Most Eloquent Quotes & Sayings

The life of a good man is at the same time the most eloquent lesson of virtue and the most severe reproof of vice. — Samuel Smiles

Sex makes bumble-tongued fools even out of the most eloquent, but the beauty of it is that it also tunes our ears to hear the meaning of words that, spoken under other circumstances, would make us laugh or cry or frown. — Megan Hart

An ill life will effectually drown the voice of the most eloquent ministry. — Charles Spurgeon

The Eucharist is the bread that gives strength ... It is at once the most eloquent proof of His love and the most powerful means of fostering His love in us. He gives Himself every day so that our hearts as burning coals may set afire the hearts of the faithful. — Father Damien

ON JUNE 25, 1890, W. E. B. Du Bois spoke at his Harvard graduation ceremony. He had now excelled, and had graduated from the most prestigious historically Black college and the most prestigious historically White college in the United States. He felt he was showing off the capability of his race. Du Bois's "brilliant and eloquent address," as judged by the reporters, was on "Jefferson Davis as Representative of Civilization." In Du Bois's rendering, Jefferson Davis, who had died the year before, represented the rugged individualism and domineering European civilization, in contrast to the rugged "submission" and selflessness of African civilization. The European "met civilization and crushed it," Du Bois concluded. "The Negro met civilization and was crushed by it." According to Du Bois's biographer, the Harvard graduate contrasted the civilized European "Strong Man" to the civilized African "Submissive Man."5 — Ibram X. Kendi

Theodore Beza was a younger colleague and successor of John Calvin, the founder of the Reformed branch of Protestantism during the Reformation. In his biography of Calvin, Beza recalled the three great preachers in Geneva during those years - Calvin himself, Guillaume Farel, and Pierre Viret. Farel, said Beza, was the most fiery, passionate, and forceful in his sermonic delivery. Viret was the most eloquent, and audiences hung on his skillful and beautiful words. The time flew by fastest when sitting under his preaching. Calvin was the most profound, his sermons packed full of "the weightiest of insights." Calvin had the most substance, Viret the most eloquence, and Farel the most vehemence. Beza concluded "that a preacher who was a composite of these three men would have been absolutely perfect. — Timothy Keller

The problem isn't that I'm uncomfortable with it, the problem is that I want it!" I yelled. It was official; I'd lost it. Oh well, I wasn't known for having a long fuse.
"Are you happy? Jesus. You say something like that and then expect me to just be whatever about it. That's like teasing someone with a giant red velvet cake and then putting it in one of those glass rotating desert thingies." I wasn't my most eloquent at the moment.
"Does this mean I'm the cake?"
"Shut up, it was a metaphor."
"So you want me?"
So much it hurt. "Yes," I whispered.
"Right now?"
"Yes."
"Oh." Now he was the one who sounded nervous.
"It's just... a surprise."
"I told you I would entertain the idea."
"I know. I just didn't think you'd be so enthusiastic so soon."
"Hunter, I'm a virgin. Not a nun."
He didn't talk for a moment.
"That was the sexiest thing you've ever said. God, why do you do this to me? — Chelsea M. Cameron

It was, possibly, the most potent orgasm I'd ever felt, made dirty and scandalous and all the more intense for taking place at a restaurant table in full view of the owner who was listing the dishes and waxing eloquent on the food he was going to bring out next. — Jasinda Wilder

You see, nothing is more immediate, more complete than the sense of smell. In an instant, it has the power to transport you. Your olfactory sense connects not to the memory itself, but to the emotion you felt when that memory was made. To recreate a scent memory is one of the most challenging, eloquent pursuits possible. It's poetry, in its most immediate form. — Kathleen Tessaro

Voices in the forest tell of dark and twisted enchantments - as dark and twisted as the roots and grasping branches of the trees themselves. Even the most gnarled tree is eloquent in the telling of its own tale. — Brian Froud

As Truman saw the presidency, the chief responsibility was to make decisions and he made some of the most difficult and far-reaching of any president. If not brilliant or eloquent, he was courageous and principled. The invisible something he brought to the office was character. — David McCullough

