A sentiment very powerful for exciting hatred may arise when an act of submission to our opponents is understood as a silent reproach of their insolence.  Our willingness to yield must indeed show them to be insupportable and troublesome, and it commonly happens that they who have desire for railing, and are too free and hot in their invectives, do not imagine that the jealousy they create is of far greater prejudice to them than the malice of their speech.

All this presupposes that the orator himself ought to be a good and humane man.  The virtues which he commends, if he possibly can, in his client, he should possess, or be supposed to possess, himself.  In this way will he be of singular advantage to the cause he undertakes, the good opinion he has created of himself being a prejudice in its favor.  For if while he speaks he appears to be a bad man, he must in consequence plead ill, because what he says will be thought repugnant to justice.  The style and manner suitable on these occasions ought, therefore, to be sweet and insinuating, never hot and imperious, never hazarded in too elevated a strain.  It will be sufficient to speak in a proper, pleasing, and probable way.

The orator’s business in regard to the passions should be not only to paint atrocious and lamentable things as they are, but even to make those seem grievous which are considered tolerable, as when we say that an injurious word is less pardonable than a blow, and that death is preferable to dishonor.  For the powers of eloquence do not consist so much in forcing the judge into sentiments which the nature of the matter itself may be sufficient to inspire him with, as they do in producing and creating, as it were, the same sentiments when the subject may seem not to admit them.  This is the vehemence of oratorical ability which knows how to equal and even to surpass the enormity and indignity of the facts it exposes, a quality of singular consequence to the orator, and one in which Demosthenes excelled all others.

THE SECRET OF MOVING THE PASSIONS

The great secret for moving the passions is to be moved ourselves, for the imitation of grief, anger, indignation, will often be ridiculous if conforming to only our words and countenance, while our heart at the same time is estranged from them.  What other reason makes the afflicted exclaim in so eloquent a manner during the first transports of their grief?  And how, otherwise, do the most ignorant speak eloquently in anger, unless it be from this force and these mental feelings?