LETE
GUIDE TO PUBLIC SPEAKING," ETC.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
FRANK H. VIZETELLY, LITT.D., LL.D.

FIFTH EDITION

FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY
NEW YORK AND LONDON
1919

COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY
(Printed in the United States of America)
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Copyright under the Articles of the Copyright
Convention of the Pan-American Republics
and the United States, August 11, 1910
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Published. October, 1917

One cannot always live in the palaces and state apartments of language,
but we can refuse to spend our days in searching for its vilest slums.
--William Watson

Words without thought are dead sounds; thoughts without words are nothing.
To think is to speak low; to speak is to think aloud.
--Max Muller

The first merit which attracts in the pages of a good writer, or the talk
of a brilliant conversationalist, is the apt choice and contrast of the
words employed. It is indeed a strange art to take these blocks rudely
conceived for the purpose of the market or the bar, and by tact of
application touch them to the finest meanings and distinctions.
--Robert Louis Stevenson

It is with words as with sunbeams, the more they are condensed, the deeper
they burn.
--Southey

No noble or right style was ever yet founded but out of a sincere heart.
--Ruskin

Words are things; and a small drop of ink, falling like dew upon a
thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.
--Byron

A good phrase may outweigh a poor library.
--Thomas W. Higginson

PLAN OF CLASSIFICATION

SECTION
I. USEFUL PHRASES
II. SIGNIFICANT PHRASES
III. FELICITOUS PHRASES
IV. IMPRESSIVE PHRASES
V. PREPOSITIONAL PHRASES
VI. BUSINESS PHRASES
VII. LITERARY EXPRESSIONS
VIII. STRIKING SIMILES
IX. CONVERSATIONAL PHRASES
X. PUBLIC SPEAKING PHRASES
XI. MISCELLANEOUS PHRASES

INTRODUCTION

The most powerful and the most perfect expression of thought and feeling
through the medium of oral language must be traced to the mastery of
words. Nothing is better suited to lead speakers and readers of English
into an easy control of this language than the command of the phrase that
perfectly expresses the thought. Every speaker's aim is to be heard and
understood. A clear, crisp articulation holds an audience as by the spell
of some irresistible power. The choice word, the correct phrase, are
instruments that may reach the heart, and awake the soul if the