"Alliteration" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... especially interesting also because it might be classed as almost any one of the types of tales. It is not accumulative though it possesses to a marked degree three characteristics of the accumulative tale, repetition, alliteration, and all sorts of phonic effects. And it is not an old tale. But it is not only one of the most pleasing animal tales we possess but one of the best humorous tales having the rare quality of freshness. It is realistic in its portrayal of animal life; and it is ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... the poem is intolerably dry, except the introductions to each Book, which reveal considerable poetical power. The chief peculiarities of Manilius' language are his strange use of prepositions and his fondness for alliteration; imitations of ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... "Polymetres" in the manner of Arno Holz and Walt Whitman, with lines alternately very long and very short, in which stops, double and triple stops, dashes, silences, commas, italics and italics, played a great part. And so did alliteration and repetition—of a word—of a line—of a whole phrase. He interpolated words of every language. He wanted—(no one has ever known why)—to render the Cezanne into verse. In truth, he was poetic enough and had a distinguished taste for stale things. He was sentimental and dry, naive ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... at Adele's suddenly inspired alliteration, while Hubert looked a dignified reproach. It was a poor preparation, certainly, for what was to follow. Adele's face straightened innocently, while Winifred still ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... made artistic use of it in his Gulistan. Had I rejected the "Cadence of the cooing dove" because un-English, I should have adopted the balanced periods of the Anglican marriage service[FN432] or the essentially English system of alliteration, requiring some such artful aid to distinguish from the vulgar recitative style the elevated and classical tirades in The Nights. My attempt has found with reviewers more favour than I expected; and a kindly critic writes of it, "These ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... have space to quote but one of the poems complete, to show the manner in which Mr. De Vere unites the real, the symbolic, and the external, with the spiritual. Like most of his poems, it is marked by artistic finish and grace, and many of the lines have a natural beauty of unsought alliteration and assonance. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... marked is the adoption of the fullest staff-rime—together (as above) with the end-rime—in the third scene, when the Weird Sisters speak. Again, there is the staff-rime when Banquo addresses them. Again, the strongest alliteration, combined with the end-rime, runs all through the Witches' spell-song in Act iv, scene 1. This feature in Shakspeare appears to me to merit closer investigation; all the more so because a less regular alliteration, but still a marked one, is found in not a few passages of a number ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... it," Emma blandly assured them. "I said it only for the sake of alliteration. You are the most interesting persons I've ever met. I am so sorry I said you weren't, and I'm so nice and comfortable now. I hadn't thought of doing any further water stunts to-day." She struggled to a sitting posture and beamed with owlish ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... own province, my small plot—a poor pedestrian's unimportant impressions of places and faces; all these p's come by accident; and this I put in parenthetically just because an editor solemnly told me a while ago that he couldn't abide and wouldn't have alliteration's artful aid in his periodical. Let us leave the subject of what Miss Mitford was to those of her day who knew her; a thousand lovely personalities pass away every year and in a little while are no more remembered than the bright-plumaged bird that falls in the tropical forest, ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... again. The glow of creation, the high-wrought impulse of imagination, the ideal conception of life, all move the novelist in the direction of poetry. With much effort he keeps meter and rhyme out of his prose, but simile and metaphor, condensed expression, unusual words, poetic compounds, alliteration, sublime and picturesque expression, will intrude themselves. Dickens even permits meter and rhyme to conquer him, and weakens his style in consequence. He grows sentimental, and the real strength of pure prose is lost. George Eliot is often poetical ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... [35-16] Note the striking alliteration in these two lines. Read this stanza and the succeeding one aloud, and see how much easier it is to read these alliterative lines rapidly than it is any of the other six lines. Such relation of movement to meaning is one of the artistic things about ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... nothing, but I knew every thing. I do not believe Horace had anything to do with it, except saying that the love-letters would be just the thing for the public if they were bad enough. I remember, too, that it was he who added the second title, 'Reminiscences of a Roue,' and said something about alliteration's artful aid. And now," concluded Lady Castlefort, "it is coming to the grand catastrophe, as Katrine calls it. She has already told the story, and to-day she was to give all her set what she calls ocular demonstration. Cecilia, now, ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... watches at the play for Owens or Warren to re-enter upon the stage. Who is our benefactress in the authorship of these books, the world knows not. Sophie May must doubtless be a fancy name, by reason of the spelling, and we have only to be grateful that the author did not inflict on us the customary alliteration in her pseudonyme. The rare gift of delineating childhood is hers, and may the line of 'Little Prudy' go out to the end of the earth.... To those oversaturated with transatlantic ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... carnage and fury. Chanted in the hearing of assembled armies, and sometimes sung before the van, it was intended as an incitement to battle, and even calculated to stimulate the courage of the general. The war-song of the Harlaw has been already noticed; it is a rugged tissue of alliteration, every letter having a separate division in the remarkable string of adjectives which are connected to introduce a short exordium and grand finale. The Jorram, or boat-song, some specimens of which attracted the attention of Dr Johnson,[21] was a variety ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... a man of aristocratic breeding, of religious and secular education, of a deeply emotional and spiritual nature, gifted with imagination and perception of beauty. He shows a liking for technique that leads him to adopt elaborate devices of rhyme, while retaining the alliteration characteristic of Northern Middle English verse. He wrote as was the fashion of his time, allegory, homily, lament, chivalric romance, but the distinction of his poetry is that ...