In an era when most bands were about nothing, the Manics were about everything: an eloquent scream, a j'accuse to the entire moribund millennium. — Simon Price

In politics we presume that everyone who knows how to get votes knows how to administer a city or a state. When we are ill ... we do not ask for the handsomest physician, or the most eloquent one. — Plato

All the wild beasts have been extinct for years, but it's perfectly possible to synthesize them autobiogenically. On the other hand, why be bound to what was once produced by natural evolution? The spokesman for surrealist zoology was most eloquent - we should populate our preserves with bold, original conceptions, not slavish imitations, we should forge the New, not plagiarize the Old. — Stanislaw Lem

I know the woman has no soul, I know The woman has no possibilities Of soul or mind or heart, but merely is The masterpiece of flesh: well, be it so. It is her flesh that I adore; I go Thirsting afresh to drain her empty kiss. I know she cannot love: it is not this My vanquished heart implores in overthrow. Tyrannously I crave, I crave alone, Her splendid body, Earth's most eloquent Music, divinest human harmony; Her body now a silent instrument, That 'neath my touch shall wake and make for me The strains I have but dreamed of, never known. — Arthur Symons

The sermon of your life in tough times ministers to people more powerfully than the most eloquent speaker. — Bill Bright

It is quite possible that the truest and most eloquent art is a successful fusion of both the visible and visionary worlds, each enhancing and reinforcing the other. — Edward Betts

Surely silence can sometimes be the most eloquent reply. — Hazrat Ali Ibn Abu-Talib A.S

The most eloquent seems to stutter. — Laozi

Birds are, perhaps, the most eloquent expression of reality. — Roger Tory Peterson

In came ... a baby, eloquent as infancy usually is, and like most youthful orators, more easily heard than understood. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Journey of the Universe is eloquent, accessible, and powerful, and conveys a sense of wonder ranging from the cosmos to the microcosm
in itself a considerable achievement. This is one of the most compelling and inspiring works I've read in a long time. — David W. Orr

The simplest man with passion will be more persuasive than the most eloquent without. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Silence is often the most eloquent answer to our critics. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

De Tocqueville, after his tour of the United States in 1831, was to comment that "The Senate contains within a small space a large proportion of the celebrated men of America. Scarcely an individual is to be seen in it who has not had an active and illustrious career: the Senate is composed of eloquent advocates, distinguished generals, wise magistrates, and statesmen of note, whose arguments would do honor to the most remarkable parliamentary debates of Europe." De Tocqueville was not the only foreign observer deeply impressed. The Victorian historian Sir Henry Maine said that the Senate was "the only thoroughly successful institution which has been established since the tide of modern democracy began to run." Prime Minister William Gladstone called it "the most remarkable of all the inventions of modern politics. — Robert A. Caro

The most eloquent prayer is the prayer through hands that heal and bless. — Billy Graham

Always the most revealing thing about the Church is her idea of God, just as her most significant message is what she says about Him or leaves unsaid, for her silence is often more eloquent than her speech. — A.W. Tozer

Tis as easy as lying: govern these ventages with
your lingers and thumb, give it breath with your
mouth, and it will discourse most eloquent music.
Look you, these are the stops. — William Shakespeare

The passions are the only orators that always persuade: they are, as it were, a natural art, the rules of which are infallible; and the simplest man with passion is more persuasive than the most eloquent without it. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Hawkins was eloquent and poetic
but most of all he was exquisitely sensitive to a woman's moods. He sensed it when Annie was depressed, though she never told him she was, and he would say just the right thing to cheer her. And when she was elated, he nourished her elation, and kept it alive for weeks instead of fleeting minutes.
Out, Brief Candle — Kurt Vonnegut

Well, one of the things we're supposed to be able to do as playwrights is write from a place of empathy, get into another character's shoes and experience things both mundane and tragic. And people don't
like me right now
people aren't necessarily the most eloquent when trying to express their emotions. I guess I feel as a playwright that those people deserve a voice, too, a voice that isn't so articulate that they themselves can no longer identify with it. — Tracy Letts

