"Exordium" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... appears from the extremely interesting fact, preserved by Phillips, that Satan's address to the Sun is part of a dramatic speech which, according to Milton's plan in 1642 or 1643, would have formed the exordium of his tragedy. Of the literary sources which may have originated or enriched the conception of "Paradise Lost" in Milton's mind we shall speak hereafter. It must suffice for the present to remark that his purpose had from the first ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... grain. While they were making these observations the twelve Managers had assembled in deep consultation around the Statue, and in a very few minutes the Oracle was prepared. The answer was very simple, but the exordium was sublime. It professed that the Vraibleusian nation was the saviour and champion of the world; that it was the first principle of its policy to maintain the cause of any people struggling for their rights as men; and it ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... hear a word of this exordium, smiled sheepishly,— and twirling the cap he held, put his coloured handkerchief into it and squeezed it tightly within the lining. Bainton, with the impending fate of the Five Sisters in view, judged it advisable not to irritate ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... soleil; dans le royaume de France il n'ya qu'un Roi; dans la medicine il n'ya que Charini." With this he placed his hand on his heart, bowed, and drew himself up with a look of the most glorious complacency. This exordium was received with the most rapturous applause by the crowd, who, from having often seen him in his progress through the kingdom, had known before that this was Charini himself, the celebrated itinerant ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... exordium Paul eagerly pressed forward and entered the bureau. There certainly was Colonel Pendleton, in spotless evening dress; erect, flashing, and indignant; his aquiline nose lifted like a hawk's beak over his quarry, his iron-gray moustache, now white and waxed, ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... has a kindly, fatherly word of friendly recognition of maiden speech of youngest CAVENDISH. No mere compliment this, extorted by old associations and personal predilections. Young VICTOR went about his work in style reminiscent of middle-aged HARTINGTON. Abstained from oratorical effort. Neither exordium nor peroration. Got some business in hand, and plodded on till it was finished. Modest mien, simple, unaffected manner, instantly won friendly ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 27, 1893 • Various
... not to have been the witness of the discords which rend us to pieces. I envy his death." The deep serenity of a powerful mind was felt in his every tone—a mind resolute to contend against factions unto death. He then read a memorial relating to the ministry of war. His exordium was an attack upon the Jacobins, and a claim for the respect due to the ministers of the executive power. "Do you hear Cromwell!" exclaimed Guadet, in a voice of thunder. "He thinks himself already so sure of empire, that he dares to inflict his commands upon us." "And why not?" ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... us not forget that the prelude, the refrain, is the spiritual expression of the song; that we must take advantage of this exordium to guide ourselves, to predispose our hearers in our favor; that we must point out to them, must make them foresee by the expression of our face the thought and the words which are to follow; that, in fact, the ravished ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... accomplice in a scheme now denounced by himself as a pirate's conspiracy, or of having betrayed, out of cowardice and cupidity, a faithful servant to foreign vengeance. That is the meaning of the exordium of this pamphlet published in November by the King's Printers, Bonham Norton and John Bill: 'Although Kings be not bound to give account of their actions to any but God alone; yet such are his Majesty's proceedings, as he hath always ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... hauteur in his manner. He ate scarcely anything, and his appearance was so remarkable, as to excite the wonder of all present. At length on the third or fourth day of the council, he arose with great dignity, and solemnity of air, and commenced speaking. His exordium was for the most part a beautiful and highly wrought enconium on the character and history of the Indians; particularly of his own people, in the past. They were taken back, as by a magic spell, to ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... After a brief exordium, containing some general proposition on the subject of human testimony, which meant no more than to suggest the propriety of giving to the prisoner the benefit of what was doubtful and obscure in the testimony which had ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... cried old Masters, completely flabbergasted at this exordium of mine; "I never thought, Mister Haldane, to hear you speak ag'in me like that. I allays believed you was a friend, that ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... of this little exordium John had become perfectly unconscious; and, at its termination, mechanically shook the hand of his interlocutor, while he took his departure. All the communication that he could comprehend, was, that it was intended to dispel all the bright illusions love's fancy had conjured in his mind. All his ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... slippery places, and," continued Mr. Staples, with a lofty disregard to consecutive metaphor, "his feet are taking fast hold of destruction." Here the child drew a breath of relief, possibly at the prospect of being on firm ground of any kind at last; but Sister Medliker, to whom the Staples style of exordium had only a Sabbath significance, ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... time after this amiable exordium to make the stranger understand the right a Capuchin had ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... robustiously and put for it with a deal of violence" in his sacred poem entitled Davideis. In the exordium of the First Book he proclaims ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... whipt through this town, for forcing away a young man as a recruit, and beating him unmercifully. The said lamentation you will find is in verse; and although sold for a single penny, is a work of remarkable merit. The exordium is a passionate address to Captains all; amongst whom, who can more properly be ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... Johnian Newton." His hit at the present Chief Secretary for Ireland,[22] when he was a junior Fellow of Trinity, is classical—"We are none of us infallible—not even the youngest of us." But it requires an eye-witness of the scene to do justice to the exordium of the Master's sermon on the Parable of the Talents, addressed in Trinity Chapel to what considers itself, and not without justice, the cleverest congregation in the world. "It would be obviously superfluous ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... organization of that august