Patrick Henry’s “Speech to the Virginia Convention” is full of highly effective rhetorical devices, including the following:
Alternation of long sentences and short sentences, so that the short sentences receive greater emphasis. A good example of this technique involves the first three sentences of the address. The initial sentence is long; the second sentence is even longer, but the third sentence is emphatically abrupt: “This is no time for ceremony.” Frequent use of metaphors, or implied comparisons. Thus, thinking is compared to seeing (“We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth”); experience is compared to a lamp (“I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided; and that is the lamp of experience”); and so on. Personification, as when he compares false hopes to the song of a siren. Allusions, as when he echoes the Bible (Mark 8:18) when he speaks of those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not . . . .
Rumination is the process of thinking about thoughts over and over again and most of the time those thought are sad or depression which is bad for your mental health, it can prolong or intensify depression as well as impair your ability to think and process emotions.
