Formal Speech Quotes

Over the centuries, Chinese bureaucrats perfected the dark arts of emptiness to such an extent that when they deliver speeches these days, they often recite verbatim speeches that they have previously delivered, with the sparest of adjustments.

An American cannot converse, but he can discuss, and his talk falls into a dissertation. He speaks to you as if he was addressing a meeting; and if he should chance to become warm in the discussion, he will say 'Gentlemen' to the person with whom he is conversing.

I did my first speech when I was 17, well, my first formal speech. So I've had time to deal with it, and to adjust to it, but I can't say I'm like gung-ho on public speaking or interviews for that matter.

When any member is about to speak in debate, or deliver any matter to the house, he shall rise from his feet and respectfully address himself to “Mr. Speaker.”

Over the years, I've trained myself to speak using the same language I would use if I were typing: meaning using full sentences in the way that paragraphs and scenes are arranged.

For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible.

A podium is something you walk up to, you say what you want to say and when you're finished, you leave.

You must pardon me, gentlemen, for being a most unconscionable time a-dying.

He speaks to Me as if I was a public meeting.

Y'all are so cute and y'all talk so proper over here. I love England.

It's hard to imagine in this day and age the accent in Dalton Trumbo speaking voice, the Mid Atlantic mixture of an English and American dialect, so flowery and oratorical that it almost sounds theatrical. It would be uncool today, no one would ever speak that way.

Anyone who has ever spent time listening to a legislature knows the astonishing speed at which all presiding officers and reading clerks can spit out the formulaic incantations of parliamentary procedure.

New York cops are very specific in terms of the way they talk and the way they handle themselves.

Poetry's unnat'ral; no man ever talked poetry 'cept a beadle on boxin' day.

We loved the language in Cormac McCarthy's 'No Country,' which is really about the region, while in 'True Grit' it's more about period: people did speak more formally and floridly.

If you talk to your friends the way your parents talk, they will think you are stiff and odd.

As all Members of Parliament know, the ease and flow of making a speech outside the House is not at all the same as that required in the Chamber.

Use declarative sentences… Use an elevated tone… Use graceful language

Senator, we just don't use that kind of language on the floor of the Senate.

Just because I have a good vocabulary, I don't think of myself as anachronistic - just because I try not to use the word 'like' every other word.

A Dumont actor was considered to be too stilted - the way we Dumont actors used to speak.

I liked the books I read that said things like 'I shan't'. I would try to find a way to say in my life, to reply, 'I shan't do that, mother.' That was so far away from my barrio world.

However, I must not indulge in homespun wisdom here before so distinguished an assembly, especially as I am to be followed by a representative of science.

Pedantry consists in the use of words unsuitable to the time, place, and company.