body; the members looking round upon each other, individually reluctant to open a business so fearfully momentous. This "deep and deathlike silence" was beginning to become painfully embarrassing, when Patrick Henry arose. He faltered at first, as was his habit; but his exordium was impressive; and as he launched forth into a recital of colonial wrongs he kindled with his subject, until he poured forth one of those eloquent appeals which had so often shaken the House of Burgesses and gained ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... parade as distinguished the early processions of the Pagans, Heathens, and Druids. The honours bestowed upon the dead may inculcate a good moral lesson upon the minds of the living, and teach them so to act in this life that their cold remains may deserve the after-exordium of their friends; but, in most instances, funeral pomp has more of worldly vanity in it than true respect, and it is no unusual circumstance in the meaner ranks of life, for the survivors to abridge their own comforts by a wasteful expenditure and useless parade, with ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... There are different stories in respect to his birth, his travels, his death, and also his mode of proceeding, political as well as legislative: least of all is the time in which he lived agreed on.' And this exordium is but too well borne out by the unsatisfactory nature of the accounts which we read, not only in Plutarch himself, but in those other authors, out of whom we are obliged to make up our idea of the memorable Lycurgian system."—Greece, vol. ii. ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... speak to him, the utmost that he dares to ask is liberty to look at her, and he protests that he would never aspire to any higher privilege. It is gratifying to add that he follows her through many startling vicissitudes of fortune in a spirit worthy of this exordium, and of course is finally persuaded that he may allow himself a nearer approach to his goddess. The Maid of Honour has two lovers, who accept a rather similar position. One of them is unlucky enough to be always making mischief by well-meant efforts to forward her interest. He, poor man, is ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... and engaging in the manner in which after saying "Now, Handel," as if it were the grave beginning of a portentous business exordium, he had suddenly given up that tone, stretched out his honest hand, and spoken like ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... agreeable to you than the ornate laudations of those who have studied the art of compliment. For this reason, I will give insertion to nothing in this letter for which I have not the certainty both of experience and reason; and in the exordium, as in the rest of the work, I will write only as becomes a philosopher. There is a vast difference between real and apparent virtues; and there is also a great discrepancy between those real virtues that proceed from an accurate knowledge of the truth, and such as are accompanied ...
— The Principles of Philosophy • Rene Descartes
... division of superstructure into architrave, frieze, and cornice; parts which have been appointed by great architects to all their work, in the same spirit in which great rhetoricians have ordained that every speech shall have an exordium, and narration, and peroration. The reader will do well to consider that it may be sometimes just as possible to carry a roof, and get rid of rain, without such an arrangement, as it is to tell a plain fact without an exordium or peroration; but he must very ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... know. The situation was far beyond the poor lady's by-laws and regulations for the upbringing of families and the conduct of life. The elemental mother in her battled on the side of her only son—foolishly, irrationally, unkindly. Her exordium was as correct as could be. The tragedy shocked her, the scandal grieved her, the innuendoes of the Press she refused to believe; she sympathised with me deeply. But then she turned from me to Dale, and feminine unreason took possession of her pen. She bitterly reproached herself ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... my higher feelings, and I trust that when the time arrives for the settlement of any pecuniary consideration which I am to derive from these irksome and uncongenial labours, my wounded self-respect may not be omitted from the reckoning. The above exordium may appear to you tedious, but it is only just to myself to remind you that you are not dealing with a vulgar hireling. My first step, after duly meditating your suggestions, was to find a fitting watch for the movements of Hawkehurst. I opined that the best person to play the ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... order, it may, as some writers on epistolary composition recommend, occasionally be of use to make, in the mind, a division of a letter into three parts, the beginning, middle, and end; or, in other words, the exordium or introduction, the narration or proposition, and the conclusion. The exordium, or introduction, should be employed, not indeed with the formality of rhetoric, but with the ease of genuine politeness ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... in the pages of Thucydides (who was himself an exile from Athens at this period, and may probably have been at Sparta, and heard Alcibiades speak), we are at loss whether most to admire or abhor his subtile and traitorous counsels. After an artful exordium, in which he tried to disarm the suspicions which he felt must be entertained of him, and to point out to the Spartans how completely his interests and theirs were identified, through hatred of the Athenian ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... declaratory exordium which prefaces the Declaration of Rights we see the solemn and majestic spectacle of a nation opening its commission, under the auspices of its Creator, to establish a Government, a scene so new, and so transcendantly unequalled by anything in the European world, that the name of a Revolution ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... course part of the bargain that Gunther shall give his sister to Siegfried in marriage. On that they swear blood-brotherhood; and at this opportunity the old operatic leaven breaks out amusingly in Wagner. With tremendous exordium of brass, the tenor and baritone go at it with a will, showing off the power of their voices, following each other in canonic imitation, singing together in thirds and sixths, and finishing with a lurid unison, quite in the manner of Ruy Gomez and Ernani, ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... omitting some circumstances which he might have been expected to have retained, and adding others with good judgment and in general with good effect, but which by some fatality usually tend in his hands to excessive prolixity. This is certainly not the case with his dignified and spirited exordium, but in the fourth stanza he begins to copy history, and his muse's wing immediately flags. No more striking example of the superiority of dramatic to narrative poetry in vividness of delineation could be found than the contrast between Shakespeare's scene ...
— The Battaile of Agincourt • Michael Drayton
... Succinct Genealogy of the Family of Vere, 1685; Collins's Historical Collections. See in the Lords' Journals, and in Jones's Reports, the proceedings respecting the earldom of Oxford, in March and April 1625/6. The exordium of the speech of Lord Chief Justice Crew is among the finest specimens of the ancient English eloquence. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... never deprive thy friends of thy presence!" returned the Jinnee, who was apparently touched by this exordium, "for truly thou art a most excellent ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... opening meditation on the Love of God as shown in creation and redemption is then no mere general exordium, but in close dramatic unity with the sequel of the letter. The Augustinian theology, however alien to our modern modes of thought, has, as she puts it, a nobility not to be ignored. As presented briefly ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... puzzled by this pompous and peevish exordium. It did not promise well; it sounded quite unlike Mr. Keith's usually bland address. Perhaps he had not yet breakfasted. "We ought to have waited," they thought. One of the listeners was so ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... you I am angry too, but you should not have shown it so outrageously. Your solemn 'if somebody personating the Editor of the, &c. &c. has received from Lord B. or from any other person,' reminds me of Charley Incledon's usual exordium when people came into the tavern to hear him sing without paying their share of the reckoning—'if a maun, or ony maun, or ony other maun,' &c. &c.; you have both the same redundant eloquence. But why should you think any body would personate you? Nobody would dream of such a ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... first chapters of Genesis. This question is answered by a recent publication[12] by Dr. Cocker of the Michigan State University. In the "Theistic Conception of the World" he treats the first two chapters of the Bible as a poem, which he calls the "symbolical hymn of creation." It has an exordium, six strophes, each with its refrain, and an episode. He does not believe the sacred narrative intends to describe the exact mode of forming the world, nor even to set the successive events in order. It is an ascription, designed to embody in symbolical language the fact that all existence ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... that permits him to be present in the assemblies of the people, if any important affair come to be debated there, he will not fail to give his judgment of it; and in my opinion he would introduce his harangue by a very pleasant exordium, if he should begin with giving them to understand that he had never learnt anything of any man whatsoever; he must address himself to them ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon
... knowledge." We think Mr. Hazlitt talks of lying a whole day on Salisbury Plain as one of his greatest enjoyments, and he is doubtless sincere. When we set out on such a walk as we are about to take, with the reader's consent, we quote Thomson for our exordium:— ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 363, Saturday, March 28, 1829 • Various
... Such was the exordium. As an exordium, it was faultless. But it was destined to remain a fragment. It goes down to history as a perfect fragment, like the beginning of a pagan temple that the death of ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... an admirable speech too. It began with 'My dear friends,' and the exordium struck at once that paternal note which makes him, with all his foibles, so lovable. 'They' must excuse him if he now took his departure; for he had arrived at an age to feel the length of a long day—even of ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... camp, it is reasonable to suppose, that the action of the Iliad immediately commenced. But that Statius had no design of extending the plan of the Achilleis beyond this period, is expressly declared in the exordium ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... fiction a decade later than Thackeray, but seems more than a decade nearer to us. With her the full pulse of modern realism is felt a-throbbing. There is no more of the ye's and thous with which, when he would make an exordium, Thackeray addressed the world—a fashion long since laid aside. Eliot drew much nearer to the truth, the quiet, homely verity of her scenes is a closer approximation to life, realizes life more vitally than the most veracious page of "Vanity Fair." Not that the ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... creeping, nameless terror as the scene after the murder of Duncan, when Macbeth rushes out from the chamber of death, crying, "I have done the deed. Didst thou not hear a noise?" I have studied this famous exordium with extreme care, and I have sought diligently in the works of all the great modern orators, and of some of the ancient as well, for similar passages of higher merit. My quest has been in vain. Mr. Webster's description of the White murder, and of the ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... had listened grimly enough to the opening exordium, but when the last sentence broke from the duke's lips, the young man grew pale as death, while his compressed lips, contracted brow, and gleaming blue eyes alone expressed the fury that ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... cipher presents its enigma at the turning of the opening page. The writer who is secure in the knowledge that he has got a good thing coming, and has arranged the manner and details of its coming, cannot go far wrong with his exordium; he wants to get into action at once, and that is his best assurance that he will do it in the right way. But O! what a labor and sweat it is; what a planning and trimming; what a remodeling, curtailing, interlining; what despairs succeeded by new lights, what heroic ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... deliver in the porch. But arriving and perceiving a crowd about it, and also, to his vast astonishment, a red baize carpet on the perron, and a butler