A Quote by Michel de Montaigne

A speech belongs half to the speaker and half to the listener.

Michel de Montaigne

Quote Topics

Belongs Half Listener Speaker Speech

Quote Author

Michel de Montaigne
French - Philosopher
February 28, 1533 - September 13, 1592

Speech belongs half to the speaker, half to the listener. The latter must prepare to receive it according to the motion it takes.

Michel de Montaigne

It is very much easier to divide your outlook on the world into two halves, to say that you know this belongs to the daily half and this belongs to the Sunday half.

Jacob Bronowski

A tree there is that from its topmost bough Is half all glittering flame and half all green Abounding foliage moistened with the dew; And half is half and yet is all the scene; And half and half consume what they renew.

William Butler Yeats

Lips half-willing in a doorway. Lips half-singing at a window. Eyes half-dreaming in the walls. Feet half-dancing in a kitchen. Even the clocks half-yawn the hours And the farmers make half-answers.

Carl Sandburg

No half measures. Some things can’t be cut in half. You can’t half-love someone. You can’t half-betray, or half-lie.

Mark Lawrence

Occasionally, once a speaker is on his feet, it is difficult to get him to sit down. ... If and when he returns to earth, he notices half of the room is paging the other half and a few are playing with the melted candles.

Erma Bombeck

Man is perhaps half mind and half matter in the same way as the polyp is half plant and half animal. The strangest creatures are always found on the border lines of species.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

A popular speaker, however unpopular and insignificant, has only to wind up his speech with half-a-dozen lines of Shakespeare (and to make it clearly understood that they are Shakespeare's) and he will sit down amid thunders of applause.

W. S. Gilbert

It's what the people wanted at the time, but the country could not be half-segregated and half-integrated, just as it could not be half-slave and half-free back in the 1800s.

George Wallace

What a name! Was it love or praise? Speech half-asleep or song half-awake? I must learn Spanish, one of these days, Only for that slow sweet name's sake.

Robert Browning

A democracy cannot flourish half rich and half poor, any more than it can flourish half free and half slave.

Felix Rohatyn

I am half-Byronic, half-moronic; part-shaman, part-showman; half-Nazi, half-Liberace.

Sebastian Horsley

Mr Speaker, I withdraw my statement that half the cabinet are asses - half the cabinet are not asses.

Benjamin Disraeli

Living out one's faith is either no way to live or the only way to live; it's either imprisonment, or the only path to freedom. It offers happiness, or it frustrates the pursuit. There is no half-love, half-religion, half-worship, half-belief, half-truth. There is no kinda-sorta.

Tarek Saab

Giving a reader a sex scene that is only half right is like giving her half a kitten. It is not half as cute as a whole kitten; it is a bloody, godawful mess. A half-good sex scene is not half as hot; it actually moves into the negative numbers, draining any heat from the surrounding material.