speech

In the dying world I come from, quotation is a national vice. No one would think of making an after-dinner speech without the help of poetry. It used to be classics, now it's lyric verse.

—Waugh, Evelyn Arthur StJohn

L'accent du pays o  u' l'on est ne¤   demeure dans l'esprit et dans le c½ur comme dans le langage. The accent of the place in which one was born lingers in the mind and in the heart as it does in one's speech.

—La Rochefoucauld, Fran c° ois, 6th Duc de

I think that people will concede that, on this of all days, I should begin my speech with the words,'My husband and I'.

—Elizabeth II

Since our concern was speech, and speech impelled us To purify the dialect of the tribe And urge the mind to aftersight and foresight.

—Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)

The controversy over freedom of speech and of the press is at the bottom a controversy over the desirability, or otherwise, of telling lies.What is really at issue is the right to report events truthfully, or as truthfully as is consistent with the ignorance, bias and self-deception from which every observer necessarily suffers.

—Orwell, George pseudonym of  Eric Arthur Blair

It isgenerally better to deal by speech than by letter.

—Bacon, Francis,Viscount St Albans

The era of free speech is closing down. The freedom of the press in Britain was always something of a fake, because in the last resort, money controls opinion; still, so long asthe legal right tosay what you like exists, there are always loopholes for an unorthodox writer.

—Orwell, George pseudonym of  Eric Arthur Blair

Rising prices or wages do not cause inflation; they only report it. They represent an essential form of economic speech, sincemoney isjust another form of information.

—Wriston,Walter Bigelow

Fashion is free speech, and one of the privileges, if not always one of the pleasures, of a free world.

—Lurie, Alison

It's ironical that the first people to demand free speech are the first people to deny it to others.

—of)

In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential freedoms.The first isfreedom of speech and expression, everywhere in the world.The second is the freedom of every person to worship God in his own way, everywhere in the world.The third is freedom from want† The fourth is freedom from fear.

—Roosevelt, Franklin D(elano)

Without deviation, without exception, without any ifs, buts, or whereases, freedom of speech means you shall not do something to people for views they have, express, speak, or write.

—Black, Hugo LaFayette

Think of what our Nation stands for, Books from Boots'and country lanes, Free speech, free passes, class distinction, Democracy and proper drains. Lord, put beneathThy special care One-eighty-nine Cadogan Square.

—Betjeman, SirJohn

He gave man speech, and speech created thought, Which is the measure of the universe.

—Shelley, Percy Bysshe

Americaörather, the United Statesöseems to me to be the Jewamong the nations. It is resourceful, adaptable, maligned, envied, feared, imposed upon. It is warm- hearted, overfriendly; quick-witted, lavish, colorful; given to extravagant speech and gestures; its people are travellers and wanderers by nature, moving, shifting, restless; swarming in Fords, in ocean liners; craving entertainment; volatile.

—Ferber, Edna

We live thetime that a match flickers; we pop the corkof a ginger-beer bottle, and the earthquake swallows us on the instant. Is it not odd, is it not incongruous, is it not, in the highest sense of human speech, incredible, that we should think so highly of the ginger-beer, and regard so little the devouring earthquake?

—Stevenson, Robert Louis

The genius of American culture and its integrity comes from fidelity to the light. Plain as day, we say. Happy as the day is long. Early to bed, early to rise. American virtues are daylight virtues: honesty, integrity, plain speech.We say yes when we mean yes and no when we mean no, and all else comes from the evil one. America presumes innocence and even the right to happiness.

—Rodriguez, Richard

Our reverence for the nobility of manhood will not be lessened by the knowledge that man is in substance and in structure, one with the brutes; for he alone possesses the marvellous endowment of intelligible and rational speech whereby†he has slowlyaccumulated and organized the experience which is almost wholly lost with the cessation of individual life in other animals; so that he now stands raised above it as on a mountain-top, far above the level of his humble fellows, and transfigured from his grosser nature by reflecting, here and there, a ray from the infinite source of truth.

—Huxley,T(homas) H(enry)

What worlds delight, or joy of living speech Can heart, so plunged in sea of sorrows deep, And heape'  d with so huge misfortunes, reach? The careful cold beginneth for to creep, And in my heart his iron arrow steep, Soon as I think upon my bitter bale.

—Spenser, Edmund

When he killed a calf he would do it in a high style, and make a speech.

—Aubrey,John

It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place, It has to face the man of the time.

—Stevens,Wallace

Let thy speech be short, comprehending much in few words; be as one that knoweth and yet holdeth his tongue.

—Bible (Apocrypha)

C'est l'actuel qui compte. Invoquer sa poste¤  rite¤  , c'est faire un discours aux asticots. It isthepresentthatcounts.To invoke one'sposterity isto make a speech to maggots.

—Destouches

The heavens declare the glory of God: and the firmament sheweth his handywork.One day telleth another: and one night certifieth another. There is neither speech nor language: but their voices are heard among them. Their sound isgone out into all lands: and their words into the ends of the world.

—Book of Common Prayer

The true call of the desert, of the mountains, or the sea, is their silenceöfree of the networks of dead speech.

