George F. Hoar

One of these merits is that it enables a man to discharge a noble duty in the noblest possible manner.

I admit that open voting has its evils as well as its merits.

Although Bernal Osborne was a man of great wit and sense, and Sir Stafford Northcote and Sir Michael Hicks-Beach were then, as the latter is now, very eminent characters, yet the only speakers who belonged to the rank of the great orators…

Gladstone showed his power of elevating the discussion to a lofty plane, which his opponent never reached, although Disraeli launched at him many a keen shaft from below.

Osborne was full of a shrewd and delightful wit, without the vitriolic flavor which often appears in the sarcasm of Disraeli.

The speeches are well worth studying by a person who wishes to get an idea of the intellectual and literary quality of these champions.

The printing-press and the reporter, the consultation in the jury-room, the reflection in the Judge's chamber, the delay of the election to a day long after the speech, are protections against the mischief of mere oratory, which the…

The speaker's argument must be sounded, and rung, and tested, and tried again and again, before the auditor acts upon it.

The Judge himself must state the reasons for his opinions, which are to be read by a learned and critical profession and by posterity.

Even then the best of them had discovered that not eloquence, but wisdom, is the power by which states grow and flourish.

The speech itself perished with the occasion, unless, as in some few instances, the orator preserved it in manuscript for a curious posterity.

The speaker, in the old time, addressed an audience about to act instantly upon the emotions or convictions he had himself caused.

There is one great difference between the condition of the American orator and that of the orator of antiquity.

I should rather, for myself, recommend Robert South to the student.

But there is a lack of strength and vigor in Addison, which perhaps prevents his being the best model for the advocate in the court-house or the champion in a political debate.

It is a maxim that the pupil who wishes to acquire a pure and simple style should give his days and nights to Addison.

There are examples of men of great original genius who have risen to lofty oratory on some great occasion who had not the advantage of familiarity with any great author.

Do not Sheridan's great perorations, and Burke's, in the Impeachment of Warren Hastings, read well?

Would not Mark Anthony's speech over the dead body of Caesar, had it been uttered, have moved the Roman populace as it moves the spectator when the play is acted, or the solitary reader in his closet?

But still the great oratoric triumphs of literature and history stand the test of reading in the closet, as well as of hearing in the assembly.

So, also, more careful and deliberate criticism will discover offences of style and taste which pass unheeded in a speech when uttered.

If there be a fallacy, he is not hurried away to something else before he can detect it.

He lacks that marvellous influence by which in a great assembly the emotion of every individual soul is multiplied by the emotion of every other.

It is often said that if a speech read well it is not a good speech.

What could he understand of that feeling, full of the morning and of the springtime, which heard the cannon boom and the bells ring, with stirring and quickened pulse, in those exultant days?