So far as emphasis is concerned, you may consider the average sentence as just one big word, with the important word as the accented syllable.  Note the following: 

“Destiny is not a matter of chance.  It is a matter of choice.”

You might as well say MASS-A-CHU-SETTS, emphasizing every syllable equally, as to lay equal stress on each word in the foregoing sentences.

Speak it aloud and see.  Of course you will want to emphasize destiny, for it is the principal idea in your declaration, and you will put some emphasis on not, else your hearers may think you are affirming that destiny is a matter of chance.  By all means you must emphasize chance, for it is one of the two big ideas in the statement.

Another reason why chance takes emphasis is that it is contrasted with choice in the next sentence.  Obviously, the author has contrasted these ideas purposely, so that they might be more emphatic, and here we see that contrast is one of the very first devices to gain emphasis.

As a public speaker you can assist this emphasis of contrast with your voice.  If you say, “My horse is not black,” what color immediately comes into mind?  White, naturally, for that is the opposite of black.  If you wish to bring out the thought that destiny is a matter of choice, you can do so more effectively by first saying that “DESTINY is NOT a matter of CHANCE.”  Is not the color of the horse impressed upon us more emphatically when you say, “My horse is NOT BLACK.  He is WHITE” than it would be by hearing you assert merely that your horse is white?

In the second sentence of the statement there is only one important word—­choice.  It is the one word that positively defines the quality of the subject being discussed, and the author of those lines desired to bring it out emphatically, as he has shown by contrasting it with another idea.  These lines, then, would read like this: 

“DESTINY is NOT a matter of CHANCE.  It is a matter of CHOICE.”  Now read this over, striking the words in capitals with a great deal of force.

In almost every sentence there are a few MOUNTAIN PEAK WORDS that represent the big, important ideas.  When you pick up the evening paper you can tell at a glance which are the important news articles.  Thanks to the editor, he does not tell about a “hold up” in Hong Kong in the same sized type as he uses to report the death of five firemen in your home city.  Size of type is his device to show emphasis in bold relief.  He brings out sometimes even in red headlines the striking news of the day.

It would be a boon to speech-making if speakers would conserve the attention of their audiences in the same way and emphasize only the words representing the important ideas.  The average speaker will deliver the foregoing line on destiny with about the same amount of emphasis on each word.  Instead of saying, “It is a matter of CHOICE,” he will deliver it, “It is a matter of choice,” or “IT IS A MATTER OF CHOICE”—­both equally bad.