A Quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson

The eloquent man is he who is no beautiful speaker, but who is inwardly and desperately drunk with a certain belief.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Quote Topics

Beautiful Belief Certain Desperately Drunk Eloquent Man Speaker

Quote Author

Ralph Waldo Emerson
American - Philosopher
May 25, 1803 - April 27, 1882

And in cases where profound conviction has been wrought, the eloquent man is he who is no beautiful speaker, but who is inwardly drunk with a certain belief. It agitates and tears him, and perhaps almost bereaves him of the power of articulation.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

True. There is a beautiful Jesus. He is frozen to his bones like a chunk of beef. How desperately he wanted to pull his arms in! How desperately I touch his vertical and horizontal axes! But I can't. Need is not quite belief.

Anne Sexton

When a man bleeds inwardly, it is a dangerous thing for himself; but when he laughs inwardly, it bodes no good to other people.

Charles Dickens

No man was ever eloquent by trying to be eloquent, but only by being so.

George Henry Lewes

If an eloquent speaker speak not the truth, is there a more horrid kind of object in creation?

Thomas Carlyle

I think what attracts me about the Electric Monk is that it's such an eloquent example of the futility of belief for belief's sake. I mean there's only any point in believing something if it's true.

Richard Dawkins

The sermon of your life in tough times ministers to people more powerfully than the most eloquent speaker.

Bill Bright

For, if a good speaker, never so eloquent, does not see into the fact, and is not speaking the truth of that - is there a more horrid kind of object in creation?

Thomas Carlyle

The man who has a certain religious belief and fears to discuss it, lest it may be proved wrong, is not loyal to his belief, he has but a coward's faithfulness to his prejudices. If he were a lover of truth, he would be willing at any moment to surrender his belief for a higher, better, and truer faith.

William George Jordan

But the hobbledehoy, though he blushes when women address him, and is uneasy even when he is near them, though he is not master ofhis limbs in a ball-room, and is hardly master of his tongue at any time, is the most eloquent of beings, and especially eloquent among beautiful women.

Anthony Trollope

In a couple of Ahdaf Soueif's novels, she gets at the certain kind of English that's being spoken by Egyptians. It's a beautiful, expressive English but it is non-standard, "broken" English that happens to be efficient, eloquent, and communicates perfectly well even if it is breaking rules.

Elliott Colla

I am drunk, seest thou? When I am not drunk I do not talk. You have never heard me talk much. But an intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend his time with fools.

Ernest Hemingway

You're a beautiful drunk, daughter. But you're a drunk.

Raymond Carver

When a man really believes that it is necessary to do a certain thing to be happy forever, or that a certain belief is necessary to ensure eternal joy, there is in that man no spirit of concession. He divides the whole world into saints and sinners, into believers and unbelievers, into God's sheep and Devil's goats, into people who will be glorified and people who are damned.