After Dinner Speech Quotes & Sayings

The easiest way to stay awake during an after-dinner speech is to deliver it. — Herman Herst Jr.

There are two things that are more difficult than making an after-dinner speech: climbing a wall which is leaning toward you and kissing a girl who is leaning away from you. — Winston Churchill

Painting is just like making an after-dinner speech. If you want to be remembered, say one thing and stop. — Charles Webster Hawthorne

But in the dying world I come from quotation is a national vice. No one would think of making an after-dinner speech without the help of poetry. It used to be the classics, now it's lyric verse. — Evelyn Waugh

There is but one pleasure in life equal to that of being called on to make an after-dinner speech, and that is not being called on to make one. — Charles Dudley Warner

It is conceivable that not knowing the meaning of life is part of the meaning of life, rather as not counting how many words I am uttering when I give an after-dinner speech helps me to give an after-dinner speech. Perhaps life is kept going by our ignorance of its fundamental meaning, as capitalism for Karl Marx — Terry Eagleton

He did not know exactly when to thank his hostess after attending a dinner or a weekend party. In his uncertainty, he would thank her over and over again. It was as though he hoped to achieve through the effect of accumulation what one speech alone could not accomplish.
Wassilly was puzzled by the fact that these social responses did not come naturally to him, as they evidently did to others. He tried to learn them by watching other people closely, and was to some extent successful. But why was it such a difficult game? Sometimes he felt like a wolf-child who had only recently joined humanity. — Lydia Davis

No matter how much strong black coffee we drink, almost any after- dinner speech will counteract it. — Kin Hubbard

On May 15, 1957 Linus Pauling made an extraordinary speech to the students of Washington University ... It was at this time that the idea of the scientists' petition against nuclear weapons tests was born. That evening we discussed it at length after dinner at my house and various ones of those present were scribbling and suggesting paragraphs. But it was Linus Pauling himself who contributed the simple prose of the petition that was much superior to any of the suggestions we were making. — Edward Condon

Sudden I stopped. I was out of breath. I asked myself, "What is this all about? What is the meaning of this ceaseless rush? This is ridiculous!" Then I declared independence, and said, "I do not care if I go to dinner. I do not care whether I make a talk. I do not have to go to this dinner and I do not have to make a speech." So deliberately and slowly I walked back to my room and took my time about unlocking the door. I telephoned the man downstairs and said, "If you want to eat, go ahead. If you want to save a place for me, I will be down after a while, but I am not going to rush any more." So I removed my coat, sat down, took off my shoes, put my feet up on the table, and just sat. Then I opened the Bible and very slowly read aloud the 121st Psalm, "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help." I closed the book and had a little talk with myself, saying, "Come on now, start living a slower and more relaxed life," and then I affirmed, "God is here and His — Norman Vincent Peale