— The Pearl • Sophie Jewett
... triangular alliteration of wit, wealth, and wickedness," observed the Prince. "He has brains, she has money, and they are both as bad ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... on top of the waterbox of the engine, in imminent peril of being jerked from his place, battering his silver trumpet insanely against the brake rods, beseeching, threatening profanely. And profanity at that time was a fine art. Men studied its alliteration, the gorgeousness of its imagery, the blast of its fire. The art has been lost, existing still, in a debased form, only among mule drivers, sailors, and the owners of certain makes of automobiles. The men on the rope responded nobly. The roar of their going over the plank ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... absolute merit in style—space and circumstances of time and place are against him, and to accomplish the negative is quite a positive triumph. Correct grammar, avoidance of hackneyed cliches, clearness of phrase, reasonably scholar-like use of words, abstinence from alliteration unless there be due cause, and escape from uncouthness of expression and monotony of sound are all he can hope to exhibit in the way of virtue. Of course a little wit or humour does no harm, provided that no sacrifice of truth is made for the sake of it. Of the moral qualities ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... Grieve, upon whose names the happy alliteration is made, are supposed to be celebrated English scene painters. But although the scenery meets with disparagement in the prologue, yet it was very superior; and the interior of the old schoolhouse, with ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... Shakespeare, Tennyson, and Browning sweep the soul upward to spiritual heights, and answer some of the deepest questionings of the soul of man. And hence literature is no longer merely a thing of vocabulary, of phrase, of rhythm, of assonance, of alliteration, or of metrical and philosophical form. It is a revelation of the progress of the soul, of its standards, of its triumphs, its defeats, and its desires. It is the unfolding of one's intellectual helplessness before the unmoved, calm passing of years; of one's emotional inadequacy ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... or more words or syllables in the same verse or successive verses. It was the determining principle in Anglo-Saxon poetry, and has remained ever since a source of harmony in English verse. Its effects are sometimes most pleasing when the alliteration turns on one or more internal syllables. The following from Mrs. Browning's "Romance of the Swan's Nest" ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... changing dispositions of the mind. They have a very marked subjective character. Some depend on the intellectual factor; the most usual are based on chance, on distant and vacillating analogies—further down, even on assonance and alliteration. Others depend on the affective factor and are ruled by the disposition of the moment: association by contrast, especially those alike in emotional basis, which have been previously studied. ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... 1: 'The rings' of their corselets. 2: Instead of ltere, for the sake of the alliteration. 3: The translator here assumes (unnecessarily) that there is a gap in the text, with loss of a speech by Hildebrand. 4: 'Friendless,' i.e. separated from his kin. Hadubrand is giving reasons for thinking that his father is dead. 5: 'Imperial gold' ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... sensible of the occasional obscurity and imperfections of his imagery in other pieces, to find it difficult to discover the meaning of some passages, to think the opening of four of his odes which commence with the common-place invocation of "O thou," and the alliteration by which so many lines are disfigured, blemishes too serious to be forgotten, unless the judgment be drowned in the full tide of generous and enthusiastic admiration of the great and extraordinary beauties by which these faults are more ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... given series were chosen from the same decade or contained identical final figures. No word was used in more than one couplet. Their vowels, and initial and final consonants were so varied within a single series as to eliminate phonetic aids, viz., alliteration, rhyme, and assonance. The kind of assonance avoided was identity of final sounded consonants in successive ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... music. This "Saj'a," or cadence of the cooing dove, has in Arabic its special duties. It adds a sparkle to description and a point to proverb, epigram and dialogue; it corresponds with our "artful alliteration" (which in places I have substituted for it) and, generally, it defines the boundaries between the classical and the popular styles which jostle each other in The Nights. If at times it appear strained and forced, after the wont of rhymed prose, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... despite that the books out of which you probably got it are carefully labeled "Fiction." Lamb says somewhere that we think of the "Dark Ages" as literally without sunlight, and so I fancy people like you, dear, think of the "East End" as a mixture of mire, misery and murder. How's that for alliteration? Why, within five minutes' walk of me there are the loveliest houses, with gardens back and front, inhabited by very fine people and furniture. Many of my university friends' mouths would water if they knew the income of some of the shop-keepers ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... of Greek literature. But the old vernacular