Metaphor is the figure most suitable for the orator, as men find a positive pleasure in catching resemblances for themselves.—Aristotle.
Those orators who give us much noise and many words, but little argument and less wit, and who are most loud when they are least lucid, should take a lesson from the great volume of Nature; she often gives us the lightning even without the thunder, but never the thunder without the lightning.—Colton.
An orator without judgment is a horse without a bridle.—Theophrastus.
When the Roman people had listened to the diffuse and polished discourses of Cicero, they departed, saying one to another, "What a splendid speech our orator has made!" But when the Athenians heard Demosthenes, he so filled them with the subject-matter of his oration, that they quite forgot the orator, and left him at the finish of his harangue, breathing revenge, and exclaiming, "Let us go and fight against Philip!"—Colton.
Let not a day pass without exercising your powers of speech. There is no power like that of oratory. Cæsar controlled men by exciting their fears; Cicero, by captivating their affections and swaying their passions. The influence of the one perished with its author; that of the other continues to this day.—Henry Clay.
It was reckoned the fault of the orators at the decline of the Roman empire, when they had been long instructed by rhetoricians, that their periods were so harmonious as that they could be sung as well as spoken. What a ridiculous figure must one of these gentlemen cut, thus measuring syllables and weighing words when he should plead the cause of his client!—Goldsmith.
Originality.—Originality is nothing but judicious imitation.—Voltaire.
One couldn't carry on life comfortably without a little blindness to the fact that everything has been said better than we can put it ourselves.—George Eliot.
The most original writers borrowed one from another. Boiardo has imitated Pulci, and Ariosto Boiardo. The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbor's, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.—Voltaire.
All originality is estrangement.—G. H. Lawes.