Quotes about speaking
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“Come, pluck up a good heart; speak the truth and shame the devil.”

Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel

Author's prologue.
Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Fifth Book (1564)

“I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you might nudge the world a little or make a poem that children will speak for you when you are dead.”

Tom Stoppard The Real Thing

Henry, Act II, scene V
Source: The Real Thing (1982)

Children, World, Thinking, Dead

“You have friends who actually care about you and speak the language of the inner self. You have avoided them of late. Your soul is as disheveled as your apartment, and until you can clean it up a little you don't want to invite anyone inside.”

Jay McInerney book Bright Lights, Big City

Source: Bright Lights, Big City

Soul

“The Kafka paradox: art depends on truth, but truth, being indivisable, cannot know itself: to tell the truth is to lie. thus the writer is the truth, and yet when he speaks he lies.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

Truth, Lie, Art, Dependency

“Out here, it's better safe than sorry, because generally speaking, too much of the time sorry means you're dead.”

Patricia C. Wrede (1953) author

Source: Across the Great Barrier

Time, Dead

“A man speaking sense to himself is no madder than a man speaking nonsense not to himself.”

Tom Stoppard (1937) British playwright

Sense

“That woman speaks eighteen languages, and can't say No in any of them.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

A similar line was later used by Ira Gershwin in "The Saga of Jenny" in Lady in the Dark (1942): "In 27 languages she couldn't say no."
Our Mrs Parker (1934)
Source: While Rome Burns

“Language most shows a man; speak that I may see thee”

Ben Jonson (1572–1637) English writer

“Do not consider me now as an elegant female intending to plague you, but as a rational creature speaking the truth from her heart.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

Truth, Heart

“What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Variant: Your actions speak so loudly, I can not hear what you are saying.

Motivational, Success, Inspirational, Life

“Speak to me."
"I hate you."
"Okay." Mad Rogan let go of me. "You're fine.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Burn for Me

Hate, Madness

“Listen to the secret sound, the real sound, which is inside you. The one no one talks of speaks the secret sound to himself, and he is the one who has made it all.”

Kabir (1440–1518) Indian mystic poet

Secret

“Marius and Cosette were in the dark in regard to each other. They did not speak, they did not bow, they were not acquainted; they saw each other; and, like the stars in the sky separated by millions of leagues, they lived by gazing upon each other.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Star

“I always speak the truth. Not the whole truth, because there's no way, to say it all. Saying it all is literally impossible: words fail. Yet it's through this very impossibility that the truth holds onto the real.”

Jacques Lacan (1901–1981) French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist

Truth, Way

“Courage originally meant "To speak one's mind by telling all one's heart.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Source: The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

Courage, Heart, Courageous

“there is nothing bad to fear; once you have crossed that threshold, all is well. Another world, and you do not have to speak”

Franz Kafka Letter to His Father

Source: Letter to His Father

World, Fear

“If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Thursday

Reading

“Tell no man anything, for no man listens
Yet hold thy lips ready to speak.”

Carl Sandburg (1878–1967) American writer and editor

“Any simpleton can speak with confidence. Sometimes the greatest fools have the most bravado.”

Brandon Mull (1974) American fiction writer

Source: Keys to the Demon Prison

Fools, Confidence

“Speaks well of a man to need a little something in this world. I wouldn't trust a man who could git through it cold sober.”

Harry Crews (1935–2012) Novelist, short story writer, essayist

Source: Blood and Grits

World

“We need more people speaking out. This country is not overrun with rebels & free thinkers. It's overrun with sheep & conformists.”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

People, Country

“Neither a person entirely broken
nor one entirely whole can speak.

In sorrow, pretend to be fearless. In happiness, tremble.”

Jane Hirshfield (1953) Poet

Source: Given Sugar, Given Salt

Happiness, Personality

“Atheists are my brothers and sisters of a different faith, and every word they speak speaks of faith. Like me, they go as far as the legs of reason will carry them -- and then they leap.”

