Life Speeches Quotes & Sayings

I thought making speeches for money was a much better thing than getting connected with any one group or company, as so many people who leave public life do. — Hillary Clinton

I can't make flowery speeches," Sir Kai began, "and I wouldn't even if I could. I won't whimper at your feet like these callow puppies that call themselves knights these days, and I don't write poetry or play the damned rebec. I don't intend to change my manners or my way of life, but if you'll have me, Connoire, I'd be obliged if you'd marry me."
The incredulous silence that struck the watching crowd was so profound that Piers could hear the peep of a chickadee in the distant forest. Lady Connoire's expression did not change. Taking a deep breath, she said, "I don't like flowery speeches, and if you ever make one to me, I'll just laugh at you. I despise simpering poems, I hate the squealing of a rebec, and we'll see whether you'll change your manners or not. I'll marry you. — Gerald Morris

Culture is the name for what people are interested in, their thoughts, their models, the books they read and the speeches they hear, their table-talk, gossip, controversies, historical sense and scientific training, the values they appreciate, the quality of life they admire. All communities have a culture. It is the climate of their civilization. — Walter Lippmann

There is but one path of safety to the Latter-day Saints, and that is the path of duty. It is not testimony, it is not marvelous manifestations, it is not knowing that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is true, ... it is not actually knowing that the Savior is the Redeemer, and that Joseph Smith was His prophet, that will save you and me, but it is the keeping of the commandments of God, the living the life of a Latter-day Saint.
[Heber J. Grant, Improvement Era, November 1936, p. 659] Quoted in "Waiting Upon the Lord" By Henry B. Eyring, BYU Speeches, 30 Sept 1990 — Heber J. Grant

Each of us has a sophisticated system that throws away most of our experiences, keeps only a few choice samples, mixes them up with bits from movies we've seen, novels we've read, speeches we've heard, and daydreams we've savoured, and out of all that jumble it weaves a seemingly coherent story about who I am, where I came from and where I am going. This story tells me what to love, whom to hate and what to do with myself. This story may even cause me to sacrifice my life, if that's what the plot requires. We all have our genre. Some people live a tragedy, others inhabit a never-ending religious drama, some approach life as if it were an action film, and not a few act as if in a comedy. But in the end, they are all just stories. What, — Yuval Noah Harari

Once the troublesome mind "begins to compose speeches and dream up arguments, especially if these are clever, it will soon imagine it is doing important work." But if you can surpass those thoughts, Teresa explained, and ascend toward God, "it is a glorious bewilderment, a heavenly madness, in which true wisdom is acquired. — Elizabeth Gilbert

All my life, I thought I was this independent woman. I was on all the right committees, made speeches for all the right causes, traveled all over the world. I had my little part-time job, I made all my own decisions, but ... there was always someone there to fall back on when things went bad. Funny, how after so many years of marriage you don't think about how much you depend on the other person until ... well, until they're gone. And then of course there's just the whole system in the city. Your doctor, your pharmacist, your plumber, your vet ... there's always someone there. You never have to find out ... how much you can't do. — Donna Ball

In Ireland, novels and plays still have a strange force. The writing of fiction and the creation of theatrical images can affect life there more powerfully and stealthily than speeches, or even legislation. Imagined worlds can lodge deeply in the private sphere, dislodging much else, especially when the public sphere is fragile. — Colm Toibin

A mountain is composed of tiny grains of earth. The ocean is made up of tiny drops of water. Even so, life is but an endless series of little details, actions, speeches, and thoughts. And the consequences whether good or bad of even the least of them are far-reaching. — Swami Sivananda

If you wanted to understand a politician you mustn't pay too much attention to his speeches, but find out who were his paymasters. A politician couldn't rise in public life, in France any more than in America, unless he had the backing of big money, and it was in times of crisis like this that he paid his debts. X — Upton Sinclair

How does anyone know from moment to moment what to say or do next until he senses the reaction to what he just did? He doesn't know. Life is always action/reaction. No monologues. No prepared speeches. An improvisation no matter how we mentally rehearse our big moment. — Robert McKee

There happen to be whole large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration. — David Foster Wallace

The Anglican service today was more familiar to me from movies. Like one of the great Shakespeare speeches, the graveside oration, studded in fragments in the memory, was a succession of brilliant phrases, book titles, dying cadences that breathed life, pure alertness, along the spine. — Ian McEwan

You asked a question about Martin Luther King.... All that stuff about "the dream" means nothing to the kids I know.... He died in vain. He was famous and he lived and gave his speeches and he died and now he's gone. But we're still here. Don't tell students in this school about "the dream." Go and look into a toilet here if you would like to know what life is like for students in this city.
-a student at East St. Louis High School, 1990 — Jennifer L. Hochschild

