Quotes & Sayings About Elocution

I was the first and only person in my family to go to university, and I spent two decades redesigning myself: even my voice is the product of elocution lessons. — M. J. Hyland

[35] Caelum non animum mutant The man who is not content where he is, would never have been content somewhere else, though he might have complained less. Donal Grant, ch. 31 — George MacDonald

I took acting and elocution lessons, to get rid of my Sicilian accent. — Maria Grazia Cucinotta

It's as if someone fashioned a small golden bird and then attached a ring around it. The bird is connected to the ring only by its wing tips. — Suzanne Collins

[On the United States:] A nation which does not appreciate that the simple elocution exercise 'Merry Mary married hairy Harry' contains not one but three vowel sounds. — Jessica Mitford

Based on the overwhelming array of luxury products manufacturers have recently introduced, homeowners want anything that makes their lives more comfortable at home. Whether it involves heating/warming accessories or spa-like home environments, it's part of the 'cocooning' phenomena that has resurfaced. People are spending more time at home and they want to be comfortable. They want to use their home to its full potential, not just as a place to eat and sleep between workdays. — Stephanie Miller

Good." He drank in her nakedness, fervent as a man downing ale after three days in the desert. His eyes, gleaming with unholy intention, came to rest on hers. "Now fuck me."
The command knocked her back like a handful of dust in the face. But only for a moment. He was the one tied up. She folded her arms again. "If you want my cooperation you had better address me more politely than that."
"Fuck me." Like the world's wickedest elocution pupil he articulated the words, lips and tongue and teeth put to such nefarious use. "Fuck me until I thrash and shout beneath you. — Cecilia Grant

Now, Woolf calls her fictional bastion of male privilege Oxbridge, so I'll call mine Yarvard. Even though she cannot attend Yarvard because she is a woman, Judith cheerfully applies for admission at, let's call it, Smithcliff, a prestigious women's college. She is denied admission on the grounds that
the dorms and classrooms can't
accommodate wheelchairs, that her speech pattern would interfere with her elocution lessons, and that her presence would upset the other students. There is also the suggestion that she is not good marriage material for the men at the elite college to which Smithcliff is a bride-supplying "sister school." The letter inquires as to why she hasn't been institutionalized.
When she goes to the administration building to protest the decision, she can't get up the flight of marble steps on the Greek Revival building. This edifice was designed to evoke a connection to the Classical world, which practiced infanticide of disabled newborns. — Rosemarie Garland-Thomson

Ordinary people who know nothing of phonetics or elocution have difficulties in understanding slow speech composed of perfect sounds, while they have no difficulty in comprehending an imperfect gabble if only the accent and rhythm are natural. — Alexander Graham Bell

Isn't one of the first lessons of good elocution that there's nothing one can say in any rambling, sprawling rant that can't, through some effort, be said shorter and better with a little careful editing? Or that, in writing, there's nothing you can describe in any page-filling paragraph that can't be captured better in just a sentence or two? Perhaps even nothing in any sentence which cannot better be refined in a single, spot-on word? Does it not follow, then, that there's likely nothing one can say in any word - in saying anything at all - that, ultimately, isn't better left unsaid?
(attrib: F.L. Vanderson) — Mort W. Lumsden

My family was going back to England to visit my mother's grandmother, who was very ill. We went up to Liverpool and I met my great-aunt, who was just a force of nature. She was an elocution teacher and a huge enthusiast for theater and the classics. I took her amateur acting class, and she was really impressed with me. — Kim Cattrall

You cannot reconcile creativeness with technical achievement. You may be perfect in playing the piano, and not be creative. You may be able to handle color, to put paint on canvas most cleverly, and not be a creative painter ... having lost the song, we pursue the singer. We learn from the singer the technique of song, but there is no song; and I say the song is essential, the joy of singing is essential. When the joy is there, the technique can be built up from nothing; you will invent your own technique, you won't have to study elocution or style. When you have, you see, and the very seeing of beauty is an art. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Love's the son
stood stammering elocution
while the poor ship in flames went down — Elizabeth Bishop

Python is much more like a dog, loving you unconditionally, having a few key words that it understands, looking you with a sweet look on its face (), and waiting for you to say something it understands. — Charles Severance

I think people know that I've got a good heart. — David Hasselhoff

What is it, you ask?" Kali said, trying to cover her surprise with nonchalant words. "I haven't thought of a name yet. Got any ideas?"
"Shit," the pirate said, said of. The gag made elocution difficult.
"That wouldn't impress anyone at the patent office. — Lindsay Buroker

I did not throw 'The Shepherd Boy Sings in the Valley of Humiliation' at the audience. I threw it at the elocution mistress. I meant to cast it at her feet, but I missed. — Mary Ann Shaffer

I loved fencing and dancing and elocution. — Vivien Leigh

I started elocution lessons because I was being teased, and I had a brilliant drama teacher. At the age of 14, I appeared at the National Theatre in 'The Crucible.' — Gina Bellman

I had a latent impression that there was something decidedly fine in Mr. Wopsle's elocution - not for old associations' sake, I am afraid, but because it was very slow, very dreary, very up-hill and down-hill, and very unlike any way in which any man in any natural circumstances of life or death ever expressed himself about anything. — Charles Dickens

Radio is in my blood. — Laura Schlessinger

The vulgar look upon a man, who is reckoned a fine speaker, as a phenomenon, a supernatural being, and endowed with some peculiargift of Heaven; they stare at him, if he walks in the park, and cry, that is he. You will, I am sure, view him in a juster light, and nulla formidine. You will consider him only as a man of good sense, who adorns common thoughts with the graces of elocution, and the elegancy of style. The miracle will then cease. — Lord Chesterfield

I took movement classes that I wore my double-breasted suits to. I worked on my elocution because people spoke differently then. I was really trying to toe the line. I think that if I had spoken exactly the way that people spoke back then, it probably would have alienated people — Matt Bomer

We have this wonderful language and we don't appreciate it. That's old-fashioned me, but when I went to school, everyone had elocution lessons, not to sound posh but so you could be understood. — Penelope Keith

He assumed a manner that could be called circular irony. Everything he said, he said in quotes, with an artificial, exaggerated emphasis, and with the elocution of someone playing a succession of improvised, ad hoc roles. Therefore, whoever did not know him long and well was confounded, for it seemed impossible ever to tell what the man thought true and what false, and when he was speaking seriously and when he was merely amusing himself with words. — Stanislaw Lem

Learn respect for the feeling function: Become aware of and undo some of your (improper) cultural training so that you grant the moods and messages of the heart the same respect that you give the thoughts and ideas of the mind. — Elizabeth Lesser

Love's the boy stood on the burning deck
trying to recite "The boy stood on
the burning deck." Love's the son
stood stammering elocution
while the poor ship in flames went down.

Love's the obstinate boy, the ship,
even the swimming sailors, who
would like a schoolroom platform, too,
or an excuse to stay
on deck. And love's the burning boy. — Elizabeth Bishop