bowing in the doorway with two footmen behind him, he coughed down his exordium, and led his daughter into the hall amid showers of rice and confetti. The bridegroom followed; and so did the wedding-guests, since no ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... public exordium, a contemptible fellow sought a quarrel with me, and obliged me to draw in my own defence, whom, on this occasion, I wounded in ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... with but one small ray of light, just enough to give force and depth to the whole—a sense of duty, a duty that must be done, whether pleasant or otherwise, and about which there was no choice. What a world of anxiety and doubt the consciousness of this saves us!" This exordium reads more like the utterance of a man being led out to execution than a Minister going to a country possessing an ancient civilisation—a civilisation which had had its effect on every phase of the national life. What would not many of us now give to have been in the ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... interpreted as they spoke. When it came to the turn of Eshkibogikoj (Flat Mouth) that venerable chief began with great dignity, saying: "Father! Two great men have met!" Here he paused to let the sentence be interpreted. His exordium amused not only the whites ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... desirous to hear what hard fortune drave them into those bitter extremes, requested Rosader to discourse, if it were not any way prejudicial unto him, the cause of his travel. Rosader, desirous any way to satisfy the courtesy of his favorable host, first beginning his exordium with a volley of sighs, and a few lukewarm tears, prosecuted his discourse, and told him from point to point all his fortunes: how he was the youngest son of Sir John of Bordeaux, his name Rosader, how his brother sundry times ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... his not inappropriate exordium. "To business. Mark me closely. I am an Australian. My name is John Dickson, though you mightn't think it from my unassuming appearance. You will be relieved to hear that I am rich, sir, very rich. You can't go into this sort of thing too thoroughly, Pitman; the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pleasantly exaggerated exordium preceded some very practical demonstrations. 'The apron is the banner of the future!' exclaimed the lecturer, and he took his coat off and put his apron on. He spoke a little about old bindings for the papyrus roll, about the ivory or cedar cylinders round which old manuscripts were ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... person than his own father. Mr. Lyons opened the cause very briefly.... And now came on the first trial of Patrick Henry's strength. No one had ever heard him speak,[53] and curiosity was on tiptoe. He rose very awkwardly, and faltered much in his exordium. The people hung their heads at so unpromising a commencement; the clergy were observed to exchange sly looks with each other; and his father is described as having almost sunk with confusion, from his ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... the baronet, with no little surprise, "I beg your pardon. Your exordium was so singularly clear, that I did not ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... passes to the results of his long and anxious thoughts: I have purposely twisted his exordium into an echo ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... Walter Beauchamp, as counsel, supported the claim of precedence of the Earl of Warwick, against the then Earl Marshal, at the bar of the House of Lords. Mr. Roger Hunt appeared in the same capacity for the Earl Marshal, and both advocates, in their exordium, made most humble protestations, entreating the lord against whom they were retained, not to take amiss what they should advance on the part of ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... great Macedonian, of the 'Marriage of Alexander and Roxana,' and I hereby request those among you to come upon the stage whom our artists have selected to take part in this scene in the procession." After this exordium he shouted in a deep and resonant voice a long list of names, and while this was going on every other sound was ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Patrick! By Jasus! Arrah, honey! My dear joy!" &c., because all such phrases, besides being absolutely out of date and fashion in Ireland, raise too high an expectation in the minds of a British audience, operating as much to the disadvantage of the story-teller as the dangerous exordium of—"I'll tell you an excellent story;" an exordium ever to be avoided by ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... exordium?—Why, just now, In taking up this paltry sheet of paper, My bosom underwent a glorious glow, And my internal spirit cut a caper: And though so much inferior, as I know, To those who, by the dint of glass and vapour, Discover stars, and sail in the wind's eye, I wish ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... evidently demonstrates in Tacitus. The ambassadors of Samos, prepared with a long and elegant oration, came to Cleomenes, king of Sparta, to incite him to a war against the tyrant Polycrates; who, after he had heard their harangue with great gravity and patience, gave them this answer: "As to the exordium, I remember it not, nor consequently the middle of your speech; and for what concerns your conclusion, I will not do what you desire:"—[Plutarch, Apothegms of the Lacedaemonians.]—a very pretty answer this, methinks, and a pack of learned ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... in his later works owed to the "Roman of the Rose" was considerable, and by no means confined to the favourite May-morning exordium and the recurring machinery of a vision—to the origin of which latter (the dream of Scipio related by Cicero and expounded in the widely-read Commentary of Macrobius) the opening lines of the "Romaunt" point. He ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... exordium eloquent in succinctness and noble in generosity. "I cannot let pass this opportunity at the close of a long session of Congress, and at the end of three years of this Administration, without putting on record ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... Sevigne and wearing a gown of white tulle adorned with pink ribbons, Natalie seemed to her mother so beautiful as to guarantee victory. When the lady's-maid left the room and Madame Evangelista was certain that no one could overhear her, she arranged a few curls on her daughter's head by way of exordium. ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... much like this exordium; he replied, stepping into the road at the same time, "I've no money, and the bundle contains ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... said, "Emancipation is first, the Union secondary. If they prefer slavery to liberty let the erring sisters go." Beecher was the all-round man of genius. His great speech in England began with an exordium at Manchester; he stated the arguments at Edinburgh, Glasgow and Liverpool; he pronounced the peroration at Exeter Hall, in London, and no such peroration and eloquence has been heard since Demosthenes' philippic against the tyrant of Macedon. But Beecher's ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... confess that this strange exordium dashed hopes which had already risen to a high pitch. Recovering myself as quickly as possible, however, I murmured that the honour of a visit from the King of Navarre ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... Keskarrah alone used boldly to express his disbelief of a Supreme Deity, and state that he could not credit the existence of a Being, whose power was said to extend every where, but whom he had not yet seen, although he was now an old man. The aged sceptic is not a little conceited, as the following exordium to one of his speeches evinces: "It is very strange that I never meet with any one who is equal in sense to myself." The same old man, in one of his communicative moods, related to us the following tradition. The earth had been formed, but continued enveloped ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... Trident., Sess. VI, cap. 5: "Declarat praeterea, ipsius justificationis exordium in adultis a Dei per Iesum Christum praeveniente gratia sumendum esse, h. e. ab eius vocatione, qua nullis eorum existentibus meritis vocantur." (Denzinger-Bannwart, ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... because all were thoroughly known, and, therefore, thoroughly well appreciated. The opening address of Serjeant Buzfuz every one naturally enough regarded as one of the most mirth-moving portions of the whole representation. In the very exordium of it there was something eminently absurd in the Serjeant's extraordinarily precise, almost mincing pronunciation. As where he said, that "never in the whole course of his professional experience—never from the first moment of his applying himself ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... for happiness in singularity; and dread a refinement of wisdom as a deviation into folly." Thus she dogmatically addresses a new married man; and to elucidate this pompous exordium, she adds, "I said that the person of your lady would not grow more pleasing to you, but pray let her never suspect that it grows less so: that a woman will pardon an affront to her understanding much sooner than one to her person, ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... contained in certain words in the exordium of the Fourth Gospel: "That [Word] was the true light which lighteth every man that ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... he has surveyed the processes of culture in "the Midland town"! How quickly he catches the first gesture of affectation and how deftly he sets it forth, entertained and entertaining! From the chuckling exordium of The Magnificent Ambersons it is but a step to The Age of Innocence and Main Street. Little reflective as he has allowed himself to be, he has by shrewd observation alone succeeded in writing not a few chapters which have texture, substance, "thickness." He has movement, he ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... While this exordium is in hand—and it takes some time—Mr. Bucket, who has seen through the transparency of Mrs. Snagsby's vinegar at a glance, confers with his familiar demon and bestows his shrewd attention on the Chadbands and Mr. Smallweed. Sir Leicester ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... pierced to the quick with grief, and on the next day, Easter-Sunday, preached a most zealous and eloquent sermon, Against the Games and Shows of the Theatre and Circus. Indignation made him not so much as mention the paschal solemnity;{242} but by an abrupt exordium he burst into the most vehement pathos, as follows: "Are these things to be borne? Can they be tolerated? I appeal to yourselves, be you your own judges. Thus did God expostulate with the Jews."[17] This exclamation he often repeated to assuage his grief. He put the people in ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... prior and that which is posterior in order; in geometry, the elements are prior to the propositions; in reading and writing, the letters of the alphabet are prior to the syllables. Similarly, in the case of speeches, the exordium is prior ...
— The Categories • Aristotle
... started a babble of words without sense, with the nauseous facility of the bar; misusing vague ideas, abstract terms, and words in ly and ion, stereotyped words, and ready-made phrases. A flattering murmur greeted the end of his exordium; for the French people in general, and the political world in particular, manifest a depraved taste for that sort of eloquence. Encouraged, the fine speaker entered the heart of his subject, and cynically sang ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... the classic legend: "Please do not look on my back." But what is dearest to the souls of these editors is a mean commonplace. One leader, which surely had a triumphant success, is headed, "What the Bar-tender Sees." And the exordium is worthy so profound a speculation. "Did you ever stop to think," murmurs the Yellow philosopher, "of all the strange beings that pass before him?" There's profundity for you! There's invention! Is it wonderful that five million men and women ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... Frederick the Great with his Nephew the Heir-Apparent, every line of which betrays itself as false and spurious to a reader who has made any direct or effectual study of Frederick or his manners or affairs,—it is set forth, in the way of exordium to these pretended royal confessions, that 'notre maison,' our Family of Hohenzollern, ever since the first origin of it among the Swabian mountains, or its first descent therefrom into the Castle and Imperial Wardenship of Nurnberg, some six hundred ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... it is far from my intention to make any formal exordium, even if I knew the exact ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... "Sir—that is only the exordium "—(my voice was raised a little, I think, for indeed I was raging again by now). "Next, I would observe that Mistress Jermyn is my own cousin, and that the hour was eight o'clock in the evening—not nine, if I may so far correct Your Majesty; whereas very different hours ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... Brüll, quoted by him, p. 457) approve of the idea that the beginning was suppressed because of its containing damaging reflections on the elders. Then the present opening (vv. 1—5) was borrowed from Θ, and is marked in both Cod. Chis. and Syro-Hex. as not part of the original work, but a foreign exordium. Rothstein (p. 184, note) thinks that in place of the present borrowed commencement there stood a short introductory remark on the two judging elders. Though lacking proof, this conjecture is well within the bounds of possibility. Yet in the Syro-Hexaplar ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... than anxiety about what we have got to say. Mr. Brooke heard the laughter; but he had expected some Tory efforts at disturbance, and he was at this moment additionally excited by the tickling, stinging sense that his lost exordium was coming back to fetch him ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... is quite clear that he has not seen the edition in question, and has, I think, mistaken the whole affair. The Irish editor did not attempt to unite Malone's fragments—quite the contrary—he left Malone's first fragment as he found it; but he took the second fragment, namely, the exordium of the pretended will of John Shakspeare, and substituted it bodily as the exordium of the will of William Shakspeare, suppressing altogether the real exordium of the latter. So that this Irish will begins, "I, ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 28. Saturday, May 11, 1850 • Various
... lapse of years—instead of finding, in that grave old book, the just panegyric of woman's goodness, I discovered, to my great surprise, only a violent satire all spiced with texts borrowed from St. Augustine, the Roman laws and the ancient canons, with this sage conclusion, full worthy of the exordium:— ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... Aunt Kezzy's regular exordium every Saturday night; for we children, being blinded, as she supposed, by natural depravity, always made strange mistakes in reckoning time on Saturday afternoons. After being duly suppered and scrubbed, we were enjoined to go to bed, and remember that to-morrow was Sunday, and ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... partisans of a gigantic innovation,—the most gigantic and the most dangerous that has been attempted in modern times,—I may compliment them upon the prudence they show in resolving to be its silent partisans." After this emphatic exordium, which electrified the House, and was followed by such a tempest of applause as for some time to drown the voice of the speaker, he proceeded at once to demonstrate the utter folly and error of contending that the action of the Lords was supported ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... worse than the men. The moment is unpropitious, but it doesn't matter! Let us try the power of a speech; an eloquent speech is never out of place. Listen, Gwynplaine, to my attractive exordium. Ladies and gentlemen, I am a bear. I take off my head to address you. I humbly appeal to you for silence." Ursus, lending a cry to ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... corrupted and had sold himself. For (not to mention the other speeches which, as I have told you, he had made on former occasions) at the first of the assemblies in which you debated about the Peace, he rose and delivered an exordium which I think I can repeat to you word for word as he uttered it at the meeting. {14} 'If Philocrates,' he said, 'had spent a very long time in studying how he could best oppose the Peace, I do not think he could have found a better device than a motion of this kind. The Peace which he ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... this exordium, and the imposing manner of Don Estevan, following so closely upon the jocular mien he had hitherto exhibited, made a painful impression upon the mind of the Senator. There was a short moment in which he regretted being so advanced in his opinions, and during this time ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... After this lengthy exordium, Orris discreetly, changed the subject by wanting to know when he and Buck would be assigned ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... that nine days it was when she was apprised of the incarnation of the divine Messiah, and also because of the nine months in which she carried Him in her virgin womb. (Novena to Jesus, Maria, and Jose, Manila, 1903, in the Exordium.) ...
— The Legacy of Ignorantism • T.H. Pardo de Tavera
... there is no reason to doubt that it conduced not only to Borrow's comfort and security, but also to his happiness. There were no children. The "daughter" whose accomplishments Borrow celebrated in the exordium to "Wild Wales" was his stepdaughter, Henrietta Clarke. He seemed now in an enviable position, with a small but agreeable freehold on the banks of Oulton Broad, able to indulge in "idleness and the pride of literature" to his heart's content. If he had had a "club" or a Boswell about him, he might ...
— George Borrow - Times Literary Supplement, 10th July 1903 • Thomas Seccombe
... of the huntsman's youth. The green plains, the wild harts, the graceful beauty of the brown deer, and the roaring stag, with the banners, ensigns, and streamers of the race of Cona,—all share in the poet's admiration. The following constitutes the exordium of the poem:— ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... affection of the lungs. The fame of Cardan as a physician had spread as far as Scotland, and the Archbishop had set his heart on consulting him. Cassanate's letter is of prodigious length. After a diffuse exordium he proceeds to praise in somewhat fulsome terms the De Libris Propriis and the treatises De Sapientia[137] and De Consolatione, which had been given to him by a friend when he was studying at Toulouse in 1549. He had just read the De Subtilitate, and ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... was uncertain; she leant on a chair with drooping head and averted face, trembling, and suppressing a sob, apparently too much frightened to attend. Just when the exordium was over, and 'Therefore I lay my commands on you' might have been expected, it turned into, 'However, upon Mr. Dusautoy's kind representation, I have resolved to give the young man a trial, and provided he convinces me by his conduct ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the bitter and foul air, Listening unto my Leader, who said only, 'Look that from me thou be not separated.' Voices I heard, and every one appeared To supplicate for peace and misericord The Lamb of God who takes away our sins. Still Agnus Dei their exordium was; One word there was in all, and metre one, So that all harmony appeared among them. 'Master,' I said, 'are spirits those I hear?' And he to me: 'Thou apprehendest truly, And they the knot of anger go unloosing.'" (Canto, ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... come to the conversations very well dressed, and, altogether, looked sumptuously. She began them with an exordium, in which she gave her leading views; and those exordiums were excellent, from the elevation of the tone, the ease and flow of discourse, and from the tact with which they were kept aloof from any excess, ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... remarkably good, for he is a miserable speaker at all times. Melbourne's severe remarks provoked the Bishop of London (Blomfield), who had not intended to speak, and he said to the Archbishop, 'I must answer this,' who replied, 'Do.' His abrupt and animated exordium, 'And so, my Lords,' was very ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... public, as to go thro' six editions. The sentiments in this poem are natural, and obvious, but no way extraordinary. It is an assemblage of pretty notions, poetically expressed; but conducted with no kind of art, and altogether without a plan. The following exordium is one of the most shining ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... old-fashioned style of exordium by an old-fashioned foreman, who believed that the best results could be obtained by the most scurrilous abuse of his men—and the immediate efforts of Vienna ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... 496. "Quis credere possit," says Baronius [Ann. Eccles., Lucae, 1741, viii. 602, in an. 496], "viguisse adhuc Romae ad Gelasii tempora, quae fuere ante exordium Urbis allata in Italiam Lupercalia?" Gelasius wrote a letter, which occupies four folio pages, to Andromachus the senator, and others, to show that the rites ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... of the stethoscope and squared about. His face was no longer flushed with irritation. Some swift purpose seemed to steady him. As Sommers made no reply to this exordium, Lindsay began again, in his ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... through this exordium as if he sat on nettles, but wisely held his tongue, while the brazen-faced proprietor leaned carelessly over, and whispered to his counsel. Phipps, on his distant seat, grew white around the lips, and felt that he was on the verge of the most ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... had led off in his favor was California; and it was a representative of California who first sounded the charge for Douglas's cohorts in the House. In any other place and at any other time, Marshall's exordium would have overshot the mark. Indeed, in indorsing the attack of the Review on the old fogies in the party, he tore open wounds which it were best to let heal; but gauged by the prevailing standard of taste in politics, the speech ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... (Fig. 1) bearing its geese progeny. From the open shells in two cases, the little geese are seen protruding, whilst several of the fully-fledged fowls are disporting themselves in the sea below. Gerard's concluding piece of information, with its exordium, must not be omitted. "They spawne," says the wise apothecary, "as it were, in March or Aprill; the Geese are found in Maie or June, and come to fulnesse of feathers in the moneth after. And thus hauing, through God's assistance, discoursed somewhat at large ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... [Footnote 12: This exordium, which has points of resemblance with that of the insufferable Bana's Harsha-charita, is only the Hindoo method of declaring that the two characters presently to be brought upon the scene are mortal incarnations of love and charm: as we ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... he continued, clearing his throat which had grown somewhat rusty from his pompous exordium "the late respected gentleman in question did not leave matters in as satisfactory a condition as might have been desired—in fact—eh—well, altogether, the residue of his once considerable fortune makes but a paltry annuity for his bereaved survivors. Were Mrs. Hampden ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... post-mortem inventory of his goods, which was made on December 9, 1556, shows that he had lived in comfort; his house was adorned by as many as eleven 'painted cloths,' which then did duty for tapestries among the middle class. The exordium of his will, which was drawn up on November 24, 1556, and proved on December 16 following, indicates that he was an observant Catholic. For his two youngest daughters, Alice and Mary, he showed especial affection by nominating them his executors. Mary received not ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... in town all the autumn. At the opening of the Opera House, on the 20th of November, Mrs. Yates, an actress whom he held in great esteem, delivered a poetical exordium of his composition. Beauclerc, in a letter to Lord Charlemont, pronounced it very good, and predicted that it would soon be in all the papers. It does not appear, however, to have been ever published. In his fitful state of mind Goldsmith may have taken no care about it, and thus it has been ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... aera, the cathedral[73] of Rouen is unquestionably the most interesting building; and it is so spacious, so grand, so noble, so elegant, so rich, and so varied, that, as the Italians say of Raphael, "ammirar non si puo che non s'onori."