—Stark, Dame Freya Madeleine

For thou art not sent to a people of a strange speech and of an hard language, but to the house of Israel; Not many people of a strange speech and of an hard language, whose words thou canst not understand. Surely, had I sent thee to them, they would have hearkened unto thee.

—Bible (Old Testament)

[The translator] will find one English book and one only, where, as in the Iliad itself, perfect plainness of speech is allied with perfect nobleness; and that book isthe Bible.

—Arnold, Matthew

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible.

—Orwell, George pseudonym of  Eric Arthur Blair

Nature, as we say, does nothing without some purpose; and for thepurpose of making mana political animal she has endowed him alone among the animals with the power of reasoned speech.

—Aristotle

But I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue. 88

—Bible (Old Testament)

Our fathers have, in process of centuries, provided this realm, its colonies and wide dependencies, with a speech as malleable and pliant as Attic, dignified as Latin, masculine, yet free of Teutonic guttural, capable of being precise as French, dulcet as Italian, sonorous as Spanish, and captaining all these excellences to its service.

—Quiller-Couch, SirArthurThomas known as  'Q'

Let yourspeech be alway withgrace, seasoned withsalt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man.

—Bible (NewTestament)

And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know, Self-schooled, self-scanned, self-honoured, self-secure, Didst tread on Earth unguessed at.öBetter so! All pains the immortal spirit must endure, All weakness which impairs, all griefs which bow, Find their sole speech in that victorious brow. Arnold

—Arnold, Matthew

   The speech is admirable, but the speaker is not to be trusted; for he has never been amid the blare of trumpets.

—Eudamidas   4c

   Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast doves'eyes within thy locks: thy hair is as a flock of goats, that appear from mount Gilead. Thy teeth are like a flockof sheep that are evenshorn, whichcameup from the washing; whereof every one bear twins, and none is barren among them. Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet, and thy speech is comely: thy temples are like a piece of a pomegranate within thy locks. Thy neck is like the tower of David builded for an armoury, whereon there hang a thousand bucklers, all shields of mighty men. Thy two breasts are liketwo young roesthat aretwins, which feed among the lilies.Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, I will get me to the mountain of myrrh, and tothehill of frankincense.Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee.

—Bible (Old Testament)

La parole humaine est comme un chaudron fe"  le¤   o  u' nous battons des me¤  lodies a'   faire danser les ours, quand on voudrait attendrir les e¤  toiles. Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, when all the time we are longing to move the stars to pity.

—Flaubert, Gustave

Speech is often barren; but silence also does not necessarily brood over a full nest.Your still fowl, blinking at youwithout remark, mayall thewhilebesittingonone addled egg; and when it takes to cackling will have nothing to announce but that addled delusion.

—Eliot, George pseudonym of  MaryAnn Evans

A speech is poetry: cadence, rhythm, imagery, sweep†and reminds us that words, like children, have the power to make dance the dullest beanbag of a heart.

—Noonan, Peggy

Speech is the small change of silence.

—Meredith, George

These are the gardens of the Desert, these The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful, For which the speech of England has no nameö The Prairies.

—Bryant,William Cullen

Give ear,O ye heavens, and I will speak: and hear,O earth, the words of my mouth. My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew, as the small rain upon thetender herb, and as the showers upon the grass.

—Bible (Old Testament)

Translation isthe paradigm, the exemplar of all writing† It is translation that demonstrates most vividly the yearning for transformation that underlies every act involving speech, that supremely human gift.

—Mathews, Harry Burchell

Half the sorrows of women would be averted if they could repress the speech they know to be useless; nay, the speech they have resolved not to make.

—Eliot, George pseudonym of  MaryAnn Evans

That part of hisspeech wasrather like being savaged bya dead sheep.

—Healey, Denis Winston Healey, Baron

As the character is, such is the speech.

—Aelius Aristides

And Thought leapt out to wed withThought EreThought could wed itself with Speech.

—Tennyson

Underall speech there lies a silencethat isbetter. Silence is deep as Eternity; speech is shallow asTime.

—Carlyle,Thomas

   U.S.A. is the slice of a continent.U.S.A. is a group of holding companies, some aggregations of trade unions, a set of laws bound in calf, a radio network, a chain of moving picture theatres, a column of stock quotations rubbed out and written in bya Western Union boy on a black-board, a publiclibrary full of old newspapers and dogeared historybooks with protests scrawled in the margins in pencil.U.S.A. is the world's greatest rivervalley fringed with mountains and hills.U.S.A. is a set of bigmouthed officials with too many bankaccounts.U.S.A. is a lot of men buried in their uniforms in Arlington Cemetery.U.S.A. is the letters at theend of anaddresswhenyouareaway from home.But mostly U.S.A. is the speech of the people

—Dos Passos,John Roderigo

A dance is a measured pace, as a verse is a measured speech.

—Bacon, Francis,Viscount St Albans

The Pressisatoncethe eyeand the earand thetongue of the people.It isthe visible speech, if not the voice, of the democracy. It is the phonograph of the world.

—Stead,WilliamThomas

And what the dead had no speech for, when living, They can tell you, being dead: the communication Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.

—Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)