"Monologue" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his breath as this monologue proceeded, and a sense of unlooked-for triumph made his heart swell within him. Here was proof positive that the treasure lay still in the forest; that it had not been taken thence and dissipated; that it still remained to be found by ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... tragedy had been essentially lyrical. It arose from the dithyrambic chorus that was sung at the festivals of Dionysus. Thespis had introduced the first actor, who, in the pauses of the choral song, related in monologue the adventures of the god or engaged in dialogue with the leader of the chorus. To Aeschylus is due the invention of the second actor. This essentially changed the character of the performance. The dialogue could now be carried on by the two actors, who were thus able to enact ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... whole lot like a monologue up to date," he continued. "Now, maybe y'u don't know y'u have the honor of entertaining the King of the Bighorn." The man's brown hand brushed the mask from his eyes and he bowed with mocking deference. "Miss Messiter, allow ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... sentences. The dialogue became a monologue. I entered upon my declaration. With the assistance of Bettina, who supplied her mistress with cologne, I kept her attention alive through the incipient circumstances. Symptoms were soon told. I came to the avowal. Her hand lay reposing on the arm of the sofa, half buried in a muslin foulard. ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... catch Dr. Blake unawares. He laughed a laugh which rang as true as Mrs. Markham's. He even ventured on a humorous monologue in which he accused his sex of every possible failing, ending with a triumphant eulogy of the other half of creation. But Mrs. Markham, though she listened with outward civility, appeared to take all his jibes seriously—miscomprehended him ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... monologue was a small tin sign in a window. Marine Insurance. Here was a hole as wide as a church-door. What could be simpler than, with a set of inquiries relative to a South Sea tramp registered as The Tigress, to make a tour of all the marine insurance companies in Hong-Kong? O'Higgins ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... Creek, the lights fanning out broader and broader as he approached. Suddenly two figures loomed up before him in the night. He came near and made out a barelegged boy, riding without a saddle and driving a cow before him. He was a very angry herdsman, this boy. He kept up a continual monologue directed at the cow and his horse, and so he did not hear the approach of Riley Sinclair until the outlaw was close upon him. Then he hitched himself around, with his hand on the hip of his old horse, swaying ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... for reference, but desperately hard to read, on account of the soggy weight of the book. Here we have, however, everything that he has thus far written which he thinks worth preserving. The first piece, Akra the Slave (1904), is a romantic monologue in free verse. Although rather short, it is much too long, and few persons will have the courage to read it through. It is incoherent, spineless, consistent only in dulness. Possibly it is worth keeping as a curiosity. Then comes ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... ending colophonian, Trust not the gypsy's tea-leaves, nor the prophets Babylonian. Better to have what is to come enshrouded in obscurity Than to be certain of the sort and length of our futurity. Why, even as I monologue on wisdom and longevity How Time has flown! Spear some of it! ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... too late. I know of what I speak. I have been a gentleman for years, and I am acquainted with all the ins and outs of the calling. It is a poor one; avoid it. But you will pardon this somewhat lengthy monologue. I have kept you from your ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... deep feeling as is compatible with slow utterance. In time the rate of utterance will vary with the syllabic quantities, these being short and crisp in the language of vivacious conversation, but extended, and with distinct, attenuated vanishes, in grave and important monologue. In quality, whenever the diction, departing from its simple character, becomes pervaded by some deep emotion, the natural mode will give place to the orotund. And while effusive utterance is always the prevalent mode, it will give ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... spared myself the jest; he gave it no attention, but seated himself in the chair that he had left and resumed the interrupted monologue as if nothing ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... Carlyle he was beyond dispute the best talker in London, and a talker far more agreeable than either Carlyle or Macaulay, inasmuch as he was no less ready to listen than to speak, and never wearied the dinner-table by a monologue. His simplicity, his spontaneity, his genial courtesy, as well as the vast fund of knowledge and of personal recollections at his command, made him extremely popular in society, so that his opponents used to say that it was dangerous to meet him, because one might be forced ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... of his monologue. The moment of silence that followed brought McGee sharply back to the present. He smiled ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... monologue, while chewing a straw, he discussed humanity in general, and the professions in particular. "I ain't got no use fer lawyers—mighty hard show them fellers has, fer get'n' to heaven. As fer doctors—waal, they'll hev hard sledd'n, too; but them fellers has to do ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... seems to be located at some distance from the station," said Mrs. Bilton presently, in the middle of several pages of rapid unpunctuated monologue. "Isolated, surely—" and off she went again to other matters, just as Mr. Twist had got his mouth ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... Tommy out of his embarrassment by an occasional 'Ay, mun,' interjected into his apologetic and cordial monologue; and so we reached the hut, where, after directing me to a seat, he filled a billy with some of the water he had brought, and ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... time to time she halted her preparations and sat down opposite her visitors, less for the moments repose than to give some special emphasis to what she was about to say; but the washing of a dish or the setting of the table speedily claimed her attention again, and the monologue went on amid the ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... reticence, laid it only to the exhaustion of a hideously rainy day, and talked on steadily. What Reed did not know till later was that her steady monologue was designed to cover up her real intention for just a little while, that she might gain time to stiffen to the resolution she had taken. The resolution had been growing up in her for weeks; it had come to its climax, ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... you able to think, permit me gently to disillusion you; and if you are imbued with the flattering faith that after studying these chapters you will suddenly be able to sit down and write a successful playlet, monologue, two-act, musical comedy libretto, or even a good little "gag," in the words of classic vaudeville—forget it! All this book can do for you—all any instruction can do—is to show you the right path, show precisely how others have successfully essayed ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... difficult to achieve? Most people seem to think of communication as getting a message across to another person. "You tell him what you want him to know." This concept produces a one-way verbal flow for which the term "monologue" is descriptive. Much of the church's so-called communication is monological, with preachers and teachers telling their hearers, both adults and children, the message they think they should know. The difficulty with ...
