Essential Qualities Of A Public Speaker

 

by  Nicholas Dixon

The HighGrade Marketer

 

The three greatest qualities in a successful public speaker are

simplicity, directness, and deliberateness.

 

Lincoln had these qualities in preeminent degree. His speech at

Gettysburg—the model short speech of all history—occupied about

three minutes in delivery. Edward Everett well said afterward

that he would have been content to make the same impression in

three hours which Lincoln made in that many minutes.

 

The great public speakers in all times have been earnest and

diligent students. We are familiar with the indefatigable

efforts of Demosthenes, who rose from very ordinary

circumstances, and goaded by the realization of great natural

defects, through assiduous self-training eventually made the

greatest of the world's orations, "The Speech on the Crown."

 

Cicero was a painstaking disciple of the speaker's art and gave

himself much to the discipline of the pen. His masterly work on

oratory in which he commends others to write much, remains

unsurpassed to this day.

 

John Bright, the eminent British orator, always required time

for preparation. He read every morning from the Bible, from

which he drew rich material for argument and illustration. A

remarkable thing about him was that he spoke seldom.

 

Phillips Brooks was an ideal speaker, combining simplicity and

sympathy in large degree. He was a splendid type of pulpit

orator produced by broad spiritual culture.

 

Henry Ward Beecher had unique powers as a dramatic and eloquent

speaker. In his youth he hesitated in his speech, which led him

to study elocution. He himself tells of how he went to the woods

daily to practice vocal exercises.

 

He was an exponent of thorough preparation, never speaking upon

a subject until he had made it his own by diligent study. Like

Phillips Brooks, he was a man of large sympathy and

imagination—two faculties indispensable to persuasive eloquence.

 

It was his oratory that first brought fame to Gladstone. He had

a superb voice, and he possess that fighting force essential to

a great public debater. When he quitted the House of Commons in

his eighty-fifth year his powers of eloquence were practically

unimpaired.

 

Wendell Phillips was distinguished for his personality,

conversational style, and thrilling voice. He had a wonderful

vocabulary, and a personal magnetism which won men instantly to

him. It is said that he relied principally upon the power of

truth to make his speaking eloquent. He, too, was an untiring

student of the speaker's art.

 

As we examine the lives and records of eminent speakers of other

days, we are impress with the fact that they were sincere and

earnest students of the art in which they ultimately excelled.

 

 

© Nicholas Dixon

 

 

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