Sentence rhetoric can be a product of grammar, as I’ll show you in a later blog.  There are also rhythmic devices that were recognized by classical rhetoricians like Cicero, but also practiced by today's statesmen and black preachers, as below, from a sermon by Benjamin Mays in the 1960s:

Man shall not live by bread alone, but man must live by his dreams, by the goals he strives to reach, and by the ideals which he chooses and chases.  What is man anyway?  Man is flesh and blood, body and mind, bones and muscle, arms and legs, heart and soul, lungs and liver, nerves and veins—all these and more make a man.  But man is really what his dreams are.  Man is what he  aspires to be.  He is the ideals that beckon him on.  Man is the integrity that keeps him steadfast, honest, true.  If a young man tells me what he aspires to be, I can almost predict his future.

It must be borne in mind, however, that the tragedy in life does not lie in not reaching your goal.  The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach.  It isn’t a calamity to die with dreams unfulfilled, but it is a calamity not to dream.  It is not a disaster to be unable to capture your ideal, but it is a disaster to have no ideal to capture.  It is not a disgrace not to reach the stars, but it is a disgrace to have no stars to reach for.  Not failure, but low aim is the sin.

These two "paragraphs," written as you read them, were from a spoken sermon.  They feature the sort of rhythm I want you to incorporate into your writing when the opportunity presents itself.

Notice the repetitions:  the use of "by" phrases in the first sentence.  They are also part of a series.

Notice next the repetitions of the third sentence:  "Man is flesh and blood, body and mind, bones and muscle, arms and legs, heart and soul, lungs and liver, nerves and veins".  

This is also features a series, but the similarity of each element's structure is more precisely the same than in the first sentence:  flesh and blood/bones and muscle/arms and legs, and so on.  This greater precision is a version of parallelism called isocolon. 

Notice also that this second set of repetitions consists of physical traits that answer the questions "What is a man?"  Mays doesn't want us so be so restricted in our understanding.  So he sets up a contrast, by stating the physical so he can add contrasting qualities, specifically "A man is what his dreams are."   His aspirations signal what kind of a person he is.

Mays begins his second paragraph with a series of antitheses. This rhythm can be strictly formal, as in the first sentence and is called a chiasmus, (ke-ás-mus); the others exhibit a looser structure.

Chiasmus indicates a pattern formed by the letter X (chi is the Greek letter X), in which the subject and direct object are inverted:

"the tragedy in life does not lie in not reaching your goal.  The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach"

This is the inverted structure of Kennedy's famous statement from his inaugural address:

"Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country!"

The first chiasmus is followed by three additional inverted antitheses that elaborate the first.  See if you can diagram the inversions.

• It isn’t a calamity to die with dreams unfulfilled, but it is a calamity not to dream. 
• It is not a disaster to be unable to capture your ideal, but it is a disaster to have no ideal to capture. 
• It is not a disgrace not to reach the stars, but it is a disgrace to have no stars to reach for. 
• Not failure, but low aim is the sin.

The last sentence states a simple contradiction, not inverted, that summarizes the preceding chiasmi.

These rhythmic repetitions are not the normal rhythms of prose, which makes them stand out.  Consequently, you want to use them to emphasize especially important claims or conclusions you make in your writing.

One last repetition to notice, though Mays doesn't use it to great effect:

• "chooses and chases"
• "lungs and liver"

The repetition of words that begin with the same sound is called alliteration, and also serves to emphasize the words, since normally alliteration is a chance occurrence and rare in English.

Practice:  write a couple chiasmi on your chosen subjects, imitating the form given in Reverend Mays’s examples.

Then write a couple sentences that include series with isocolon parallelism.

Welcome to the world of classical rhetoric, alive and well in formal speech and writing today in presidential addresses and black preachers' sermons.  You'll find it elsewhere, too.  Sometimes writers use the form just because it's fun.

The forms I show you here are especially useful in writing exhortations, passionate pleas for change.  You can find them in any book or essay urging the reader to agree that the world is in desperate straits and needs to change.  Who can deny the need for exhortation, besides Pangloss?