entire ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... this type talks well. If the mental element is also strong he can become a good public speaker for he will then have all the qualifications—a powerful voice, human sympathy, ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... him. For the first half hour his opponents would agree with every word he uttered, and from that point he began to lead them off, little by little, cunningly, till it seemed as if he had got them all into his fold. He displays more shrewdness, more knowledge of the masses of mankind than any public speaker we have heard since long Jim Wilson left ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... I taught it for a number of years, and evolved from it certain fundamental principles upon which I have largely based the cultivation of my own memory and mentality, and for which I can never be sufficiently thankful. Then I desired to be a public speaker. I became a "hobbyist" on pronunciation, enunciation, purity of voice, phrasing and getting the thought of my own mind in the best and quickest possible way into the minds of others. For years I kept a small book in which I jotted down every word, its derivation ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... with an attractive manner and a clear enunciation that not even acute nervousness can slur or disorganize. He is, in fact, an excellent public speaker, never missing the value of a sentence, and managing his voice so well that even in the open air people are able to follow what he says at a distance that ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... previous Jacobitism passed 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 ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... to have a sense of humor and a collection of funny stories, and not only the preacher, the public speaker and entertainer, but everyone, as well, who must influence others. The "voice with a smile" wins because behind the voice is a sense of humor. We have more confidence in those who have a sense of humor. The following is quoted from a persuasive advertisement entitled "The ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... man is to express a violent contempt for him, and by the heat of this to persuade others and himself that the man is contemptible. I remember reading a satiric attack on Mr. Gladstone by one of the young anarchic Tories, which began by asserting that Mr. Gladstone was a bad public speaker. If these people would, as I have said, go quietly and read Pope's "Atticus," they would see how a great satirist ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... that. 'He speaks . . . he speaks well in conversation. I fancy he would be liked by the poor. I should doubt his being a good public speaker. He certainly has command of his temper: that is one thing. I cannot say whether it favours oratory. He is indefatigable. One may be sure he will not faint by the way. He quite believes in himself. But, Mr. Austin, do you really regard him as ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... last thing which Babberly said in his speech. He talked a great deal more, but he did not say anything else which it is possible to write down. I do not think I have ever heard any public speaker equal to Babberly in eloquence. He gave one incontestable proof of his power as an orator that day in Belfast. He must have spoken for very nearly an hour, and yet no one noticed that he was not saying anything for the greater part of the time. I did not notice it, and probably should ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... 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 ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... excessive—ardor. I think he is likely to make an eminent figure in Parliament; for he is a man of very clear head, very patient, of business-like habits, ready in debate, and, moreover, has at once an impressive and engaging delivery as a public speaker. He is generous and charitable as his admirable mother, and careless, even to a fault, of his pecuniary interests. He is a man of perfect simplicity and purity of character. Above all, his virtues are the virtues which have been sublimed by Christianity—as ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... the crowd, by the new and unusual spectacle, by the bewilderment of seeing for the first time what he had so often heard of, the judge on the bench, the wigged barristers below, the one who was speaking, so different from any other public speaker Philip had ever heard, addressing not the assembly, but the smaller circle round him, interrupted by other voices: the accused in his place and the witness—standing there more distinctly at the bar ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... come to think of it, there is no other country for the American public speaker to ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... 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 ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... been open to her, she was accustomed to challenge criticism by fondling a pet monkey at tea-parties. Since she had lost caste by taking up the cause of 'Independent Ireland' the ape had been discarded, and the same result achieved by occasional bickerings with the police. She was an able public speaker, and could convince her audiences for a time of the reasonableness of opinions which next morning appeared to be the outcome of delirium. She wrote, not, like Mary O'Dwyer, verse in which any sentiment ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... he appeared occasionally before home audiences as a public speaker, and always with ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... formal preface is used, one of the three objects to which a public speaker devotes his exordium may be neglected; the historian, that is, has not to bespeak goodwill—only attention and an open mind. The way to secure the reader's attention is to show that the affairs to be narrated are great in themselves, throw light on ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... 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 ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... school education and at an early age began work as a bobbin-boy in a cotton factory of which his father was superintendent. Subsequently he edited a weekly paper at Waltham, studied law and was admitted to the bar, his energy and his ability as a public speaker soon winning him distinction. He served as a Free Soiler in the Massachusetts house of representatives from 1849 to 1853, and was speaker in 1851 and 1852; he was president of the state Constitutional Convention of 1853, and in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... voice of a public speaker; the voice of a man making good many words.... Dabnitz stepped between Boylan and Mowbray, stretching out his arms before them. It was all in an instant. They saw Dabnitz's apologetic smile—and a Russian platoon at their right, rifles raised ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... be a public speaker, and get into Parliament later on, when women were admitted. One despised Parliament, ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... a public speaker is of the widest fame, while comparatively few, beyond those of her most trusted Officers, are brought into admiring touch with her brilliant executive powers. All these, however, unite in most unstinted ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... 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 ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 39, No. 03, March, 1885 • Various
... years of age he met Annie Besant. This was in Eighteen Hundred Seventy-four, and a friendship grew up between them that was of great benefit to both. Mrs. Besant was a woman of much power, a clear, logical thinker, and a fluent and eloquent public speaker. Her influence upon Bradlaugh was marked. After meeting her, much of the storm and stress seemed to leave his nature, and he acquired a poise and peace he had never ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... 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; besides in the "high school of hard knocks" from which ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... 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 of the committee, whose special and extensive knowledge ...
