319 Quotes About Speaking

We unlearn the art of speaking well when we cease to speak with God.

Shame derives its power from being unspeakable.

Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.

O yes youwl want to think on that you dont want your mouf to walk you where your feet dont want to go.

The first rule of my speaking is: listen!

Well, all speaking is difficult, whether peril attends it or not. Sometimes peril to the body, sometimes a more intimate, miniature, invisible peril to the soul. When to speak at all is a betrayal of something, perhaps a something not even identified, hiding inside the chambers of the body like a scared refugee in a site of war.

He sounded like a man with a mouthful of marbles, articulating his goatbone underjaw laboriously, the original one having been shot away.

Mrs. Porter was from Virginia and had a smooth-as-cat-fur way of speaking. She taught me how to say, “Fiddle-Dee-Dee,” just like Scarlett O’Hara and she made her split-pea soup with bacon and even let me try on her lipstick sometimes as she teased up my hair in the same sixties style she wore, “Ala Pricilla Presley,” whoever that was.

It is an enormous mistake to assume that what the translator conveys is what the speaker intended, and it is equally foolish to assume that what you intended to say is what will be understood.