Category Archives: Commonplaces

#4 – On Timing

“Any kid will run an errand for you, if you ask at bedtime” – Red Skelton

“A good speech should be like a woman’s skirt: long enough to cover the subject, and short enough to create interest” – Winston Churchill

“There is nothing so annoying as to have two people talking when you’re busy interrupting.” – Mark Twain

#3 – On Truth

“Truth carries with it confrontation. Truth demands confrontation; loving confrontation, but confrontation nevertheless.” – Francis Schaeffer

“Liars are experts in chopping logic and missing the truth slightly – ‘Did God say not to eat from any tree?’ In order to pin a liar down, words must be defined in the most careful manner available.” – Douglas Wilson

“You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.” – G. K. Chesterton

Commonplaces #1

In anticipation of my soon-to-be-published rhetoric text, Fitting Words, I have decided to post each Monday my favorite commonplaces, scrounged and solicited over the past twenty years of teaching rhetoric. Each post will include two or three quotes on a given topic.

It is fitting that the topic of this first post be commonplaces about commonplaces.

“I always have a quotation for everything – it saves original thinking.” – Dorothy Sayers

“If you can’t write your message in a sentence, you can’t say it in an hour.” – Dianna Booker

Un bon mot ne prouve rien.” [“A witty saying proves nothing”] – Voltaire