— Herein is Love • Reuel L. Howe
... the plan of the book offers for any variety or display of character, being mainly occupied with erudite monologue, put sometimes into the mouth of Durtal, sometimes into that of the Abbe Plomb, yet the personalities of these two, as well as those of Geversin, Madame Bavoil, and Madame Mesurat, stand out very vividly, and make us wish for that ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... he continued, changing the form of his monologue, "he may have a purse; the which I'm sure to stand in need of before this time to-morrow. If without money, his weapons may be of use ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... political situation. Each of us contributed his remarks, his comment, or his jest, a pleasantry or a proverb. This was no longer exclusively a discussion of life on the colossal scale just described by Marcas, the soldier of political warfare. Nor was it the distressful monologue of the wrecked navigator, stranded in a garret in the Hotel Corneille; it was a dialogue in which two well-informed young men, having gauged the times they lived in, were endeavoring, under the guidance of ...
— Z. Marcas • Honore de Balzac
... gone, Louise came down, and found Maxwell in a dreary muse over his manuscript. He looked up at her with a lack-lustre eye, and said, "Godolphin is jealous of Salome now. What he really wants is a five-act monologue that will keep him on the stage all the time. He thinks that as it is, she will take all the attention ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... equal anywhere? How could a thinker of his power of brain cover leagues of letter-paper with windy nonsense and mawkish insincerity? And finally, of what quality was the talk of one whose social life was entirely monologue? To the first of these questions Wordsworth perhaps helps with an analogy, but not very far; for it is certain that Wordsworth's opinion of the importance of his own verses was inflexible, whereas Coleridge, having another medium of expression, was by no means so insistent upon publishing. Upon ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... her fierce monologue for some time, without interruption. Wilhelmine stood watching her, till an involuntary breathless pause in her mother's torrent of words gave her the opportunity of speech. 'You have always been unjust to me, ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... will," said Patty. "That is, I'll help. I won't write it all alone, nor act it all by myself, either. I don't suppose it's to be a monologue, is it?" ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... monologue, when he heard the macer cry out, "Maxwell against Lord Traquair;" then came forward the advocates, and shook their wigs over the bar, and at length old Durie, the President, said, in words that did not escape ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... especially the pint of port, throws light on "Will Waterproof's Lyrical Monologue," which, as the poet himself has stated, was "made at the Cock." Its opening ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... time. To the older gentleman's polite inquiries relative to his impressions of the city and so forth, he for the same reason gave the briefest possible replies. But the Colonel, no apostle of the doctrine that time is far more than money, went off into a long monologue, kindly designed to give the young stranger some idea of his new ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... could not do better by way of forestalling starvation and repentance. Every day I stopped once or twice at a travelers' bungalow, or rest-house; and I managed, notwithstanding that my stock of Urdu was scanty, to make my wants understood. That a great part of the copious monologue which my purveyors expended, as we settled the details of breakfast or dinner, was lost on me, did not seem, in the final result, to matter in the least. What I needed I asked for, and then listened attentively for the barbaric representative of "yes" or "no" in the Babel of sounds ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... that was a danger signal. Whenever his thoughts reached that particular point, Raf tried to think of something else, to break the chain of dismal foreboding. How? By joining in Wonstead's monologue of complaint and regret? Raf had heard the same words over and over so often that they no longer had any meaning—except as a series of sounds he might miss if the man who shared this pocket were suddenly ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... barking at something down in the orchard," Wally volunteered, passing over Baumberger's monologue. "I was going down there, but it was so dark—and I thought maybe it was Gene's ghost. That was before the moon came up. Got ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... doesn't please you." The saint's whisper to me was unheard by the egotist, spellbound by his own monologue. "I have spoken to Divine Mother about it; She realizes our sad predicament. As soon as we get to yonder red house, She has promised to remind him of more ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... This monologue lasted more than an hour, and he threw himself on to his bed quite worn out, and slept at once, in spite of the nightingales, who filled the starlit, breezy, balmy night with ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... Blarcom, I reflected, was surely coming out of his shell; this was quite a monologue with which he was favoring me. It was dark now; our lights were flaring. Being in a friendly port's shelter, we ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... he would conclude, casting bleared eyes in the direction of the house, wearily, "I got soom vino inside. You coom along now. We go gettin' a drink." Which would close the monologue. ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... of the Poem, and invocation to Freedom. Condition of Columbus in a Spanish prison. His monologue on the great actions of his life, and the manner in which they had been rewarded. Appearance and speech of Hesper, the guardian Genius of the western continent. They quit the dungeon, and ascend the mount of vision, which rises over the western coast ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... of this monologue, Dick Penryn lit his pipe, took up the book he had been reading, and was soon deep in the pages of ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... before announcing his displeasure, had missed the first shot. When he dragged himself out from under his deceased horse the scenery was undisturbed save for a small cloud of dust hovering over a distant rise to the north of him. After delivering a short and bitter monologue he struck out for the ranch and arrived in a very hot and wrathful condition. It was contagious, that condition, and before long the entire outfit was in the saddle and pounding north, Pete overjoyed because his wound ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... he cried, "there won't be anything of that sort. You ain't going to be starred as a comic. You're a Refined Lecturer and Society Monologue Artist. 'How I Invaded England,' with lights down and the cinematograph going. We can ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... the rector, who was substituting monologue for dialogue unconsciously as he looked at this lamb of his fold, on whose face could be read her anxiety. She colored and trembled. When the worthy man saw the tears in the beautiful eyes of the mother, he was ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... that juncture of Hicks' monologue, had effectively terminated it by leaning from the window, grasping his unsuspecting comrade by the scruff of the neck, and dragging him over the window-ledge, into the grub-shack, and the presence of Coach Corridan and Deacon Radford. Strenuous objection was ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... prevailed, but himself. There was an embarrassment about him which he could not quite conceal. I thought it proper to state in the outset that I wished simply to know whatever he was free to tell me in regard to his own willingness or unwillingness to accept a renomination. The reply was a monologue of an hour's duration, and one that wholly absorbed me, as it seemed to absorb himself. He remained seated nearly all the time. He was restless, often changing position, and occasionally, in some intense moment, wheeling his body ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... men go—and all of them do not go very straight in the right direction—but he made one mistake which many are making in our own day; he valued peace more highly than truth. His decalogue was a monologue, consisting but of one commandment: Do your duty. What a man's duty was, the Justice did not pause to define. Had he been required to do so, his dissection of that difficult subject would probably have run in three grooves—go to church; give alms; ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... think I may say the entire evening, was occupied by a monologue addressed by the poet to my mother, who was of course extremely well pleased to listen to it. I was chiefly occupied in talking to my old schoolfellow, Herbert Hill, Southey's nephew, who also passed ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... divesting the actor's face of a mask, on which the many expressions appropriate to his dramatic character might be moulded into one permanent and unchanging expression, is favourable only to a partial and inharmonious effect; it is fit for nothing but a monologue, where all the attention may be directed to some great master of ideal mimicry. The modern practice of blending comedy with tragedy, though liable to great abuse in point of practice, is undoubtedly an extension of the ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... thinks that the vacant space of the waiter's shirt-front might also be utilised to advertise the Gee Whiz Ginger Champagne, he will instantly follow up the new idea in all its aspects and possibilities, in an even longer monologue; and will never think of looking at his watch while he is rapturously looking at his waiter. The consequence is that he will come late into the great social movement against chewing-gum, where an Englishman would probably have arrived at the proper hour. ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... worldly experiences and wit. He was younger than Calvin, but older than Wilmer Deakon, and a little fat. He had a small mustache cut above his lip, and closely shaved ruddy cheeks with a tinge of purple about his ears. Drawing out his monologue entertainingly he gazed repeatedly at Lucy. Calvin lost the sense of most that the other said; he was immersed in the past that had been made the present and then denied to him—it was all before him in the presence of Lucy, of Hannah come ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the Geneva editors, "written au courant de la plume—sometimes in the morning, but more often at the end of the day, without any idea of composition or publicity—are marked by the repetition, the lacunae, the carelessness, inherent in this kind of monologue. The thoughts and sentiments expressed have no other aim than sincerity ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a gloomy expression. He was annoyed because Bridget had not been introduced to Mrs. Reynolds, and in considerable pain from the increasing rheumatism in his knee joint. In the midst of his old friend's monologue, Knight announced— ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... A writer commits this error when he thinks it enough if he himself knows what he means and wants to say, and takes no thought for the reader, who is left to get at the bottom of it as best he can. This is as though the author were holding a monologue; whereas, it ought to be a dialogue; and a dialogue, too, in which he must express himself all the more clearly inasmuch as he cannot hear the questions ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... fact, when he stands before the shut door, a man believes that he is quite alone; and he would have no hesitation in beginning a silent monologue, a dreamy soliloquy, in which he revealed his desires, his intentions, his personal qualities, his faults, his virtues, etc.; for undoubtedly a man on a stoop is exactly like a young girl of fifteen at confession, the evening before her ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... drama, no fault can reasonably be found with lyrical passages like that at the end of the third act of 'The Piccolomini'. Schiller found the soliloquy at hand as an accepted convention of the stage and he converted it occasionally into a lyric monologue, as Goethe had done before him in 'Iphigenie' and 'Faust'. This looked toward opera, toward Romanticism, toward a mixture of types; but it was effective as a mode of portraying states of feeling. The lyric monologue is of course out of tune with the modern naturalistic ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... guests had reached the stage of being apparently all lost in their own thoughts, and the conversation had been practically reduced to a disjointed monologue on music by Lady Everard, when the lights began to be lowered, and the ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... "April," a brief lyric of marked merit, highly expressive of the season. "Writing Poetry," an essay by Dora M. Hepner, is a clear and tasteful analysis of the poet's art and inspiration. "The Norwegian Recruit," a dialect monologue by Maurice W. Moe, is the leading feature of this issue. This exquisite bit of humor, recited by Mr. Moe at the United's 1913 convention, is a sketch of rare quality. "The Amateur Press," now firmly ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... monologue the machine-agent was silent, a dark frown of indecision on his face. As for his wife, she looked as if she had bartered her child's birthright for something that had disagreed with her mental digestion. Jason Wrinkle, however, reflections on the cost of his joke for the moment set aside, seemed ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... This is what cultured people are like. In order to be cultured and not to stand below the level of your surroundings it is not enough to have read "The Pickwick Papers" and learnt a monologue from ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... that, in a place where fungi were so common that, before a given evening two of them sprang up, only he, a stranger in this very fungiferous place, knew a fungus when he saw something like a fungus—if we disregard its quick liquefaction, for instance. It was only a monologue, however: now we have an all-star cast: and they're not only ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... was thus noticed in one of the newspapers of the day, in the column of births:- "Yesterday, at his house in Queen Anne-street, Dr. Busby of a still-born Lucretius." [Bushy's Monologue was parodied by Lord Byron: see Byron's ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... viii, quotes the last two words of the Preface. Was it from the same source that he caught up the words 'Balmy sunny islets, islets of the blest and the intelligible' which he uses to illustrate the lucid intervals in Coleridge's monologue? ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Mr. Alcott in Andover, it is true, but we did not look upon him exactly through Mr. Emerson's marine-glass; and, though the Professor did his hospitable best to sustain his end of the conversation, it swayed off gracefully into monologue. We listened deferentially while the philosopher pronounced Bronson Alcott the greatest mind of our day—I think he said the greatest since Plato. He was capable of it, in moments of his own exaltation. I thought I detected a twinkle in my father's blue eye; but ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... the body of a German lieutenant, the head and arms of which were hanging into our trench. The man who had cut off the foot used to sit and carry on a one-sided conversation with this officer, used to argue and point out why Germany was in the wrong. During all of this monologue, I never heard him say anything out of the way, anything that would have hurt the officer's feelings had he been alive. He was square all right, wouldn't even take advantage of a ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... author of 'Typee,' etc. He lives in a spacious farmhouse about two miles from Pittsfield, a weary walk through the dust. But it as well repaid. I introduced myself as a Hawaiian-American, and soon found myself in full tide of talk, or rather of monologue. But he would not repeat the experiences of which I had been reading with rapture in his books. In vain I sought to hear of Typee and those paradise islands, but he preferred to pour forth his philosophy and his theories of life. The shade of Aristotle arose like a cold mist between myself ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... was printed 'Bothwell,' a poetic monologue on Mary Stuart's lover. Of Aytoun's humorous sketches, the most humorous are 'My First Spec in the Biggleswades,' and 'How We Got Up the Glen Mutchkin Railway'; tales written during the railway mania of 1845, which treat of the folly and dishonesty of its promoters, and show many typical Scottish ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... confidences, nor did Ruth bestow them. But Hilda succeeded in making Ruth feel that she was trustworthy, that she offered her friendship sincerely.... That she was an individual to depend on if need came for dependence. They talked. At first Hilda carried on a monologue. Gradually Ruth became more like her sincere, calm self, and she met Hilda's advances without reservation.... When Hilda left her at her home both girls carried away a sense of possessing something ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... of wolves occurred in it. Johnson fell into a reverie upon wild beasts, and, whilst Reynolds and Langton were discussing something, he broke out, "Pennant tells of bears." What Pennant told is unknown. The company continued to talk, whilst Johnson