An American orator discussing the character of Washington discharged the following.
The higher we rise in the scale of being—material, intellectual, and moral—the more certainly we quit the region of the brilliant eccentricities and dazzling contrasts which belong to a vulgar greatness. Order and proportion characterize the primordial constitution of the terrestrial system; ineffable harmony rules the heavens. All the great eternal forces act in solemn silence. The brawling torrent that dries up in summer deafens you with its roaring whirlpools in March; while the vast earth on which we dwell, with all its oceans and all its continents and its thousand millions of inhabitants, revolves unheard upon its soft axle at the rate of a thousand miles an hour, and rushes noiselessly on its orbit a million and a half miles a day. Two storm-clouds encamped upon opposite hills on a sultry summer's evening, at the expense of no more electricity, according to Mr. Faraday, than is evolved in the decomposition of a single drop of water, will shake the surrounding atmosphere with their thunders, which, loudly as they rattle on the spot, will yet not be heard at the distance of twenty miles; while those tremendous and unutterable forces which ever issue from the throne of God, and drag the chariot wheels of Uranus and Neptune along the uttermost path-ways of the solar system, pervade the illimitable universe in silence.
Of course, today, nobody talks like that. At least no one should.
Trite Expressions. Less easily guarded against is the delivery of trite expressions. These are phrases and clauses which at first were so eloquent that once heard they stuck in people's minds, who then in an endeavor themselves to be emphatic inserted continually into their speeches these overworked, done-to-death expressions, which now having been used too frequently have no real meaning. One of the most frequently abused is "of the people, by the people, for the people." Others are words and phrases made popular by the war. Many are no more than jargon—meaningless counterfeits instead of the legal tender of real speech. It is amazing to notice how persistently some of them recur in the remarks of apparently well-trained men who should know better than to insert them. The following were used by a prominent United States political leader in a single speech. He could; easily have replaced them by living material or dispensed with them entirely.
Jot or tittle; the plain unvarnished truth; God forbid; the jackal press; that memorable occasion; tooth and nail; the God of our fathers; the awful horrors of Valley Forge; the blood-stained heights of Yorktown; tell it not in Gath; proclaim it not in the streets of Askalon; peace with honor; the Arabian Nights; Munchausen; the fathers; our globe-encircling domain; I am a Democrat; the pirates of the Barbary Coast; Democratic gospel pure and undefiled; Janus-faced double; Good Lord, good devil; all things to all men; God-fearing patriots; come what may; all things are fair in love or war; the silken bowstring; the unwary voter; bait to catch gudgeons; to live by or to die by; these obsequious courtiers; Guttenburg; rubber stamp; at all hazards; the most unkindest cut of all.
With the artificiality, the stiltedness of the foregoing contrast the simplicity, the sincerity of these two extracts from Abraham Lincoln.
And now, if they would listen—as I suppose they will not—I would address a few words to the Southern people.
I would say to them: You consider yourselves a reasonable and a just people; and I consider that in the general qualities of reason and justice you are not inferior to any other people. Still, when you speak of us Republicans, you do so only to denounce us as reptiles, or, at the best, as no better than outlaws. You will grant a hearing to pirates or murderers, but nothing like it to "Black Republicans." In all your contentions with one another, each of you deems an unconditional condemnation of "Black Republicanism" as the first thing to be attended to. Indeed, such condemnation of us seems to be an indispensable prerequisite—license, so to speak—among you to be admitted or permitted to speak at all. Now can you or not be prevailed upon to pause and to consider whether this is quite just to us, or even to yourselves? Bring forward your charges and specifications, and then be patient long enough to hear us deny or justify.
Cooper Union Speech, 1860