"Extemporaneous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mint, wintergreen, sassafras,—the least part carries the flavor of the whole. Is there one indifferent or equivocal or unsympathizing drop of blood in him? Where he is at all, he is entirely,—nothing extemporaneous; his most casual word seems to have lain in pickle a long time, and is saturated through and through with the Emersonian brine. Indeed, so pungent and penetrating is his quality that even his quotations seem ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... was silence in the meeting-house. Then the voice of another preacher rose in the universal prayer, "Our Father, which art in heaven." Every extemporaneous prayer in the Church of the Brethren is complemented by the model prayer the Master ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... a ragged fellow of mechanical aspect, in a tattered black doublet and an old straw hat, ascended the pulpit. Opening a sacred volume which he found there, he began to deliver an extemporaneous and coarse caricature of a monkish sermon. Some of the bystanders applauded, some cried shame, some shouted "long live the beggars!" some threw sticks and rubbish at the mountebank, some caught him by the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... doubtless a pleasure, and a help too, to read the good books of good men; but there are many good men who write good books, and he is among the few who cannot. He has suffered from ill health, particularly difficulties in the head; and though his gift of extemporaneous speech is remarkable, he cannot compose for printing without labor of the brain which is injurious to him. In this he also resembles Dr. Follen, of whom he reminds me, who ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... degrees that he acquires the ability to utter a phrase, and at last a short sentence, without interruption. Nature prompts the child to this exercise, which from the first attempt, to the full flow of eloquence in the extemporaneous debater, consists simply in commanding and managing one set of ideas in the mind, at the moment the person is giving utterance to others. This cannot be done by the child, but it is gradually acquired by the man; and we shall see in its proper place, that this acquisition is entirely ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... 1688 the breaches which had long divided the great body of English Protestants had seemed to be almost closed. Disputes about Bishops and Synods, written prayers and extemporaneous prayers, white gowns and black gowns, sprinkling and dipping, kneeling and sitting, had been for a short space intermitted. The serried array which was then drawn up against Popery measured the whole of ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that?" he asked. Edward looked at him. Mr. Beecher's face was tense. After a few moments he said: "That's generally the way with extemporaneous remarks: they are always dangerous. The best impromptu speeches and remarks are the carefully ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... fact, too great a temptation for my friend's temperament, and the very theater for the full display of his magnificent voice; and naturally, this afternoon, off he set at a tangent, interrupting the current of his sermon by extemporaneous bursts of warning, entreaty and exhortation. Here is something like his discourse—yet done by me in a subdued tone—as, I repeat, are most extravaganzas of the ecclesiastical and spiritual sort, not only here, but in all other ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... written preparation—an orator as modern life forms orators—not, of course, an orator like those of the classic world, who elaborated sentences before delivery, and who, after delivery, polished each extemporaneous interlude into rhetorical exactitude and musical perfection. And how narrow the range of compositions to a man burdened already by a grave reputation! He cannot have the self-abandonment—he cannot venture the headlong charge—with which Youth flings the reins to genius, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... celebrated Icelandic poet, having murthered the son and many of the friends of Eric Blodaxe, king of Denmark or Norway, then residing in Northumberland, and which he had just conquered, procured a pardon by singing before the king, at the command of his queen Gunhilde, an extemporaneous ode. Egill compliments the king, who probably was his patron, with the appellation of the English chief. 'I offer my freight to the king. I owe a poem for my ransom. I present to the ENGLISH CHIEF the mead of Odin.' Afterwards he calls this Danish conqueror the commander of the Scottish ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... the poetical dedication of his "Sea-piece" to Voltaire it seems that this extemporaneous reproof, if it must be extemporaneous (for what few will now affirm Voltaire to have deserved any reproof), was something longer than a distich, and something more gentle than the distich ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... fighting when it was attacked, and to give the reasons that made it necessary to fight,—reasons which none but a consistent Friend or avowed non-resistant can pretend to dispute: His ordinary style in speaking is pointed, staccatoed, as is that of most successful extemporaneous speakers; he is "short-gaited"; the movement of his thoughts is that of the chopping sea, rather than the long, rolling, rhythmical wave-procession of phrase-balancing rhetoricians. But when the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... druggists have, however, been selling it now for some time to country practitioners, for them to form extemporaneous rose-water, which it does to great perfection. Roses are cultivated to a large extent in England, near Mitcham, in Surrey, for perfumers' use, to make rose-water. In the season when successive crops can be got, which is about ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... congregation were to hear Kenyon Adams' new composition, which had been rather widely advertised by his friends; and Rev. John Dexter, feeling himself a fifth wheel, discarded his sermon and in humility and contrition submitted some extemporaneous remarks on the passion for humanity ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... thoroughly English, and his pronunciation, like that of Washington Irving, was singularly correct. As a speaker, he at times rose to splendid flights of oratory, although his delivery from memory was less effective than the extemporaneous style. Macaulay never married, but was always happy in the social ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... assembled at the mairie of the Tenth Arrondissement, and what did they do there? Every shade of opinion was represented in this extemporaneous Assembly. But four-fifths of its members belonged to the different conservative parties which had constituted the majority. This Assembly was presided over by two of its Vice-Presidents, M. Vitet and M. Benoist d'Azy. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... visits without carrying away a sweet, refining influence, a stronger faith, and a brighter realization of heavenly truths. And there are mediums, too, from whose lips distil a lofty eloquence and a remarkable wisdom upon any or all subjects proposed, with a flow of extemporaneous poetry or of heavenly music which has never been equaled under such circumstances by ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various
... dedicatory poem. Some years later, when, it seems, she wanted to go to Harrogate, and hoped in vain for the escort of a Mr. Best, Jane presented her with a copy of doggerel—and probably almost extemporaneous—verses:— ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... that in tones so invigorating, that Hugh and his friend (who had both been drinking before) rose from their seats as by previous concert, and, to the great admiration of the assembled guests, performed an extemporaneous No-Popery Dance. ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... closing prayer may be extemporaneous or may be read from one of the books of prayers. Many of the prayers in the Episcopal Prayer Book are especially beautiful and quite suitable. Of course in families of the Episcopal church the collect for the day would be the right prayer ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... of doing that is that it enables a young beginner to form his own style at the outset by careful and systematic writing. Spurgeon, often when a youth, read some of his sermons, although afterwards he never premeditated a single sentence for the pulpit. Dr. Richard S. Storrs was a most fluent extemporaneous speaker, but for twenty years he carefully wrote all his discourses. My own habit, after a time, was to write a portion of the sermon and turn away from my notes to interject thoughts that came in the heat of the moment and then turn ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... an Episcopal clergyman, he gave a violent wrench to his conscience and an awful shock to his friends. But Mr. Duche met the issue in the true spirit, and leaving his detested "popery robe" and prayer-book at home uttered an extemporaneous invocation, without a trace of intoning, that pleased the Puritans and caused one of them to remark, "He is surely coming over ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... let us indulge his fastidious taste by calling it an autoschediastic combat, to which, surely, there can be no such objection. And as the manner of the combat is autoschediastic or extemporaneous, and to meet a hurried occasion, so is the reader to understand that the object of our disputation is not the learned, but the unlearned student; and our purpose, not so much to discontent the one with his painful acquisitions, as to console the other under what, upon the old principle of ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... strong to express their indignation against the devoted Colonel, who was described by one imaginative peasant, who had worked himself up to a sort of descriptive convulsion, as a "Rawhacious Vagabone," a fine instance of extemporaneous word-coining of the ideo-phonetic school, which will doubtless be greedily accepted by Nationalist Parliamentarians who, long ago, exhausted their vocabulary of expletives in dealing with ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... deal for the theatre; connected with a certain Madam Neuber, who was at the head of a company of players in Leipsic, he discarded Punch (Hanswurst), whom they buried solemnly with great triumph. I can easily conceive that the extemporaneous part of Punch, of which we may even yet form some notion from the puppet-shows, was not always very skilfully filled up, and that many platitudes were occasionally uttered by him; but still, on the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... character and wonderful enthusiasm attracted vast audiences. His voice was unusually powerful, clear and melodious, and he used it with consummate skill. In the preparation of his sermons he meditated much but wrote not a word, so that he was in the truest sense a purely extemporaneous speaker. Sincerity, intensity, imagination and humor, he had in preeminent degree, and an English style that has been described as "a long bright river of silver speech which unwound, evenly and endlessly, like a ribbon from a revolving spool that could ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... amanuensis for the last six years. Every work that we have had published has been extemporaneously written; and out of fifty lectures and sermons that we have delivered the last year, forty-four have been extemporaneous. We have distributed many of our unpublished manuscripts; loaned to one of our youngest students, R. K————y, between three and four hundred pages, of which we were sole author—giving him liberty to copy but not ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... without being tied down to any particular manner of expression or obliged to follow any set order of procedure, he can use his material as opportunity requires. His language should be at least partially extemporaneous; he may have a fairly clear conception of how he is to frame his sentences, but he should have nothing learned word for word. Thus his speech may have an element of spontaneity that will give it a tone of sincerity and earnestness unattainable when one is repeating a memorized passage. Too much, ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... signor, that face of thine has looked at me over a dirty white neckcloth, with the corners of that cunning mouth drawn downwards, and those small eyes turned up in sanctimonious gravity, while thou wast offering to a crowd of halfgrown boys an extemporaneous exhortation in the capacity of a travelling preacher. Have I not seen it peering out from under a blanket, as that of a poor Penobscot Indian, who had lost the use of his hands while trapping on the Madawaska? Is it not the face of the forlorn father of six small children, whom the "marcury doctors" ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier |
