To choose elements of a speech requires a vigorous and imaginative mind

 To choose from these elements [of speech] those which should be employed for each subject, to join them together, to arrange them properly, and also, not to miss what the occasion demands but appropriately to adorn the whole speech with striking thoughts and to clothe it in flowing and melodious phrase require much study and are the task of a vigorous and imaginative mind. Isocrates.  Against the Sophists.  Speech 13.  Section 17.



Image: Mark Antony reading Caesar's will, 1834, by William Hilton courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.


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