Figure of Thinking: Oxymoronica, by Dr. Mardy Grothe

As a voice coach, my primary concern with clients and students is the moment of delivery. Not because it's the most important thing necessarily, but because when you're with an audience, preparation and delivery are almost indivisible. 

There are five traditional canons of rhetoric: invention, arrangement, style, memory and delivery [see The Forest of Rhetoric site]. Broadly speaking, the first three have been parsed out to writing teachers, the last two neglected in academic disciplines and professional training. Hence, the movement in business programs to reunite the components of rhetoric in the name of cultivating: leadership, executive presence, presentation skills, authenticity, charisma, adaptive leadership...

The written component of preparation, however, can give the voice something to do when it comes time to deliver. Arrangement of material into a story, and into sentences and paragraphs that emphasize contrasts and parallels, invites pitch variation: structures of thought give the voice something to express. 

Dr. Mardy Grothe, a therapist by trade, has assembled a collection of the most compressed contrasts: oxymorons. In his book, Oxymoronica: Paradoxical Wit and Wisdom from History's Greatest Wordsmiths, Grothe has provided an entertaining trove of potentially useful quotations to enliven a presentation for an audience, both audibly and intellectually. It's content is divided into themed chapters, so you can raid it when pressed for time, as well as read it at leisure.