"Eloquence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on "The Eternal Life" ("The Proof of the Gospel by the Supernatural.") The same talent and great eloquence; but the orator does not understand that the supernatural must either be historically proved, or, supposing it cannot be proved, that it must renounce all pretensions to overstep the domain of faith and to encroach upon that of history and science. He quotes ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... frequently, they were only politicians. They were brave and loyal: indeed, in the time of the Stuarts, all the Wits were Cavaliers, as well as the Beaux. One hears of no repartee among Cromwell's followers; no dash, no merriment, in Fairfax's staff; eloquence, indeed, but no wit in the Parliamentarians; and, in truth, in the second Charles's time, the king might have headed the lists of the Wits himself—such a capital man as his Majesty is known to have been for a wet evening or a dull ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... always appeared a "fine fellow," would leave his daughter to decide the matter. Thus referred, he lost no time in making Ellen the recipient of his "tale of love." All his theatrical powers were called in action; his eloquence commanded; but the impressions made were far different from those intended. Though the outward semblance was complete, Ellen saw that the passion was feigned, and a still deeper dislike took possession of her feelings. But with gentle delicacy, she ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison
... by a languid Belgian barrister, tired of the invidious role of mechanical pleading for the lives of prisoners, especially where, as in this case, they were foredoomed, and eloquence was waste of breath, and even got you disliked by the impatient ogres, thirsty for the blood of an English man or woman.... "Du reste," he said to a colleague, "agissait-il d'un Belge, mon cher, tu sais que l'on se sentirait force a risquer ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... three weeks, shut up in a small hut and bound by a strong rope to a post. Food was taken to him by an old Indian woman, who paid no attention at first to what he said to her, for the good reason that she did not understand a word of English. The persuasive eloquence of her prisoner's tones, however, or perhaps his brogue, seemed in the course of a few days to have made an impression on her; for she condescended to smile at the unintelligible compliments which Barney lavished upon her in the hope of securing ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... still persist in his more delicate enterprise, he fails to be as widely his inferior. But let us select them from the pages of the same writer, one who was ambidexter; let us take, for instance, Rumour's Prologue to the Second Part of Henry IV., a fine flourish of eloquence in Shakespeare's second manner, and set it side by side with Falstaff's praise of sherris, act iv. scene iii.; or let us compare the beautiful prose spoken throughout by Rosalind and Orlando; compare, for example, the first speech ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... more demand the tear humane; I see, I see! glad Liberty succeed With every patriot virtue in her train! And mark yon peasant's raptur'd eyes; 25 Secure he views his harvests rise; No fetter vile the mind shall know, And Eloquence shall fearless glow. Yes! Liberty the soul of Life shall reign, Shall throb in every pulse, shall flow ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... were for the feeble brain of Man to wade far into the doings of the Most High: whom although to know be life, and joy to make mention of His Name; yet our soundest knowledge is to know that we know Him not as indeed He is, neither can know Him. And our safest eloquence concerning Him is our silence, when we confess without confession that His glory is inexplicable; His greatness above our capacity and reach. He is above, and we upon earth: therefore it behoveth our words to be ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... of his oration was quite as surprising to Nicholas as to his opponents, and, enchanted by the effect of his eloquence, he could not help glancing up at the window, where he perceived Mistress Nutter, whose smiles showed that ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... as well as frequent individual confessions, by which their interest is enhanced, and which will always make them specially attractive. Their title expressed a personal liking. Of all the societies, charitable or self-assisting, which his tact and eloquence in the "chair" so often helped, none had interested him by the character of its service to its members, and the perfection of its management, so much as that of the Commercial Travellers. His, admiration of their schools introduced him to one who then acted as their treasurer, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... he spoke, and had stepped from behind his desk to give freer play to this burst of eloquence, but he now paused at the entrance of a secretary for whom he had sent, and changing to that quizzical drawl with which he had so often disarmed a hostile audience, added, "And they do say that I am not ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... second reason for squeezing into an already overcrowded church. The persuasive and gentle eloquence of Mr. Sainway operated like a charm upon those accustomed only to the higher and dryer styles of preaching, and for a time the other churches of the town were thinned ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... and nobleness of sentiment, active benevolence, which knew no limit but the furthest extent of her ability, and a boundless enthusiasm for the good and fair, wherever she discovered them. Her lively imagination, and the flow of eloquence which it inspired, aided by one of the most melodious of voices, lent an inexpressible charm to her conversation; which was heightened by an intuitive discernment of character, rare in itself, and still more so in combination with such fertility of fancy and ardency of ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... its time. Of this class Addison is an illustrious example. His gifts are not of the highest order; there was none of the spontaneity, abandon, or fertility of genius in him; his thought made no lasting contribution to the highest intellectual life; he set no pulses beating by his eloquence of style, and fired no imagination by the insight and emotion of his verse; he was not a scholar in the technical sense: and yet, in an age which was stirred and stung by the immense satiric force of Swift, charmed by the wit and elegance of Pope, moved by the tenderness ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Sv[a]mi N[a]r[a]yana. He was born about 1780 near Lucknow, and advocated a return to Vallabha's purer faith, which had been corrupted. Probably most of the older reformers have had much the same career as had Sv[a]mi N[a]r[a]yana. Exalted by the people, who were persuaded by his mesmeric eloquence, he soon became a political figure, a martyr of persecution, a triumphant victor, and then an ascetic, living in seclusion; whence he emerged occasionally to go on tours "like a bishop visiting his ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... in driving with his host, and they naturally chatted a great deal about Mr. Cassall's new ideas. The physician listened to his friend's version of Miss Dearsley's eloquence, and then musingly said, "I don't know that you can do better than take your niece's advice. The fact is, my dear fellow, you have far too much money. I have more than I know how to use, and mine is like a drop in that pond compared with ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... Shortly afterwards she turned round to look if Spikeman was gone; he had remained near the seat, with his eyes following her footsteps. "I could love that man," thought Melissa, as she walked on. "What an eye he has, and what eloquence; I shall run away with a tinker I do believe; but it is my destiny. Why does he say a week—a whole week? But how easy to see through his disguise! He had the stamp of a gentleman upon him. Dear me, I wonder how this is to end! I must not tell Araminta yet; she would ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... Her usual eloquence utterly failed her, as most things do in which one is wont to trust, before the pressure of a real and horrible evil. She had no heart to make fine sentences, to preach a brilliant sermon of commonplaces. What could she say that her mother had not known long before she was born? And throwing herself ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... rude, as well I know, For beauty thou hast none, nor eloquence, Who did on thee the hardiness bestow To appear before my Lady? but a sense Thou surely hast of her benevolence, 295 Whereof her hourly bearing proof doth give; For of all good she ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... have been a barrister, Mr. Lovell," he said; "that would have been a capital opening for your speech as counsel for the crown. I can see the wretched criminal shivering in the dock, cowering under that burst of forensic eloquence." ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... again the Lamb (Devereux, I mean) had tried to stop Jane's eloquence, but Robert and Cyril held him, one by each leg, and no proper explanation was possible. The lady rode hastily away, and electrified her relatives at dinner by telling them of her escape from a family of dangerous lunatics. "The little girl's eyes ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... off its load, and gayly goes From the intolerant storm to rest awhile, In love's true heart, sure haven of repose; Does not pain's veriest transports learn to smile From that bright eloquence affection gave To friendly looks?