—By an exordium like this, I am aware that an expectation will be raised, which it will be difficult for the powers of description to gratify; but I have still felt that it was due to the edifice, to speak of it as I am sure it deserves, and rather to subject myself ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... With this exordium, which the occasion seemed to require, let us proceed to consider the most powerful and radical measure, which belongs to the science of education, and which has been developed by the ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... After an exordium about the cruelty of the Spanish tyranny and the enormous expense entailed by the war upon the Netherlands, Menin, who, as usual, was the spokesman, alluded to the difficulty which the States at last felt ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... sir, let your science alone, or you will put me under the painful necessity of demolishing it bit by bit, as I have done your exordium. I will undertake it any morning; but it is too hard exercise ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... talk about persons, and in general Society about things. The state of the weather is always an excusable exordium, but it is convenient to have a paradox or heresy on the subject always ready so as to direct the conversation into other channels. Really domestic people are almost invariably bad talkers as their very virtues ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... fooling,' was his not inappropriate exordium. 'To business. Mark me closely. I am an Australian. My name is John Dickson, though you mightn't think it from my unassuming appearance. You will be relieved to hear that I am rich, sir, very rich. You can't go into this ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... while Podatadsky, by way of exordium, embraced her affectionately. Neither did she offer any opposition to his daring hands, as first they removed her long mantilla, and then threw back her black crape veil which had ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... let these, after intense consideration, and not till then, pronounce, Whether on the utmost verge of our actual horizon there is not a looming as of Land; a promise of new Fortunate Islands, perhaps whole undiscovered Americas, for such as have canvas to sail thither?—As exordium to the whole, stand ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... the survey. This other makes me yawn. Better choose the bold, the frank, the generous, with all his faults; he may be rash, unthinking, wasting the powers whose force he knows not; but the capabilities of amendment are within him. What say you to my exordium?" ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... been diligently found out by the rules of art, and handled with due care and deliberation, then at length we may proceed to arrange the remaining portions of our speech. And these portions appear to us to be in all six; the exordium, the relation of the fact, the division of the different circumstances and topics, the bringing forward of evidence, the finding fault with the action which has been done, and ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... the cause, and seeming well pleased that he could boast a deficiency so well befitting a warrior, that he had "no heart,"—his interior being framed of stone as hard as the flinty rock under his feet. This exordium finished, he proceeded to bestow sundry abusive epithets upon the prisoner, charging him with having put his young men to a great deal of needless trouble, besides having killed several; for which, he added, the Longknife ought to expect ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... my exordium I had assumed a sitting posture but at her coarse rejoinder I fell back, inexpressibly shocked, and lay staring upon the dark, tingling with mortification that I should have wasted myself in such vain appeal and been thus callously repulsed ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... introduction." (68; C. R., 26, 171.) This introduction, later on replaced by another, was composed by Melanchthon at Coburg and polished by him during the first days at Augsburg. May 4 he remarks in a letter to Luther: "I have shaped the Exordium of our Apology somewhat more rhetorical (hretorikoteron) than I had written it at Coburg." (C. R., 2, 40; Luther, St. L. 16, 652.) In this introduction Melanchthon explains: Next to God the Elector builds his hope on the Emperor, who had always ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... set out, was no more than the first insinuating How d'ye of a caressing prefacer, stifling his reader, as a lover sometimes does a coy mistress, into silence. For alas! could this effusion of light have been as easily procured, as the exordium wished it—I tremble to think how many thousands for it, of benighted travellers (in the learned sciences at least) must have groped and blundered on in the dark, all the nights of their lives—running their heads against posts, ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... exordium meant something serious. It was a favorite theory of his, that danger, or any kind of anticipated, disagreeable thing, was best met halfway. So he said, with a ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... method is to become very much animated,—to lash myself into a state of high excitement, and to hold forth as though I were making an exordium,—to talk with furious rapidity, using the most forcible expressions, the most emphatic ejaculations! Those unloose my tongue! My words hurl themselves impetuously forward, as zouaves in battle! Only, as you may conceive, this discourse is not of ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... again into the bosom of the fold. So far from manifesting an outward hostility, the papal demeanor was conciliating. The letters of invitation from the Pope to the princes were sent by a legate, each commencing with the exordium, "To my beloved son," and were all sent back to his Holiness, contemptuously, with the coarse jest for answer, "We believe our mothers to have been honest women, and hope that we had better fathers." The great council had ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Exeter 'Change, looking almost as wild and feeling quite as savage. Presenting me to each and all of the splendid crowd which an idle curiosity, easily excited and as soon satisfied, had gathered round us, she prefaced every introduction with a little exordium which seemed to amuse every one but its object: 'Lord Erskine, this is the Wild Irish Girl whom you are so anxious to know. I assure you she talks quite as well as she writes.—Now, my dear, do tell my Lord Erskine some of those Irish stories you told ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... present. As soon as the Court broke up, I burst into Mill's room, boiling over with indignation, and exclaiming, "What an infamous shame!" and no doubt adding a good deal more that followed in natural sequence on such an exordium. "What's the matter?" replied Mill as soon as he could get a word in. "M——[the director] was quite right. The petition was the joint work of —— and myself."—"How can you be so perverse?" I retorted. "You ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other
... London, April 29, 1876. The President, Sir Francis Grant, in introducing Mr. Froude, said: "The next toast is 'The Interests of Literature and Science.' This toast is always so welcome and so highly appreciated that it needs no exordium from the chair. I cannot associate with the interests of literature a name more worthy than that of Mr. Froude, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... not even the remembrance of beauty as a consolation, nor its remnant as a sign of past triumphs, 'only this and nothing more,' as that wonderful man Poe makes his raven say. We never find our level until we go among people who know and care nothing about us, who have never 'heard of us'—that exordium of most greetings from folks of our own class. It is absolutely refreshing to be so unaffectedly despised and slighted—it does one a world of good, there is no doubt of that, especially when one's grandfather was a Revolutionary ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... glanced uneasily at the colonel, but replied, still in the hysterical intonation of his exordium:— ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte |
