Sermon
A religious address — historically one of the most prolific sources of quotation in any culture.
A sermon is a religious or moral address, typically delivered by a member of the clergy. The genre is one of the oldest and most prolific sources of quotation in any literate culture, partly because sermons are designed to be remembered and partly because they have been written down and preserved for centuries.
The Sermon on the Mount is the single most-quoted English-language sermon, but the genre extends from John Donne and George Whitefield to Martin Luther King Jr., whose 'I Have a Dream' address is structurally a sermon delivered to a political audience.
Reading a famous quotation as a sermon — asking what congregation it was written for, what behaviour it was meant to change — usually clarifies the line.
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
Keep reading the glossary
A formal public speech — the original setting for many of the most-quoted lines in history.
The art of persuasive speaking and writing — the discipline behind every great quoted line.
A speech of praise for someone who has died, often the source of widely-quoted lines.
A 2,000-year-old practice of distilling ethical instruction into short, repeatable lines.