—there, finds ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... a new preacher was announced to lecture in the synagogue, at Cordova, upon a designated Sabbath. Numerous rumors of his wonderful learning and eloquence were rife, and all were anxious to hear him. In matter, delivery, earnestness, and effect, the sermon excelled all that the people had before listened to, and to the amazement of Maimonides the elder, and ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... administration now, although familiar with his contemporaries. The remarkable circumstance, however, connected with these eccentricities was, that he introduced them with the utmost gravity, and oftentimes, after he had delivered them, pursued his subject with great earnestness and eloquence, as if he had said nothing uncommon. One saying of the professor, however, out of the pulpit, is too good to be omitted, and may be recorded without violation of propriety. He happened to meet at the house of a lawyer, whom he considered rather a man ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... goes on he will stand by him, seems in flat contradiction to what happened in 1874. But Colonel Leathes puts the date as 1875, and Dr. Aldis Wright has been kind enough to look up old almanacs in his possession and corroborates this view. It speaks with extraordinary eloquence of FitzGerald's affection for Posh, of his patience with the man, that after the want of recognition of his kindness shown in 1874 he should have written to him in ...
— Edward FitzGerald and "Posh" - "Herring Merchants" • James Blyth
... of a customs officer to a Massachusetts court for writs of assistance "as usual." This application was vainly opposed by James Otis in a speech of five hours' duration—a speech of such fire and eloquence that it sent every man who heard it away "ready to take up arms against writs of assistance." Otis denounced the practice as an exercise of arbitrary power which had cost one king his head and another his throne, a tyrant's device which placed the liberty of every man in jeopardy, ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... "new-fangled," it is likely he would have carried his request elsewhere. But, greatly to Davie's surprise, his grandfather listened to the proposition of Mr Hemmenway with no special signs of disfavour, and he could only hope that the wonderful eloquence of their Yankee friend might not hinder rather than ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... this, and disappeared. The rear-guard of civilians was now left alone on the plain. Cora, as she pressed slowly onwards with her sister and David, saw Magua addressing the natives, speaking with his fatal and artful eloquence. The effect of his ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... of the public health were objects at which, in the middle part of his life, he worked hard, both as a landowner and as the unpaid Chairman of the Board of Health. The crusade against vivisection warmed his heart and woke his indignant eloquence in his declining years. His Memorial Service in Westminster Abbey was attended by representatives of nearly two hundred religious and philanthropic institutions with which he had been connected, and which, in one way or another, he had served. But, of course, it is with the reform ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... was not unfrequently amazed at this inequality of nature in her favorite pupil. On one side he seemed a full-grown man of grand proportions; on the other, a pigmy-child. She had heard him pour forth torrents of eloquence on the Sabbath, and felt the force of a nature exceptionally rich and strong in its conception of religious truths and human needs, only to find him on the morrow floundering hopelessly in the mire of rudimentary ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... and though he took but about three hours in its delivery, he had devoted as many, if not more, weeks to its preparation. It was very able, and Mr. Lincoln was throughout the whole of it a rapt listener. Mr. Stanton closed his speech in a flight of impassioned eloquence. ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... shepherd named Dakianos, who for thirty years had attended his sheep without having ever neglected the holy custom of making his daily prayers. All those who knew him did justice to his probity; and nature had endowed him with an eloquence capable of raising him to the highest employments, had he lived in ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... natives, who replied in the same language; and without landing, as the stem touched the sand, he began an address, which appeared from his tones to be full of eloquence. They listened to it with profound attention, and then several of them stretched out their hands, and gave indubitable signs that they were eager to welcome him on shore. He and his companions accordingly ...
— Washed Ashore - The Tower of Stormount Bay • W.H.G. Kingston
... other book on a political subject that I had ever read. My mind stirred with the stirring times, and the characters round which the life of two contending nations centred seemed to move right before me. I wondered more and more, while Burke's masterly speech rolled on in mighty surges of eloquence, how it was that King George and his ministers could have turned a deaf ear to his warning prophecy of our victory and their humiliation. Then I entered into the melancholy details of the relation in which the great statesman stood to his party ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... of the Tonga Islands on the 17th of July, and the expedition arrived in sight of an island called Tabouai by the inhabitants, upon the 8th of August, after a series of tempestuous winds which caused serious damage to the Discovery. All the eloquence of the English failed to bring the natives on board. Nothing would induce them to leave their boats, and they contented themselves with inviting the strangers to visit them. But as time pressed, and Cook had no need of provisions, he passed the island without stopping, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... et praeterea almost nihil (he had yet to die and show that it was almost, not quite,) sheers off too, into the country, there to busy himself with an essay on the Nature of the Gods (to contain, be sure, some fine eloquence), and with making up his mind to attack Anthony on behalf of Republican Freedom.—Anthony's next step is wise too: he appoints himself Caesar's executor, gets hold of the estate, and proceeds to squander it right and left buying ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... viz., that when France was in the throes of agony, the voice of French Canada spoke out its loud attachment to the cause of the ancient mother country. In such action was the forgotten daughter restored to its sorrowing mother. The hon. gentleman then in language of forcible eloquence referred to the pleasure shown by English-Canadians at the success of Mr. Frechette, and concluded a highly intellectual and eloquent speech, amidst the reiterated cheers of ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... New York City, March 11, 1863, said among other things, a constellation of linguistic brilliants not surpassed since the impassioned appeals of Cicero swept the Roman Senate to its feet, or Demosthenes fired his listeners with the flame of his matchless eloquence; ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... is no man so powerful as the great lawyer. The wealth and the character of his fellow men often depend upon him. His clients are sometimes powerful corporations, or cities, or states. Crowded courts listen to his eloquence year after year; and no one has greater freedom of speech than he. The orator and politician may be wafted into a conspicuous place for a brief period, and fall again when popular favor has cooled; ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... disinclined to it, according to the last view of the case presented to them. But the natural love of adventure, curiosity, fondness for the hunting life, dissatisfaction with the incessant labor necessary for subsistence on their present comparatively sterile soil, joined to the confident eloquence of the Boones, prevailed on four or five families to join ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... the evening, partly in writing urgently in Meynell's defence to certain of his own personal friends in the diocese, and partly in composing an anti-Modernist address, full of a sincere and earnest eloquence, to be delivered the following week at a meeting of the ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... describing it to the officials of the Patent Office, he was obliged to call it "an improvement in telegraphy," when, in truth, it was nothing of the kind. It was as different from the telegraph as the eloquence of a great orator is from the sign-language ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... strenuous sobbing. I stopped dead short to listen, moved by instinctive recognition. Aye, I was right. It was Irish keening. Some son of Erin was spelling out his sorrow to the darkness with that profound and garrulous eloquence which is in the character of ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... party with common Christian treatment; yet upon his arrival hither, could put on a face of importance and authority, talked more than six, without either gracefulness, propriety, or meaning; and at the same time be admired and followed as the pattern of eloquence and wisdom. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... Reason for a moment—any presentation of this matter calls for the highest ability; it involves sifting of evidence; symmetry of arrangement; cohesiveness of method, logic of argument, persuasiveness of advocacy, subtleties of acumen, charms of eloquence—all the elements of the ...
— The Angel of Lonesome Hill • Frederick Landis
... tale of our sorrows and the sight of my torments, had done their work, and the heart of the people was filled with fury against the Teules who had destroyed their army, and the Tlascalans that had aided them. Never did the wit and eloquence of a woman cause a swifter change. They screamed and tore their robes and shook their weapons in the air. Maxtla strove to speak, but they pulled him down and presently he was flying for his life. Then they turned upon the Tlascalan envoys and ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... impossible that the prisoner can have committed this crime. A mother guilty of such conduct to her own child? Why, it is repugnant to our better feelings"; and then being carried away by his own eloquence, he proceeded: "Gentlemen, the beasts of the field, the birds of the ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... Patrick Henry speak. He thrilled us with his eloquence. He is a spare but rugged man, whose hands have been used to toil like my own. They tell me that he was a small merchant, farmer and bar-keeper down in Virginia before he became a lawyer and that he educated himself largely by the reading of history. He has a rapid, magnificent diction, slightly ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... poignant and ironic visions, despite his youthful fire and exuberance—and it was as something of a golden youth of music that Strauss burst upon the world—one sensed in him the not quite beautifully deepened man, heard at moments a callow accent in his eloquence, felt that an unmistakable alloy was fused with the generous gold. The purity, the inwardness, the searchings of the heart, the religious sentiment of beauty, present so unmistakably in the art of the great men who had developed music, were wanting in his work. He had neither ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... than Phlippon. When the day's toil was ended, he loved to gather around him associates whose feelings harmonized with his own, and to descant upon their own grievous oppression and upon the arrogance of aristocratic greatness. With an eloquence which often deeply moved his sympathizing auditory, and fanned to greater intensity the fires which were consuming his own heart, he contrasted their doom of sleepless labor and of comparative penury with the brilliance ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... Literature of All Lands; Folk-Lore, Fairy Tales, Fables, Legends, Natural History, Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky, Animal Stories, Sea Tales, Brave Deeds, Explorations, Stories of School and College Life, Biography, History, Patriotic Eloquence, Poetry ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... style of George Eliot. Her vocabulary, though large, is too full of abstract and scientific terms to permit of great flexibility and idiomatic purity of English. She is master of powerful figures of speech, original, epigrammatic turns of expression, and, sometimes, of a stirring eloquence. ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... and out of disrespect to the demons to make men more devout." And Savonarola, though he has been accused of being one of the causes of the decline, thus upheld the sacred influences of art; when he exclaimed in one of his fervent bursts of eloquence, "You see that Saint there in the Church and say, 'I will live a good life and be like him.'" If these were the feelings of the least devout and the religious fanatic, how hallowed must the influences of Christian painting have been to the intermediate ranks. Mr. Symonds beautifully expresses ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)
... sex. (A very intellectual woman once remarked to me that the book seemed to her "a sort of religious aphrodisiac.") If we read, for instance, Book III, Chapter V, of this work ("De Mirabili affectu Divini amoris"), we shall find in the eloquence of this solitary monk in the Low Countries neither more nor less than the emotions of every human lover at their highest limit of exaltation. "Nothing is sweeter than love, nothing stronger, nothing higher, nothing broader, nothing pleasanter, nothing fuller nor ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... processions in Liverpool. Notwithstanding some grand features in connection with them, they were, unfortunately, sometimes the occasion of rioting and intemperance. Father Nugent was of Irish parentage and sympathies, and possessed of great zeal, capacity, energy and eloquence. He determined to make a new departure in celebrating the national anniversary, for though the processions were magnificent displays, and it was not the fault of their promoters if ever there was any scandal arising out of them, still there ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... presumed that Mr. Brown did not exactly follow the quotation, but the eloquence of Robinson had its desired effect. Mr. Brown did at last produce a sum of five hundred pounds, with which printers, stationers, and advertising agents were paid or partially paid, and Robinson ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... military merit which attached the glory of having saved Rome from the Cimbri and Teutones entirely to the name of Marius. Catulus was a polished and clever man, so graceful a speaker that his euphonious language sounded almost like eloquence, a tolerable writer of memoirs and occasional poems, and an excellent connoisseur and critic of art; but he was anything but a man of the people, and his victory was a victory of the aristocracy. The battles of the rough farmer on the other hand, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... of Nashville, preached the annual "missionary sermon." Dr. Landrith possesses true Southern eloquence, and was listened to with marked attention. During the year he has, on several occasions, expressed himself as heartily in sympathy with our work. Such friendliness on the part of an influential Southerner is ...
