“What a vast advantage has a speech over a written composition. Men are imposed upon by voice and gesture, and by all that is conducive to enhance the performance.”
Aphorism 27
Les Caractères (1688), De la chaire
Context: What a vast advantage has a speech over a written composition. Men are imposed upon by voice and gesture, and by all that is conducive to enhance the performance. Any little prepossession in favor of the speaker raises their admiration, and then they do their best to comprehend him; they commend his performance before he has begun, but they soon fall off asleep, doze all the time he is preaching, and only wake to applaud him. An author has no such passionate admirers; his works are read at leisure in the country or in the solitude of the study; no public meetings are held to applaud him.... However excellent his book may be, it is read with the intention of finding it but middling; it is perused, discussed, and compared to other works; a book is not composed of transient sounds lost in the air and forgotten; what is printed remains.
Original
Quel avantage n'a pas un discours prononcé sur un ouvrage qui est écrit! Les hommes sont les dupes de l'action et de la parole, comme de tout l'appareil de l'auditoire. Pour peu de prévention qu'ils aient en faveur de celui qui parle, ils l'admirent, et cherchent ensuite à le comprendre: avant qu'il ait commencé, ils s'écrient qu'il va bien faire; ils s'endorment bientôt, et le discours fini, ils se réveillent pour dire qu'il a bien fait. On se passionne moins pour un auteur: son ouvrage est lu dans le loisir de la campagne, ou dans le silence du cabinet; il n'y a point de rendez-vous publics pour lui applaudir. … On lit son livre, quelque excellent qu'il soit, dans l'esprit de le trouver médiocre; on le feuillette, on le discute, on le confronte; ce ne sont pas des sons qui se perdent en l'air et qui s'oublient; ce qui est imprimé demeure imprimé.
Les Caractères (1688), De la chaire
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Jean de La Bruyère 65
17th-century French writer and philosopher 1645–1696Related quotes
Source: 1910s, Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (1919), Ch. 7: Rational, Real and Complex Numbers
Source: Speech in the House of Lords (6 July 1888), quoted in Michael Bentley, Lord Salisbury's World: Conservative Environments in Late-Victorian Britain (2001), p. 231
Original: (it) L'individuo che approfitta del potere che ha per imporre esclusivamente gli interessi a suo vantaggio, è un fallito assolutamente privo di coraggio e valore.
Source: prevale.net
“Drawing is like making an expressive gesture with the advantage of permanence.”
As quoted by in the review of 'The Drawings of Henri Matisse', exhibit at Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art, by Theodore F Wolff in The Christian Science Monitor (25 March 1985)
Posthumous quotes
Manasseh: On the Speech and Gesture of Jesus
Jesus, The Son of Man (1928)
Context: I admired Him as a man rather than as a leader. He preached something beyond my liking, perhaps beyond my reason. And I would have no man preach to me.
I was taken by His voice and His gestures, not by the substance of His speech. He charmed me but never convinced me; for He was too vague, too distant and obscure to reach my mind.
I have known other men like Him. They are never constant nor are they consistent. It is with eloquence not with principles that they hold your ear and your passing thought, but never the core of your heart.