"Phrasing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which endures long after the singer has lost the power to produce a pure tone or to contrive accurate phrasing and so makes it possible for artists to hold their places on the stage long after their voices have become partially defective or, indeed, have actually departed. It is knowledge of style that accounts for the long careers ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... young lady in his arms for a matter of twenty-odd miles was not as alluring to him as it might have been to another, for he was a slight young man, only a little while out of West Point. But orders were orders, and he gave Frances to understand that in diplomatic and polite phrasing. ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... to the talk at the next table, because the orchestra was quiet and the conversation unrestrained; then, too, a nautical phrasing caught my ear and aroused my attention. For I had been a lifelong student of nautical matters. A side glance showed me the speaker, a white-haired, sunburned old fellow in immaculate evening dress. With him at the table in the restaurant were other similarly clad men, evidently ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... In 1890, a brilliant-phrasing Socialist, named William Lane, set Queensland workers' minds aflame with his Utopian dreams of the ideal socialistic life that could be lived on a large tract of country offered them in the heart of South America. ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... specie the reign of Queen Victoria. Before we appreciate Tennyson's real place in literature, we must frankly recognize the fact that his muse wore a crinoline. The great mass of his work bears its date stamped upon it as obviously almost as a copy of The Times. How topical, both in mood and phrasing, are such lines as those ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... and by no means a small one, to go into this matter of phrasing which I am now discussing. Even in such a book there would doubtless be many points which would be open to assaults for sticklers in psychological technology. I am not issuing a propaganda or writing a thesis ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... been the purpose of the committee to frame an amendment which should protect whites as well as blacks and operate in behalf of corporations as well as individuals. In other words, Conkling was making the interesting contention that his committee had had a far wider and deeper purpose in mind in phrasing the Amendment than had been commonly understood and that the demand for the protection of the negro from harsh southern legislation had been utilized to answer the request of business for federal assistance. ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... all these animated and inspired the glowing genius of Spenser. His rhythm is singularly sweet and beautiful. Hazlitt says: "His versification is at once the most smooth and the most sounding in the language. It is a labyrinth of sweet sounds." Nothing can exceed the wealth of Spenser's phrasing and expression; there seems to be no limit to its flow. He is very fond of the Old-English practice of alliteration or head-rhyme— "hunting the letter," as it was called. ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... IV. in Part II.) should have been framed in what is really nothing but a very poor "sensation" novel, with a moral or lesson which is poorer still. Poetry is not bound to be unintermittingly poetic; there must be flat passages,—but such second-hand phrasing as "a war in defence of the right"—"that an iron tyranny now should bend or cease"—"a cause that I felt to be pure and true"—"a giant liar"—is intolerable in a poem of which the climax is so high-pitched. Better the merest conversational familiarity, ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... launch was laughing except the captain, who was swearing quietly; but the line of negroes marched on down to the wharf- boat with the unshakable dignity of black folk in an important position. They came singing an old negro spiritual. The women's sopranos thrilled up in high, weird phrasing against an organ-like ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... she set forth were her own or somebody else's, I could see that she relished uttering them. Also, that she relished the euphony and felicity of her phrasing, which was certainly her own. Whether she spoke from conviction or not, one thing seemed indisputable: the atmosphere surrounding the books and authors she named had a genuine fascination for her. There was a naive sincerity in her rhetoric, and ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... mingling in music of voice and skill and feeling which weave an enchanted spell. Those who have known the troubadour Riccardo have doubtless heard what are called greater voices, artists who hold for a triumphant moment the hazardous peak of the high C, whose roulades and phrasing are exquisite and admirable. But the singer whom they wish to hear, whose singing is a part of life, like the beauty of flowers and the dawn, is the singing of the troubadour Riccardo. It is so with Cecilia's playing, and it is impossible to suppose ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... those of proper names) are reproduced without change or comment. The use of sic and of square brackets is reserved to indicate evident slips of the pen, obviously incorrect, unclear, or incomplete phrasing and punctuation, and my conjectures in ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... Theology of Civilisation, p. 61. It would, of course, have been easy to give references from other authors; but there is an extraordinary family-likeness between the writers of this School, extending down to the very phrasing of their ideas. ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... interests or his personal well-being. One of his chiefest oppositions, according to his daughter, was to telling the friends or relatives of any stricken person that there was no hope. Instead, he would use every delicate shade of phrasing and tone in imparting the fateful words, in order if possible to give less pain. "I remember in the case of my father," said one of his friends, "when the last day came. Knowing the end was near, he was compelled to make some preliminary discouraging remark, and I bent over with my ear against ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... clearly-thought meaning. Most of the subsidiary matter is foisted in with monstrous clumsiness. Yet Beowulf has what we do not find, out of Homer, in the other early epics. It has occasionally an unforgettable grandeur of phrasing. And it has other and perhaps deeper poetic qualities. When the warriors are waiting in the haunted hall for the coming of the marsh-fiend Grendel, they fall into untroubled sleep; and the poet adds, with Homeric restraint: "Not one of them thought that ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie
... partiality and prejudice, we will at once state that we believe it possible for a man to be singular in his manner and quaint in his mode of phrasing, and yet to utter an opinion in some one direction which, if neither novel nor interesting, nor even tenable, shall yet have the one redeeming merit of representing a conceivable point of view. But when a man begins by stating that he belongs to the Democrats ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... Mail's praiseworthy efforts to instruct applicants for situations in the correct phrasing of letters to prospective employers, we propose to supply a similar long-felt want, and give a little advice as to the kind of letter it is desirable to enclose ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 14, 1914 • Various
... The phrasing has a peculiar quaintness, old fashioned, perhaps, but with a grace and dignity all its own. Through the formal, stately sentences the hidden sweetness creeps like the crimson vine upon the autumn leaves. ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... first-night. In the height of the Season it was not easy to get together a goodly selection of guests at short notice, and Francesca had gladly fallen in with Serena's suggestion of bringing with her Stephen Thorle, who was alleged, in loose feminine phrasing, to "know all about" tropical Africa. His travels and experiences in those regions probably did not cover much ground or stretch over any great length of time, but he was one of those individuals who can describe a continent ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... has been attempted has been accomplished; and the best of it is that the auditor at the end of a large hall experiences this sense of satisfaction quite as fully as the persons sitting in the first row of seats. Without good attacks there can be no intellectual singing or speaking, no broad phrasing, and much more that all should aim at who come before the public, and which listeners have, indeed, a right to expect. But just because many persons feel this to be true, they make serious errors in attempting to attain the result; they ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... had lived so long in England that he spoke without trace of accent, though he sometimes gave an unEnglish twist to the phrasing of a sentence, but his quick emotion and the simplicity with which he made no effort to conceal it stamped him unmistakably ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... startlingly dramatic; but such composition, with him, seems easy, and while the descriptions are marvelously well established in his stories, the reverse is true of Flaubert's, which always appear a little veneered. Maupassant's phrasing, however dramatic it may ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... stories of Hermaphroditus and Salmacis (Meta. IV. 285 ff.), and the hunting in Calydon (Meta. VIII. 270 ff.). Ovid is quoted in Latin in three early plays; and even where a translation was available, the phrasing of Shakespeare's allusions sometimes shows knowledge of the original. Most of Ovid had been translated into English before Shakespeare began to write, and Golding's version of the Metamorphoses (1567) was used for the references to the Actaeon myth in A Midsummer-Night's ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... on the stone walls about him—singly, in bunches, in long, detached wails. The organ yelped and snarled as Truesdale, time routed and accent annihilated, abandoned himself to the expression and the phrasing of the true Italian school. Two or three passing children paused on the pavement; a park policeman, stationed on the next corner, walked his sedate iron-gray slowly along ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... these meetings, pursuing their own humble duties, indifferent to the follies of fashionable society. The fencing schools flourished—what memories cluster around that odd, strange master of the blade, Spedella, a melancholy enigma of a man, whose art embodied much of the finest shading and phrasing peculiar to himself; from whom even many of Bonaparte's discarded veterans were not above acquiring new technique and temperament! Men in those days were most punctilious about reputation, but permitted a sufficiently ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... the bud—that's Rosemary," said Winnie who scorned to read poetry and often employed poetical fancies in her rather quaint phrasing. "A rose in the bud and a flower of a girl. A temper that blazes, a quick pride that bleeds at a word and a passion for loving that sometimes frightens me. The sick and the helpless and the young—Rosemary ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... speaking the words of haste, makes her audience wait to hear them. Nothing more incongruous than Juliet's harry of phrase and the actress's leisure of phrasing. None act, none speak, as though there were such a thing as impulse in a play. To drop behind is the only idea of arriving. The nurse ceases to be absurd, for there is no one readier with a reply ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... tale was of extreme delicacy in both sentiment and design. It was a little fanciful, a little elaborate, but of an ephemeral poetry. It was all "atmosphere," and its success depended upon the minutest precision of phrasing and the nicest harmony between idea and word. There was much in mere effect of words; and more important than mere plot was the feeling produced by the balancing of phrases and the cadence ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... could lift its flame toward Heaven. And even during its suppression the careful student may see little flickers of the flame—little wreathings of smoke—escaping here and there. Veiled in mystic phrasing, and trimmed with poetic figure, many allusions may be seen among the writings of the centuries. And during the past two hundred years the revival in the subject has been constant, until at the close of the Nineteenth Century, and the beginning of the Twentieth Century, ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... of water called Lecco; to the right there lies the queen of lakes, the crown of Italy, a corn-flower sapphire known as Como. Over and about it—this terrace—poets have raved and tousled their neglected locks in vain to find the perfect phrasing; novelists have come and gone and have carried away peace and inspiration; and painters have painted it from a thousand points of view, and perhaps are painting it from another thousand this very minute. It is the Place of Honeymoons. Rich lovers come and idle there; and lovers of modest ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... worry," he said to Tira, in the phrasing he unconsciously adopted to her. "Everything's going to be exactly as you want it. Only," he added whimsically—a tone she had never heard in her life before—"if I could have my say for a few hours, it would be to find you here when I ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... difficult than the silence; all the while, he told me, his thoughts were going back to the scene in the bath-room. He had no security that it wouldn't be repeated and with a far different conclusion. He had a passing impulse to ask Jannie to call off her subliminal thugs; the phrasing is my own. There was no doubt in his disordered mind that it was she who, at the instigation of the elder Meekers, was trying to remove him in the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... very much opposed to the general theory of acting, and the story is told with great gusto of a boy who was sent to see Garrick, we believe, and who was greatly delighted with the fine phrasing and swagger of a supernumerary, but could not understand why people applauded such an ordinary bumpkin as Garrick, who did not differ a whit from all the country boobies he had ever seen. It is insisted that the actor must ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... advanced of you, that I find myself obliged to make a change. Your father particularly, Richard Bultitude," he added, turning suddenly upon the unlucky Paul, "has complained bitterly of the slovenly tone and phrasing of your correspondence; he said very justly that they would disgrace a stable-boy, and unless I could induce you to improve them, he begged he might not be annoyed by them ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... other night. He had saved his dime deliberately, going hungry rather than admit to himself that he was absolutely at the end of his resources. To-morrow he would not especially need that dime. He had a job. He would begin to draw pay. In his own phrasing he would "buy him a square meal and rent him a room somewhere." Upon these two prospects his brain fastened with a leech-like persistency. And yet above anything he had faced in his life he dreaded the job and the room. The inspiration of his flight, the impulse ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... an extract from the prospectus of a Kentucky 'Female College.' Female college sounds well enough; but since the phrasing it in that unjustifiable way was done purely in the interest of brevity, it seems to me that she-college would have been still better—because shorter, and means the same thing: that is, if either phrase means ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... MAGAZINE, and came out in book form in March. From its first published instalment it attracted attention far and wide. A trite enough subject—a girl from a small New Jersey town coming to New York to go on the stage—treated simply, with a peculiar vividness of phrasing and a haunting undertone of sadness in the very inadequacy of its vocabulary, it made ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... naturalness and passion. The objection to the simile in the language of passion was an old note in English criticism (cf. Dennis, Critical Works, I, 424); but the author of the Essay on Wit in condemning glittering strokes and ingenious prodigalities in impassioned literature shows by his phrasing that he is following Father Bouhours (cf. Manlere die Bien Penser, Amsterdam, 1688, pp. 8-9, ...
