Rhetorical Devices Quotes

If you can't answer a man's arguments, all is not lost; you can still call him vile names.

… a style of oratory that I never heard equaled in this or any other country

Modi is an excellent orator - sure, anybody who spouts untruths is an excellent orator.

That's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody's going to be against, and everybody's going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything.

Epithets, like pepper, Give zest to what you write; And if you strew them sparely, They whet the appetite: But if you lay them on too thick, You spoil the matter quite!

Rhetoric is the counterpart of logic; since both are conversant with subjects of such a nature as it is the business of all to have a certain knowledge of, and which belong to no distinct science. Wherefore all men in some way participate of both; since all, to a certain extent, attempt, as well to sift, as to maintain an argument; as well to defend themselves, as to impeach.

What is called eloquence in the forum is commonly found to be rhetoric in the study. The orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion, and speaks to the mob before him, to those who can hear him; but the writer, whose more equable life is his occasion, and who would be distracted by the event and the crowd which inspire the orator, speaks to the intellect and heart of mankind, to all in any age who can understand him.

Language is a weapon of politicians, but language is a weapon in much of human affairs.

People pay attention to what a President says, whether or not he pauses for emphasis in the right places. Sometimes they even read the text.

George Bush ran a campaign where he bragged about being an anti-intellectual, dismissing his Harvard and Yale pedigree, pretending he was an American every day, ordinary everyman, and as a result of that, played up his fumbling speech because it signified that he was a good guy. That is deeply and profoundly anti-intellectual.

Language, philosophy, and science are interwoven into the design of words, which are manipulated to create surprising illusions.

You can't learn pathos or profundity.

Liberals in their meetings utter bold words; they strut, grimace belligerently, and then issue a weasel-worded statement which has tremendous implications, if read between the lines.

Brevity is a great charm of eloquence.

Now all orators effect their demonstrative proofs by allegation either of enthymems or examples, and, besides these, in no other way whatever.

My poems tend to have rhetorical structures; what I mean by that is they tend to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. There tends to be an opening, as if you were reading the opening chapter of a novel. They sound like I'm initiating something, or I'm making a move.

When it comes to Republican debates, fibs and fits come first; facts come last.

The language is always powerful in Shakespeare, but with 'Antony and Cleopatra,' the speeches are so big and muscular and rich - exhausting to speak, actually.

When people say "clearly" something that means there's a huge crack in their argument and they know things aren't clear at all.

When you have the facts on your side, argue the facts. When you have the law on your side, argue the law. When you have neither, holler.

Ayn Rand is a rhetorician who writes novels I have never been able to read.

Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion.

The things that mount the rostrum with a skip, And then skip down again, pronounce a text, Cry hem; and reading what they never wrote Just fifteen minutes, huddle up their work, And with a well-bred whisper close the scene!

The flowery style is not unsuitable to public speeches or addresses, which amount only to compliment. The lighter beauties are in their place when there is nothing more solid to say; but the flowery style ought to be banished from a pleading, a sermon, or a didactic work.

Metaphors convince at once or not at all.