The Art of Public SpeakingACQUIRING 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. |
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Page 4
... better - remembered only so as to help us win toward higher things . Have Something to Say The trouble with many speakers is that they go before an audience with their minds a blank . It is no wonder that nature , abhorring a vacuum ...
... better - remembered only so as to help us win toward higher things . Have Something to Say The trouble with many speakers is that they go before an audience with their minds a blank . It is no wonder that nature , abhorring a vacuum ...
Page 5
... better than your hearers know it , and you have nothing to fear . After Preparing for Success , Expect It Let your bearing be modestly confident , but most of all be modestly confident within . Over - confidence is bad , but to tolerate ...
... better than your hearers know it , and you have nothing to fear . After Preparing for Success , Expect It Let your bearing be modestly confident , but most of all be modestly confident within . Over - confidence is bad , but to tolerate ...
Page 33
... better be made . Once the flowers distilled their fragrance here , but now see the devastations of war . He had reckoned without one prime factor - his conscience . 7. Make a diagram of a conversation you have heard , showing where high ...
... better be made . Once the flowers distilled their fragrance here , but now see the devastations of war . He had reckoned without one prime factor - his conscience . 7. Make a diagram of a conversation you have heard , showing where high ...
Page 37
... BETTER AND FAIRER THAN I HAVE TOLD YOU , and yet but fit setting in its material excellence for the loyal and gentle quality of its citizenship . This hour little needs the LOYALTY THAT IS LOYAL TO ONE SECTION and yet holds the other in ...
... BETTER AND FAIRER THAN I HAVE TOLD YOU , and yet but fit setting in its material excellence for the loyal and gentle quality of its citizenship . This hour little needs the LOYALTY THAT IS LOYAL TO ONE SECTION and yet holds the other in ...
Page 56
... better , but we never forget that tree ! For- tunately , this is no difficult task , in this instance , for the trees stand thick all about us . One man is pleading the cause of another : " This man , my friends , has made this ...
... better , but we never forget that tree ! For- tunately , this is no difficult task , in this instance , for the trees stand thick all about us . One man is pleading the cause of another : " This man , my friends , has made this ...
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Common terms and phrases
Abraham Lincoln American appeal argument attention audience beauty Belgium Berg Esenwein Cæsar cause chapter crowd deliver delivery effect emotions emphasis exposition expression eyes fact fear feeling force friends gathered gesture give hand hear hearers heart Henry Ward Beecher honor human ideas important inflection Julius Cæsar labor liberty lives look matter means memory methods mind MINOR PREMISE monotony Monroe Doctrine moral nation nature never notes party pause peace pitch platform political practise principle progress Progressive party public speaking QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES race remember Republic reserve power rich Robert Louis Stevenson sentence sound speaker speech stand suggestion tariff tell tempo things thought tion to-day tone Toussaint l'Ouverture truth utterance voice Wendell Phillips Woodrow Wilson words wrong
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.