— Essays on Wit No. 2 • Richard Flecknoe and Joseph Warton
... be no gross phrasing to Milly, in particular, of the probability that if she wasn't so proud she might be pitied with more comfort—more to the person pitying; there could be no spoken proof, no sharper demonstration than the consistently considerate ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... that little enough of this verse is dull: it nearly all has character, a distinct personal flavour in phrasing and motive. Yet this flavour is best known to the public in its development by the first of brilliant young men to be influenced by Mr. Belloc's style, as apart from his ideas. We may pause a moment to examine this point, ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... rivalries of peace; and are not books worth a scrimmage?—books that are all those wonderful things so poetically set forth in a preceding paragraph! Lightly earned, lightly spurned, is the sense, if not the exact phrasing, of an old proverb. There is no telling how we should value many of our possessions if they were more arduously come by: our relatives, our husbands and wives, our presentation poetry from the unpoetical, our invitation-cards to ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... at the clock of the Metropolitan tower. The bronze hand pointed to the stroke of six. As he looked, the first note of the quarter chimes rang out. The car swung the corner and headed down the street. McCarthy stepped forward. The sweet chimes ceased their fourfold phrasing, and the great bell began ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... for much of a voice in a comic song. You don't expect correct phrasing or vocalization. You don't mind if a man does find out, when in the middle of a note, that he is too high, and comes down with a jerk. You don't bother about time. You don't mind a man being two bars in front ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... are very short. They have no preliminary measures, but at once voice the actuating emotion; that done, they come to a close. Although they are so short, they have form and in their structure follow in simple lines the rules of phrasing and motivization taught in our schools. These songs, speaking in general terms, partake more of the character of motifs than of musical compositions. They do not stand alone or apart from the ceremonials or pleasures of which they form an ...
— Indian Games and Dances with Native Songs • Alice C. Fletcher
... with the eyes of April, the hearts of June'" (early spring and early summer would be the more accurate Indian phrasing). ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... of the finest episodes in the great Iliad of India, and, in fact, is hardly surpassed for profound thought, deep feeling, and exquisite phrasing, in the whole literature of India. Telang holds that the song is at least as old as the 4th century, and is inclined to regard it as an original part of the epic. According to most scholars, however, the "Divine Song" was added at ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... bitterly having lost control of himself. Something in the phrasing of her sentence chilled him. He knew the fear of embarking upon an unknown ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... old regime went tottering, talking, quoting, jesting to its fall. Read Franklin's charming and wise letter to Madame Brillon about giving too much for the whistle. It is the perfection of well-bred humor: a humor very American, very Franklinian, although its theme and tone and phrasing might well have been envied ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... of Helen Keller's early letters, this to her French teacher is her re-phrasing of a story. It shows how much the gift of writing is, in the early stages of its development, the ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... adverse criticism of her position always caused her defense to collapse. So she collected all the material she could get on the subject of personal responsibility and sacrifice. Her husband's brilliant way of phrasing became a delight to her. But always, as she listened, vague doubts arose in ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... chalk to fumble in his fingers, and once he had been stricken to impotence by their hiding his supply. He came and looked under his grey eyebrows at the rising tiers of young fresh faces, and spoke with his accustomed studied commonness of phrasing. "Circumstances have arisen—circumstances beyond my control," he said and paused, "which will debar me from completing the course I had designed. It would seem, gentlemen, if I may put the thing clearly and briefly, that—Man has lived ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... rage on that old man's part; and instead of allaying Pen's renascent desire to see his little conquest again, Warrington's accounts inflamed and angered Pendennis, and made him more anxious than before to set himself right, as he persisted in phrasing it, with Fanny. They arrived at the church door presently; but scarce one word of the service, and not a syllable of Mr. Shamble's sermon, did either of them comprehend, probably—so much was each engaged with his own private speculations. The ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... extravagant but perfectly dignified and diplomatic translation of his master's protests. Where and when, by what instinct, he had assimilated and made his own the grotesque inversions and ponderous sentimentalities of Teutonic phrasing, Paul could not guess; but it was with breathless wonder that he presently became aware that, so perfect and convincing was the old man's style and deportment, not only the simple officials but even the bystanders were profoundly impressed by this farrago of absurdity. A happy word ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... which the male animal is apt to behave inequably. In the language of the estimable Herr Doctor von Herzlich, he will seek those avenues of modification in which the least struggle is required. In the simpler phrasing of Uncle Peter ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... not be burdensome to others in any way; we must not be shocked or offended or disgusted, but tolerate, forgive, welcome, share. We must treat life in an eager, light-hearted way, not ruefully or drearily or solemnly. The old language in which the Gospel comes to us, the formality of the antique phrasing, the natural tendency to make it dignified and hieratic, disguise from us how utterly natural and simple it all is. I do not think that reverence and tradition and awe have done us any more grievous injury than the fact that we have made the Saviour into a figure with ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... distrust of them or by any undervaluing of the high qualities of the true, the beautiful, and the good which the young man brings to it. Let no young man get the idea that the world of society and affairs is "down on him," to borrow the phrasing of the people again. Let him never for a moment feel that this world of experience and present power ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... broadly stressed. Certainly the Abbe Peyreyve had neither the emotion nor the ardor of Lacordaire. He was too much a priest and too little a man. Yet, here and there in the rhetoric of his sermons, flashed interesting effects of large and solid phrasing or touches of ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... SOL. My father, my dear father, Thou call'dst me fondly, but some moments past, Thy gentle child. I call my saint to witness I would be such. To say I love this man Is shallow phrasing. Since man's image first Flung its wild shadow on my virgin soul, It has borne no other reflex. I know well Thou deemest he was forgotten; this day's passion Passed as unused confrontment, and so transient As ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... "luckelesse" in having lost her knights, but "lucky" in the friendship of the Satyrs. Note the Euphuistic phrasing. ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... feast—how gladly we listen to this poet with his serene faith in God, and immortal life, and the soul's unending development! "Hope hard in the subtle thing that's Spirit," he cries in the Prologue to "Pacchiarotto": and this, in manifold phrasing, is his leit-motif, his fundamental idea, in unbroken line from the "Pauline" of his twenty-first to the "Asolando" of his seventy-sixth year. This superb phalanx of faith—what shall prevail ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... as he thought of her phrasing,—"a man like yourself." She did not know how near to ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... his friend contained the first personal note which had come from his lips. Barbara did not answer immediately, and Steve thought that she was phrasing her own reply. He could not know that she wanted a moment in which to contemplate the little hint of diffidence in his voice and to wonder at herself for not having wondered before if he had not, many, many ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... humanity, their likeness to ourselves, the mighty flood-tide of tolerant human sympathy on which they are floated into the safe haven of our hearts. With delightful understanding, Charles Dudley Warner writes: "After all, there is something about a boy I like." Dickens, using the phrasing for a wider application, might have said: "After all, there is something about men and women I like!" It was thus no accident that he elected to write of the lower middle classes; choosing to depict the misery of the poor, their ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... of the bottle had gone by the sententiousness of my friend's phrasing, the slight turgidity, so ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... millions of dollars. The fortunes of not a few railroad and industrial magnates were instantly and hugely increased by this fraudulent transaction. [Footnote: "Fraudulent transaction," House Ex. Doc. 47, Part iv, Forty-sixth Congress, Third Session, speaks of the phrasing of the act as a mere subterfuge for despoilment; that the act was passed specifically "for the benefit of capitalists," and "that fraud was used in sneaking it through Congress."] Hundreds of millions of dollars in capitalist bonds and stock, representing in effect mortgages ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... and nettles, while in contrast to these stood some modern stones of polished granite. The inscriptions on these stones were worded differently from those places farther south. The familiar words "Sacred to the memory of" did not appear, and the phrasing appeared rather in the nature of a testimonial to the benevolence of the bereft. We copied two ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... body, a perfect bearing—all these qualities combined, and many others which we forget, left the auditor free to enjoy the pleasure of listening without having his attention diverted by fatiguing gymnastics. Kalkbrenner's manner of phrasing was somewhat lacking in expression and communicative warmth, but the style was always noble, true, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... services were rendered by the committee of detail, which early in August put into orderly and connected form the conclusions which the convention had reached. It was the committee on unfinished business which suggested the method finally adopted of electing the President. In its final form and phrasing the Constitution is the work of Gouverneur Morris, who prepared the report of the ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... makes his questions clear and definite so that they can not be misunderstood. That this is not always accomplished is proved by the fact that a child who is unable to answer a question when it is put in one form may answer it perfectly when it is asked in different phrasing. The teacher always needs to make certain that the question is fully comprehended, for it is evident that an answer cannot exceed the understanding of the ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... chairman was wont to say cheerily. Ten days after the opening of the session Douglas reported from his committee a joint resolution for the admission of Texas, "on an equal footing with the original states in all respects whatever."[209] There was a certain pleonasm about this phrasing that revealed the hand of the chairman: the simple statement must be reinforced both for legal security and for rhetorical effect. Six days later, after but a single speech, the resolution went to a third reading and was passed by a large majority.[210] ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... afflicted with a nervousness or stiffness of style that will make the work difficult of perusal, and so lessen its power to hold the reader. One of the first requisites for this desired ease is a lightness of phrasing which is at once a matter of thought and of rhetorical construction. Try to avoid heaviness and austerity of thought as much as you would similar qualities in writing. Get at the lighter, brighter, perhaps more frivolous side of things; do not take your work too seriously, ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... It was not outside the reasonable that Ruth should have had possession of this old document, in which a Ruth of that far-distant day had accepted a member of his own household. She might have chosen to answer him by this clear enigma, but a sense of solemnity in the phrasing of the letter made him hope his guess untrue. Desperate mysteries ask naturally for desperate guesses, and Reuben guessed right and left, but the mystery remained as desperate as ever. His thoughts so harried him that at last, though it was late for Heydon Hay, he determined to go ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... cannot be said that any psychological observations of the fool's or of the rich man's mind are recorded here. If I sift those maxims more carefully, I cannot find more than two score which, stripped of their picturesque phrasing, could really enter into that world system of naive psychology. And yet even this figure is still too high. Of those forty, most are after all epigrams, generalizations of some chance cases, exaggerations of a bit of truth, or expressions of a mood of anger, of love, of class ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... down on the dead with a scowling face. "Curse him—curse him eternally. Who would have guessed that this fool, this phrasing fool, would have spoiled our plans? Curse his conscience and his honour, and God pity him for a fool! I must return to my troops, for this is no place to linger in." The man saw his work of years spoiled in a night, and all by the agency of a single ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... quote from an old English writer on the subject of the use of the crystal. I do this realizing that sometimes a particular student will get more from one point of view, than from another—some particular phrasing will seem to reach his understanding, where others fail. The directions of the English authority ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... observe everything; be ready to describe to me the locality, the accessories—how shall I say it?—the mise en scene. Then, at my own time, at my own hour, under circumstances of my own choosing, I will go to them. I will present myself—I will appear before them!" said the Baroness, this time phrasing her idea ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... the first chorus of Israel in Egypt, except as the treatment of a phrase of chorale or canto fermo? Again, to return to the 16th century, what are the hymns of Palestrina but figured chorales? In what way, except in the lack of symmetry in the Gregorian phrasing, do they differ from the contemporary setting by Orlando di Lasso, also a Roman Catholic, of the German chorale Vater unser im Himmelreich? In modern times the use of German chorales, as in Mendelssohn's oratorios and organ-sonatas, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... The phrasing of the edict was ambiguous, as Madison indicated. Notably, while neutral vessels having on board merchandise neutral in property, but British in origin, were to be seized when voluntarily entering a French port, it was not clear whether they were for the same reason to be arrested ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... forgotten among the numerous works of the Elizabethan age, and Otway had been only the compiler of fantastic odes."[157] A final plea, in favor of the stage as a democratic agency—though this of course is not Scott's phrasing—seems slightly unusual for him, although not essentially out of character. "The entertainment," he says, "which is the subject of general enjoyment, is of a nature which tends to soften, if not to level, the distinction of ranks."[158] In another mood he admitted the greater likelihood ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... from it certain fundamental principles upon which I have largely based the cultivation of my own memory and mentality, and for which I can never be sufficiently thankful. Then I desired to be a public speaker. I became a "hobbyist" on pronunciation, enunciation, purity of voice, phrasing and getting the thought of my own mind in the best and quickest possible way into the minds of others. For years I kept a small book in which I jotted down every word, its derivation and full meaning with which I was not familiar. I ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... early, for her sleep had been light and troubled. She dressed hastily and sat down to compose a note which could be altered slightly in case she found some one better than the half-breed; but before she was half through the phrasing she heard a slight disturbance below her window and a muttering in guttural tones from a strange voice. Glancing hastily out, she saw some Indians below, talking with one of the men, who was shaking his head and motioning to them that they must go on, that this was no place for them to ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... voice. Wagner's interminable dissonances were insupportable. That these two composers imagine that to sing is simply to degoiser the note; but the art of singing, or technic was considered by them to be secondary and insignificant Phrasing or any sort of finesse was superfluous. The orchestra must be all powerful. "If Wagner gets the upper hand," Rossini continued, "as he is sure to do, for people will run after the New, then what will ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... subtle phrasing of the second line this poem is noteworthy because it is cast in the classic form. All the best Limericks are about a young man, or else an old one, who said some short sharp monosyllable in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... the physiological side, the law of habit as set forth in the definition of association in the preceding section includes all the laws of association. In different phrasing we may say: (1) Neurone groups accustomed to acting together have the tendency to work in unison. (2) The more frequently such groups act together the stronger will be the tendency for one to throw the other into action. Also, (3) the more intense the ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... "I am glad you feel so, even if I don't deserve it." Then he steadied sharply and became practical. "So far, we've put it through, one way or the other," he went on. "Still, if I go in for the ministry," and his mother winced at the bald worldliness of his phrasing; "I shall have a year and a half more at college, and then three years of divinity school. We can do it, I suppose. For a matter of fact, I ought to be able to put it through alone, without a cent from you; but is it quite worth while? According to Professor Mansfield, ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... but deeply touching, and told with the beauty of phrasing and the deep and subtle sympathy of the ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... produce from his files a collection of letters full of phrasing so vague and inconsequential that only his business instincts and knowledge of the situation enable him to interpret it. Any lawyer could give numberless instances where an inability to write clear and simple English has caused litigation without end. Indeed, the bar is largely supported ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... pleasant tale of some worthless, phrasing Frenchman, who was taxed with ingratitude: "Il faut savoir garder l'independance du coeur," cried he. I own I feel with him. Gratitude without familiarity, gratitude otherwise than as a nameless element in a friendship, is ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with a quaint, cowpunchery phrasing that caused the woman to take a second look at him. And, since Andy Green would look good to any woman capable of recognizing—and appreciating—a real man when she saw him, she smiled and said it didn't ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... is au fond that of many a comedy of to-day: that the situations and phrasing in which she presents her amorous intrigues and merry cuckoldoms do not conform with modern exposition of these themes we also show yet would not name, is but our surface gloss of verbal reticence; we hint, point, and suggest, where she spoke out broad words, frank and ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... Her excitement had been growing ever since she learned the visitor's name and, although her husband did not notice the peculiar phrasing of ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... was founded by two mighty aristocracies of intellect, to whom the religions of their day were, as they are to us, nothing but more or less graceful fairy-tales.[4] We know that many of the greatest men the world ever saw, while phrasing their relation to the "deus absconditus" in various ways, were utterly free from that penitential, supplicatory abjectness which is the mark of Asian salvationism. And though of course the conscious filiation ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... masters of harmony, can be worth little. The unbiased listener is likely to assure us that clamorous contradiction is precisely what the aggregate of poets' speaking amounts to, but we shall be slow to acknowledge as much. Have we been merely the dupe of pretty phrasing when we felt ourselves insured against discord by the testimony of Keats? ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... to attempt to make oneself into a brilliant talker, because the qualities needed—humour, quickness, the power of seeing unexpected connections, picturesque phrasing, natural charm, sympathy, readiness, and so forth—are things hardly attainable by effort. But much can be done by perseverance; and it is possible to form a deliberate habit of conversation by determining that however much one may be indisposed to talk, however unpromising one's companions may ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... odd," he insisted, "but somehow you're such a slip of a boy—" His voice grew meditative and he recurred to his native trick of phrasing, as he always did when ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... the easiest to imitate is Addison. First, we should note the old-fashioned phrasing and choice of words, and perhaps translate Addison into simple, idiomatic, modern English, altering as little as possible. We note that the letter offered by Addison is purposely filled with all the faults of rhetoric which we never find in his own writing. Addison's humorous imitation ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... May within the Twins received the sun. In May the sun is in the sign of the zodiac known as Gemini, or the Twins. Dryden here copies a favorite phrasing of Chaucer, though not used by him in ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... tea, fudges, chocolate, and creamed oysters, visits to the circus, the menagerie, the vaudeville, and the multitude of side-shows. "Side-show," so the posters announced, was the designation of "a bewildering variety of elegant one-act specialties." Mary Brooks was very proud of that phrasing. ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... it will be remembered that in reporting this person's speeches I am making an earnest effort to set them down word for word in all their terrific peculiarities. I mean to say, I would not be held accountable for his phrasing, and if I corrected his speech, as of course the tendency is, our identities might become confused. I hope this will be understood when I report him as saying things in ways one doesn't word them. I mean to say that it should not be thought that I would say them ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... with bringing her up. That was Marilla's exclusive duty; if it had been his he would have been worried over frequent conflicts between inclination and said duty. As it was, he was free to, "spoil Anne"—Marilla's phrasing—as much as he liked. But it was not such a bad arrangement after all; a little "appreciation" sometimes does quite as much good as all the conscientious "bringing up" in ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... characteristic energies zealously into the acquirement of the classical learning proffered him at Eton; but a fine scholarship, great possession though it be, was not the only gain of his Eton years. Here, says Murphy in his formal eighteenth-century phrasing, young Fielding had "the advantage of being early known to many of the first people in the kingdom, namely Lord Lyttelton, Mr Fox, Mr Pitt, Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, and the ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... inner life of music, still less of child nature. Manifold perplexities arise, and faltering through these the pupil acquires a halting use of the musical vocabulary, with other bad habits equally hard to correct. A constant repetition of false notes, wrong phrasing, irregular accents, faulty rhythms and a meaningless jumble of notes dulls the outer ear and deadens the inner tone-sense. Where there is genius, or decided talent, no obstacle can wholly bar the way to music. Otherwise, it ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... bebadged and beribboned bosoms of his illustrious compatriots heaved with emotion; their faces—or such parts of their faces as were visible above the whiskerline—flushed with enthusiasm, and most vociferously they applauded his masterly phrasing and his tracing-out of the evolution of the tango, all the way from its Genesis, as it were, to its Revelation. I judge the revelation particularly appealed to them—that part of it ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb |
