“Jack was to give the [speech], as he knew very well—it was expected of him, and it was his privilege. But this kind of deference, this attentive listening to every remark of his, required the words he uttered to be worth the attention they excited—a wearing state of affairs for a man accustomed to ordinary human conversation, with its perpetual interruption, contradiction and plain disregard. Here everything he said was right: and presently his spirits began to sink under the burden.”
Patrick O’Brian’s description of Captain Jack Aubrey at a dinner speech in the novel I'm reading, Master and Commander. Those of us who preach can sometimes feel the same.
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