Latin was a homely and simple speech, much more like any modern language in its ways and movements than would be supposed by those who only know classical Latin. The old Latin poetry was rhythmical, and fond of alliteration. Such was the native song of the Italian Camen, unlike the sthetic poetry of the classical age, with its metres borrowed from the Greek Muses. The old Latin poetry was like the Saxon, in so far as it was rhythmical and not metrical; but unlike it ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... opening invocation to his wife, praying her aid and benediction in the work he has undertaken. "This passage," says Dr. Corson, "has a remarkable movement, the unobtrusive but distinctly felt alliteration contributing to ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... the title of his book just quoted shows, was very fond of alliteration, and one sentence of his diatribe may be quoted. He warned his readers that tobacco-smoke was "very pernicious unto their bodies, too profluvious for many of their purses, and most pestiferous to the publike State." Much may be forgiven, however, to the introducer of so charming a ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... or sinned, or so much as lived, himself. Then the art of it: so entirely unperceived by the ordinary reader, so invincible in its effect upon him. The whole secret of it defies analysis: but a few ingredients can {216} be detected. There is comparatively little of Milton's favourite alliteration: the tone of the passage is too quiet for the free use of an artistic device so instantly visible. ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... Let them flee from the wrath to come! And truly they were only too anxious to do so, for they knew that Leicester's hatred was poisonous. "He is not so facile to forget as ready to revenge," said poor Wilkes, with neat alliteration. "My very heavy and mighty adversary will disgrace and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... advantage; and is himself the dupe and victim of his ruling passion—an insatiable craving after action of the most difficult and dangerous kind. "Our ancient" is a philosopher, who fancies that a lie that kills has more point in it than an alliteration or an antithesis; who thinks a fatal experiment on the peace of a family a better thing than watching the palpitations in the heart of a flea in a microscope; who plots the ruin of his friends as an exercise for his ingenuity, and stabs men in the dark to prevent ennui. His gaiety, such ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... to the living original having apparently proved irksome. Against one such, evidently an attempt to help Dick see himself in his true colours, I find this marginal, note in pencil: "Better not. Might make him ratty." Opposite to another—obviously of Mrs. St. Leonard, and with instinct for alliteration—is scribbled; "Too terribly true. She'd ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... "A most effective alliteration," he murmured, but without spontaneity. It was evident that the doldrums were very real with him, for he made no effort to take part in the ensuing conversation, in spite of the fact that the subject was one which might have aroused him ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... genders; some pronouns had a dual as well as a plural number; and the verb had a much larger number of inflexions than it has now. The vocabulary of the language contained very few foreign elements. The poetry of the language employed head-rhyme or alliteration, and not end-rhyme, as we do now. The works of the poet Caedmon and the great prose-writer King Alfred belong to ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... as we drive from the Eastern Extension Railway Station, we notice as a curious coincidence of alliteration, the sign,— ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... sorts of variations from the regular forms here given. Indeed, regularity, as has been clearly pointed out, is the exception and not the rule; for few single lines, and, in a still more marked degree, almost no songs, adhere to one measure throughout. Precisely as "apt alliteration's artful aid" may be used or not used as may suit his purpose best, so the song-writer makes regularity of measure subservient to ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... the luckiest I ever heard—"and stood up beautiful before the cloudy seat." I cannot enough admire it. 'Tis somehow picturesque in the very sound. The 2d Antistrophe (what is the meaning of these things?) is fine and faultless (or to vary the alliteration and not diminish the affectation) beautiful and blameless. I only except to the last line as meaningless after the preceding, and useless entirely—besides, why disjoin "nature and the world" here, when you had confounded both in their ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... suggested in Miss Brooke's version. It is, perhaps, the finest thing in the poem; but I hardly know any ballad finer as a piece of dramatic narrative; and the resonant verse, strongly rhymed (in the Gaelic assonances), and copiously stressed with alliteration, bears ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... they should procure a few of Wagner's later vocal scores and note the extremely ingenious manner in which he has made the peculiarities of German consonants subservient to his dramatic purposes. I refer especially to his use of alliteration—the repetition of a consonant in the same or in consecutive lines. This not only insures a smooth, melodious flow, but enables the composer to heighten the effect of any situation by choosing consonants ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck |
