An orator is a good man who is skilled in speaking.
Cato the Elder
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A good talker, even more than a good orator, implies a good audience. Modern society is too vast and too restless to give a conversationalist a fair chance.
Leslie Stephen
A skilled soldier kills your enemies, but a skilled duelist kills your allies.
Lois McMaster Bujold
Like a rough orator, that brings more truth
Than rhetoric, to make good his accusation.Philip Massinger
In person, as on the page, Hitchens is in masterly possession of what he calls saeva indignatio, that "combination of cheek and anger to point out how the world falls short of its pretensions". He is a skilled orator, working, as far as I could see, without a text or notes. He chooses his weapons carefully, and is efficient either as a sniper or as a bombardier unloading the full arsenal of his invective. But he is also a barnum, of the type so congenial to that quintessentially American tradition of cracker-barrel salesmanship. When an elderly woman rises to challenge Hitchens, he quips: "Mother, I told you not to do this." Thus her question is deflected, amid the general laughter of an audience who are now behaving as so many valets to this lofty wit.
Christopher Hitchens
To one commending an orator for his skill in amplifying petty matters, Agesilaus said, "I do not think that shoemaker a good workman that makes a great shoe for a little foot."
Plutarch
Cato the Elder
Catullus, Gaius Valerius
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