"Public speaker" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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, ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... that! But 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
... sense and knowledge is requisite for that, as well as for everything else; but beyond that, the purity of diction, the elegance of style, the harmony of periods, a pleasing elocution, and a graceful action, are the things which a public speaker should attend to the most; because his audience certainly does, and understands them the best; or rather indeed understands little else. The late Lord Chancellor Cowper's strength as an orator lay by no means in his ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... the exhaustion of the body; he was sea-sick 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 ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... years past, Hall Caine has devoted himself to literary public affairs. He is Sir Walter Resant's best supporter in his noble efforts to protect authors and to advance their interests. His ability as a public speaker and a politician of letters is great, and in recognition of this he was asked—a most distinguished honor—in November of last year to open the Edinburgh Literary and Philosophical Institution for the winter session, his predecessors having been John Morley ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... time since had ceased in her attempts to gratify ambition by reflective honors from her husband and had marched forth under the leadership of Mrs. Catt as a most trusted lieutenant. She was head of the Woman's Suffrage Organization of Kentucky; was in great demand as a public speaker and heralded by an extensive following as the probable successor of Mrs. Catt in the fight for the ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... to be eloquent while reading a manuscript, he was generally ineffective and sometimes comical,—worse even than the general run of lecturers in the German universities, and that is saying much; but as a public speaker he was excellent—so much so that, congratulating him afterward, and bearing in mind the fact that he had been formerly defeated for Parliament, I assured him that if he would come to America and ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... Patrick Henry speak at Richmond.—Jefferson was educated to be a lawyer; he was not a good public speaker, but he liked to hear men who were. Just before the beginning of the Revolutionary War (1775), the people of Virginia sent men to the city of Richmond to hold a meeting in old St. John's Church. They met to see what should be done about ...
— The Beginner's American History • D. H. Montgomery
... going to a task not less great than Washington's, but he was going to it with a preparation in many respects far inferior to his. For the last eight years he had laboured as a public speaker, and in a measure as a party leader, and had displayed and developed comprehension, perhaps unequalled, of some of the larger causes which mould public affairs. But, except in sheer moral discipline, those years had done ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... Mr. Balfour, who now, for the first time, began to take a prominent part in public business. I must be forgiven if I say that, though he was an admirable writer, it was evident that Nature had not intended him for a public speaker. Even at this distance of time I can recall his broken sentences, his desperate tugs at the lapel of his coat, his long pauses in search of a word, and his selection of the wrong word ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... or writing without 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 ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... somewhat cynical restraint which seemed to divest of enthusiasm Borrowdean's most earnest words, and which militated somewhat against his reputation as a public speaker, seemed to have fallen from him. Mannering, recognizing it, answered him gravely enough, though with ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... other spare time was devoted to reading and composition. During two years he was employed in the evenings as amanuensis to Professor Playfair. At one of the College debating societies he improved himself as a public speaker, and subsequently took an active part in the discussions of the "Forum." Fond of verse-making, he composed some spirited lines on the battle of Waterloo, when the first tidings of the victory inspired a thrilling interest in the public mind; the consequence was, the immediate establishment ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... 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 separate cultivation of oratory, or into any ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... to the 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 of the committee, whose special and extensive knowledge of books was always ...
— The Early Life of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford |
