The Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University

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Author QuotedMarcus Tullius Cicero
Title QuotedDe Oratore
Date (Year/Month/Day)1939/05/02
Imprint[S.l.] : [s.n.]. 55 BC
QuotationCicero, De Oratore, recommends stamping your foot during your speech. At least at the beginning of the speech and at the end. Caius Gracchus [Note 1: In the first book of Cicero's De Oratore (c. 55 B.C.E.), chapter XXXIV, reference is made to Caius Gracchus, whose speeches were studied as models in the rhetorical schools of the Empire.] had a servant stand behind him with an ivory flute to play the proper note, and regulate the pitch of the orator's voice if he were getting too low or too high or too furious. A girl on a street corner stamping her feet to make the men turn around.
Quotation SourceRun to the mountain: The Story of a Vocation. The journals of Thomas Merton, Volume 1, 1939-1941.; Edited by Patrick Hart, O.C.S.O. / San Francisco : Harper Collins. 1995, p. 3
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