— American Missionary, Volume 50, No. 8, August, 1896 • Various
... call the mirror of health," said Langdon, in an unwonted burst of poetic eloquence, as he passed his hand across the horse's ribs. Then feeling that somehow he had laid himself open to a suspicion of gentleness, added, "He's a hell of a fine looker; if he could gallop up to his looks he'd make some of the ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... there was in that assembly, however, who seemed to be not very deeply touched by the wizard's eloquence. Yet he did not express unbelief by his looks, but received all that was said with profound gravity. This was Angut, the reputed angekok, to whom reference has been made ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... extraordinary, and I meant it. That a ghost should venture into Atherley's neighbourhood was less amazing than that it should continue to exist in his wife's presence, so much more fatal than his eloquence to all but the tangible and the solid. Her orthodoxy is above suspicion, but after some hours of her society I am unable to contemplate any aspects of life save the comfortable and the uncomfortable: while the Universe itself appears to me only a gigantic apparatus especially designed to ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... Francis, men; but I am a boy," he said, "and after all, boys are fond of adventure for adventure's sake. However, Father," he said, with a smile, "no doubt your eloquence on the green will turn me mightily to the project, for you must allow that the story you have told me this morning is not such as to create any very strong yearning in one's mind to follow the millions of men who have perished in the ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... is any discussion of moral matters in common life in which this form of appeal is not present in a measure sufficient to obscure the merits of the question at issue. I desire for present purposes to eliminate as far as possible all conflict and prejudices, and thus to dispense with zeal and eloquence. I shall assume, therefore, that you propose to be reasonable concerning this moral affair. By this I mean simply that you shall directly observe the facts of life, report candidly on these facts, and fully accept the implications of any judgment to which you may commit yourself. I may phrase ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... gayer hours She has a voice of gladness and a smile, And eloquence of beauty; and she glides Into his darker musings with a mild And gentle sympathy, that steals away Their sharpness ere he ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... Jurgis was with them, he was shouting to tear his throat; shouting because he could not help it, because the stress of his feeling was more than he could bear. It was not merely the man's words, the torrent of his eloquence. It was his presence, it was his voice: a voice with strange intonations that rang through the chambers of the soul like the clanging of a bell—that gripped the listener like a mighty hand about his body, that shook him and startled him with sudden fright, ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... age, continued firm and intrepid. He rallied the members as well as he could, maintaining still the authority of a magistrate, both in his words and behaviour, and went leisurely back to the King's palace, through volleys of abuse, menaces, curses, and blasphemies. He had a kind of eloquence peculiar to himself, knew nothing of interjections, was not very exact in his speech, but the force of it made amends for that; and being naturally bold, never spoke so well as when he was in danger, insomuch that when he ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... tables in which this proportion should be made clear at a glance. This kind of statistics would be important for the class of persons who think themselves stronger-minded than the rest, and who tell you, "I only believe in the eloquence of figures." Such people do not realise that battalions of figures are like battalions of men, not always ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... discreditable imputation.[437] But he really leaves no room for either entreaties or admonitions from me. For, whether in everyday conversation or in the senate, no one could support your cause with greater eloquence, seriousness, zeal, and energy than he has done, testifying in the highest terms to your services to himself and his affection for you. Marcellinus, you know, is incensed with his flute-playing majesty.[438] In everything, saving and excepting this case of the king, he professes the intention ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... mentioned, took place a little more than a year ago. I was carried away, as the House of Commons never is, by my Hon. friend's eloquence. We got the garden. We have it now; but I do not trust myself on this page to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 25, 1890 • Various
... courtezans, having an influence over those orators must have had an influence on public affairs. There was not one, not even the thundering, the inflexible Demosthenes, so terrible to tyrants, but was subjected to their sway. Of that great master of eloquence it has been said, "What he had been a whole year in erecting, a woman overturned in a day." That influence augmented their consequence; and their talent of pleasing increased with the ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... his back turned upon the party, smoking a meerschaum pipe. Not a word of Tommy's eloquence had missed him, and he now faced suddenly about ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... Father Richard, who watched him with his little bright cunning eyes, and the unmoved professors, and his watchful fellow-students, jeering and scoffing at first, then at last astonished and jealous. "There is the stuff of an orator in him," the Professor of Sacred Eloquence had said, "we must push this lad forward." "He is full of talent and virtue," the Superior had replied, "he will get on. He is our chosen vessel." And the same day he had dined at the master's table, and they had spoken of him to Monseigneur. ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... the door. "Oh, man," said Mr. Daff, slyly, "ye shouldna hae left them at the door by themselves." Mr. Craig looked at him austerely, and muttered something about the growing immorality of this backsliding age; but before the smoke of his indignation had kindled into eloquence, the delinquents were admitted. However, as we have nothing to do with the business, we shall leave ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... other evils which might be worse. All the same I do not recommend you to have an anthrax, otherwise called carbuncle. It is a stupid malady, and serves no good end. One dies of it—that is all. I am neither uncultivated nor rustic. I honour eloquence and poetry, and live in an innocent union with these goddesses. I conclude by a piece of advice. Ladies and gentlemen, on the sunny side of your dispositions, cultivate virtue, modesty, honesty, probity, justice, and love. Each one here below may thus have his little pot of flowers ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... the memorable evening all the men of Muscatel Came to listen to the logic and the eloquence as well— All but William Perry Peters, whose attendance there, I fear. Was to wreak his ready rhetoric upon the public ear, And prove (whichever side he took) that hearing wouldn't lift The human mind ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... French pleading is exactly what we might be led to expect from the peculiar state of manners, and the particular character of that singular people. It is infinitely further removed from dry legal ratiocination, and much more allied to real eloquence, than any thing we met with in England. Any one who is acquainted with the natural inborn fluency in conversation of every individual whom he meets in France, may be able to form some idea of the astonishing command of words in a set of men who are bred to public speaking. One bad effect arises ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... one hundred and ninety-five dollars and there it hung for several minutes, despite the eloquence of Mr. Wood, who tried by all his persuasive powers to get a substantial advance. But every one seemed afraid to bid. As for the young inventor, he was in a quandary. He could only offer five dollars more, and, if he bid it in a lump, some one might go ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-boat - or, The Rivals of Lake Carlopa • Victor Appleton
... to lead, His orthodoxy had no dependence on his cassock; he could pray with fervor and with faith, if circumstances required it, without the assistance of his clerk; and he had even been known to preach a most evangelical sermon, in the winning manner of native eloquence, without the aid of ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... of them an undying history attaches, and even their vacant sites appeal with mute, but surpassing eloquence to the sympathy, the interest and the veneration of visitors, to whom Quebec will be ever dear, not for what it is, but for what it has been. To the quick comprehension of Lord Dufferin, it remained ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... queer; but which Mr. Coleridge would have called mystical, Mr. Kant pantheistical, Mr. Carlyle twistical, and Mr. Emerson hyperquizzitistical. I began not to like it at all. Mr. Dammits soul was in a perilous state. I resolved to bring all my eloquence into play to save it. I vowed to serve him as St. Patrick, in the Irish chronicle, is said to have served the toad,—that is to say, "awaken him to a sense of his situation." I addressed myself to the task forthwith. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... in his preface of resigning the service of the Muses for a different vocation, he had "conceived him bent on pursuits which lead to the character of a legislator and statesman;—had imagined him at one of the universities, training himself to habits of reasoning and eloquence, and storing up a large fund of history and law." It is in reply to this letter that the exposition of the noble poet's opinions, to which I have ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... sentiment throughout the United States adverse to slavery, in the confident expectation of speedily overthrowing the institution. The issue taken, that slavery is malum in se—a sin in itself—was prosecuted with all the zeal and eloquence they could command. Churches adopting the sin per se doctrine, inquired of their converts, not whether they supported slavery by the use of its products, but whether they believed the institution itself sinful. Could public sentiment be brought to assume ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... and breakfasting. My captor had treated me with a certain rough kindness through all the journey, and done his best to hearten me. He had told me my fate—to be sold into a harem—but he had pictured it as glowingly, as glitteringly as his rough eloquence would let him. And, with all the blood of countless centuries of Eastern races coursing in my veins, and in the more or less stunned, stupified condition in which that awful night-tragedy had left me, I yielded, for the time, to the fatalism with ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... but you cannot very well be loquacious, without danger of having the devil for a listener, if the old saying is true. Yet still, I felt a keener poignancy in her sequestration. Her beauty had even greater claim to regard than his eloquence. She was a woman who could have commanded a whole roomful with it, and no one would have wanted a word from her. She could only have been entirely herself in society, where, and in spite of everything that can be ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... noise of their arrival had echoed through all the haunts of those who get their livelihood by administering to the crimes and the weaknesses of men. They offered them their several female relations, and depicted their charms and various attractions with such fiery eloquence, that Faustus, besieged on every side, knew not which to prefer. As these wretches uttered religious maxims in the same breath with the most stimulant descriptions of voluptuousness, Faustus imagined himself authorised ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... greatest of Men, as that Caesar should be but a Fourth-rate Actor in his own Tragedy? How could it have been that, seeing Caesar, we should ask for Caesar? That we should ask, where is his unequall'd Greatness of Mind, his unbounded Thirst of Glory, and that victorious Eloquence, with which he triumph'd over the Souls of both Friends and Enemies, and with which he rivall'd Cicero in Genius as he did Pompey in Power? How fair an Occasion was there to open the Character of Caesar in the first Scene between Brutus and Cassius? For when ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... dwindled into a ridiculously small compass. I cannot give you the particulars of the cross-examination, though it was conducted with great spirit and humour by Miss Broadhurst; but I can tell you the result—that Sir Arthur Berryl, by incontrovertible facts, and eloquence warm from the heart, convinced everybody present that he had the best friend in the world; and Miss Broadhurst, as he finished speaking, gave him her hand, and he led her off in triumph—So you see, Lord Colambre, you were at last the ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... but fled with my whole company amongst my Enemies, and overthrew 'em: Now the report of my valour is come over before me, and they say I was a raw young fellow, but now I am improv'd, a Plague on their eloquence, 't will cost me many a beating; And Mardonius might help this too, if he would; for now they think to get honour on me, and all the men I have abus'd call me freshly worthily, as they call it by the way ...
— A King, and No King • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... Further, every special sin has a special matter. Now pride has a general matter, for Gregory says (Moral. xxxiv, 23) that "one man is proud of his gold, another of his eloquence: one is elated by mean and earthly things, another by sublime and heavenly virtues." Therefore pride is not a special but a ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... to be sought in holy writings, not in eloquence. Every holy writing ought to be read with the same spirit wherewith it ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... conceal his inward triumph and to assume the mask of indifference. The moment of vengeance was at last come, and his proud heart exulted in the prospect of repaying with interest the injuries of the Emperor. With artful eloquence, he expatiated upon the happy tranquillity of a private station, which had blessed him since his retirement from a political stage. Too long, he said, had he tasted the pleasures of ease and independence, to sacrifice to the vain phantom of ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... was not lifted until in the last century, and the excavations have narrated the catastrophe with an eloquence which even Pliny himself, notwithstanding the resources of his style and the authority of his testimony, could not attain. The terrible exterminator was caught, as it were, in the very act, amid the ruins he ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... though the names of George Dawson and others were whispered, the unanimous choice fell upon Mr. John Bright, "the rejected of Manchester," and it may be truly said he was at that time the chosen of the people. Birmingham men of all shades of politics appreciating his eloquence and admiring his sterling honesty, though many differed with his opinions. Addresses were early issued by Baron Dickenson Webster and Mr. M'Geachy, but both were at once withdrawn when Mr. Bright consented to stand ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... arrangement is confused, his repetitions endless, his style everything which it ought not to be. Instead of saying what he has to say with the perspicuity, the precision, and the simplicity in which consists the eloquence proper to scientific writing, he indulges without measure in vague, bombastic declamation, made up of those fine things which boys of fifteen admire, and which everybody, who is not destined to be a ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... party in Liverpool, in election times. From the balcony of that house, wherein the utmost hospitality was always exercised, the great statesmen who have represented Liverpool in Parliament—George Canning and William Huskisson—have many a time poured forth the floods of their eloquence, stirring up the heart's-blood of the thousands assembled in the street to hear them, making pulses beat quicker, and exciting passions to fever-heat. Mr. Canning used also to address the electors from Sir Thomas Brancker's house ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... on Lord Russell's trial—Finch summed up the evidence against him. But ... shewed more of a vicious eloquence, in turning matters with some subtlety against the prisoners, than of solid or sincere reasoning.—Swift. Afterwards Earl ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... in their galleries, and who sell a picture, as English gentlemen cut down a wood, whenever the cards grow gloomy. The charming De Ventadour! she had attraction for them all! smiles for the silent, badinage for the gay, politics for the Frenchman, poetry for the German, the eloquence of loveliness for all! She was looking her best—the slightest possible tinge of rouge gave a glow to her transparent complexion, and lighted up those large dark sparkling eyes (with a latent softness beneath the sparkle) seldom seen but in the French—and ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... specimen of a savage athlete, and the most noted runner and hunter in his tribe. Like many of his race, while hating the white man, he loved the white man's fire-water, and it made him surly and quarrelsome. He was a natural leader, and often, at night, he spoke with fiery eloquence of the wrongs of his race, sowing the seeds of ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory
... admitted to Godin's presence, he poured out his petition with the vehemence of one who can take no denial, urging his suit with all the eloquence of intense anxiety and deep conviction of the terrible extremity of the feeble folk in ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... his brother had given him, who had already one of his daughters as a pledge, which was sufficient while she lived; "when she dieth he shall have another child of mine." And then he broke forth in pathetic eloquence: "I hold it not a brotherly part of your King, to desire to bereave me of two of my children at once; further give him to understand, that if he had no pledge at all, he should not need to distrust any injury from me, or any under my subjection; ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... attacking this favourite study of our friend, but merely to provoke him to defend it. I wish our attack would induce him to vindicate his science, and that we might enjoy a little of the sport of literary gladiators, at least, in order to call forth his skill and awaken his eloquence. ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... of eloquence, of which no detail was lost on the experienced man of the world, who sat twirling his cigar with nervous fingers, his eyes growing keener in proportion as his face became more gray. It was part of his professional acquirement to be able to draw his deductions from some snatch of ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... conduct, our need for beauty;" and he finds the springs of the supply to be, not in the "strenuous" life, always at high pressure and extreme tension, but in the thoughtful leisure, in the serenity of repose, in the devotion to poetry and art. "How," he questions, "are poetry and eloquence to exercise the power of relating the modern results of natural science to man's instinct for conduct, his instinct for beauty? And here again I answer that I do not know how they will exercise it, but that they can and will exercise ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... had vanquished the oddities of his body. The inhabitants of Bordeaux, as a rule, testified a friendly respect and a deference that was full of esteem for him. The old man's voice went to their hearts and sounded there with the eloquence of uprightness. His craft consisted in going straight to the fact, overturning all subterfuge and evil devices by plain questionings. His quick perception, his long training in his profession gave him that divining sense which goes to the depths of conscience and reads ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... desire. No man can do the Christian work of witnessing for and of Christ without that clothing with power. It was granted as an abiding gift on Pentecost. It needs perpetual renewal. We may all have it. Without it, eloquence, learning, and all else, are but as sounding brass and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... general powers superior even to Fox and Sheridan. His oratory, however, did not do justice to his talents, and he was both shy and indolent. His best speech was that in December, 1796, for the release of Lafayette, to which even the ridicule of the Anti-Jacobin allowed the merit of pathetic eloquence. His share in the Rolliad was considerable, and there are many other sprightly and some elegant specimens of his poetical talents scattered through various publications. I ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 78, April 26, 1851 • Various
... George plunged again into the maelstrom, and a pretty girl appeared from the firelit room behind to stir him to his highest flights of eloquence. A smell of savoury cooking came also, and out in the street night shut down dark and chill and sinister, as it does in all the best novels. John let part of the kit down on the door-sill. It was his way of explaining that at the present moment there was a deeper, more intimate ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 29, 1919 • Various
... great bulk a little, and regarded the girl with new earnestness. Into his speech crept a rude eloquence, for he voiced a sincere passion, though debased by his ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... born of superstition; eloquence of ambition, hatred, flattery, and lying; geometry of avarice; physics of a vain curiosity; all, and morals themselves, of human pride. The arts and sciences, therefore, owe their birth in our vices; we should have less ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... America, through their | |churches and Sunday-schools, to educate | |the American negro morally and | |religiously, was the sentiment of the | |twelfth session of the International | |Sunday-school Convention last night, | |voiced with special power and eloquence | |by Dr. Booker T. Washington, the chief | |speaker of the ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... every now and then he would be arresting. In his prime, Joan felt, he must have been a great preacher. Even now, decrepit and wheezy, he was capable of flashes of magnetism, of eloquence. The passage where he pictured the Garden of Gethsemane. The fair Jerusalem, only hidden from us by the shadows. So easy to return to. Its soft lights shining through the trees, beckoning to us; its mingled voices stealing to ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... treasuries that they are themselves forcing their own displacement by courts of arbitration. The two hundred and fifty disputes successfully arbitrated in the past century challenge with trumpet-tongued eloquence the support of all men for reason's peaceful rule. To-day no discussion is needed to show that if war is to be abolished, if navies are to dwindle and armies diminish, if there is to be a federation of the world, it must come through treaties of arbitration. In this way alone lies peace; yet in ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... the fair Dinah kept him bound to Sancerre. The enthusiastic lawyer refused all promotion, and became a quite pious adorer of this angel of grace and beauty. He was a tall, lean man, with a minatory countenance set off by terrible eyes in deep black circles, under enormous eyebrows; and his eloquence, very unlike his love-making, ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... boast some farther excellence— Mind to create as well as to attain; To sway his peers by golden eloquence, As wind doth ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... testified to a mental and spiritual uplifting. It was told me that the aged Emperor never travelled from his capital without the attendance of this chaplain, as well known for his simple Christian integrity and his ceaseless good deeds as for his wonderful eloquence. ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... was to impart the higher education to the more mature youth. It was therefore part of their profession to disseminate their views not by means of learned professional writings, but by the persuasive eloquence of oral discourse. And in their criticism of the existing state of things they did not start with special results which only science could prove, and the correctness of which the layman need not recognise; they operated with facts and principles known and acknowledged by everybody. ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... think, see that they know something—know it exactly, with no blurred edges, no fogs. Be sure of our facts, and keep theories out of the system like poison. And when we say anything we should say it concisely and baldly, without eloquence and frills. ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... the infairmary. It's juist for puir toon bodies that are aye ailin' an' deein'." Fright and resentment lent the silent old man an astonishing eloquence for the moment. "Ye wadna gang to the infairmary ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... furnished with things, words will follow but too fast; he will pull them after him if they do not voluntarily follow. I have observed some to make excuses, that they cannot express themselves, and pretend to have their fancies full of a great many very fine things, which yet, for want of eloquence, they cannot utter; 'tis a mere shift, and nothing else. Will you know what I think of it? I think they are nothing but shadows of some imperfect images and conceptions that they know not what to make of within, nor consequently bring out; they do not yet themselves understand what they would ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... Hall 95 feet long, 30 feet wide, and 56 feet high to the apex of the stone groining, is lined by twelve "statues of Parliamentary statesmen who rose to eminence by the eloquence and abilities they displayed in the House of Commons," Fox and Pitt are here placed on opposite sides of the hall, "facing" each other after the manner they were wont to in ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... parties, in the House of Representatives, embalmed his patriotic counsel with such heroic patience and eloquent references to his approaching end, that his speech became one of the standard exemplars of American eloquence. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... "Do you remember the case of Sy Biddlecomb, and them green pumpkins of mine, how I—" But I interrupted his almost fervid eloquence, and sez I, with my right hand extended ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... display more persuasive eloquence than Saint-Aignan did, but something still more powerful, and of a more energetic nature than this eloquence, aroused La Valliere. The king, who was kneeling before her, covered the palms of her hands with those burning kisses which are to the hands what a kiss upon the ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... had seen his cousin—last night, he had thought her handsome, pleasing, graceful—but now, he saw a new person, or he saw her in a new light. He marked the superior intelligence, the animation, the eloquence of her countenance, its variety, whilst alternately, with arch raillery or grave humour, she played off Mr. Soho, and made him magnify the ridicule, till it was apparent even to Lady Clonbrony. He ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... upon my listeners and caught sight of Phyllis, glancing up with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes, I was nearly betrayed into promises of the most preposterous nature. At the end of my remarks—I recall that I spoke with unusual grace and eloquence—the chairman stood up and gravely thanked me, intimating that I was a credit to Meadowvale and its perfect public school system. I fancy I should have been applauded if it had been compatible with the nature of the people of Meadowvale ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... illustrious," said Tasso, gaining courage and eloquence; "and now I want to beg something of you. We are poor, and I drew a bad number, and it was for that my mother sold Moufflou. For myself, I did not know anything of it; but she thought she would buy my substitute, and of course she could; but Moufflou is come home, and ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... his eloquence in fruitless attempts to persuade us to return, the under-chief, who headed the party of Sekomi's messengers, inquired, "Who is taking them?" Looking round, he exclaimed, with a face expressive of the most unfeigned disgust, "It is Ramotobi!" Our guide belonged to Sekomi's tribe, ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... adjective and tagged a reputation with three; Rankin, the architect, always in a defensive explanatory attitude, who held his elbows on the table, his hands before his long sliding nose, and gestured with his fingers; Quinny, the illustrator, long and gaunt, with a predatory eloquence that charged irresistibly down on any subject, cut it off, surrounded it, and raked it with enfilading wit and satire; and Peters, whose methods of existence were a mystery, a young man of fifty, who had done nothing and who knew every one by his ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... whom, thanks to the Church's teaching, they had all been intimate from their cradles. They had not thus assembled at an early hour, deserting their mills and their shops, their boats and their nets, renouncing their chances of gain, to hear a preacher's eloquence or to listen to fine music, but merely to pay their annual visit of respect to their Spiritual Master. Why should we aliens intrude upon so private a gathering? In any case, we have grown weary of standing in the close sickly atmosphere, wherein the fragrance of the ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... discovered for him. He discovered, himself, the observations of others; he sought for ideas, others sought facts for him." How fulsome his eulogists were is seen in the case of Flourens, who capped the climax in exclaiming, "Buffon is Leibnitz with the eloquence of Plato;" and he adds, "He did not write for savants: he wrote for all mankind." No one now reads Buffon, while the works of Reaumur, who preceded him, are nearly as valuable as ever, since they are packed ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... after a sharp bombardment, surrendered. Davis was then elected commander of the pirate fleet, but one night, when entertaining the other captains in his cabin, all having drunk freely of punch, they started to quarrel, and blows were threatened, when Davis, with true Celtic eloquence, ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... flaring burst of eloquence, Jipson seized his hat, gloves and cane, and soon might be seen an elderly, natty, well-shaved, slightly-flushed gentleman taking his seat in a down town bound bus, en route for the sugar bakery of the firm of Cutt, Comeagain, ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... parchment records, fixed forms, and poor terrestrial Justice, with or without horse-hair, what sane man will not reverence these? And yet, behold, the man is not sane but insane, who considers these alone as venerable. Oceans of horse-hair, continents of parchment, and learned-serjeant eloquence, were it continued till the learned tongue wore itself small in the indefatigable learned mouth, cannot make unjust just. The grand question still remains, Was the judgment just? If unjust, it will not and cannot get harbour for itself, or continue to have ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... an anecdote of the celebrated William Wirt, related to show how ready his mind was, how instant in activity, and how suddenly it would flash with an eloquence, superior to that exhibited by the most elaborate preparation. He was arguing a cause before the Supreme Court of the United States, and laid down, as the basis of his argument, a principle to which he desired to call the particular attention of the judges. The opposing counsel interrupted him, ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... greatest of magicians, O son of the Lord-of-many-Lands," responded Bakahenzie in a burst of eloquence. "For thou hast entrapped the spirits of rocks and ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... observations, and the more accurate and perfect these are, the more vigorous will be the form he creates. The insane talk of fantastic things, but we do not therefore say that they have a great deal of "imagination"; there is a vast gulf between the delirious confusion of thought and the metaphorical eloquence of the imagination. In the first case there is a total incapacity to perceive actual things correctly, and also to construct organically with the intelligence; in the second, the two things are co-existent as forms closely bound up ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... mother is ever near me; their faces are the most lovely; their hearts the most tender of all in this world—my mother and my wife. And for their sake, and for the sake of all the mothers, wives, sisters and daughters, whom I daily meet doing good, I long and I earnestly yearn for the eloquence and grace to half express the thoughts that rise within me of what ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... eloquence in the tone of voice, in the eyes, and in the air of a speaker, as in his ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... been but a few years in Havana, are gradually removing pernicious influences like these by the learning, piety and zeal which they exhibit from the pulpit and among the people. Hundreds of men, as well as of women, are drawn to the sacraments by their persuasive eloquence and self-sacrificing, holy lives. The good work will continue and bear glorious fruit, if these noble men be not persecuted in Havana. My earnest hope is that the glorious influence of Catholic Spain will protect ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... calling her father. In an instant, like the flash of lightning, a thought ran through her mind that it must be the bearer of Elfonzo's communication. "It is not a dream!" she said, "no, I cannot read dreams. Oh! I would to Heaven I was near that glowing eloquence—that poetical language—it charms the mind in an inexpressible manner, and warms the coldest heart." While consoling herself with this strain, her father rushed into her room almost frantic with rage, exclaiming: ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... daughter, the other figure at the door when the brother of the two sisters was dead, and one of the two ran to the mourner, crying, 'The Master is come and calleth for thee'?