"Fluent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with some reason, that on the longer tramp to the south his presence with me would introduce a danger which would be absent if I were alone. For his English was not fluent, and he spoke it with an accent that would betray him at once. He even suggested our parting, if we ever did succeed in getting out—he to take his chance eastward, while I went south, lest he should prove a drag on me. But this I would not hear of, and the matter was ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... reputation for some little while, but had already begun to be forgotten, and in a private room up two pair of stairs, the three companions made a very elegant supper, and drank three or four bottles of champagne, talking the while upon indifferent subjects. The young man was fluent and gay, but he laughed louder than was natural in a person of polite breeding; his hands trembled violently, and his voice took sudden and surprising inflections, which seemed to be independent of his will. The dessert had been cleared ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... party required to make up for the thinness of their members by the strength of their eloquence. Practice makes perfect, and it is not to be wondered at therefore if a large proportion of The Twenty had become fluent. But more were wanted, and of our friend O'Mahony's fluency there could be no doubt. Therefore he was sent for, and on the very day of his arrival he proved to the patriotic spirits of Dublin that he was the man ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... let his dignity weigh upon him. He had been sent down alone. Hence there had been great scrambling to gather together on the Zone men enough who spoke Spanish—and with no striking success. Most noticeable of my fellow-enumerators, being in uniform, were three Marines from Bas Obispo, fluent with the working Spanish they had picked up from Mindanao to Puerto Rico, and flush-cheeked with the prospect of a full month on "pass," to say nothing of the $4.40 a day that would be added to their daily military income of $.60. Then there were four of darker hue,—Panamanians ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... following day she gave Roberts a check for the money, drawn by Zillah Chetwynde. Waving off his thanks, she dismissed him, and sent for the cook. That functionary quickly appeared. She was short of stature, large of bulk, red of face, fluent of speech, hasty of temper—au reste, she was a good cook and faithful servant. She bobbed to Hilda on entering, and, closing the door, stood with folded arms and belligerent aspect, like a porcupine armed for defense on the slightest appearance ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... holde one like bodie. Outward garments and cloakes may be borrowed, but never the sinews and strength of the bodie. Most of those that converse with me, speake like unto these Essayes; but I know not whether they think alike. The Athenians (as Plato averreth) have for their part great care to be fluent and eloquent in their speech; The Lacedemonians endevour to be short and compendious; and those of Creet labour more to bee plentifull in conceits than in language. And these are the best. Zeno ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... her brother's praise with fond and fluent tongue, she felt without being able to describe her feelings, that he had lost something of his original beauty. The breath of the world had passed over the mind and dimmed its purity. His was the joyous, ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... natural, were very much despised by the women of the tribe. The pieces of fine sentiment and brilliant description discovered by Macpherson seemed never to have found their way into this northern district. But, told in fluent Gaelic, in the great "Ha'," the wild legends served every necessary purpose equally well. The "Ha'" in the autumn nights, as the days shortened and the frosts set in, was a genial place; and so attached was my cousin to its distinctive ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... lady is my maiden aunt, come over from the State of Maine to see your British institutions," Mr. Parmalee said, in fluent fiction, to the obsequious landlady. "She's writing a book, and she'll mention the Blue Bell favorably in it. Her name is Miss Hepzekiah Parmalee. Let her have your best bedroom and all the luxuries this hotel affords, and I ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... both read and spoke remarkably well, would say haive, and shaul (for shall), when she sung her hymns. But it was not so well in reading lectures at the Academy. Mr. West would talk of his art all day long, painting all the while. On other subjects he was not so fluent; and on political and religious matters he tried hard to maintain the reserve common with those about a court. He succeeded ill in both. There were always strong suspicions of his leaning to his native ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... ministers, and become preachers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, insomuch that the people where they dwell may even take up a proverb concerning them, saying, "Is he among the prophets?" his gifts may be so rare, his tongue may be so fluent, and his matter may be so fit, that he may speak with a tongue like an angel, and speak of the hidden mysteries, yea, of them all; mark that, and yet be nothing, and yet be none of the Lord's anointed ones, with the Spirit of grace savingly, but may ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... alert it was a sensitive medium. He dropped with crossed knees into his chair and glanced reflectively at Bernard Clowes, heu quantum mutatus. . . . When the body was wrecked, was there not nine times out of ten some corresponding mental warp? Bernard's fluent geniality struck him as too good to be true—it was not in Bernard's line: and why translate a close friendship into "meeting once or twice"? Was Bernard misled or mistaken, or was he laying a trap?