He himself said that he gained his skill at the expense of the House, for he had sometimes tasked himself during the entire session to speak on every question that came up, whether he was interested in it or not, as a means of exercising…

The value of the practice of translation from Latin or Greek into English, in getting command of good English style, in my judgment, can hardly be stated too strongly.

You have in these two languages and especially in Latin, the best instrument for the most precise and most perfect expression of thought.

The Latin prose of Tacitus and Cicero, the verse of Virgil and Horace, are like a Greek statue, or an Italian cameo--you have not only exquisite beauty, but also exquisite precision.

You get the thought into your mind with the accuracy and precision of the words that express numbers in the multiplication table.

Having got the idea into your mind with the precision, accuracy, and beauty of the Latin expression, you are to get its equivalent in English.

If the phrase that occurs to you does not exactly fit the thought, you are almost certain, especially in speaking or rapid composition, to modify the thought to fit the phrase.

The extemporary speaker never gets, or easily loses, the power of precise and accurate thinking or statement, and rarely attains a literary excellence which gives him immortality.

He must get an English expression if the resources of the language will furnish it, which will equal as near as may be the dignity and beauty of the original.

Thanksgiving was then, as it is and ought to be now, the great day of the year.

This practice will soon give him ready command of the great riches of his own noble English tongue.

The best word and phrase will come to him spontaneously when he speaks and thinks.

The orator will get the affluence and abundance which characterize the great Italian artists of the Middle Ages, who astonish us as much by the amount and variety of their work as by its excellence.

He can use to great advantage the most varied learning, the profoundest philosophy, the most compelling logic.

He must master the subject with which he has to deal, and he must have knowledge adequate to illustrate and adorn it.

When every other faculty of the orator is acquired, it sometimes almost seems as if the voice were nine-tenths, and everything else but one-tenth, of the consummate orator.

It is impossible to overrate the importance to his purpose of that matchless instrument, the human voice.

The most fastidious critic is by no means the best judge, seldom even a fairly good judge, of the public speaker.

What did the Englishman know of the Fourth of July emotion which stirred all Americans in the days when the country had just escaped destruction, and was entering upon its new career of freedom and of glory?

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?

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

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.

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

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

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.