137 definitions
Art (n.) strictly defined — what is fully known and beyond the caprice of opinion — leaves no room for oratory; the whole learned dispute over an art of speaking is a quarrel about a word.
Audience (n.) is sharper and quicker to find a speaker's defects than his merits, and whatever offends it wipes out the memory of everything worth praising.
Eloquence (n.) is a weapon kept always ready, to protect yourself, to defy the malicious, or to avenge yourself when provoked.
Eloquence (n.) is impossible on a subject you do not understand — yet understanding a subject ever so well will not make you eloquent about it.
Flattery (n.) cannot be done to any purpose unless it is done foolishly.
Genius (n.) can be animated and excited by art, but never ingrafted or instilled by it: invention, fertility and memory are all gifts of nature.
Greeks (n.) have long quarrelled over the word orator, being minute people, fonder of argument than of truth.
Learning (n.) shows in a speech as training shows in a tennis player: he never performs the moves of the wrestling school, but his every movement betrays whether he learned them.
Orator (n.) is the marvel of one man, out of an infinite multitude, wielding by himself that power which nature has granted to all.
Orator (n.) who masters a subject as he masters his client's cause will speak on it better and more elegantly than its very inventor.
Oratory (n.) at its highest rouses men to anger, hatred or grief and calls them back to gentleness and compassion — a power no one has without a thorough insight into the passions of humanity.
Philosophy (n.) reasons about the gods, friendship and justice in corners, in tame and bloodless phrases; the orator's part is to set out the very same topics with full power and attraction.