— The Early Life of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... preserve him. The truly immortal books are most valued for their artistic excellences. No man, however great his genius, can afford to be dull. Style is to written composition what delivery is to a public speaker. The multitude do not go to hear the man of thoughts, but to hear the man of words, being repelled or ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... 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
... you can do now. I would wish you to cultivate a manner towards him that would leave it in your power to serve him or make him useful, if occasion presents. He needs a better education, and perhaps a profession. He should study law. He has a capacity to become a very superior public speaker—one of the first. I don't think there is much danger of his forming bad habits or associations. He avoids and shuns everything of that kind. You know he deeded his share of his father's land to his brother, to provide a home ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... his writings he has been in steady demand as a lecturer and public speaker for the past twelve years, and has recently devoted his entire time to literary work and lecturing, with the purpose of interpreting his ...
— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman
... the Scottish Young Men's Society,' we said, 'it is rather late in life for the individual who now addresses you to attempt acquiring the art of the public speaker. Those who have been most in the habit of noticing the effect of the several mechanical professions on character and intellect, divide them into two classes—the sedentary and the laborious; and they remark, that while in the sedentary, such as the printing, weaving, tailoring, ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... breathing than reading aloud. Try how much can be read easily, without strain, upon a single inflation of the lungs. Never gasp, catch up, or piece out a breath. "You may add years to your life by the simple act of breathing." Every public speaker knows, or should know, the feeling of repose and self-possession that comes over him as he calmly, silently, faces his audience long enough to draw three of these deep, full breaths. Nervousness has vanished; he and his audience have had time to become acquainted, and, having command ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... faces, to anything printed in books. I took great liberties with what I had read and sometimes invented all. It was a part of their education, probably—certainly, it was a part of mine, and it gave me a command of language which helped me when I became a public speaker. My brother-in-law's newspaper furnished an occasional opportunity to me, though no doubt he considered that he could fill his twice-a-week journal without my help. He was, however, helpful in other ways. He was one of the subscribers to a Reading Club, and through him I had access ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... 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, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... Miss Keller to-day is a college graduate, a public speaker, and the author of several charming books. It need scarcely be explained that this miracle was not wrought by self-help alone. But if she had not striven with all her might to respond to the efforts of her devoted teacher, Miss ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... marked effect, advocating the necessity of legal redress for the wrongs and disabilities to which her sex are subject. As an advocate of woman's rights, anti-slavery and religious liberty, she has earned a world-wide celebrity. For fifty years a public speaker, during which period she has associated with the influential classes in Europe and America, and borne an active part in the great progressive movements which mark the present as the most glorious of historical ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... praise bestowed—especially when votes are to be secured—upon the "bone and sinew of the country;" but the farmers themselves are very far from accepting as true, even if sincere, the estimate of their qualities which the editor and the public speaker so ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring
... in whose pulpit she lectured in Gardiner, says: "Never before or since have I seen an audience so held and so moved by any public speaker, man or woman; and never before or since have I seen a Christian pulpit so well filled, nor in the ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... Not merely because Springfield was his home. He doubtless would have been there anyhow. His ability as a politician, his growing fame as a lawyer and a public speaker, his well-known antipathy to slavery, singled him out as the one man who was preeminently fitted to answer the speech of Douglas, and he was by a tacit agreement selected ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... be said 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 by any personal accidents of life into a ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... were often monologues, anyone with a word to say having attentive hearers, if interesting, otherwise—not. A young lady, distinguished as a public speaker, came to us with what was doubtless an eloquent discourse on Woman's Rights, and was much put out, after orating awhile, to note that her glowing periods were falling on dull ears. Our women-folk had all the rights of our men-folk. They ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... career as a public speaker he showed a very pretty vein of humour, which served to open his hearers' minds with honest laughter to receive his plain and forcible arguments. But someone remarked that his speaking lacked dignity and weight; so he loaded himself with the works of Edmund Burke; ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... your pardon, Mr. Grayson," he said, "for intruding on you, but I've come to ask a favor. I'm Henry Moore, of Council Grove, the father of Charlie Moore, who was the best telegraph-operator in Denver, and who is now the poorest public speaker ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... every passion are to be expressed by more moderate exertions of voice and gesture; as every public speaker's discretion will ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... Hamburg, N. Y.; wife of one of editors of Buffalo Express; writer, public speaker and club leader. Arrested for picketing, Aug., 1917, and sentenced to 30 days in ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... Fine rhetoric and lofty declamation have always stirred my blood; and yet I suppose that Demosthenes was right, and that, though rhetoric and declamation are good, still the most valuable asset for a public speaker is a complete identification with the majority of his countrymen, in their prejudices, their ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... 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 ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... I had known in his boyhood among the Green Mountains, and who was one of {pg 212} the officers of the convention. While there I listened to several speeches from colored men, which, for clearness of thought and pathos of oratory, would have done credit to any public speaker in the country. I have since learned, with great pleasure, that several of these gentlemen were graduates of this University. On leaving the convention, when scarcely a block away, I met a well-dressed ...
— The American Missionary, Volume XLII. No. 7. July 1888 • Various
... politician and author of a celebrated philological volume, "The Diversions of Purley" (1786, 1805). His portrait is included in the "Spirit of the Age": "He was without a rival (almost) in private conversation, an expert public speaker, a keen politician, a first-rate grammarian, and the finest gentleman (to say the least) of his own party. He had no imagination (or he would not have scorned it!)—no delicacy of taste, no rooted prejudices ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... heard by more than thirty thousand auditors. It is said that the habit of speaking gave to the utterance of Garrick so wonderful an energy, that even his under-key was distinctly audible to ten thousand people. Dr. Porter sums up this matter thus :—"The public speaker needs a powerful voice; the quantity of voice which he can employ, at least can employ with safety, depends on his strength of lungs; and this again depends on a sound state of general health. If he neglects this, all other precautions will ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... the parade of dull citation, or formal introduction. "Sir," said Dr. Johnson, to some prosing tormentor, "I would rather a man would knock me down, than to begin to talk to me of the Punic wars." A public speaker, who rises in the House of Commons, with pedantry prepense to quote Latin or Greek, is coughed or laughed down; but the beautiful unpremeditated classical allusions of Burke or Sheridan, sometimes conveyed in a single word, seize ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... degree of D. D. from Guadalupe College of Seguin, Tex. In 1883 Dr. Gilbert was married in Columbia, S. C., to Miss Agnes Boozer. Seven children have been born to them, five of whom are still living. Dr. Gilbert is much in demand as a public speaker on great occasions and his services are frequently sought by some of the ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... is there not a public opinion in Italy? Can the public speaker direct his words over the heads of his immediate surrounders to countless thousands beyond them? If he cannot, Parliament is but a debating-club, with the disadvantage of not being able to ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... After an illness of two years, he died on the 9th August 1849, at the early age of twenty-nine. He was possessed of much general talent; was fond of society, fluent in conversation, and eloquent as a public speaker. His habits were sober and retiring. He left a widow and four children. A thin 8vo volume of his "Literary Remains" was published in 1850, for the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... soldier, but in many other ways, has General Daggett distinguished himself. As a public speaker the following was said of him by the Rev. ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... of her own importance. Now naturally Mrs. Nevington will be the head of everything and the clergymen's wives will go for advice to her. I do not see how Susan can help disliking that. And then Mrs. Nevington is said to be a very good public speaker. I am perfectly certain Susan will dislike that. For I always observe that people who speak a great deal themselves, like Susan, never get on well with other good speakers."