continued his monologue, the word "bear" occurring at intervals, like a word in a catch. At last, when a pause came, he was going on: "We are told that the black bear is innocent, but I should not like to trust myself with him." Gibbon ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... this Mr. Willmott was carrying on an equally impassioned but much slower monologue on his conception of the character of Cyrano de Bergerac, which he said he intended to produce. "Cyrano," he said, "has been maligned by Coquelin. Coquelin is a great artist, but he did not understand Cyrano. Cyrano ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... a remarkable talker. A single speech of his has been known to change an entire vote in Parliament. Unlike Coleridge, he did not indulge in monologue, but showed to finest advantage in debate. His power of memory was wonderful. He often startled an opponent by quoting from a given chapter and page of a book. He repeated long passages from Paradise Lost; ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... publish or not (remember) remains to be considered—that is a different side of the subject. If I do, it may be in a magazine—or—but this is another ground. And then, I have in my head to associate with the version, a monodrama of my own,—not a long poem, but a monologue of AEschylus as he sate a blind exile on the flats of Sicily and recounted the past to his own soul, just before the eagle cracked his great massy skull ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... sat back as the Cow unreeled a fifteen minute monologue which repeated both sides of the conversation including the order to make ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... called so? And going off to her bedroom with her dinner, no one downstairs being good enough to eat with her. I must say it isn't what I'm used to, and me lived with the first families. Quite the first." Mrs. Atkins ceased her weary monologue and gazed on the family with conscious virtue. She was dressed in dull black silk, and looked ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... recitals, such as he must often have heard from the improvisatori of his native island. Bourrienne states that Bonaparte's realism required darkness and daggers for the full display of his gifts, and that the climax of his dramatic monologue was not seldom enhanced by the screams of the ladies, a consummation which gratified rather than perturbed ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... King, dismally in again at a nod from him. Whenever she did appear Prince John hovered about, looking tormented; afterwards the pock-marked Cluniac might be heard lecturing her on theology and the soul's business in passionless monologue. It was very far from gay. As for her, Richard believed her melancholy mad; he himself grew fretful, irritable, most quarrelsome. Thus it was that he first plundered and then ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... circle of boxes—sitting and standing, gray-haired, bald and pomaded heads—were intently following the movements of a slim actress making wry faces and in an unnatural voice reading a monologue. Some one hissed when the door was opened, and two streams of cold and warm air were wafted ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... this apparently irrational and arbitrary style of composition he displays a harmonious beauty, never losing himself in description, but giving only such a sketch of scenes and persons as does not hinder the flowing movement of the narrative. Still less does he lose himself in conversation and monologue, but maintains the lofty privilege of the true epos, by transforming all into living narrative. His pathos does not lie in the words, not even in the famous twentythird and following cantos, where Roland's madness ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... hear in a monologue. Whoever sets man or woman talking for us does us a service. To be a good listener is to be astute. When anybody talks in our hearing, we become readers of pages in his soul. He thinks himself talking about things; while we, if wise, know he is giving ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... must be conceived as an active intercourse between the worshipper and a Person other than himself, who is the object of his worship. It is not a soliloquy—what the Germans expressively call a Selbstgespraech, or "self-talk"; it is not a monologue, but a dialogue; it is not a mere contemplation, but addressed to Someone who is thought of as willing to listen and able to answer. As Sabatier has well said, "Prayer is religion in act; that is, prayer is real religion." Wherever men believe in a personal God, as distinct ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... advanced, the others remaining back in the semi-darkness, they all heard Jack Jepson break into a sort of monologue. He was talking to himself, in ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... quite indicated that it was he and not Madame Barenna who was upset. The lady consented, and proceeded to what she took to be a consultation, which in reality was a monologue. During this she imparted a vast deal of information, and received none in return, which is the habit of voluble people, and renders them exceedingly dangerous to ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... life had been an episode which began and ended in Paris. What a contrast to the being of a few years before, of whom it is written: "He was no longer on the earth; he was in an empyrean of golden clouds and perfumes; his imagination, so full of exquisite beauty, seemed engaged in a monologue ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... Siegfried Sassoon, on its publication, became one of the leading young poets of England. The book begins with the long monologue of a retired huntsman, a piece of remarkable characterisation. It continues with all the best of the 'paradise' poems, including the loveliest in 'Discoveries' and 'Morning Glory.' There are also the 'bridge' poems between his old manner ...
— Counter-Attack and Other Poems • Siegfried Sassoon
... up a brisk monologue as she opened one of her suit cases and began hauling out its contents. Miriam made a gesture of hopeless resignation behind the ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... interlocutor were his equal both in position and intelligence; yet without a suspicion of pedantry, and with such complete adaptation of style and topic that his talk charmed the humblest as it did the highest that listened to it. His conversation was not a monologue; if he had the larger share, it was simply because his hearers were only too glad that it should be so; he would listen with something like deference to very ordinary talk, as if the mere fact of the speaker being one of the same company ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... in introducing such a large ingredient of this buffoon element—taken from what I called the Muenchhausen portion of the old legend. Patriotic German commentators sometimes deny that Goethe knew Marlowe's play (though he knew Shakespeare well), but I think there is no doubt that the opening monologue of Marlowe's play inspired the more famous, though scarcely finer, opening scene of Goethe's drama. 'Theology, adieu!' Faustus exclaims, taking up a ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... thumping and kneading him on the slab, Tanno went on talking a cheerful monologue of frothy gossip. I asked ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... up her sleeves, put the toast in the oven and the ham in the frying pan, with much the same grimness with which she had sat the night before listening to Mrs. Boyd's monologue. If this was the way they looked after Willy Cameron, no wonder he was thin and pale. She threw out the coffee, which she suspected had been made by the time-saving method of pouring water on last night's grounds, ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... [520] No monologue of Euripides that has been preserved bears the faintest resemblance to this specimen which. Aeschylus pretends to ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... had moved in the Colonel's face during Mr. Losely's jovial monologue. But when Jasper had bowed himself out, Mrs. Haughton, courtesying, and ringing the bell for the footman to open the street-door, the man of the world (and, as a man of the world, Colonel Morley was consummate) again raised those small slow eyes,—this time ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... upon the fence, a plaintive monologue without words: the boy's thoughts were adjectives, but they were expressed by a running film of pictures in his mind's eye, morbidly prophetic of the hideosities before him. Finally he spoke aloud, with such ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... Mr. Gaius Small, and, although he stammered, he loved the sound of his own voice. The demand for a dozen oranges furnished Gaius with subject sufficient for a lengthy monologue—"forty drawls and ten stutters to every ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... down a bore, although some of those in the strictly university circles did at times become troublesomely learned in conversation. However, this was esteemed "old fogy-ism" by the younger men like Serviss, who alluded to "the days of the professional monologue" with smiling contempt. Conversation with them was a means of diversion, not of enlightenment as to ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... "Christopher Columnibus." I recently ran across a postcard a college mate sent Carl from Italy years ago, with a picture of a statue of Columbus on it. On the reverse side the friend had written, quoting from Carl's monologue: "'Boom Joe!' says the king; which is being interpreted, 'I see you first.' 'Wheat cakes,' says Chris, which is the Egyptian for 'Boom Joe'"). He loved football, track,—he won three gold medals broad-jumping,—canoeing, swimming, billiards,—he ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... between the casuists. This salon had its talkers and speakers, those who tyrannized over the audience and those who charmed it, those who shot off fireworks and those who prepared them, those who had made a symphony of conversation and those who made of it a monologue and had no flashes of silence. They did not follow fashion there—they rather made it; in art and literature as in toilets, smallness follows the fashion, pretension exaggerates it, taste ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... and her observations as to the rector's dog, and little Adey's personal opinion of Elisha. And so on, in a manner not unfamiliar to fond parents. Mrs. Rabbet said toward the end that it was a most enjoyable chat, although to me it appeared to partake rather of the nature of a monologue. It consumed perhaps a half-hour; and when we two at last relinquished Mrs. Rabbet to her husband's charge, it was with a feeling not altogether ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... stream flowed, until Mollie felt dazed and bewildered. Mrs Wolff evidently felt it such a treat to have a listener that she was capable of continuing for hours at a time, and it was only the sounding of the gong for lunch which brought an end to the monologue. ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... with more whisky and helped the two men in a liberal manner. He abused the teetotal sect with ferocity, as he handed the seltzer, and pouring out a glass of water for himself, was about to resume his monologue, when Cotgrave ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... and sword, on a chair in one corner, after which he deliberately rearranged his luxuriant ringlets in front of a Venetian mirror, and then, assuming his most graceful and telling pose, began pouring forth in dulcet tones the following monologue: "But where, oh! where, is the divinity of this Paradise? Here is the temple indeed, but I see not the goddess. When, oh! when, will she deign to emerge from the cloud that veils her perfect form, and reveal herself ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... was the breath of his nostrils. He had the Scottish chariness of bestowing praise or approval, and could surely give Emerson the sense of being met which he demanded. Writing was irksome to Muir as it was to Carlyle, but in monologue, in an attentive company, he shone; not a great thinker, but a mind strongly characteristic. His philosophy rarely rose above that of the Sunday school, but his moral fiber was very strong, and his wit ready and keen. In conversation and ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... His monologue seemed to interest his wife apart from the satirical point it had for themselves. "You ought to get Mr. Fulkerson to let you work some of these New York sights up for Every Other Week, Basil; you could ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... in a pathetic monologue, for none of us felt exactly at liberty to put in our own oars, and he could find relief only in his incoherent talk. It had been a needless and unkind thing and the men almost unanimously disapproved of it. Why indeed ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... of them on the wire with all the stuff we had over!" went on with his monologue the knight of the collapsed romance, who, not being troubled with fine sensibilities, had no idea of the feelings under ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... Greece the dialogue reflected most truly the intellectual life of the people, and as in the Middle Ages learned literature naturally assumed with the recluse in his monastic cell the form of a long monologue, so with us the lecture places the writer most readily in that position in which he is accustomed to deal with his fellow-men, and to communicate his knowledge to others. It has no doubt certain disadvantages. In a lecture which is meant to be didactic, we have, for the sake of completeness, to ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... sent in for special cakes to tempt him with, showered a host of questions on him about school and games and hobbies. Sir Francis exchanged views on weather, politics, and the coming cricket season with his guest. The latter subject mostly resolved itself into a monologue on the part of the baronet, since cricket held no more interest for Larssen than ninepins; but he listened with polite attention while Sir Francis expounded the chances of the Australian Team (he had been to Lord's that morning to watch them at preliminary practice), and his own pet ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... low whinney, and Maurice, believing that the horse had given an ear to his monologue, laughed. But he flattered himself. The horse whinneyed because he inhaled the faint odor of his kind. He drew down on the rein and settled into a swinging trot, which to Maurice's surprise was faster and easier than the canter. They covered ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... Part of this monologue—a very small part—was Old Dalton's own, repeated over and over, and so kept in mind ever since the more initiative years a decade ago when he first began to think about his age. Another part of the utterance—more particularly that about "movin' on"—consisted ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... minute was needed for his world travel in beautiful fantastic pictures; and yet we lived through all the boy's hopes and ecstasies with him. If we had seen the young sailor in his hammock on the theater stage, he might have hinted to us whatever passed through his mind by a kind of monologue or by some enthusiastic speech to a friend. But then we should have seen before our inner eye only that which the names of foreign places awake in ourselves. We should not really have seen the wonders ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... she had ever listened. From silence, the Premier passed to a remark here and there, thence to a conversation, thence, as the evening went on and they strolled further and further away from the house, into a monologue on his life and aims and hopes. Young man after young man sought her in vain, or, finding the pair, feared to intrude and retired in discontent, while Medland strove to draw the picture of that far-off society whose bringing-near was his goal in public life. She wondered ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... Gayety. "Don't strike me this is exactly the sort of place for one of your moral respectability to be discovered in. Lord! but what would the old man or that infernal prig of a brother of yours say, if they could only see you now? A monologue artist at the Gayety was bad enough, but this, ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... First, he should read the Memoirs of David Home, the famous spiritualist medium with whom Browning came in contact. These Memoirs constitute a more thorough and artistic self-revelation than any monologue that Browning ever wrote. The ghosts, the raps, the flying hands, the phantom voices are infinitely the most respectable and infinitely the most credible part of the narrative. But the bragging, the sentimentalism, the moral and intellectual foppery of the composition is everywhere, ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... must be calm. We must be entirely calm," observed the doctor. "Now," continuing his monologue, "we shall remove the hair from the field of operation. Cleanliness in an operation of this kind is of prime importance. Recent scientific investigations show that the chief danger in operations is from septic poisoning. Yes, ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... aroused from his monologue by the voice of his father, who called him to come at ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... While they are conversing, Rebolledo