He that can carp in the most eloquent or acute manner at the weakness of the human mind is held by his fellows as almost divine. — Baruch Spinoza

Matt Mason must be declared the poet laureate of the Midwest! No other native son celebrates the overlooked America, its unsung citizens (from the anonymous poets to the part-time English teachers), and its expansive indigenous landscape, as well as he does. Mason's poetry is humorous when he wants to be quirky, heartbreaking when he wants to be eloquent, and though he moves effortlessly into other moods and geographies, he always returns to his first and most enduring love (and to what he knows best)-his homeland. — Rigoberto Gonzalez

The position of an art in the scale of human knowledge is, perhaps, the most eloquent symptom of the gulf between man's progress in the physical sciences and his stagnation (or, today, his retrogression) in the humanities. — Ayn Rand

Type is one of the most eloquent means of expression in every epoch of style. Next to architecture, it gives the most characteristic portrait of a period and the most severe testimony of a nation's intellectual status. — Peter Behrens

I am not the most eloquent guy in the world. — Dave Pelzer

Delicate, gracious, and eloquent, John Brandi's poems reveal that he remains an extraordinary profound poet of prayer and praise. His is the most honorable and heroic of ambitions - to dress our broken world in the clothes of language, trust, and hope. — David St. John

It should be noted that people in the free market rarely bear false witness; integrity is the rule. The morning mile, phone calls, planes the airlines buy, autos by the millions - no one could list the instances - are as represented. We have daily, eloquent, enormous testimony that the Ten Commandments can be and are observed by fallible human beings. Contemporary politics is the most glaring of all exceptions. — Leonard Read

I saw "Forrest Gump" several times. I personally thought it was Tom Hanks' greatest role and I think it was one of the most eloquent love stories of our time. — Frederick Lenz

Poetry can be more eloquent than the most eloquent sermons, and it becomes a weapon more formidable than the sharpest of swords; whenever such a poem--which finds its correct tune and conveys the excitement of the heart--rings out, all the miserable, heaped drifts of words fly for shelter and bury themselves in ashamed silence. Whenever such a sword of poetry is drawn from its scabbard, all the false princes of words, who have set their thrones on a void, are thwarted and retreat into seclusion. — M. Fethullah Gulen

Bushes may not be eloquent explaining emotion, but George HW Bush's mother knew enough to be in position with her children were ready to talk. She waited up not just to ensure safety but to make the most of the moment of excited emotions. The next morning, they would congeal into polite, one-word answers. — H.W. Brands

a silent night. - the most eloquent poem i have ever read. — Sanober Khan

Josip had only an instant to exchange a glance with Serif. He made it the most eloquent glance of his life. — Geraldine Brooks

The most eloquent eulogy of capitalism was made by its greatest enemy. Marx is only anti-capitalist in so far as capitalism is out of date. — Albert Camus

The orator puts off his individuality, and is then most eloquent when most silent. He listens while he speaks, and is a hearer along with his audience. — Henry David Thoreau

It was the most eloquent silence I ever heard. — Laurie Halse Anderson

When I am praying the most eloquently, I am getting the least accomplished in my prayer life. But when I stop getting eloquent and give God less theology and shut up and just gaze upward and wait for God to speak to my heart He speaks with such power that I have to grab a pencil and a notebook and take notes on what God is saying to my heart. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

A month later Billie sits at her dining room table, sifting through the pictorial record of Chris's final days. It is all she can do to force herself to examine the fuzzy snapshots. As she studies the pictures, she breaks down from time to time, weeping as only a mother who has outlived a child can weep, betraying a sense of loss so huge and irreparable that the mind balks at taking its measure. Such bereavement, witnessed at close range, makes even the most eloquent apologia for high-risk activities ring fatuous and hollow. - describing the mother of Chris McCandless after learning of his starvation in the wild — Jon Krakauer

With Head Off & Split, Nikky Finney establishes herself as one of the most eloquent, urgent, fearless and necessary poets writing in America today. What makes this book as important as anything published in the last decade is the irresistible music, the formal dexterity and the imaginative leaps she makes with metaphor and language in these simply stunning poems. This is a very, very important achievement. — Kwame Dawes

and pleasure? What is it that I am tasting?' The most eloquent rabbi and writer of Hasidic mysticism, Abraham Joshua Heschel, left Warsaw in 1939 to become an important — Diane Ackerman

Perhaps the most eloquent of the hard virtues is courage, the disposition to encounter adversity head-on and strive to overcome it. — Ted Malloch

Language is the crowning achievement of human beings, and that is something Muslims have always known and revered. We are a literate people whose miracle is a Book from an unlettered man, peace and blessings be upon him, who was the most articulate and eloquent human being who ever lived. We honor our Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, in honoring language that he loved so much and used so well. — Hamza Yusuf

It is an unfortunate fact that those people who are most eloquent in their demand for the conservation of animals are often those most eager to violate animal life at the first opportunity. — Andrew Linzey

The heavens are nobly eloquent of the Deity, and the most magnificent heralds of their Maker's praise. — James Hervey

His system of morality was the most benevolent and sublime probably that has been ever taught, and consequently more perfect than those of any of the ancient philosophers ... He was the most innocent, the most benevolent, the most eloquent and sublime character that ever has been exhibited to man. — Thomas Jefferson

J. Budziszewski is perhaps the clearest and most eloquent natural lawyer writing today. When reading his works I often find myself amazed by his insights and wondering, 'Why didn't I think of that?' And then it dawns on me, 'That's what C. S. Lewis and G. K. Chesterton do to me as well.' The Line Through the Heart is another destination in J. Budziszewski's philosophical quest to lead his readers to the promised land of the good, the true, and the beautiful, to guide us to that place where we have always been but can't seem to find. — Francis J. Beckwith

If we understood it, the silence of Christ is the most eloquent of all appeals. Can you remember when you used to hear Him - when the words of the Book and the preacher used to move you in church, when the singing awoke aspiration, when the Sabbath was holy ground, when the Spirit of God strove with you? And is that all passed of passing away? — James Stalker

But the hobbledehoy, though he blushes when women address him, and is uneasy even when he is near them, though he is not master ofhis limbs in a ball-room, and is hardly master of his tongue at any time, is the most eloquent of beings, and especially eloquent among beautiful women. — Anthony Trollope

The most obscene symbol in human history is the Cross; yet in its ugliness it remains the most eloquent testimony to human dignity. — R.C. Sproul

Money will say more in one moment than the most eloquent lover can in years. — Henry Fielding

For me writing biographies is impossible, unless they are brief and concise, and these are, I feel, the most eloquent. — Alfred Nobel

One Monday, just for sport, Charlie grabbed an eggplant that a spectacularly wizened granny was going for, but instead of twisting it out of his hand with some mystic kung fu move as he expected, she looked him in the eye and shook her head - just a jog, barely perceptible really - it might have been a tic, but it was the most eloquent of gestures. Charlie read it as saying: O White Devil, you do not want to purloin that purple fruit, for I have four thousand years of ancestors and civilization on you; my grandparents built the railroads and dug the silver mines, and my parents survived the earthquake, the fire, and a society that outlawed even being Chinese; I am mother to a dozen, grandmother to a hundred, and great-grandmother to a legion; I have birthed babies and washed the dead; I am history and suffering and wisdom; I am a Buddha and a dragon; so get your fucking hand off my eggplant before you lose it. — Christopher Moore

Force, not persuasion, not discussion, is the legitimate instrument for influencing and policing the hockey mind. Fighting in hockey is one of the most magnificent and eloquent displays of refinement in all of sports. — Brian D'Ambrosio

Life in the country teaches one that the really stimulating things are the quiet, natural things, and the really wearisome things are the noisy, unnatural things. It is more exciting to stand still than to dance. Silence is more eloquent than speech. Water is more stimulating than wine. Fresh air is more intoxicating than cigarette smoke. Sunlight is more subtle than electric light. The scent of grass is more luxurious than the most expensive perfume. The slow, simple observations of the peasant are more wise than the most sparkling epigrams of the latest wit. — Beverley Nichols

To me, a wicked man who is also eloquent seems the most guilty of them all. He'll cut your throat as bold as brass, because he can dress up murder in handsome words. — Euripides

Read Hearn, the most eloquent and truthful interpreter of the Japanese mind, and you see the working of that mind to be an example of the working of Bushido. — Inazo Nitobe

Silence (can) be the most eloquent form of lying. — Pat Conroy

Dorian gave a smug grin. "My mate thinks I'm the most gorgeous leopard she ever saw."
"Show us the footage before your head explodes," Lucas muttered, but his own cat was grinning to see Dorian so happy. The sentinel had been latent most of his life, unable to shift into leopard form. Now that he could, he did so at every opportunity. "Have you managed to catch a rabbit yet?"
A single eloquent finger. "Fuck you."
Lucas snickered. "What about trying for a turtle?"
Dorian lunged out of the chair and went for Lucas's throat. — Nalini Singh

The most important questions - "What are you? Where did you come from?" - had a whole range of answers, starting with "I'm the Disreputable Dog" and "from elsewhere" and occasionally becoming as eloquent as "I'm your Dog" and "You tell me - it was your spell. — Garth Nix

It's always what may not be shown that shows the most. Forbidden words are always the most eloquent. — Clive Barker

Sometimes, to be silent is to be most eloquent. — Charlton Heston

The seventh day of creation is the most eloquent and insightful as to the nature of God. From a literary perspective, the Sabbath forms the pinnacle of the story. Like the dramatic kiss of a soldier returning from war, this is the moment we're not meant to miss. In choosing rest as the grand finale, God reveals himself as one driven by neither anxiety nor fear but one who finds gladness in both the work of creation and the creation of work. — Margaret Feinberg

Many of the most eloquent people I have ever met work in lab coats every day. — Michael Specter

Ten Little Indians once again shows [Alexie] to be not just one of the West's best, but one of the most brilliantly literate American writers, even funnier than Louise Erdrich, even more primal than Jim Harrison, and even more eloquent than Annie Proulx. — Ron Franscell

Ideal conversation must be an exchange of thought, and not, as many of those who worry most about their shortcomings believe, an eloquent exhibition of wit or oratory. — Emily Post

what's the most horrible experience you can imagine? To me - it's being left, unarmed, in a sealed cell with a drooling beast of prey or a maniac who's had some disease that's eaten his brain out. You'd have nothing then but your voice - your voice and your thought. You'd scream to that creature why it should not touch you, you'd have the most eloquent words, the unanswerable words, you'd become the vessel of the absolute truth. And you'd see living eyes watching you and you'd know that the thing can't hear you, that it can't be reached, not reached, not in any way, yet it's breathing and moving there before you with a purpose of its own. That's horror. Well, that's what's hanging over the world, prowling somewhere through mankind, that same thing, something closed, mindless, utterly wanton, but something with an aim and a cunning of its own. — Ayn Rand

On Sundays Mom invariably ran out of money, which is when she cracked eggs into the skillet over cubes of fried black sourdough bread. It was, I think, the most delicious and eloquent expression of pauperism. — Anya Von Bremzen

Pitt and Burke were two of the most eloquent and respected members of Parliament, and taken together, by early 1775, they were warning the British ministry that it was headed toward a war that was unwise, unnecessary, and probably unwinnable. — Joseph J. Ellis

At their most eloquent, proponents of neoliberalism sound as if they are doing poor people, the environment, and everybody else a tremendous service as they enact policies on behalf of the wealthy few. The — Noam Chomsky

Tokyo Sonata speaks to us, with feeling and passion, as one of the most eloquent statements on the world today that we are likely to see in this moviegoing year. — Andrew Sarris

Half-drunken poetry is the most honest kind of poetry. Too slurred to be eloquent, not slurred enough to be witless. — Sam Sykes

The most eloquent prayer is often prayed through hands that heal and bless. — Billy Graham