Anecdotes Quote by John D'Agata

If Plutarch is the essayist I want to believe he is, he would want us all to sit in his chair.

— John D'Agata

“It was at this point that the transition was first made to the conception that rhetoric was a teachable skill, that it could, usually…

— Aristotle

But, if we explore the literature of Heroism, we shall quickly come to Plutarch, who is its Doctor and historian. To him we owe…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“How can a man who, for a significant phase of his formation, shared his master’s opposition to rhetoric have in maturity composed a masterpiece…

— Aristotle

I answer, Socrates, that rhetoric is the art of persuasion in courts of law and other assemblies, as I was just now saying, and…

— Gorgias

“philosophical writers after his time: nor again must his simplicity of thought and occasional quaintness be reproduced in the form of archaisms of language;…

— Herodotus

I look for the kind of text that doesn't look like the writer I'm considering. Plutarch is a great example.

— John D'Agata

“one who, though he never digress to read a Lecture, Moral or Political, upon his own Text, nor enter into men’s hearts, further than…

— Thomas Hobbes

“APORIA  (APO'RIA) n.s. [a figure in rhetorick, by which the speaker shews, that he doubts where to begin for the multitude of matter, or what…

— Samuel Johnson

Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion. This is not a function of…

— Aristotle

“The reading of the ancients awakened new delight in the melody and beauty of language: men became intoxicated with words. The practice of rhetoric…

— G. H. (George Herbert) Mair

“PLATITUDE, n. The fundamental element and special glory of popular literature. A thought that snores in words that smoke. The wisdom of a million…

— Ambrose Bierce