Yann Martel (1963) Canadian author best known for the book Life of Pi

Faith, Sister

“It is the mind that speaks a woman's heart, not the vaginal walls.”

Mary Roach book Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

Source: Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

Heart

“It is quite a three pipe problem, and I beg that you won't speak to me for fifty minutes.”

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) Scottish physician and author

Source: The Red Headed League

Problem

“I know you'll think this is crazy, but all I want to do is hold you, and I think that if you'll let me do that just for a few seconds, I can walk away, and never speak to you again.”

David Guterson book Snow Falling on Cedars

Source: Snow Falling on Cedars

Thinking

“With a gun barrel between your teeth, you speak only in vowels.”

Chuck Palahniuk (1962) American novelist, essayist

“I would have offered you a forest of truth, but you wish to speak of a single leaf”

David Gemmell (1948–2006) British author of heroic fantasy

Source: Fall of Kings

Truth

“Not wanting anyone to pop my bubble by speaking to me, I immediately began reading Lesbian Nuns, and that did the trick. No one attempted small talk.”

John Waters (1946) American filmmaker, actor, comedian and writer

Source: Crackpot: The Obsessions of John Waters

Reading

“What term do you employ when you speak of your progenitor?"
I answered with the term I'd always wanted to employ.
"Sonovabitch."
"To his face?" she asked.
"I never see his face."
"He wears a mask?"
"In a way, yes. Of stone. Of absolute stone.”

Erich Segal book Love Story

Source: Love Story

Way

“My grandmother is a little Cuban woman who cooks all day and speaks Spanish. Your grandmother watches pay-per-view porn."
"She used to watch the Weather Channel, but she said there wasn't enough action."

-Ranger and Stephanie”

Janet Evanovich book To the Nines

Source: To the Nines

Weather, Cooking

“More like some small, fierce bird of prey, something with a sharp bite. An owl perhaps, that speaks only when the rest of the world sleeps.
Jenny will do well enough.”

Juliet Marillier book Daughter of the Forest

Source: Daughter of the Forest

World, Bird, Sleep

“A writer should write what he has to say and not speak it.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Nobel Prize Speech (1954)

“When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object. In the realm of kitsch, the dictatorship of the heart reigns supreme.”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), Part Five: Lightness and Weight

Heart

“… all things speak, in their way, don't they?”

Shannon Hale The Goose Girl

Source: The Goose Girl

Way

“I looked at her and tried to speak, but all I could think about was how shocked she'd be if I said what I was thinking.”

John Grisham book A Painted House

Source: A Painted House

Thinking

“He would always speak the language of the heart with an awkward foreign accent.”

Orson Scott Card book Shadow of the Hegemon

Source: Shadow of the Hegemon

Heart

“French: why does this language even exist? Everyone there speaks english anyway.”

Meg Cabot (1967) Novelist

Source: Princess in Waiting

“I am the Lorax who speaks for the trees,
Which you seem to be chopping as fast as you please!”

Dr. Seuss The Lorax

Source: The Lorax (1971)
Context: I am the Lorax who speaks for the trees,
Which you seem to be chopping as fast as you please!
But I'm also in charge of the brown Bar-ba-loots,
Who played in the shade in their Bar-ba-loot suits,
And happily lived, eating Truffula fruits.
Now, thanks to your hacking my trees to the ground,
There's not enough Truffula fruit to go 'round!
And my poor Bar-ba-loots are all getting the crummies
Because they have gas, and no food, in their tummies!

Tree

“Before I speak, I have something important to say.”

Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian

“I read that speaking in front of a crowd is the number-one fear in America. I found that amazing. Number two was death. Number two! That means that, if you're ever at a funeral, you'd rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy.”

Jerry Seinfeld (1954) American comedian and actor

I'm Telling You for the Last Time (1998)

Death, Fear, Reading

“It was one of those parties where you cough twice before you speak and then decide not to say it after all.”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

“When we learn to speak, we learn to translate.”