Abraham Ellison dipped his sword in the pool and the red from the blood floated ominously across the water's surface. He had been waiting all night for his vampire to arise from his 100th death and take his place among the ranks of the mortals. There was no discussion, no words of parting, or speeches of regret, as Ellison held his former superior's head and made a powerful cut to his new life - a life of solitude as a normal man living on his own terms. — Phil Wohl

As the war went on, opposition grew. The American Peace Society printed a newspaper, the Advocate of Peace, which published poems, speeches, petitions, sermons against the war, and eyewitness accounts of the degradation of army life and the horrors of battle. The abolitionists, speaking through William Lloyd Garrison's Liberator, denounced the war as one "of aggression, of invasion, of conquest, and rapine - marked by ruffianism, perfidy, and every other feature of national depravity ... " Considering the strenuous efforts of the nation's leaders to build patriotic support, the amount of open dissent and criticism was remarkable. Antiwar meetings took place in spite of attacks by patriotic mobs. — Howard Zinn

It's a fascinating time, I think. I do believe that with all the qualifications I've said - [such as] the uncertain accuracy of the web - nonetheless the access to speeches, documents is unparalleled with the ease of gathering information. If I had had that access when I was an editor or coming up, it would have made my life so much easier. As it was, everything took so much longer. — Harold Evans

I often say in my speeches, I say, 'It's rare in life that you get a controlled scientific experiment.' 'Cause you can't do controlled scientific experiments with real people, normally. — Jerrold Nadler

The effect of speech upon the condition of the soul is comparable to the power of drugs over the nature of bodies. For just as different drugs dispel different secretions from the body, and some bring an end to disease and others to life, so also in the case of speeches, some distress, others delight, some cause fear, others make the hearers bold, and some drug and bewitch the soul with a kind of evil persuasion. — Gorgias

But to the managing editor of Life, Joseph J. Thorndike, Jr., the problem centered on bias. "Of course, we did not intentionally mislead our readers," he wrote. But I do think that we ourselves were misled by our bias. Because of that bias we did not exert ourselves enough to report the side we didn't believe in. We were too ready to accept the evidence of pictures like the empty auditorium at Omaha and to ignore the later crowds. We were too eager to report the Truman "bobbles" and to pass over the things that were wrong about the Republican campaign: empty Dewey speeches, the bad Republican candidates, the dangers of Republican commitments to big business. — David McCullough

In sharp contrast, the blessings are speeches of new energy, for they promise future well-being to those who are without hope. In the deathly world of riches, fullness, and uncritical laughter, those who now live in poverty, hunger, and grief are hopeless. They are indeed nonpersons consigned to nonhistory. They have no public existence, and so the public well-being can never extend to them. But the blessings open a new possibility. So the speech of Jesus, like the speech of the entire prophetic tradition, moves from woe to blessing, from judgment to hope, from criticism to energy. The alternative community to be shaped from the poor, hungry, and grieving is called to disengage from the woe pattern of life to end its fascination with that other ordering, and to embrace the blessing pattern. — Walter Brueggemann

Gangsta rap often reaches higher than its ugliest, lowest common denominator, misogyny, violence, materialism and sexual transgression are not its exclusive domain. At its best, this music draws attention to complex dimensions of ghetto life ignored by most Americans. Indeed, gangsta rap's in-your-face style may do more to force America to confront crucial social problems than a million sermons or political speeches. — Michael Eric Dyson

It is easy to love one's enemy when one is making fine speeches; but so difficult to do so in the actual everyday work of life. — Anthony Trollope

Ivanov: You only qualified last year, my dear friend, you're still young and confident, but I am thirty-five. I have the right to give you some advice. Don't marry a Jew or a psychopath or a bluestocking but choose yourself someone ordinary, someone a shade of grey, with no bright colour and no superfluous noises. In general, construct your whole life on a conventional pattern. The greyer, the more monotonous the background, the better. My dear fellow, don't do
battle against thousands all on your own, don't tilt against windmills, don't beat your head against walls ... And may
God preserve you from all kinds of rational farming, newfangled schools, fiery speeches ... Shut yourself in your shell and do your little God-given business ... It's snugger, healthier and more honest. — Anton Chekhov

Some of the most powerful speeches I have given have been delivered in the dedicated silence of my actions. — Steve Maraboli

These are the three things - volume of sound, modulation of pitch, and rhythm - that a speaker bears in mind. It is those who do bear them in mind who usually win prizes in the dramatic contests; and just as in drama the actors now count for more than the poets, so it is in the contests of public life, owing to the defects of our political institutions. — Aristotle.

