The Art of Public Speaking

Front Cover
Home Correspondence School, 1915 - Language Arts & Disciplines - 512 pages
ACQUIRING CONFIDENCE BEFORE AN AUDIENCE There is a strange sensation often experienced in the presence of an audience. It may proceed from the gaze of the many eyes that turn upon the speaker, especially if he permits himself to steadily return that gaze. Most speakers have been conscious of this in a nameless thrill, a real something, pervading the atmosphere, tangible, evanescent, indescribable. All writers have borne testimony to the power of a speaker's eye in impressing an audience. This influence which we are now considering is the reverse of that picture--the power _their_ eyes may exert upon him, especially before he begins to speak: after the inward fires of oratory are fanned into flame the eyes of the audience lose all terror.

From inside the book

Contents

I
1
II
10
III
16
IV
27
V
39
VI
55
VII
69
VIII
80
XVII
184
XVIII
199
XIX
218
XX
231
XXI
249
XXII
262
XXIII
280
XXIV
295

IX
87
X
101
XI
115
XII
124
XIII
134
XIV
146
XV
156
XVI
171
XXV
308
XXVI
321
XXVII
334
XXVIII
343
XXIX
355
XXX
362
XXXI
372
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 111 - Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our petition comports with those warlike preparations which cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation ? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled, that force must be called in to win back our love ? Let us not deceive ourselves, sir.
Page 63 - A Book of Verses underneath the Bough, A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread — and Thou Beside me singing in the Wilderness — Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!
Page 103 - The graces taught in the schools, the costly ornaments, and studied contrivances of speech, shock and disgust men, when their own lives, and the fate of their wives, their children, and their country, hang on the decision of the hour.
Page 111 - We have petitioned, we have remonstrated, we have supplicated, we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and parliament. Our petitions have been slighted, our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult, our supplications have been disregarded, and we have been spurned with contempt from the foot of the throne.
Page 112 - Three millions of People, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us.
Page 141 - I come from haunts of coot and hern, I make a sudden sally, And sparkle out among the fern, To bicker down a valley. By thirty hills I hurry down, Or slip between the ridges, By twenty thorps, a little town, And half a hundred bridges.
Page 316 - And bid them speak for me: but were I Brutus, And Brutus Antony, there were an Antony Would ruffle up your spirits and put a tongue In every wound of Caesar that should move The stones of Rome to rise and mutiny.
Page 110 - Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst and to provide for it.
Page 88 - Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor : suit the action to the word, the word to the action ; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature : for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 't were, the mirror up to nature ; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.
Page 111 - No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us : they can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the British ministry have been so long forging.

About the author (1915)

Dale Breckenridge Carnegie (spelled Carnagey until 1922) was born on November 24, 1888 in Maryville, Missouri. He was the son of a poor farmer but he managed to get an education at the State Teacher's College in Warrensburg. After school he became a successful salesman and then began pursuing his dream of becoming a lecturer. At one point, he lived, penniless, at the YMCA on 125th street in New York City. There he persuaded the "Y" manager to allow him to give courses on public speaking. His technique included making students speak about something that made them angry -- this technique made them unafraid to address an audience. From this beginning, the Dale Carnegie Course developed. (Dale also changed the spelling of his last name from Carnagey to Carnegie due to the widely recognized name of Andrew Carnegie.) Carnegie wrote Public Speaking: a Practical Course for Business Men (1926), but his greatest written achievement was How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936). The book has still made it on to the bestsellers' list in 2014. Carnegie died at his home in Forest Hills, New York on November 1, 1955. He was buried in the Belton, Cass County, Missouri, cemetery. The official biography from Dale Carnegie & Associates, Inc. states that he died of Hodgkin's disease.

Bibliographic information