—She moved a little, throwing back the fronts of her black beaded jacket—her ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... our annals fills a larger space. As soldier, commanding important and difficult expeditions, as counsel in cases before the courts, as judge on the bench, and innumerable other positions requiring talent and intelligence, he was constantly called to serve the public. He was distinguished as a public speaker, and is the only person, I believe, of that period, whose reputation as an orator has come down to us. He was an Assistant, that is, in the upper branch of the Legislature, seventeen years. He was a deputy twenty years. When the deputies, ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... with the usual apologetic manner, 'it is not fair to you that the toastmaster should ask me to speak. I am notorious as the worst public speaker in the State of New York. My reputation extends from one end of the state to the other. I have no rival whatever, when it comes—' I was interrupted by a lanky, ill-clad individual, who had stuck too close to ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... before one can enter into what he reads. A 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 ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... the easiest way to "stop talk," and that if he "laid down," the opposition would walk off with all his "people." He was "Boss" because he was the boss slugger, the best executive, the best drinker and smoker, the best "persuader," and the best public speaker in his ward. So you see he had a variety of talents. In China I can imagine such a man being beheaded as a pirate in a few weeks; this would be as good an excuse as any; yet men like this have grown and developed into respectable persons in New ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... debut as an orator. He spoke for about an hour; and his speech was, on the whole, well received, though it raised some hisses at the beginning by his remarks upon Roman Catholicism. There is no proof that Shelley, though eloquent in conversation, was a powerful public speaker. The somewhat conflicting accounts we have received of this, his maiden effort, tend to the impression that he failed to carry his audience with him. The dissemination of his pamphlets had, however, raised considerable interest in ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... constitutional opposition. His nature was too sensitive and his health too delicate to enable him to hold a foremost place as orator in the debates of this period. His habits of mind were, moreover, those of a writer rather than of a public speaker. But the firmness and moderation of his principles and the clearness and justice of his opinions secured for him a general respect, and gave weight and influence to his counsels. "In 1839, having been named reporter on the proposition ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... 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, ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... most common sin of the public speaker, is not a transgression—it is rather a sin of omission, for it consists in living up to the confession of the Prayer Book: "We have left undone those things we ought ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... excuse me, Mrs. Holt. I'm a rather busy man, and nothing of a public speaker, and it is rarely I get off ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... danger in which his son was placing himself. Dr. Finn, who in his own profession was a very excellent and well-instructed man, had been so ignorant of Parliamentary tactics, as to have been proud at his son's success at the Irish meetings. He had thought that Phineas was carrying on his trade as a public speaker with proper energy and continued success. He had cared nothing himself for tenant-right, and had acknowledged to Mr. Monk that he could not understand in what it was that the farmers were wronged. But he knew that Mr. Monk was a Cabinet Minister, and ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... drawn than to Bishop Gilbert Haven. None shed off such splendid scintillations in our evening colloquies on the piazzas. Haven was not comparable with his associate, Bishop Simpson, in pulpit oratory, for he was rarely an effective public speaker on any occasion, but in brilliancy of thought, which made him in conversation like the charge of an electric battery, and in brilliancy of pen, that kindled everything it touched, he was without a rival in the Methodist Church—or almost in any other church in the land. Consistently ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... acquainted with its great rhythms. Mr. Boyle, skillful artificer of situation, and truthful depicter of character that he is, and Mr. Colum, too, for all his closeness to the earth, are now and then betrayed, Mr. Boyle more often than now and then, into the English of the newspaper or of the public speaker; but the English of Mr. Mayne is all but always an unworn English, an English used freshly, or if with reminiscences in it, reminiscences of the seventeenth-century English that has survived in the Bible or in the memory of the folk from the time of ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... the Irish Renascence—the group of which William Butler Yeats, Doctor Douglas Hyde, Katharine Tynan and Lady Gregory were brilliant members. Besides being a splendid mystical poet, "A. E." is a painter of note, a fiery patriot, a distinguished sociologist, a public speaker, a student of economics and one of the heads of the Irish ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... 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 ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... during the 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, but from a sense of power they impress upon the beholder. This sense ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... too well organized to allow the Convention to be stampeded, even by the power and eloquence of an Ingersoll. It was this speech that gave Mr. Ingersoll his national fame and brought him to the front as a public speaker and lecturer. It was the most eloquent and impressive speech that was delivered during the sitting of the Convention. After a bitter struggle of many hours, and after a number of fruitless ballots, the Convention ...
— The Facts of Reconstruction • John R. Lynch |