—Not misled: the Laura Selincourt of Hyde's recollection ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... not a natural quality. Jefferson states that "in the circle of his friends, where he might be unreserved with safety, he took a free share in conversation," and Madison told Sparks that, though "Washington was not fluent nor ready in conversation, and was inclined to be taciturn in general society," yet "in the company of two or three intimate friends, he was talkative, and when a little excited was sometimes fluent and even eloquent" "The story ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... him from swimming the swollen Tiber; Claelia the hostage on her brazen steed; and many another, handed down inviolate from the days of the ancient kings. Here was the rostrum, beaked with the prows of ships, a fluent orator already haranguing the assembled people from its platform—there, the seat of the city Praetor, better known as the Puteal Libonis, with that officer in session on his curule chair, his six lictors leaning on their fasces at his back, as he ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... of these nations are reflected also in their methods of presentation. The style of the English philosopher is sober, comprehensible, diffuse, and slightly wearisome. The French use a fluent, elegant, lucid style which entertains and dazzles by its epigrammatic phrases, in which not infrequently the epigram rules the thought. The German expresses his solid, thoughtful positions in a form which is at once ponderous and not easily ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... eye its ancient aspect; but if it chance to him to land at the Battery on a clear and still Sabbath morning, and before the bells summon forth the worshippers, and to walk thence to Union Square in company with an octogenarian Knickerbocker of good memory, local pride, and fluent speech, he will obtain a mental photograph of the past that transmutes the familiar scene by a quaint and vivid aerial perspective. Then the "Middle Road" of the beginning of this century will reappear,—the traces of a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... better can prevail, Or from the fluent tongue produce the tale, Than when two friends, alone, in peaceful place Confer, and wines and cates the table grace; But most, the kind inviter's cheerful face? Thus might we sit, with social goblets crown'd, Till the whole circle of the year goes round: Not the whole circle of the year would ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... labourer, a talkative young chap who had sat with Hal at lunch-time, and had given his name as Apostolikas. He entered into fluent conversation with Hal, explaining how much interested he was in the check-weighman plan; he wanted to know just what they were going to do, what chance of success they thought they had, who had started the movement and who was in it. Hal's replies took ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... that although Europeans of most brilliant intellect may devote long years and infinite labour to the study of Chinese, lacking this native instinct, they can never attain to that ripened and fluent knowledge which is a heritage of the Mongol ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... she folded her arms. "Oui, assez de musique," repeated Panshin gaily, and at once he dropped into a chat, alert, light, and in French. "Precisely as in the best Parisian salon," thought Marya Dmitrievna, as she listened to their fluent and quick-witted sentences. Panshin had a sense of complete satisfaction; his eyes shone, and he smiled. At first he passed his hand across his face, contracted his brows, and sighed spasmodically whenever he chanced to encounter Marya Dmitrievna's eyes. But later on he forgot her altogether, ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... correspondence which fully demands a volume alone to provide for the various phases incident to Love, Courtship and Marriage. Few persons, however otherwise fluent with the pen, are able to express in words the promptings of the first dawn of love, and even the ice once broken how to follow up a correspondence with the dearest one in the whole world and how to smooth the way with those who need to be consulted in the matter. The numerous ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis
... happiness in private, life." He was tall, well-proportioned, graceful; his features were clean-cut and expressive of both intelligence and amiability; his manner was cordial and unaffected; his mind was vigorous and his industry unremitting. Furthermore, he was an able lawyer, a fluent orator, a persuasive debater, an adroit parliamentarian. Upon entering the Senate at the early age of thirty-two, he had won prompt recognition by a powerful speech in opposition to the tariff of 1824; and by 1828, when he was reelected, he was known as the South's ablest and boldest ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... up Menelaus was taller, when they sat down Odysseus was more stately. But when they spake, Menelaus' words were fluent, clear but few; Odysseus when he spoke, fixed his eyes on the ground, turning his sceptre neither backwards nor forward, standing still like a man devoid of wit; one would have deemed him a churl and a very fool; yet when ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... Glasgow working woman whose son was at the front was treated to a fluent harangue on the misdeeds of that "auld blackguard," the Kaiser. She ventured to suggest that we should love our ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... talk. Tombs in his sing-song namby-pamby University voice was concerned to get information. He asked endless questions, chiefly of Gilkison, who was the only one who really understood his language. I thought I had never seen anyone quite so fluent and so futile, and yet there was a kind of feeble violence in him like a demented sheep. He was engaged in venting some private academic spite against society, and I thought that in a revolution he would be the class of lad I would personally conduct to the nearest ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... copy, ordinarily fluent enough, would not come. Ideas fluttered away just out of reach. The sequence of a chapter had been in his head. Like the dagger, it had gone. He could not account for that disappearance, nor did he try. It would turn up again. So, ultimately, ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... fishing operations on the part of Goliath and his merry men for that day, at any rate. It was all so quiet, and so tame and so stupid, no wonder Mistah Jones felt savage. When Captain Slocum's fluent profanity flickered around him, including vehemently all he might be supposed to have any respect for, he did not even LOOK as if he would like to talk back; he only looked sick ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... from Corcelle, is to me my duty, and I will sustain it in the best way in my power.... Ah! that ancient France, how one feels her grandeur here, and what a part she is known to have had in Christianity! It is that chord which I should like to have heard vibrate in a fluent writer like you, and not eternally those paradoxes, those sophisms. But what matters it to you who date from yesterday and who boast of it," he added, almost sadly, "that in the most insignificant corners of this city centuries of history abound? Does your heart blush at the sight of the facade of ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... skirts of "Merry Islington," return to a temperate dinner and cheerful evening, and, before going to bed, write off what had arranged itself in his head from the studies of the morning. In this way he took a more general view of the subject, and wrote in a more free and fluent style than if he had been mousing at the time among authorities. The influence of this way of composing history is plainly seen in the entertaining, but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... yet once more, for "St. Raphael," who spoke fluent Finnish, at once secured the only cart to take our things over the ferry to the railway station ...
— Field Hospital and Flying Column - Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia • Violetta Thurstan
... feeling that he is failing miserably. He, the fluent speaker at lectures, and on public platforms, is now bereft of the power to explain ...
— A Little Rebel - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... terrible storm near Cape Horn are surely less vivid than those in Dauber. Had Mr. Noyes written Drake without the songs, and written nothing else, I should not feel certain that he was a poet; I should regard him as an extremely fluent versifier, with remarkable skill in telling a rattling good story. But the Songs, especially the one beginning, "Now the purple night is past," could have been written only by a poet. In Forty Singing Seamen there is displayed an imagination quite superior to anything in Drake; ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... details, little touches of local colour, revision of choice of words, heart-rending erasions. And here, my child," I concluded, bringing out the beautiful, clean, smooth typed copy—"here is the finished work itself, light, pleasant, fluent, humorous and, most important ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 8, 1919 • Various
... the Kaiser's blue-and-white-uniformed gunner in every function of his body and every corner of his soul, waking and sleeping, dying and dead, with fluent Scriptural curses. The crowded faces about her went white. Some of the women were ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... nature an orator and a lover of the drama. So far as I am aware, he never read a poem if he could help it, and yet he responded instantly to music, and was instinctively courtly in manner. His mind was clear, positive and definite, and his utterances fluent. Orderly, resolute and thorough in all that he did, he despised William McClintock's easy-going habits of husbandry, and found David's lack of "push," of business enterprise, deeply irritating. And yet he loved them both and respected my mother for ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... the country attorney very often united the functions of solicitor and counsel. As a result of this double life, the attorney acquired the peculiar intellectual defects of the barrister, and retained the heavy responsibilities of the attorney. He grew talkative and fluent, and lost his lucidity of judgment, the first necessity for the conduct of affairs. If a man of more than ordinary ability tries to do the work of two men, he is apt to find that the two men are mediocrities. The Paris attorney never spends himself in forensic ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... gained our first glimpse during these early days. The Boers we found were in many respects startlingly near akin to us. They sprang originally from the same liberty-loving stock as ourselves. Hosts of them spoke correct and fluent English, while not a few of them were actually of English parentage. Moreover, the Hollanders and the English have so freely intermarried in South Africa that at one time it was fondly hoped the cradle rather than the rifle would finally settle ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... a good fluent talker; moreover, she studied her listener, and finding that my interest in her own interminable story was becoming exhausted she sought for other subjects, chiefly the strange events in the lives of men and women who had lived in the village ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... "To a pleasing, fluent, narrative style, Miss corner unites a nice discrimination, and never suffers matters which sully the mind to appear in ...
— The World's Fair • Anonymous
... the conversation rose with the champagne; the sounds of fluent and broken French were mingled with those of Spanish and Portuguese. The ladies lay back in their chairs and laughed. The guests already knew each other well enough not to be reserved or constrained. Jokes and bons-mots passed over the ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... at this period a Greek myth and a Christian legend were all one. Both afforded the occasion for displaying technical skill in fluent forms, devoid of any but voluptuous feeling; while both might be subordinated to rich effects of decoration.[116] To this point the intellectual culture of the fifteenth century had brought the plastic arts of Italy, by a process ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... people which his class are studying. He is aware that the pupil should experience something more than a kaleidoscopic view of isolated facts. He recognizes the folly of requiring four years of high school English for the purpose of cultivating clear, fluent, and accurate expression, only to relax the effort when the student comes into the history class. He knows that the precision, logic, and habit of definite thinking exacted by the pursuit of the scientific subjects should not be laid aside when the ...
— The Teaching of History • Ernest C. Hartwell
... teaching at Newburyport for a short time, she accepted a call to fill a vacancy in the academy at Elizabeth City, N. C., where she continued an earnest and appreciated teacher for a number of years. She became a fluent French scholar while at that institution, and her leisure hours were devoted to the fine arts. Her paintings and drawings were much admired for their correctness in outline, subdued coloring, ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... He was still a young man when he was preferred to all the prominent statesmen of his party as a Presidential candidate. He was remarkably attractive in personal appearance, prepossessing in manner, ready and even eloquent as a public speaker, fluent and graceful in conversation. He presented thus a rare combination of the qualities which attach ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... on some slight matter, I went to the merchant's shop where I saluted him and sat down by him. Presently up came the lady as usual, followed by a slave girl and wearing a dress more sumptuous than before; and she saluted me without noticing Badr al-Din and said in fluent graceful speech (never heard I voice softer or sweeter), "Send one with me to take the thousand and two hundred dirhams, the price of the piece." "Why this hurry?" asked I and she answered, "May we never lose thee!"[FN524] and handed me the money. Then I ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... the music the soft air along, While fluent Greek a vowel'd undersong Kept up among the guests discoursing low At first, for scarcely was the wine at flow; But when the happy vintage touch'd their brains, Louder they talk, and louder come the strains ...
— Lamia • John Keats
... of determination I kept on bearing up toward the top, but it was always quite labour in vain, through my want of skill, as the smaller stones being more fluent, I found myself still sinking down more and more with every step, till, mingled with the peculiar rattle of the gliding stones, came the roar of the river foaming and dashing amongst the rocks, and into which I expected ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... on for some time without a word on either side, until I ventured to remark that I coincided with him in the belief that Acadia was the romantic ground of early discovery in America; and that even the fluent pen of Hawthorne had failed to lend a charm to the harsh, repulsive, acrimonious features ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... Judge Paterson, [3] a fault in his mode of speaking while a youth, and seems never to have been fully corrected, as he did that of rapid utterance, attaining the true medium for public speaking in this respect. He spoke with great apparent ease, but could not be called fluent, although he never appeared at a loss for words, which were always so chaste and appropriate that they seemed to, have been as carefully selected before they fell from his lips as if they had been written down in a prepared speech and committed to memory. His manner was dignified and ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... more Gallantry in a Billet-doux that should be understood at the Bank, than in gross Money; But as to stubborn People, who are so surly as to accept of neither Note or Cash, having formerly dabbled in Chymistry, I can only say that one part of Matter asks one thing, and another another, to make it fluent; but there is nothing but may be dissolved by a proper Mean: Thus the Virtue which is too obdurate for Gold or Paper, shall melt away very kindly in a Liquid. The Island of Barbadoes (a shrewd People) manage all their Appeals to Great-Britain, by a skilful Distribution of Citron-Water ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... in this work which we could have wished somewhat different from what they are. Mr. Parton's fluent and forcible style sometimes degenerates into flippancy. We could cite many instances of felicitous expression, some, also, of bad taste, and some of hasty assertion. "Clubable" is hardly a good enough word ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... lead in ever widening circles, away from the topic under discussion when the events of his own life were discussed, but he is a fluent speaker and a student of psychology. Psychology as that philosophy relates to the mental and bodily tendencies of the African race has long since become one of the major subjects with which this unusual man struggles. "Why is the negro?" is ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... has never been in Europe a fluent script so beautiful and legible as that of our very best English writers of to-day. But their aesthetic mastery has come from loving study of the forms that conscious artistry had perfected, and through a constant practice ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... this fluent discourse, the meaning of which was not altogether clear to him. He frowned in bewilderment, as he again seated himself in the chair opposite his wife. He could think of nothing with which to rebuke her diatribe, save ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... delay, or difficulty about anything concerning the relations between himself and the factory, the deepest and keenest expression of discontent and disgust his versatile and acute imagination can suggest, or his fluent tongue give utterance to is, that this is 'Adanlut lea mafich,' that is, 'Like a court of justice.' Could there be a stronger ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... shoulders the model consented, and they went off to a cremerie. The Spaniard spoke broken French, fluent but difficult to follow, and Philip managed to get on well enough with him. He found out that he was a writer. He had come to Paris to write novels and kept himself meanwhile by all the expedients possible to a penniless man; he gave lessons, he did any translations he could get hold of, chiefly ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... Billy promotin'. I 'spect he could take to writin' newspapers right away, if you could hold him down to it. He's jes' like his pa—the very spittin' image of him! Mr. Wiggs was so educated—the most fluent man ...
— Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch • Alice Caldwell Hegan
... a short quarter of an hour with your excellency," said Count de Lacy, in very fluent German, but with the hard foreign accent of a Hungarian. "After a battle won, I know nothing pleasanter than to recall with a comrade the past danger, and to revel again in memory ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... their heads adorned with very tasteful ornaments of cowrie-shells, surmounted by plumes of ostrich-feathers, which drooped over the back of the neck. After the dance, the old chief addressed them in a long and vehement speech; he was followed by several other speakers, all of whom were remarkably fluent, and the resolution of the meeting was declared "that the nogaras were to be beaten, and men collected to accompany the Turks on a razzia in the ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... clamorous, Filling my still breasts with a flush and a flame, Gathering the soft ripples below my breasts Into urgent, passionate waves, And my soft, slumbering belly Quivering awake with one impulse of desire, Gathers itself fiercely together; And my docile, fluent arms Knotting themselves with wild strength To clasp what they have never clasped. Then I tremble, and go trembling Under the wild, strange tyranny of my body, Till it has spent itself, And the relentless nodality of my eyes reasserts itself, ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... whereon he rose, or rather tried to, felt for his hat, which, of course, had gone, with the idea of taking it off, and instantly addressed her in his beautiful and fluent Arabic, saying how glad he was to have this unexpected honour, and ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... burning under the Prior's eyelids; but he was silent still. That was not his idea of Heaven; but then he was less weary of earth. He felt almost vexed that the only passage of Scripture which would come to him was one utterly unsuited to the occasion—"They rest not day nor night." Usually fluent and fervent, he ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... to see the noble Athenian in his own city. His fame for eloquence and prudence is already in Tyre and Babylon," spoke the stranger, never taking his steel-blue eyes from the orator's face. The accent was Oriental, but the Greek was fluent. The prince—for prince he was, whatever his nation—pressed his hand closer. Almost involuntarily Democrates's hand responded. They clasped tightly; then, as if Lycon feared a word too much, the unknown released his hold, bowed ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... gray, lighting up from time to time with a sympathetic glow; the countenance sensitive, spiritual, with 'mind and music breathing' from it; the general demeanor composed and gracious; her utterance fluent and finished, but somewhat measured; her voice clear and melodious, moving evenly, as it were in a monotone, though now and then rising, with a sort of quiet eagerness, into a higher note." The same writer speaks of the close-fitting ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... I continued: "He hasn't lost a bone since I have known him." This nettled him, and he began to badger me about an unsuccessful attempt which I made some time ago to get him to taste a green persimmon. Hobart has a good education, is fluent in conversation, and in discussion gets the better of me without difficulty. All I can do, therefore, is to watch my opportunity to give him an occasional thrust as best I can. Father Stanley is slow, destitute of either education or ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... spite of his foreign accent, was considered fluent, and his writing very good. To the questions put to him he answered in a way to obtain the approbation of the Doctor, and he was forthwith sent to take his place in the lower school. Ernst found that each class contained sixteen boys. The ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... beside her. His friends anticipated a distinguished Parliamentary career for John; he could make anything sound reasonable. Miss Bussey was fascinated by his suave and fluent narrative of what had befallen Mary and himself; she could not but admire his just remarks on the providential disclosure of the true state of the case before it was too late, and sympathized with the ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... to him: it gave him pain. He felt none of that exultation in creating characters which he had been told was part of the pleasures of an author. There were times, indeed, when he felt a mitigated joy in writing because his ideas were fluent and words fell easily off his pen, but even on those occasions, the labour of writing hurt him and exhausted him. The times of pleasurable writing were short interludes between the long stretches of painful writing, little oases that ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... celebrated historian, was there, with his lady. He is a young-looking man, of agreeable manners, and fluent in conversation. This I gather from Mr. S., with whom he conversed very freely on our historians, Prescott, Bancroft, and especially Dr. Sparks, his sharp controversy with whom he seems ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... is to be unpopular, especially in the East, where comminatory swearing alone is practised, and you have to offend a man very grievously to get him to disgorge his treasure. In this country, except among ladies in comparatively humble circumstances, anything like this fluent, explicit, detailed, and sincere cursing, aimed, missile-fashion, at a personal enemy, is not found. It was quite common a few centuries ago; indeed, in the Middle Ages it was part of the recognised procedure. ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... birth and of the highest rank in Scythia. Anacharsis, on the other hand, could not be expected to see a compatriot in Toxaris, who was dressed in the Greek fashion, without sword or belt, wore no beard, and from his fluent speech might have been an Athenian born; so completely had time transformed him. 'You are surely Anacharsis, the son of Daucetas?' he said, addressing him in the Scythian language. Anacharsis wept tears of joy; he not only heard his mother-tongue, but heard ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... was that the grief of each found fluent expression; and the fair corpse was addressed to, with all the tenderness that the sincerest love and warmest admiration could inspire; each according to their different degrees of relationship, as if none of them had before looked upon her. She was their very niece, both uncles said! ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... flowing periods; the right word in the right place; antithesis &c. 577. *purist. V. point an antithesis, round a period. Adj. elegant, polished, classical, Attic, correct, Ciceronian, artistic; chaste, pure, Saxon, academical[obs3]. graceful, easy, readable, fluent, flowing, tripping; unaffected, natural, unlabored[obs3]; mellifluous; euphonious, euphemism, euphemistic; numerose|, rhythmical. felicitous, happy, neat; well put, neatly put, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... position to a nicety. His fluent adaptability was in its right place. Little Captain von Wegstetten would have no non-commissioned officer under him better calculated to satisfy his desires than Gustav Weise. If he had remained a social-democrat, thought Wolf to himself, he would simply have been a pliant tool ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... gained, and a renewal of old issues and hostilities in the near future. Republican congressmen from the State, almost without exception, yielded to this view, voicing the sentiment that it was vain to temporise longer with compromises. With fluent invective, James B. McKean of Saratoga assailed the South in a speech that recalled the eloquence of John W. Taylor, his distinguished predecessor, who, in 1820, led the forces of freedom against the Missouri Compromise. "The slave-holders," ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... aspect; yet not a trace of abjectness; nothing that asked for pity. When Diana last caught sight of them, Marion had a contadino's child on her knee, in the corner of a third-class carriage, and Frobisher opposite—he spoke a fluent Italian—was laughing and jesting with the father. Marion, smiling, waved her hand, and the ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... bat, he was, after one or two repulses, actually adopted into the university eleven. He communicated this ray of glory by letter to his mother and sister with genuine delight, coldly and clumsily expressed; they replied with feigned and fluent rapture. Advancing steadily in that line of academic study towards which his genius lay, he won a hurdle race, and sent home a little silver hurdle; and soon after brought a pewter pot, with a Latin inscription recording the victory at "Fives" ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... tall, loosely made man swung into the room. The new-comer shot a swift glance at him and moved past to the bedside, addressing the concierge in fluent French that was marked by a pronounced American accent. He cut short her eager communication as he bent over the bed and made ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... Barsetshire. "It will probably be necessary for you to review the connection which still exists between, and which binds together, the Church and the State." Mr. Daubeny's words had of course been more fluent, but the gist of the expression was the same. He had been quite in earnest when addressing his friends in the country. And though there had been but an interval of a few weeks, the Conservative party in the two Houses heard the paragraph read without ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... Bowring! man of many tongues, (All over tongues, like rumor) This tributary verse belongs To paint his learned humor. All kinds of gab he knows, I wis, From Latin down to Scottish— As fluent as a parrot is, But far more Polly-glottish. No grammar too abstruse he meets, However dark and verby; He gossips Greek about the streets And often Russ—in urbe. Strange tongues—whate'er you do them call; In short, the man is able To tell you what o'clock in all The dialects of Babel. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... their mother generally sent their messages for them. Nancy and Kitty did not yet write nearly as well as they talked, but they contrived to express something of their own individuality in their communications, which were free and fluent, though childlike ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and daughter bid him a rather stoical farewell, so far as tears and talk were concerned, though their pallid faces indicated the pain of separation was heartfelt. Mountain women have not a fluent line of chit-chat, nor are they ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... performance, Mr. Davidson, which I can not entirely commend. It is fluent, to be sure, but it lacks variety. A true artist would have interspersed those finer shades and gradations of meaning which go to express the numerous and clashing emotions which must necessarily agitate your venerable bosom. You surely mean more than ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... broken, being much troubled by a cobweb which some studious spider had woven across it, and having probably contracted a cold from long exposure to the chills and damps of the abbey. In a short time, however, it became more distinct, and I soon found it an exceedingly fluent, conversable little tome. Its language, to be sure, was rather quaint and obsolete, and its pronunciation what, in the present day, would be deemed barbarous; but I shall endeavor, as far as I am able, to render ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... in fluent American, began by alluding to the numerous links which bound together his country with that of his audience, and pointed out that nowhere was this affinity more pronounced than in their philosophies. Both showed a concrete cosmopolitanism indissolubly wedded ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various