Octavio Paz (1914–1998) Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature

Learning

“Our mouths and bodies speak for us in a new language as the trees shake loose a rain of petals that stick to our slickness like skins we will wear forever. And just like that, I am changed.”

Libba Bray book The Sweet Far Thing

Source: The Sweet Far Thing

Tree, Change

“Simon kept pace beside Clary for a few moments without speaking before he said, “So what did I miss? Naked dancing ladies?”
Clary thought of the male faerie‘s torn-open ribs and shuddered. “Nothing that pleasant.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

Dance

“The unconscious wants truth. It ceases to speak to those who want something else more than truth.”

Adrienne Rich (1929–2012) American poet, essayist and feminist

Source: On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose, 1966-1978

Truth

“As Lacy waited for her turn to speak on Peter's behalf, she thought back to the first time she realized she could hate her own child.”

Jodi Picoult book Nineteen Minutes

Source: Nineteen Minutes

Hate, Time, Waiting

“We may speak about a place where there are no tears, no death, no fear, no night; but those are just the benefits of heaven. The beauty of heaven is seeing God.”

Max Lucado (1955) American clergyman and writer

Source: Experiencing the Heart of Jesus: Knowing His Heart, Feeling His Love

Death, God, Fear, Beauty

“Everything in life is speaking in spite of its apparent silence.”

Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882–1927) Indian Sufi

Life, Silence

“Everything that occurs out of necessity, everything expected, repeated day in and day out is mute. Only chance can speak to us. We read its message much as gypsies read the images made by coffee grounds at the bottom of the cup.”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Coffee, Chance, Reading

“To speak a language is to take on a world, a culture.”

Frantz Fanon book Black Skin, White Masks

Source: Black Skin, White Masks (1952), pp. 38

World

“Life is short and truth works far and lives long: let us speak the truth.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Source: The World as Will and Representation, Vol 1

Life, Truth, Wise, Life

“But what happens when her beauty is torn from her like a cover from a book? Will he care to read her then, although her pages speak of nothing but love for him?”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

Love, Books, Beauty, Reading

“When Mutti and Vati came in I didn't speak to them. I just unfurled the CAT MOLESTERS banner I had made.”

Louise Rennison book Knocked Out by My Nunga-Nungas

Source: Knocked Out by My Nunga-Nungas

Cats

“If she doesn't speak, she is making a choice. If she doesn't try, she can lose her chance forever.
-An-mei”

Amy Tan The Joy Luck Club

Source: The Joy Luck Club

Chance

“Music is a language that doesn’t speak in particular words. It speaks in emotions, and if it’s in the bones, it’s in the bones.”

Keith Richards (1943) British rock musician, member of The Rolling Stones

Source: According to the Rolling Stones

Music

“Generally speaking, I think it is fair to say that I am a friend to the creatures of the earth when I am not busy eating them or wearing them.”

John Hodgman book The Areas of My Expertise

Source: The Areas of My Expertise (2005), p. 46

Business, Thinking

“She frowned at me. "You need some rest. You look like hell. And you're obviously tired enough to have gotten the giggles."

Wizards don't giggle," I said, hardly able to speak. "This is cackling.”

Jim Butcher book Changes

Source: Changes

Hell

“She wanted nothing more than someone to miss, to touch, with whom to speak like a child, with whom to be a child.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Source: Everything Is Illuminated

“Thus we use our supposed "knowledge" of others to speak on their behalf, and condemn them for their words we ourselves put in their silent mouths.”

Margaret George (1943) American writer

Source: The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers

Knowledge

“Emily: YOU CAN'T SPEAK AND TYPE AT THE SAME TIME, BINDY!

Bindy: Watch me.”

Jaclyn Moriarty (1968) Australian writer

Source: The Year of Secret Assignments

Time

“I don’t want to speak too disparagingly of my generation (actually I do, we had a chance to change the world but opted for the Home Shopping Network Instead)…”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

World, Home, Change, Chance

“What was the point in satin and lace if it didn't make a man struggle to speak?”

Alexandra Ivy (1961) American novelist

Source: Embrace The Darkness

“When a person should be spoken with, and you don't speak with them, you lose them. When a person shouldn't be spoken with and you speak to them, you waste your breath. The wise do not lose people, nor do they waste their breath.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

People, Personality

“For a week, almost without speaking,
they went ahead like sleepwalkers through a universe of grief, lighted only by the tenuous
reflection of luminous insects, and their lungs were overwhelmed by a suffocating smell of blood.”

Gabriel García Márquez book One Hundred Years of Solitude

Source: One Hundred Years of Solitude

Light, Universe

“I dont think any of us can speak frankly about pain until we are no longer enduring it.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

Pain, Thinking

“I can speak to my soul only when the two of us are off exploring deserts or cities or mountains or roads.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Source: Aleph

Soul, Mountain

“All of us are born with a set of instinctive fears - of falling, of the dark, of lobsters, of falling on lobsters in the dark, of speaking before a Rotary Club, and of the words "Some Assembly Required".”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Fear

“Hi there," squeaked a precocious little voice, "you are speaking to Chloe Fusakawa, and I have just learned how to answer the phone.”

Gabrielle Zevin book Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

Source: Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

Learning

“but I find her personality annoying. It's like being molested by a sleeping bag that speaks in Comic Sans with little love-hearts over the i's.”

Charles Stross Saturn's Children

Source: Saturn's Children

Love, Sleep, Heart, Personality

“There is fear hanging in the air of the sleeping halls, and the air of the streets. Fear walks through the city, fear without name, without shape. All men feel it and none dare speak.”

Ayn Rand book Anthem

Source: Anthem

Men, Fear, Feeling, Sleep

“On the contrary, there is something pleasing about his mouth when he
speaks. And there is something of dignity in the way his trousers cling to those most English parts
of him.”

Seth Grahame-Smith book Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Source: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Way, Parting

“Speak softly, but carry a big can of paint.”

Banksy pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter

Source: Wall and Piece

Painting

“Poetry speaks to you either at first sight or not at all. A flash of revelation and a flash of response.”

J.M. Coetzee book Disgrace

Source: Disgrace

“[Jem] looked from Will to Tessa and raised his silvery eyebrows. "A miracle," he said. "You got him to speak."
"Just to shout at me, really," said Tessa. "Not quite loaves and fishes.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Fish

“You see that massive giantess blocking the river?” “Technically speaking,” Jack said, “I can’t see anything, because I don’t have eyes. But yes, I see the giant.”

Rick Riordan book The Sword of Summer

Source: The Sword of Summer

“There is no grief like the grief that does not speak.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

For Father

“I speak only of myself since I do not wish to convince, I have no right to drag others into my river, I oblige no one to follow me and everybody practices his art in his own way."

- Tristan Tzara "Dada Manifesto 1918”

Tristan Tzara (1896–1963) Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist

1910s, Dada Manifesto', 1918
Context: Dada; knowledge of all the means rejected up until now... Dada; abolition of logic, which is the dance of those impotent to create: Dada; of every social hierarchy and equation set up for the sake of values by our valets: Dada; every object, all objects, sentiments, obscurities, apparitions and the precise clash of parallel lines are weapons for the fight: Dada; abolition of memory: Dada; abolition of archaeology: Dada; abolition of prophets: Dada; abolition of the future: Dada; absolute and unquestionable faith in every god that is the immediate product of spontaneity:* Dada; elegant and unprejudiced leap from a harmony to the other sphere... Freedom: Dada Dada Dada, a roaring of tense colors, and interlacing of opposites and of all contradictions, grotesques, inconsistencies: LIFE.

Art, Way