appears, announced as the Count Fuentes, and a quintet occurs, very slightly constructed, but full of humor. An usher interrupts it by announcing the Queen will have a private audience with the Count Fuentes. While awaiting her, the latter, in a monologue, lets us into the secret that the real crown jewels have been pledged for the national debt, and that he has been employed to make duplicates of them to be worn on state occasions until the real ones ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... is apt to limit itself to monologue; so, while Henry was greatly interested in this odd talk, it left him but ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... well, one paper admitted, but it could never succeed. It was not dramatic of construction. Another admitted that it was a novel and pretty entertainment, a kind of prose poem, a fantasy of the present, but without wide appeal. Others called it a moonshine monologue—that a girl at once so naive and so powerful was impossible. All united in praise of Helen, however, and, as though by agreement, bewailed her desertion of the roles in which she won great renown. "Our advice, given in the friendliest spirit, is this: go back ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... channel of conversation and spoke of the coming round-up, of the poor condition of range stock owing to the severity of the winter; but it was a monologue. For a time the man sat and listened, as if he enjoyed the sound of her voice, contributing nothing to the conversation himself, then suddenly he stirred in his chair and waved a hand to indicate the unimportance ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... that steam up the yacht Corsair and ho for the Riviera! feeling. I want to loaf and indict my soul, as Walt Whittier says. I want to play pinochle with Merry del Val or give a knouting to the tenants on my Tarrytown estates or do a monologue at a Chautauqua picnic in kilts or something summery and outside the line ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... on, "as a monologue artist, you'd certainly have them all backed off the boards. I know a place in New York where you could draw down your two fifty per ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... the weather, and the small gossip of the film world, and a judiciously expurgated sketch of his life since he had last seen her. Marie answered him whenever his monologue required answer, but she was unresponsive, uninterested—bored. Joe twisted his mustache, eyed her aslant and took ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... the end, the monologue was an incoherent discursive medley, now plaintive, now passionate, at times prayerful, then exultant. As he proceeded, he seemed to lose sight of his present aim at doing good in the hope of release from termless life, and become the Jew ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... a small but comfortable armchair, with a small Turkish inlaid coffee and cigarette stand covered with books on one side, and on the other an antique wrought iron fender placed in front of an immense fireplace, and commences placidly the following monologue, which I give as nearly as ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Graham was invited to stand in front of the machine and the tailor muttered some instructions to the crop-haired lad, who answered in guttural tones and with words Graham did not recognise. The boy then went to conduct an incomprehensible monologue in the corner, and the tailor pulled out a number of slotted arms terminating in little discs, pulling them out until the discs were flat against the body of Graham, one at each shoulder blade, one at the elbows, one at the neck and so forth, so that at last there were, ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... the old man's monologue, broken only by courteous, half-articulate interjections on his own part. He knew too well the old feud between their houses, the ambition that had possessed many a Vaufontaine to inherit the dukedom of Bercy, and the Duke's ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... no sooner started than some question arose which not only interested but excited Mr. Gladstone. He at once entered upon an eloquent monologue on the subject. There was no possibility of interruption by any one, and Mr. Lincoln had no chance whatever to interpose a remark. When the clock was nearing eleven Labouchere interrupted this torrent of talk by saying: "Mr. Gladstone, it is now eleven; it is ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... the Greek nodded, or his dark face lighted; and once or twice he spoke. But for the most part it was a rapid monologue, ...
— Mr. Achilles • Jennette Lee
... old-fashioned now, but which has so much of truth and beauty that it must again, like Colonial furniture, become our best fashion. These two essays [Footnote: A third essay, "The Mystery of Life," was added to Sesame and Lilies. It is a sad, despairing monologue, and the book might be better off without it.] contain Ruskin's best thought on books and womanly character, and also an outline of his teaching on nature, art and society. If we read Sesame and Lilies in connection with two other ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... disciples of realism who believe that the art of conversation is dead, and that modern people are only capable of addressing each other in one-line sentences. He has the traditional love of the fine speech such as we find it in the ancient poets and historians and dramatists and satirists. He loves a monologue that passes from mockery to regret, that gathers up by the way anecdote and history and essay and foolery, that is half a narrative of things seen and half an irresponsible imagination. He can describe a runaway horse with the farcical realism of the authors of Some Experiences of ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd |
