Speeches
"And I can pledge out nation to goal: When we see that wounded traveler on the road, Jericho, we will not pass to the other side."
--George W. Bush, 9-20-01, Address to Congress and the Nation
Allusion
"Somewhere at this very moment, a child is being born in America. Let it be our cause to give that child a happy home, a healthy family, and a hopeful future."
--Bill Clinton, 1992, Democratic National Convention Acceptance Address
Alliteration
"Dumb gorgeous people should not be allowed to use literature when competing in the pick-up pool. It's like bald people wearing hats."
--delivered by Matt McGrath Broken Hearts Club
Analogy
" I think it can be said that he now stands with our other American martyrs in the cause of freedom and justice. His death is a terrible tragedy and sorrow first of all to his family, to our nation, and to our conscience. The criminal act that took his life brings shame to our country. An Apostle of non-violence has been the victim of violence. The cause for which he marked and worked, I am sure, will find a new strength."
-- Hubert H. Humphrey, on Remarks on the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr
Paradox
"A Republic whose history, like the path of the just, is as the shining light that shineth more and more unto the perfect day."
--William Jennings Bryant
Simile
"Oh, my piglets, we are the origins of war-not history's forces nor the times, nor justice, nor the lack of it, nor the causes, nor religions, nor ideas, nor kinds of governments- nor any other things. We are the Killers."
--delivered by Katherine Hepburn, The Lion in Winter
Polysyndeton
"We have seen the state of our Union in the endurance of rescuers, working past exhaustion. We've seen the unfurling of flags, the lighting of candles the giving of blood, the saying of prayers in English, Hebrew, and Arabic
--George W. Bush, 9/20/01, Address to the Nation on Terrorism
Parallelism
"At the dawn of spring last year, a single act of terror brought forth the long, cold winter in our hearts. The people of Oklahoma City are mourning still."
--Al Gore, Oklahoma Bombing Memorial Address
Metaphor
"I feel the need, the need for speed."
--delivered by Tom Cruise and Anthony Edwards, Top Gun
Assonance
"Such acts are commonly stimulated by forces of hatred and malevolence such as today are eating their way into the bloodstream of American life."
--USSC Justice Earl Warren Eulogy for John F. Kennedy
Personification
"and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."
--Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address
Epistrophe
"We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punch line."
--delivered by Jack Nicholson, A Few Good Men
Asyndeton
"The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here."
--Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
Antithesis
"Give us this day, our daily bread."
--Matthew 6:11,
The Holy Bible
Synecdoche
" I ask you to consider the evidence. Don't turn away from the truth. Don't turn away from your conscience. Please, don't ignore the law. No embrace that higher principle for which the law was meant to serve: Justice that's all I ask justice."
--delivered by Denzel Washington, The Hurricane
Epanalepsis