(Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism, 1711) It gilds all objects, but it alters none.' Its gaudy colours spreads on every place Īll glares alike, without distinction gay īut true expression, like th' unchanging Sun,Ĭlears and improves whate'er it shines upon Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found:įalse Eloquence, like the prismatic glass, 'Words are like leaves and where they most abound, (David Hume, 'An Essay on Eloquence,' 1742) Now, banish the pathetic from public discourses, and you reduce the speakers merely to modern eloquence that is, to good sense delivered in proper expression.' 'It may be pretended, that the decline of eloquence is owing to the superior good sense of the moderns, who reject with disdain all those rhetorical tricks employed to seduce the judges, and will admit of nothing but solid argument in any debate of deliberation. (Laurence Sterne, 'Sermon 42: Search the Scriptures,' 1760) The other sort of eloquence is quite the reverse of this and which may be said to be the true characteristic of the holy scriptures, where the excellence does not arise from a laboured and far-fetched elocution, but from a surprising mixture of simplicity and majesty, which is a double character, so difficult to be united, that it is seldom to be met with in compositions merely human.' This kind of writing is for the most part much affected and admired by people of weak judgment and vicious taste.

The one indeed scarce deserves the name of it, which consists chiefly in laboured and polished periods, an over-curious and artificial arrangement of figures, tinselled over with a gaudy embellishment of words, which glitter, but convey little or no light to the understanding. The categorical appeal of literature resides in a liking for verbalization as such, just as the categorical appeal of music resides in a liking for musical sounds as such.' 'The primary purpose of eloquence is not to enable us to live our lives on paper-it is to convert life into its most thorough verbal equivalent. Even the poorest art is eloquent, but in a poor way, with less intensity, until this aspect is obscured by others fattening upon its leanness. Eloquence is simply the end of art, and is thus its essence. is no mere plaster added to a framework of more stable qualities.

Kenneth Burke on Eloquence and Literature.Those skills do not include eloquence or an appreciation of eloquence: each profession has its own ways of speech, corresponding to its pragmatic purposes and values.' 'It is regrettable that undergraduate education is already turned toward the professional and managerial skills on which students will depend for a livelihood. 'he qualities of writing I care about are increasingly hard to expound: aesthetic finesse, beauty, eloquence, style, form, imagination, fiction, the architecture of a sentence, the bearing of rhyme, pleasure, 'how to do things with words.' It has become harder to persuade students that these are real places of interest and value in a poem, a play, a novel, or an essay in the New Yorker. Like beauty, it claims only the privilege of being a grace note in the culture that permits it. The main attribute of eloquence is gratuitousness: its place in the world is to be without place or function, its mode is to be intrinsic. It is a gift to be enjoyed in appreciation and practice. ' Eloquence, as distinct from rhetoric, has no aim: it is a play of words or other expressive means. Denis Donoghue on the Gift of Eloquence.(Marshall McLuhan, The Mechanical Bride, 1951) 'Today it is not the classroom nor the classics which are the repositories of models of eloquence, but the ad agencies.'.'In a word, to feel your subject thoroughly, and to speak without fear, are the only rules of eloquence.'.'They are eloquent who can speak low things acutely, and of great things with dignity, and of moderate things with temper.'.(Ben Jonson, Timber, or Discoveries, 1630) 'Talking and eloquence are not the same: to speak and to speak well are two things.'.

Spoke eloquently