Persuasion Quotes

If you wish to win a man over to your ideas, first make him your friend.

Abraham Lincoln

When a person is determined to believe something, the very absurdity of the doctrine confirms them in their faith.

Junius

Those that will not hear must be made to feel.

Proverb

No one can withstand the charm of such a mystery.

Jane Austen

Anne did think on the question with perfect decision, and said as much in replay as her own feelings could accomplish, or as his seemed able to bear, for he was too much affected to renew the subject - and when he spoke again, it was something totally different.

Jane Austen

For your own good is a persuasive argument that will eventually make a man agree to his own destruction.

Janet Frame

I never saw quite so wretched an example of what a sea-faring life can do: but to a degree, I know it is the same with them all; they are all knocked about, and exposed to every climate, and every weather, till they are not fit to be seen. It is a pity they are not knocked on the head at once, before they reach Admiral Baldwin's age.

Jane Austen

To make converts is the natural ambition of everyone.

Johann von Goethe

Secrecy has many advantages, for when you tell someone the purpose of any object right away, they often think there is nothing to it.

Johann von Goethe

I don't know the rules of grammar. If you're trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language.

David Ogilvy

One of the best ways to persuade others is with your ears - by listening to them.

Dean Rusk

Call the bald man, Boy; make the sage thy toy; greet the youth with solemn face; praise the fat man for his grace.

Helen Rowland

To convert somebody go and take them by the hand and guide them.

Thomas Aquinas

The secret is to always let the other man have your way.

Claiborne Pell

You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight and a half years ago. Dare not say that a man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant.

Jane Austen

Whenever he met a great man he groveled before him, and my-lorded him as only a free-born Briton can do.

William Makepeace Thackeray

Captain Harvile: Poor Phoebe, she would not have forgotten him so soon. It was not in her nature. Anne Elliot: It would not be in the nature of any woman who truly loved. Captain Harvile: Do you claim that for your sex? Anne Elliot: We do not forget you as soon as you forget us. We cannot help ourselves. We live at home, quiet, confined, and our feelings prey upon us. You always have business of some sort or other to take you back into the world. Captain Harvile: I won't allow it to be any more man's nature than women's to be inconstant or to forget those they love or have loved. I believe the reverse. I believe... Let me just observe that all histories are against you, all stories, prose, and verse. I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which did not have something to say on women's fickleness. Anne Elliot: But they were all written by men.

Jane Austen

She ventured to hope he did not always read only poetry; and to say, that she thought it was the misfortune of poetry, to be seldom safely enjoyed by those who enjoyed it completely; and that the strong feelings which alone could estimate it truly, were the very feelings which ought to taste it but sparingly.

Jane Austen

What! Would I be turned back from doing a thing that I had determined to do, and that I knew to be right, by the airs and interference of such a person, or any person I may say? No, I have no idea of being so easily persuaded. When I have made up my mind, I have made it.

Jane Austen

Nothing is so unbelievable that oratory cannot make it acceptable.

Marcus Tullius Cicero