What I like about graduation speeches is that they're an opportunity for someone to make sense of their life and to impart that wisdom to someone else. It's like a sanctioned self-help moment. — Bruce Eric Kaplan

They teach us that human beings learn and absorb ideas and concepts through narrative, through stories, not through lessons or theoretical speeches. This is what any religious texts teach us. They're all tales about characters who must confront life and overcome obstacles, figures setting off on a journey of spiritual enrichment through exploits and revelations. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The terms of copyright last far too long: either the life of the author plus 70 years after death for a personal work or 95 years for a corporate work. That length doesn't encourage more authorship - it merely limits the speakers who could share powerful speeches, books, and films. — Marvin Ammori

If I could have chosen a flag back then, it would have been embroidered with a portrait of Malcolm X, dressed in a business suit, his tie dangling, one hand parting a window shade, the other holding a rifle. The portrait communicated everything I wanted to be - controlled, intelligent, and beyond the fear. I would buy tapes of Malcolm's speeches - "Message to the Grassroots," "The Ballot or the Bullet" - down at Everyone's Place, a black bookstore on North Avenue, and play them on my Walkman. Here was all the angst I felt before the heroes of February, distilled and quotable. "Don't give up your life, preserve your life," he would say. "And if you got to give it up, make it even-steven." This was not boasting - it was a declaration of equality rooted not in better angels or the intangible spirit but in the sanctity of the black body. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Thus the city repeats its life, identical, shifting up and down on its empty chessboard. The inhabitants repeat the same scenes, with the acton changed; they repeat the same speeches with variously combined accents; they open alternate mouths in identical yawns. Alone, among all the cities of the empire, Eutropia remains always the same. Mercury, god of the fickle, to whom the city is sacred, worked this ambiguous miracle. — Italo Calvino

One of my life goals is to be a best man. It's a baller position. You get drunk, you make speeches, and you make love to the prettiest bridesmaid. Usually standing from behind. — Aziz Ansari

I try to teach my students style, but always as a part of life, not as ornament. Style has to come out of communicating coherent thought, not in sticking little flowers on speeches. Style and substance and a sense of life are the things literature is composed of. One must use one's own personality in relationship to life and language, of course, and everyone has such a relationship. Some people find it, some don't find it, but it's there. — Marguerite Young

The comparison might strike you as farfetched. What (you might be asking) can a Broadway musical possibly add to the legacy of a Founding Father--a giant of our national life, a war hero, a scholar, a statesman? What's one little play, or even one very big play, next to all that?
But there is more than one way to change the world . To secure their freedom, the polyglot American colonists had to come together, and stick together, in the face of enormous adversity. To live in a new way, they first had to think and feel in a new way. It took guns and ships to win the American Revolution, but it also required pamphlets and speeches--and at least one play. — Jeremy McCarter

Ivanov: With a heavy head, with a slothful spirit, exhausted, overstretched, broken, without faith, without love, without a goal, I roam like a shadow among men and I don't know who I am, why I'm alive, what I want. And I now think that love is nonsense, that embraces are cloying, that there's no sense in work, that song and passionate speeches are vulgar and outmoded. And everywhere I take with me depression, chill boredom, dissatisfaction, revulsion from life ... I am destroyed, irretrievably! — Anton Chekhov

For someone like me who, as a kid, walked to school muttering little political speeches to myself, it was irresistible to finally get a chance at political life for real. When the people of Etobicoke-Lakeshore elected me their MP, it changed me forever. — Michael Ignatieff

They don't really listen to speeches or talks. They absorb incrementally, through hours and hours of observation. The sad truth about divorce is that it's hard to teach your kids about life unless you are living life with them: eating together, doing homework, watching Little League, driving them around endlessly, being bored with nothing to do, letting them listen while you do business, while you negotiate love and the frustrations and complications and rewards of living day in and out with your wife. Through this, they see how adults handle responsibility, honesty, commitment, jealousy, anger, professional pressures, and social interactions. Kids learn from whoever is around them the most. — Rob Lowe

I worry that friends will slowly become professional pallbearers, waiting for each death, of their lovers, friends and neighbors, and polishing their funeral speeches; perfecting their rituals of death rather than a relatively simple ritual of life such as screaming in the streets. — David Wojnarowicz

I never would've imagined in the first part of my life that I could've stood up and said anything. The war in Vietnam changed me. I was so angry. Some of my speeches probably weren't well considered. — Jane Fonda