The truth is, that as a speaker your words must be born again every time they are spoken, then they will not suffer in their utterance, even though perforce committed to memory and repeated, like Dr. Russell Conwell's lecture, "Acres of Diamonds," five thousand times. Such speeches lose nothing by repetition for the perfectly patent reason that they arise from concentrated thought and feeling and not a merenecessity for saying something--which usually means anything, and that, in turn, is tantamount to nothing. If the thought beneath your words is warm, fresh, spontaneous, a part of your _self_, your utterance will have breath and life. Words are only a result. Do not try to get the result without stimulating the cause.
Do you ask _how_ to concentrate? Think of the word itself, and of its philological brother, _concentric_. Think of how a lens gathers and concenters the rays of light within a given circle. It centers them by aprocess of withdrawal. It may seem like a harsh saying, but the man who cannot concentrate is either weak of will, a nervous wreck, or has never learned what will-power is good for.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
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