—Let the preacher who will thoroughly forget himself and remember no individuality but one, and no eloquence but one, stand up before four thousand men and women at the Britannia Theatre any Sunday night, recounting that narrative to them as fellow creatures, and he ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... to dispense with singing and proceed to prayers and exhortations. One or two other prominent members followed in much the same strain, flattering the indignant preacher by making special reference to his eloquence ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... very easy to give the order to the women, but not so easy to get it obeyed. They shrieked and abused us in a way in which few of the female sex can beat the lower orders of my countrywomen. At length, however, finding that their eloquence had no effect, they retreated through the door that we had left open. It turned out that the means of escape were not so elaborate as had been supposed, and, as far as we could learn, all the men in the neighbourhood had on this occasion collected ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... potbellied country colonels are preparing to march and make it drunk when it comes. I don't know, as it is an event in Mr. Pitt's administration, whether the Jacobite corporations, who are converted by his eloquence which they never heard, do not propose to bestow their freedom on the first corps of French that ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... been desired to wait. Now he had come again at a fixed hour to be informed—like a servant waiting for a place—whether it was thought that he would suit. The servant out of place, however, would have had this advantage, that he would receive his answer without the necessity of further eloquence on his own part. With the lover it was different. It was evident that Mary Lowther would not say to him, "I have considered the matter, and I think that, upon the whole, you will do." It was necessary that he should ask the question again, and ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... existing between Father Kelly and Rabbi Levi is proof against differences in race and religion. Each distinguished for his learning, his eloquence and his wit; and they delight in chaffing each other. They were seated opposite each other at a banquet where some delicious roast ham was served and Father Kelly made comments upon its flavor. Presently he leaned ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... Testament is also adequately represented. In one poem (ix.) the miracles of Christ in His earthly ministry and His descent into Hades are narrated with considerable spirit and eloquence. Besides being a student of the Bible, Prudentius is a theologian. His theology is that of the Nicene Creed. The Fall of man, the personality of the Tempter, the mystery of the Trinity and of the Incarnation, the Virgin-birth, the Death and Resurrection of Christ, the pains of ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... stage and Charles waxed eloquent over the scenery he had designed. Eloquence with Charles was rather an athletic performance. He took a tape measure from his pocket, and raced about with it, making chalk marks on ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... was elected prior in 1531, and it is around his personality that the interest of the history now centres. "He was small," we are told, "in stature, in figure graceful, in countenance dignified. In manner he was most modest, in eloquence most sweet, in chastity without a stain." Such was the man who worthily upheld the traditions of his order during the Reformation troubles. For these and the succeeding events we have the authority of Maurice Chauncey, one of ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... old man," he said soberly, "I hate to have you go. It'll be beastly lonely here without you to sit down on me and make me feel foolish." He gestured in mute eloquence. "It means the end between you and me the moment you pack your trunk. We may both put up a bluff—but just ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... in that log house three persons. One of them was dead and his death would speak for him with an eloquence louder than any living tongue. There were, also, the woman and Thornton himself. Between them must lie the responsibility. Conscientiously the fugitive summarized the circumstances as the prosecution would marshal ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... cries, "you bow your crests - My eloquence has set you weeping; In shame you bend upon your breasts!" (And so they did, for ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... out rumors, As if it were going to happen to her. And all went well and the child was born— They were so kind to me. Later I married Gus Wertman, and years passed. But—at political rallies when sitters-by thought I was crying At the eloquence of Hamilton Greene— That was not it. No! I wanted to say: That's ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... gave the slightest cause of suspicion or offence till her dying day. As this was one of the last cases of conviction in England, Dr Hutchison has been led to dilate upon it with some strength of eloquence as well ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... first at being asked to go; but little Mila's eloquence conquered, and she led him in triumph back, holding on by his arm; but this time it was to prevent herself from being fairly lifted off her feet, and ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... al-Zulal)," which I would translate: Who if she look upon the heavens, the very rocks cover themselves with verdure, and an she look upon the earth, her lips rain unpierced pearls (words of virgin eloquence) and the dews of whose mouth are sweeter than the purest ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... am the word that lovers leave unsaid, The eloquence of ardent lips grown mute, The mourning mother's heart-cry for her dead, The flower of faith that grows to ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... 1738, when the last reflections from the Northampton revival had faded out from all around the horizon, the young clergyman, whose first efforts as a preacher in pulpits of the Church of England had astonished all hearers by the power of his eloquence, arrived at Savannah, urged by the importunity of the Wesleys to take up the work in Georgia in which they had so conspicuously failed. He entered eagerly into the sanguine schemes for the advantage of the young ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... food for Midas, I will none of thee; Nor none of thee, thou pale and common drudge 'Tween man and man: but thou, though meager lead, Which rather threatenest than dost promise aught, Thy paleness moves me more than eloquence; And here choose ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... Bill feared that under the conviction of her friend's eloquence, she had begun to idealize the efforts of Wilfred Compton. He need not have been afraid. To her imagination, "big people" were not living in dugouts, or tents, far from civilization; "big people" were going to the opera every night, and riding in ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... reformer Charles Reade. In his crusade against the form of punishment known as the 'silent system,' the English novelist obtrudes his moral with a frequency that weakens the effect of his often splendid eloquence. The direct opposite of this style is seen in the Australian novel. The author never openly preaches. His best effects are obtained by quiet satire conveyed in the gradual limning of his characters, and by occasional incidents of which each is allowed to give its ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... Bragi, the god of poetry and eloquence. [2] See note, p. 175 [The "Nornir" were the Fates of northern mythology.] [3] Suttung was a giant who kept guard over the magic mead of ...
— The Vikings of Helgeland - The Prose Dramas Of Henrik Ibsen, Vol. III. • Henrik Ibsen
... head, and wiped her eyes. Lord Courtland perceived the effect his eloquence had produced upon the childish fancy of his daughter, and continued to expatiate upon the splendid joys that awaited her in a union with a nobleman of the Duke's rank and fortune; till at length, dazzled, if not convinced, she declared herself "satisfied that it was her duty ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... all his wife's hopeful eloquence to comfort Tim. There was no water in Tim's cellar, because he had no cellar. The cow, their most valuable piece of property, was taken beyond the tracks up on the hillside, and fastened to a stake in a deserted vineyard. If the worst came to the worst, and they were drowned out of ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... I shouted. "Nothing but this lunch can save me from your eloquence. You have already ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... college agency, they telephoned for two applicants, and after what seemed to Wally a week of tedium, they arrived. The first one was pretty and she knew it. She talked a great deal, and was saccharine to the little girl. Isabelle shook her head twice, but Wally seemed hypnotized by the woman's eloquence. ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke |
