Answers to Renaissance of Rhetoric Quotations

Answers to Renaissance of Rhetoric Quotations:

#1: Vico

"The answer is that eloquence does not address itself to the rational part of our nature, but almost entirely to our passions. The rational part in us may be taken captive by a net woven of purely intellectual reasonings, but the passional side of our nature can never be swayed and overcome unless this is done by more sensuous and materialistic means."(873)

#2: Ramus

"There are two universal, general gifts bestowed by nature upon man, Reason and Speech: dialectic is the theory of the former, grammar and rhetoric of the latter. Dialectic therefore should draw on the general strengths of human reason in the consideration and the arrangement of the subject matter. . .rhetoric should demonstrate the embellishment of speech first in tropes and figures, second in dignified delivery." (684)

#3: Bacon

"But our Saviour, speaking of Divine Knowledge, saith, that the kingdom of heaven is like a good householder, that bringeth forth both new and old store. . ." (740)

#4: Augustine

For teaching, of course, true eloquence consists, not in making people like what they disliked, nor in making them do what they shrank from, but in making clear what was obscure; yet if this be done without grace of style, the benefit does not extend beyond the few eager students who are anxious to know whatever is to be learnt, however rude and unpolished the form in which it is put; and who, when they have succeeded in their object, find the plain truth pleasant food enough. (Book IV, Paragraph 26)

#5: Bacon

"The duty and office of Rhetoric is to apply Reason to Imagination for the better moving of the will."(743)

#6: Ramus

". . .the dialectical and rhetorical arts of Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian are fallacious and confused in their treatment of the dialectical and rhetorical usage of reason, and then of speech…" (682)

#7: Vico ". . .figures of thought, if properly fashioned by careful word choice, could fascinate the mind and thereby hold attention or move the soul." ( Smith 211)

#8: Augustine "An orator ought to speak in such a way to instruct, to please, and to persuade…It is necessary, therefore…that [he] should not only teach in order to instruct, and please in order to hold [attention], but also move in order to win." (Smith 148)

#9: Ramus

Quintilian should turn the whole thing around and should more correctly conclude that since dialectic is not a moral virtue which can shape a good man, so neither is rhetoric." (685)

#10: Bacon

"And therefore it was great injustice in Plato, though springing out of a just hatred of the rhetoricians of his time, to esteem Rhetoric but as a voluptuary art, resembling it to cookery. . .for we see that speech is much more conversant in adorning that which is good than in coloring that which is evil. . ." (743)

#11: Bacon

"The invention of speech or argument is not properly an invention. . .the use of this invention is no other but out of the knowledge whereof our mind is already possessed, to draw forth or call before us that which may be pertinent to the purpose which we take into our consideration. . .it is no invention, but a remembrance or suggestion. . ."(740)

#12: Augustine

On the other hand, the man who lays down rules for interpretation is like one who teaches reading, that is, shows others how to read for themselves. So that, just as he who knows how to read is not dependent on some one else, when he finds a book, to tell him what is written in it, so the man who is in possession of the rules which I here attempt to lay down, if he meet with an obscure passage in the books which he reads, will not need an interpreter to lay open the secret to him, but, holding fast by certain rules, and following up certain indications, will arrive at the hidden sense without any error, or at least without falling into any gross absurdity. (Preface, paragraph 9)

#13: Vico

"It is a positive fact that, just as knowledge originates in truth and error in falsity, so common sense arises from perceptions based on verisimilitude. Probabilities stand, so to speak, midway between truth and falsity, since things which most of the time are true, are only very seldom false. . .I may add that common sense, besides being the criterion of practical judgment, is also the guiding standard of eloquence." (868) #14: Vico

"No doubt all that man is given to know is, like man himself, limited and imperfect." (865)