Extemporaneous speaking should be practiced and cultivated. It is the lawyer’s avenue to the public. However able and faithful he may be in other respects, people are slow to bring him business if he cannot make a speech.
—Abraham Lincoln
The cultivated voice is like an orchestra. It ranges high, intermediate or low, unconsciously to him who uses it, and men listen, unaware that they have been bewitched out of their weariness by the charms of a voice not artificial, but made by assiduous training to be his second nature.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Men forget what they read; some do not read at all. They do not, however, forget when they are told by a vigorous speaker who means what he says.
—John Oliver Hobbes (Mrs. Craigie)
For who can suppose amid the great multitude of students, the utmost abundance of masters, the most eminent geniuses among men, the infinite variety of causes, the most ample rewards offered to eloquence, there is any other reason to be found for the small number of orators than the incredible magnitude and difficulty of the art?
—Cicero