... us to consult five minutes among ourselves. He withdrew; and the fluent agent remarked the sum was a trifle: but, trifling as it was, he had no doubt but feelings of delicacy and honor would dictate that it ought to be jointly paid, by the three parties ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... realize it in life. Being an antithesis to the analytical novel, this novel treats of sex, not as a psychology but as a philosophy; nuances are avoided, the feminine figure becomes a symbol, drawn, not photographically but broadly, in fluent, even exaggerated Botticellian outlines. I might go even further and say that as a symbol of Russian revolution the figure of Elisaveta is perhaps meant to stand out with the statuesque boldness of the Victory of Samothrace. The feminine figure, nude or thinly ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... as organist of the cathedral at Milan, and having distinguished himself by certain operas successfully produced in Italy, he removed to London, where he led an easy and enjoyable life. He was an elegant and fluent writer for the pianoforte. The one son of Bach who is commonly regarded as having left a mark upon the later course of music was Carl Philip Emanuel (1714-1788), the third son, commonly known as the Berlin ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... put the writing materials before Mr. Bruff, and asked him if he had any objection—before we separated for the night—to draw out, and sign, a plain statement of what he had seen. He at once took the pen, and produced the statement with the fluent readiness of ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... constitutional law; third, of strong will, indomitable courage, and patient labor. Guided by the light of her own understanding, she seeks truth among the mixed materials of other minds, and having found it, maintains it against all obstacles; fourth and last, a writer fluent, cogent, and abounding with evidence of ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell
... Howell, Esq. are well known as fluent examples of the best style of writing of his day, and as repositories of many curious facts and intelligent remarks. The following letter appears to be addressed to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... good writing. An AEschylus or a Shakespeare, a Browning or a Dickens, conquers us with an abundance like nature's. He feeds us out of a horn, of plenty. This, unfortunately, is possible only to writers of the first order. The others, when they attempt profusion, become fluent rather than abundant, facile of ink rather than generous of golden grain. Who does not agree with Pope that Dryden, though not Shakespeare, would have been a better poet if ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... of this interrogation. And it is a question especially for you, because you have special advantages in the matter of putting it. We older people are all fixed and fossils, as you are very fond of telling us. The iron has cooled and gone into rigid shapes with us. It is all fluent with you. You may become pretty nearly what you like. I do not mean in regard to circumstances: other considerations come in to determine these; but circumstances are second, character is first; and I do say, in regard to character, you young folk have all but infinite possibilities before you; ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... the other officials look very small: indeed the first impression of him is that of a man of another race. While I am wondering whether the old Japanese heroes were cast in a similar mould, he signs to me to take a seat, and questions my guide in a mellow basso. There is a charm in the fluent depth of the voice pleasantly confirming the idea suggested by the face. ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... was greasy, and I took out my handkerchief, but before I could use it to wipe my hands, a young squaw pushed her way up to me, and offered her long black hair as a napkin. She threw the oily length across my arm, and flattered me in fluent Ottawa. ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... to dispose of; my uncle's cabinet is bare to the wainscot; even were it still intact, I have done well on the Stock Exchange, and should more likely add to it than otherwise, and my errand to-day is simplicity itself. I seek a Christmas present for a lady," he continued, waxing more fluent as he struck into the speech he had prepared; "and certainly I owe you every excuse for thus disturbing you upon so small a matter. But the thing was neglected yesterday; I must produce my little compliment at dinner; and, as you very well know, a rich marriage ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... his company of all things. Indeed, had Halfman been other than he was, Evander would have preferred any companionship that kept him from his melancholy thoughts. And already Halfman attracted him, or at least interested him. His fantastical manner, his fluent speech, his assurance, and that note of something foreign, odd, as characteristic, as conclusive, as the scorch of foreign suns upon his face, appealed to the curiosity in Evander which ever made men books for him. Halfman's manner grew more expansive at Evander's ready acceptance of his offer. ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... exclaimed Herr Schulz—and this time his English was faultless and fluent—"Shut that door behind you, Mr. Greve, and shoot the bolt—that's it just below the knob! Sit down, sit down, and while I mix you a drink, you shall tell me ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... we have already spoken. He is a colored gentleman, and in every respect the noblest man, white or black, whom we met in the West Indies. He is highly intelligent, and of fine moral feelings. His manners are free and unassuming, and his language in conversation fluent and well chosen. He is intimately acquainted with English and French authors, and has studied thoroughly the history and character of the people with whom the tie of color has connected him. He travelled two years in Hayti, and his letters, written in a flowing and luxuriant ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... most of all in Johannesburg. You are soon able to recognise his points and identify him at a distance. He is a little too neatly dressed and his watch-chain is a little too much of a certainty. His manner is excessively glib and fluent, yet he has a trick of furtively glancing round while he talks, as if fearful of being overheard. For the same reason he speaks in low tones. He must often be discussing indifferent topics, but he always looks as if he were hatching a swindle. ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... confident. Interest in all his actions was discern'd; 1150 More learn'd than honest, more a wit than learn'd: Or forced by fear, or by his profit led, Or both conjoin'd, his native clime he fled: But brought the virtues of his heaven along; A fair behaviour, and a fluent tongue. And yet with all his arts he could not thrive; The most unlucky parasite alive. Loud praises to prepare his paths he sent, And then himself pursued his compliment; But by reverse of fortune chased away, 1160 His gifts no longer than their author stay: He shakes ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... that as in strategy he took the advice of Suetonius Paulinus and Marius Celsus, so too in political matters he employed the talents of Galerius Trachalus.[200] Some people even thought they could recognize Trachalus' style of oratory, fluent and sonorous, well adapted to tickle the ears of the crowd: and as he was a popular pleader his style was well known. The crowd's loud shouts of applause were in the best style of flattery, excessive and insincere. Men vied with each other in their enthusiasm and ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... to her with regard: with the result that Mr. Lien himself has, in fact, had to take a back seat (lit. withdrew 35 li). In looks, she is also so extremely beautiful, in speech so extremely quick and fluent, in ingenuity so deep and astute, that even a man could, in no way, come up to ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... when talking in a company with fluent vivacity, and, as he flattered himself, to the admiration of all who were present; a German who sat next him, and perceived Johnson rolling himself, as if about to speak, suddenly stopped him, saying, 'Stay, stay,—Toctor Shonson is going to say something.' This was, no doubt, very ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... every respect the noblest man, white or black, whom we met in the West Indies. He is highly intelligent and of fine moral feelings. His manners are free and unassuming, and his language in conversation fluent and well chosen.... He is at the head of the special magistrates (of whom there are sixty (sic) in this island) and all the correspondence between them and the governor is carried on through him. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... granite walls from thirty-five hundred to four thousand feet high. It shows grandly from where it broke on our sight, sweeping boldly forward and downward in its majestic channel, swaying from side to side in graceful fluent lines around stern unflinching rocks. While I stood in the canoe making a sketch of it, several bergs came off with tremendous dashing and thunder, raising a cloud of ice-dust and spray to a height of a hundred feet ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... when she was let out, and expressed her entire approval of Johnny in fluent dog language, looking after him reproachfully when he ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... almost universal in his days. The older poetry of the desert had been constantly imitated up to this time, although it was not natural to town life. Abu-l-'Atahiya was one of the first to drop the old qasida (elegy) form. He was very fluent and used many metres. He is also regarded as one of the earliest philosophic poets of the Arabs. Much of his Poetry is concerned with the observation of common life and morality, and at times is pessimistic. Naturally, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... and began to speak. At first his words came to him slowly; but as he warmed to his subject he became fluent and ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... these chastisements she recounts in the nightly half-hour which she spends with me when I am endeavouring to compose myself for sleep. Francesca is fluent at all times, but once seated on the foot of my bed she ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... entertaining as it was penetrating; his allusions and quotations, as far as they were English and within my reach, were apt and ingenious - and the wild and sudden flights of his fancy, bursting forth from his creative imagination in language fluent, forcible, and varied, had a charm for my ear and my attention wholly new and ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... because he was stern and unrelenting when he felt that justice and his duty required him to be so, no more proves that he had a cold heart than does the fact that he was silent, dignified, and reserved. Cold-blooded men are not fierce in seeking to redress the wrongs of others, nor are the fluent of speech the only kind and generous members of the ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... inner circle, and in many respects associated with it, was the Rev. Francis Hodgson, a ripe scholar, good translator, a sound critic, a fluent writer of graceful verse, and a large-hearted divine, whoso correspondence, recently edited with a connecting narrative by his son, has thrown light on disputed passages of Lord Byron's life. The views entertained by the friends on literary matters were almost identical; ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... as the sunny air at noonday. Nor was his conversation altogether light and mirthful. There were at times bursts of high enthusiasm, at which he would himself laugh heartily a moment afterward—there were touches of passing romance and poetry blending in an under-current with his fluent mirth; and, above all, there was an evident strain of right feeling, of appreciation of all that was great and generous and good, predominant above romance and wit, perceptible in every ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... demonstrative girl naturally; not ready with her tears, not liberal with her caresses, not fluent in her talk, Eunice was affected by my proposal in a manner wonderful to see. She suddenly developed into an excitable person—I declare she kissed me. "Oh," she burst out, "how clever you are! The very thing to write about; ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins |
