"Fluent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Toru's brain. For it must frankly be confessed that in the brief May-day of her existence she had not time to master our language as Blanco White did, or as Chamisso mastered German. To the end of her days, fluent and graceful as she was, she was not entirely conversant with English, especially with the colloquial turns of modern speech. Often a very fine thought is spoiled for hypercritical ears by the queer turn ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... informed the commander in Spanish that was more fluent than elegant or precise,—his name was Peleg Scudder. He was master of the schooner General Court, of the port of Salem, in Massachusetts, on a trading voyage to the South Seas, but now driven by stress of weather into the bay of San Carlos. He begged permission to ride out the gale ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... accepted the seals, the opposition journals announced that he would enter the house as "Baron Ego, of Eye, in the county of Suffolk." Another of his nicknames was Lord Clackmannan; and Cobbett published the following notice of an harangue made by the fluent advocate in the House of Commons:—"Mr. Erskine delivered a most animated speech in the House of Commons on the causes and consequences of the late war, which lasted thirteen hours, eighteen minutes, and a second, by Mr. John Nichol's stop-watch. Mr. Erskine closed his speech with a ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... fact, if she did differ in opinion from her brother and his wife, the children would never have been able to guess it from the invariably restrained tones of her fluent and agreeable speech, so different from the outspoken virulence with which people in that house were accustomed to defend their ideas. But, indefinable though it was to Sylvia's undeveloped powers of analysis, she felt that the advent of her father's beautiful ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... translations, one by Thomas Common and the other by Anthony M. Ludovici. That of Mr. Common follows the text very closely, and thus occasionally shows some essentially German turns of phrase; that of Mr. Ludovici is more fluent but rather less exact. I do not offer my own version on the plea that either of these is useless; on the contrary, I cheerfully acknowledge that they have much merit, and that they helped me at almost every line. I began this new Englishing ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... uncle's cabinet is bare to the wainscot; even were it still intact, I have done well on the Stock Exchange, and should more likely add to it than otherwise, and my errand to-day is simplicity itself. I seek a Christmas present for a lady," he continued, waxing more fluent as he struck into the speech he had prepared; "and certainly I owe you every excuse for thus disturbing you upon so small a matter. But the thing was neglected yesterday; I must produce my little compliment at dinner; and, as you very well know, a rich marriage ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... you men make of us," she replied. "How you fool us to the top of our bent; and of all men you clergymen are the most fluent of your honeyed, caressing words. Now look me in the face, Mr. Slope, ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... to have obtained, in abundance, the gift of that "civil courage" which makes an Irishman at ease and unconstrained in all places and under all circumstances; and he who has kissed the Blarney stone is assumed to be endowed with a fluent and persuasive tongue, altho it may be associated with insincerity; the term "Blarney" being generally used to characterize words that are meant neither to ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... some reason, that on the longer tramp to the south his presence with me would introduce a danger which would be absent if I were alone. For his English was not fluent, and he spoke it with an accent that would betray him at once. He even suggested our parting, if we ever did succeed in getting out—he to take his chance eastward, while I went south, lest he should prove a drag on me. But this I would not hear ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... and I will sustain it in the best way in my power.... Ah! that ancient France, how one feels her grandeur here, and what a part she is known to have had in Christianity! It is that chord which I should like to have heard vibrate in a fluent writer like you, and not eternally those paradoxes, those sophisms. But what matters it to you who date from yesterday and who boast of it," he added, almost sadly, "that in the most insignificant corners of ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... tracts of fluent heat began, And grew to seeming-random forms, The seeming prey of cyclic storms, Till at ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... but she was not fluent to-day. She sat up and repeated, "I have not forgotten old times either, ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... middle age, noticeable so far chiefly for his huge grey mustachios and for his silence. He has been willing but laconic,—taciturn, in fact. But I have felt sure he has a "glib" side. Can I find it? The stillest of men are fluent on their loved topics; there is some key to unlock every one's reserve. Can I hit upon the key to his? Which of possible interests in common will bring ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... the hardware supplies, and then I tackled the chuck with the same weapons. It ain't much trouble to travel with the high-flyers after you find out their gait. I got along fine. I was feeling cool and agreeable, and pretty soon I was talking away fluent as you please, all about the ranch and the West, and telling 'em how the Indians eat grasshopper stew and snakes, and you never saw ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... chastisements she recounts in the nightly half-hour which she spends with me when I am endeavouring to compose myself for sleep. Francesca is fluent at all times, but once seated on the foot of ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... all a demonstrative girl naturally; not ready with her tears, not liberal with her caresses, not fluent in her talk, Eunice was affected by my proposal in a manner wonderful to see. She suddenly developed into an excitable person—I declare she kissed me. "Oh," she burst out, "how clever you are! The very thing to write about; I'll ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... refrained from insulting Vitellius. For it was generally believed that as in strategy he took the advice of Suetonius Paulinus and Marius Celsus, so too in political matters he employed the talents of Galerius Trachalus.[200] Some people even thought they could recognize Trachalus' style of oratory, fluent and sonorous, well adapted to tickle the ears of the crowd: and as he was a popular pleader his style was well known. The crowd's loud shouts of applause were in the best style of flattery, excessive and insincere. Men vied with each other ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... stationed are not so, but even the little children come to the convent and are assembled. And in matters of the soul—the chief thing—they go to confession; and in truth I would rather confess a hundred Indians in the Filipinas, of those thus rendered fluent, than one Spaniard. The Indian women confess remarkably well, and with many tears, and take communion with devotion. They give account of themselves, respect the father, and recognize his courtesy. Who has not experienced this? The Spaniards understand it all, but when an effort is made to settle ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... us to consult five minutes among ourselves. He withdrew; and the fluent agent remarked the sum was a trifle: but, trifling as it was, he had no doubt but feelings of delicacy and honor would dictate that it ought to be jointly paid, by the three ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... really grateful, for she felt herself at a great disadvantage among these fluent and interesting folk, who talked like the characters in novels. Their jests, their comment, meant little to her; but their gestures, their graceful attitudes, their courtesies to each other, meant ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... Jones," his masterpiece, appeared in 1749, and three years later "Amelia"; journalism and his duties as a justice of the peace occupied him till 1754, when ill-health forced him abroad to Lisbon, where he died and was buried. Fielding is a master of a fluent, virile, and attractive style; his stories move with an easy and natural vigour, and are brimful of humour and kindly satire, while his characters in their lifelike humanness, with all their foibles and frailties, are a marked contrast to the buckram and conventional ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... booking-office where she might obtain her ticket to Italy—and home—when a wail in a thin foreign voice fell upon her ear, and she turned round to face a dark and agitated-looking young woman, neatly dressed, who was bewailing herself in the fluent Italian of the ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... older poetry of the desert had been constantly imitated up to this time, although it was not natural to town life. Abu-l-'Atahiya was one of the first to drop the old qasida (elegy) form. He was very fluent and used many metres. He is also regarded as one of the earliest philosophic poets of the Arabs. Much of his Poetry is concerned with the observation of common life and morality, and at times is pessimistic. Naturally, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Burman language, let this occupy your most precious time and your most anxious solicitude. Do not be content with acquiring this language superficially, but make it your own, root and branch. To become fluent in it, you must attentivly listen, with prying curiosity, into the forms of speech, the construction and accent of the natives. Here all the imitative powers are wanted; yet these powers and this attention, without ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... because it is full of soft placid selfishness is one of the most difficult to paint;" but in sketching Tito's career, "the same wonderful power is maintained throughout, of stamping on our imagination with the full force of a master hand a character which seems naturally too fluent for the artist's purpose. There is not a more masterly piece of painting in English romance than this figure ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... Baron to me in his fluent French, as our little party sauntered out into the open fields to shoot, "I do not get along very well with my farmer. I must tell you this in case he gives us trouble to-day. He has the right, owing to a stupid lease my aged aunt was unwise enough to sign with him some years ago, to exclude us ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... daughters, that the most handsome, industrious, and accomplished man the world has ever seen, his own nephew, in fact, thinks of marriage, and that his conditions are this and that; he tells his nephew that the most beautiful and amiable creature in Germany, a brilliant musician, a fluent linguist, a devoted daughter, and a person of simple housewifely tastes, lives next door to him, the uncle. Except for the housewifely tastes, it sounds, and in fact is, rather like a courtship in the Arabian Nights so far. The ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... his reputation through Europe, for an extraordinary proficiency in the languages of India. Later scholars speak lightly of this multifarious knowledge, and nothing can be more probable, than that attainment of many languages, with any approach to their fluent use, is beyond the power of man. But his diligence was exemplary, his memory retentive, and his understanding accomplished by classical knowledge; with those qualities, much might be done in any pursuit; and though modern ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... M'Gregor questioned the drover. The man was monosyllabic to a degree, as the real bushmen generally are. It is only the rowdy and the town-bushy that are fluent of speech. ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... in a usually fairly fluent prattler with the sex was her whole mental attitude. I don't want to wrong anybody, so I won't go so far as to say that she actually wrote poetry, but her conversation, to my mind, was of a nature calculated ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... everyone hurried to occupy his seat. In the wings there was no one save the author and three or four of his friends. The opening scenes were received as usual with indifference; the following ones with a little more cordiality; the versification was fluent and polished, and, as you know, the public appreciates sugar-coated phrases. At last the moment arrived for Clotilde's entrance, and a faint murmur of curiosity and expectation ran through the audience. ...
— First Love (Little Blue Book #1195) - And Other Fascinating Stories of Spanish Life • Various
... ditch? What is the earthly good to be got out of a nod of the head? Strange that men will be contented with such pleasures, or if not contented, at least that they will be so eager in seeking them. Not one word did Harry, he so fluent of conversation ordinarily, change with his charmer on that day. Mutely he beheld her return to her carriage, and drive away among rather ironical salutes from the young men in the Park. One said that the Indian widow was ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... across the Macquarie has long been a desideratum. This river, although in common seasons fordable, and in dry seasons scarcely fluent, is liable, after heavy falls of rain in the mountains, to rise suddenly to a great height, and cut off the communication between the public buildings on the one side, and the peopled suburbs and great road from Sydney on the other. The country beyond the Macquarie ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... criticised by the American public for their elocutionary defects. They have no speakers to compare with Wendell Phillips, George William Curtis, or Anna Dickinson, although John Bright is without peer among his countrymen, as is Mrs. Besant among the women. The women, as a general rule, are more fluent ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... from its associations with Burns (which Mr. T.F. Henderson in a dainty little book has recently recounted anew), but also from the fact that the natives keep alive the literary traditions of the place in quite a worthy way. The local baker has written a fluent volume of Essays dealing with village incidents and worthies, which proves, as Mr. Barrie says, that life in every stage, if truthfully portrayed, is intensely interesting, and that every window-blind is the curtain for some tragedy ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... Although Dr. Macleod never aspired to rank as a theological writer, he has in his way been a prolific and successful author. His works may be said to have merits peculiarly their own. His graceful, easy, fluent style; his admirable capacity for illustration; his graphic delineations of scenery and character; and, above all, his unfailing use of simple, terse, homely Saxon, have combined to place him in the front rank of living writers. Among his more notable publications we ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... Governor of Panama to leave no stone unturned to find and surrender the seventeen Englishmen, on account of whom all this fuss and pother was being made, lest worse come of it. The Don was not a particularly fluent correspondent, but he grew almost eloquent when he strove to impress upon his fellow-governor the inexorable determination displayed by the young English captain, and he wound up by quoting two or three Spanish proverbs to the effect that of two evils it was always best to choose ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... awkwardly that he had done nothing. Where was the easy, gay and debonaire assurance of this fluent young man? He was finding nothing to say to Rue Carew, or saying what he said as crudely and uncouthly ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... of age he met Annie Besant. This was in Eighteen Hundred Seventy-four, and a friendship grew up between them that was of great benefit to both. Mrs. Besant was a woman of much power, a clear, logical thinker, and a fluent and eloquent public speaker. Her influence upon Bradlaugh was marked. After meeting her, much of the storm and stress seemed to leave his nature, and he acquired a poise and peace ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... twelve o'clock with an unnatural flush upon your cheek and a strange color in your eye that you got at the club. You merely acknowledge that you feel queer. You say that champagne never intoxicates; that it only exhilarates, makes the conversation fluent, shakes up the humor, and has no bad effect except a headache next day. Be not deceived. Champagne may not, like whiskey, throw a man under the table; but if, through anything you drink, you gain an unnatural fluency of speech and glow of feeling, ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... extorting money from the passengers, which he regularly spent every night in the wine-shops of Badajoz. To those who gave him money he returned blessings, and to those who refused, curses; being equally skilled and fluent in the use ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... into Venetia's grasp; and stood, irresolute and ashamed, her fluent tongue stricken dumb, her intent to wound, and sting, and outrage with every vile, coarse jest she knew, rendered impossible to execute. The purity and the dignity of her opponent's presence had their irresistible influence, an influence too strong for even her debonair and ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... subject, forgot his theme, and sat down in confusion. With all his incisive thought and fine command of language, Addison could not think on his feet. And as if aware of his limitations, in one of the "Spectator" essays he said, with more or less truth, "The fluent orator, ready to speak on any topic, is never profound, and when once his thought is cold it will seldom repay ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... now, in a moment's pause, only to find, too late, that all warmth and naturalness had left her with the effort. Fluent dream-practice is only too apt to make one uncomfortably crude and ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... of correspondence which fully demands a volume alone to provide for the various phases incident to Love, Courtship and Marriage. Few persons, however otherwise fluent with the pen, are able to express in words the promptings of the first dawn of love, and even the ice once broken how to follow up a correspondence with the dearest one in the whole world and how to smooth the way with those who need to be consulted in the matter. ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis
... inner circle, and in many respects associated with it, was the Rev. Francis Hodgson, a ripe scholar, good translator, a sound critic, a fluent writer of graceful verse, and a large-hearted divine, whoso correspondence, recently edited with a connecting narrative by his son, has thrown light on disputed passages of Lord Byron's life. The views entertained by the ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... certainly not by dint of wrestling with Greek prose, the mastery of language. His light verse is wonderfully handled, quaint, fluent, right. Modest as he was, he was ambitious, as we said, but not ambitious of any gain; merely eager, in his own way, to excel. His ideal is plainly stated ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... of them are fugitive and aim at coloring a word, a phrase, or at best a temporary situation. There is little flow of natural, fervent melody. What the composer accomplished with tune, characteristic but fluent, eloquent yet sustained, in "Cavalleria rusticana," he tries to achieve in "Iris" with violent, disjointed, shifting of keys and splashes of instrumental color. In this he is seldom successful, for he is not a master of orchestral writing—that ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... than the possession of any commanding one, that created his influence. He certainly was not a wit yet he was always gay, and always said things that made other people merry. His conversation was sparkling, interesting, and fluent, yet it was observed he never gave an opinion on any subject and never told an anecdote. Indeed, he would sometimes remark, when a man fell into his anecdotage, it was a sign for him to retire from the world. And yet Pinto rarely opened ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... have found inaccuracies in Froude's transcripts from the Simancas manuscripts without knowing a word of Spanish. But he was seldom so frank as that. It was not often that he forgot his two objects of holding up Froude as the fluent, facile ignoramus, and himself as the profound, ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... Blake, whom the Doctor engaged as housekeeper, was the youngest daughter of an honest shoemaker, who formerly flourished at Belfield Green, where he was noted for industry, a fondness for reading, a tenacious memory, a ready wit, and a fluent tongue. In politics he was a radical, and in religion a schismatic. The little knot of Presbyterian Federalist magnates, who used to assemble at the tavern to discuss affairs of church and state over mugs of flip and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... each science lifts its modern type, Hist'ry her Pot, Divinity her Pipe, While proud philosophy repines to shew, Dishonest sight! his breeches rent below; Imbrown'd with native bronze, lo! Henley stands, Tuning his voice and balancing his hands. How fluent nonsense trickles from his tongue! How sweet the periods, neither said nor sung! Still break the benches, Henley! with thy strain, While SHERLOCK, HARE, and GIBSON, preach in vain. Oh great restorer of the good old stage, Preacher at once, and zany of thy age, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... what you would call an eloquent or fluent speaker: his Somersetshire brogue was at times difficult of comprehension. He certainly was not fluent when he said to Mrs. Oldtimes: "Why thic—there—damn un Mrs. Oldtimes if he beant gwine and never zeed zich a ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... sympathetically, more fluently, and with finer effect on a beautiful "grand" than on a jangly upright instrument: the one is a better vehicle of expression than the other. So also we can secure more fluent expression with a fountain pen than with one that continually interrupts the free flow of ideas by demanding to be dipped in the inkpot. We have two typewriters of the same manufacture, but one is an early model and the other a modern machine: there is a vast difference in the ease of expressing ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... I had the ambition—it was one of several ambitions—to become a courier. The Morning Post advertisements of couriers who professed to be fluent in a number of languages and were at the disposal of invalid aristocrats desiring to take extensive (and expensive) trips abroad, aroused the most romantic visions in my mind. A courier's was the life for me. I saw myself whirling ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... forward after that which is to follow. There is no ebb and flow in his metre more than on the shores of the Adriatic, but wave follows wave with equable gainings and recessions, the one sliding back in fluent music to be mingled with and carried forward by the next. In all this there is soothingness indeed, but no slumberous monotony; for Spenser was no mere metrist, but a great composer. By the variety of his pauses—now at the close of the ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... amazement fell upon all. For myself, the wild incongruity of this foreign tongue from lips which I had heard utter such fluent and flute-like English ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... cocoa-nut groves, park-like flat, lovely ravines running upward, and down which tiny rills of water came cascading; past three huge black buttresses of lava, the ends that had cooled in the water of as many streams of fluent stone; and above all, grey, strange, dotted with masses of rock, seamed, scored, and wrinkled, rose from out of the dense forest, which rail up its flanks, the great truncated cone, above whose summit floated a faint grey cloud of smoke or ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... was no affair of his. He heard that Mayor Brenchfield had been invited—and had accepted the invitation—to attach himself to the Royce Pederstone party in order to give the candidate the support of his fluent tongue and widespread influence. ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... very glad to see the noble Athenian in his own city. His fame for eloquence and prudence is already in Tyre and Babylon," spoke the stranger, never taking his steel-blue eyes from the orator's face. The accent was Oriental, but the Greek was fluent. The prince—for prince he was, whatever his nation—pressed his hand closer. Almost involuntarily Democrates's hand responded. They clasped tightly; then, as if Lycon feared a word too much, the unknown released his hold, bowed ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... a most remarkable treatise, and ran through London at once. For the style, though slovenly, was fluent and popular, and Edwards, having plenty of time on his hands, and having a taste for personalities, had made minute inquiries into the antecedents of the Five Independents in Holland and in England, and had interwoven the results of these inquiries with his arguments ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... such things in a certain order of mind. His phrases about "dire calamity" and so on mean nothing; the whole tenor of his writing proves that he represents, and consciously, one of the forces which go to bring war about; his part in the business is a fluent irresponsibility, which casts scorn on all who reluct at the "inevitable." Persistent prophecy is a familiar way ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... time after his election, he began to take part in the debates. He was not a fluent speaker; indeed he was hesitating, and sometimes his sentences were much involved; but, as he never spoke except upon topics with which he was perfectly familiar, he was listened to with the respect and attention which are always, in the House of ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... demagogue beat the pulpit-drum In the Age of the Antonines! The sting was not dreamed to be taken from death, No Paradise pledged or sought, But they reasoned of fate at the flowing feast, Nor stifled the fluent thought, We sham, we shuffle while faith declines— They were frank in the Age of ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... He was no brawling ruffian, no ordinary rake. Remembering what Scotland was in those days, Bothwell might well seem in reality a princely figure. He knew Italian; he was at home in French; he could write fluent Latin. He was a collector of books and a reader of them also. He was perhaps the only Scottish noble of his time who had a book-plate of his own. Here is something more than a mere reveler. Here is a man of varied accomplishments and ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... jealous of Baboo's fluent talk. Rather a sportive negro, it appears. Says he goes to theatre nearly every night. Has a regular and rather ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various
... Johann Matthysz (Matthyszoon), baker of Haarlem. He had little education, but some literary faculty, and had written plays. On the 13th of January 1534 he appeared in Muenster as an apostle of Matthysz. Good-looking and fluent, he fascinated women, and won the confidence of Bernard Knipperdollinck, a revolutionary cloth merchant, who gave him his daughter in marriage. The Muenster Anabaptists took up arms on the 9th of February 1534 (see ANABAPTISTS). On the death of Matthysz (1534), Buckholdt succeeded him as prophet, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... that he was very pleased with all he had seen and heard; that he wanted the troops to know that both he and the Queen always kept them in their thoughts, and that he meant to see all of them again, with his own eye, as soon as the war was over. The General gave it out very well, (he is fluent in Hindustani,) and it made a great impression on ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... of grim smiles. Suddenly I recognized the trick of that Arab cheapjack. It may be seen at work in Poplar, my native parish to which the ships come, when a curious and innocent Chinaman joins the group about the fluent ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... a void of darkness beneath him,— night made visible by street lamps; and he found himself suddenly and acutely sensible of the wonder and mystery of the City: the City whose secret life ran fluent upon the hot, hard pavements below, whose voice throbbed, sibilant, vague, strident, inarticulate, upon the night air; the City of which he was a part equally with the girl in grey, whom he had never before seen, and in all likelihood ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... natural talent, and those naturally possessed of fluency must of course find it hard to restrain the tide of words that is perpetually flowing up to the lips; but if they desire to converse agreeably, the effort must be made, and self-denial must be attained. The benefit derived by an over-fluent talker from self-restraint will be quite commensurate with the effort, no less than with the added pleasure of the listener, for he will gain in the power of accurate thought every time that he resists the inclination to utter ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... See fault in him who bravely dares defend The cause forlorn, the wretch without a friend Nay, though the rightful side is wisdom's choice, Wrong has its rights and claims a champion's voice; Let the strong arm be lifted for the weak, For the dumb lips the fluent pleader speak;— When with warm "rebel" blood our street was dyed Who took, unawed, the hated hirelings' side? No greener civic wreath can Adams claim, No brighter ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... morning when Red awoke, arrows of gold were shooting through the holes in the old barn, and outside, the bird life, the twittering and chirping, the fluent whistle and the warble, the cackle and the pompous ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... your fluent witt interpret Why she procastinatts your promisd match? By this light, her daughter would be married tomorrow If her mother and I ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... profession was then little more than a vow of celibacy and his devotion took no ascetic turn. His nature in fact was sunny, versatile, artistic; full of strong affections, and capable of inspiring others with affections as strong. Quick-witted, of tenacious memory, a ready and fluent speaker, gay and genial in address, an artist, a musician, he was at the same time an indefatigable worker alike at books or handicraft. As his sphere began to widen we see him followed by a train of pupils, busy with literature, writing, harping, painting, designing. One morning a lady summons ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... pocket, and accordingly after dinner we gathered round him in a circle, and he held forth. It would be no easy matter to describe a discourse which lasted a couple of hours, or indeed to say very precisely what it was about. It was a rambling, desultory reference to his travels and adventures in fluent and sometimes eloquent language, and not without an occasional dash of humour and drollery. He illustrated the truth of the Scriptures by examples drawn from his personal observation and the habits, ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... Soliciting the kind offices of both Sherwen and Raimonda, he had presented himself, under their escort, stiff and perspiring in his full official regalia, before Mr. Brewster; then before his daughter, whose solemnity, presently breaking down before his painfully rehearsed English, dissolved in fluent French, setting him at ease and making him her slave. Poor penitent Von Plaanden even apologized to Carroll, fortunately not having heard of the American's threat, and made a most ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... her lip and, although she had never felt more fluent in her life, said nothing. Her husband lit his pipe, and after a rapid glance in her direction took up an old newspaper ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... great power,—fluent and elegant in diction, bright and sparkling in thought, keen ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... his retreat to study Holy Scriptures, and to such good effect that, the next time he preached, he charmed his hearers by his eloquence. Soon after this the Archbishop of La Plata held a provincial council, with the object of reforming the morals of the Indians in his diocese. Cardenas, being a fluent speaker, was chosen for the post of Apostolic Missionary. From this time dates the beginning ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... be unpopular, especially in the East, where comminatory swearing alone is practised, and you have to offend a man very grievously to get him to disgorge his treasure. In this country, except among ladies in comparatively humble circumstances, anything like this fluent, explicit, detailed, and sincere cursing, aimed, missile-fashion, at a personal enemy, is not found. It was quite common a few centuries ago; indeed, in the Middle Ages it was part of the recognised procedure. Aggrieved parties ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... like his science, is first-hand. In the woods, one day, talk ran on the Trinity as being nowhere asserted as a doctrine in the Bible, and some one suggested that the attempt to pack these great and fluent mysteries into one word must always be more or less unsatisfactory. "Ye-es," droned Phelps: "I never could see much speckerlation in that expression the Trinity. Why, they'd a ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... me," began Dete again, in her usual fluent manner, "I myself had lost count of her exact age; she is certainly a little younger, but not much; I cannot say precisely, but I think she ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... ages which had faith to recognize their worthiest man and to accept his guidance which had achieved great things in the world, not those which prated of democracy and progress. To make his countrymen, in this age of fluent political talk, see the true moral quality of the men of the seventeenth century—this it was which occupied seven years of Carlyle's life and filled his thoughts. It was indeed a labour of Hercules. Much of the material was lost beyond ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... two solid quarto volumes, published at Paris in 1756—"avec approbation et privilege du Roy," as the title page says—in which he related all that he could learn about previous voyages to the south, and pointed out, with generous amplitude, in limpid, fluent French, the desirableness of pursuing further discoveries there. Incidentally he coined a useful word: to Monsieur le President Charles de Brosses we owe the name "Australasia."* (* De Brosses, Histoire des Navigations aux ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... 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 ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... once more, for "St. Raphael," who spoke fluent Finnish, at once secured the only cart to take our things over the ferry to the railway station about ...
— Field Hospital and Flying Column - Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia • Violetta Thurstan
... disposition was naturally cheerful and mild, his temper even, and not easily provoked. Although somewhat inclined to taciturnity, yet when drawn out to converse upon any subject he was acquainted with, he was naturally fluent, and in his language pure and correct. He was a universal favorite with the youth of both sexes in his native town, and, during the intervals between his voyages, was always in demand when a Thanksgiving ball was contemplated, or a sleigh-ride, or a "frolic," ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... was a picturesque woman, and a fluent talker, and she held a tolerably high station among the Parvenus. Her English was fair enough, as a general thing—though, being of New York origin, she had the fashion peculiar to many natives of that city of pronouncing saw and law as if they ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... movements with gentle interest, maintaining a silence meanwhile only surpassed in completeness by Dot's. Hannah rattled on, but there was a hollowness in the rattle that made Catherine's hostess heart falter. She was never fluent, herself. Her gentle art consisted in making her guests entertain ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... rather than from convenience, a wife puts kindred before husband, her affection remaining chiefly where it was before marriage. But if the moralist desires yet more solid virtues, he need only inquire of the first Sevillan he meets, who will give at shortest notice, in choice and fluent language, a far more impressive list than ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... strips of tape are softly unwound and fall in slack twisted piles. One of those machines is printing off a long letter from Berlin, another is registering news from Vienna, and by a third news from Paris comes as easily and rapidly as from Shoreditch; subdued men take the tapes, expand and make fluent the curt, halting phrases of the foreign correspondents, and pass the messages swiftly away to the printers. From America, Australia, India, China, the items of news pour in, and are scrutinised by severe sub-editors; ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... of James Howell, Esq. are well known as fluent examples of the best style of writing of his day, and as repositories of many curious facts and intelligent remarks. The following letter appears to be addressed to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... of Lord Normanby. His writings evince great knowledge of the world, the work-o'-day world, as well as the beau monde; yet there is no bitterness in his satire, which is always just and happily pointed. His style, too, is easy, fluent, and polished, without being disfigured by ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... not a fool. In the discussion of graver matters—politics, law, and history—that arose in the smoking-room, he was not to be put down by more fluent tongues; demolished sophistry by solid reasoning, impregnable assertions, and an array of facts that might be prolix, but was always formidable—in short, sustained fully the character ascribed to him by his brother-in-law, ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... from Rupert Vivian." Kitty read the inscription; her lip curled, but she still kept silence. Hugo thought that her eye rested with some complacency upon the silver beads; but she did not express a tithe of the pleasure and surprise which flowed so readily from Mrs. Heron's fluent tongue. ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... keep life fixed and constant, and all about her she found life fluent and changing. Or perhaps life was constant, and the fluency was in her. Or perhaps the difficulty was all in this man, about whom she had never been able to take any position that he did not shortly ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... this of the whole race of the Greeks: I grant them literary genius, I grant them skill in various accomplishments, I do not deny them elegance in conversation, acuteness of intellect, fluent oratory; to any other high qualities they may claim I make no objection: but the sacred obligation that lies upon a witness to speak the truth is what that nation has ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... READER,—Whether this book is to be of use to you or not, depends wholly on your reason for wishing to learn to draw. If you desire only to possess a graceful accomplishment, to be able to converse in a fluent manner about drawing, or to amuse yourself listlessly in listless hours, I cannot help you: but if you wish to learn drawing that you may be able to set down clearly, and usefully, records of such things ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... fluent is ever thy speech at the moment war calls for action; and when the fathers are summoned thou art there the first. But we need no words to fill our senate-house, safely as thou wingest them while the mounded walls keep off the enemy, and the ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... to make the best of it, youth is easily attracted and filled with the present show, and easily forgets that which, from distance in time or space, has no show to show. Spending his evenings in the midst of merry faces, and ready tongues fluent with the tones of jollity, if not always of wit, which glided sometimes into no too earnest discussion of the difficult subjects occupying their student hours; surrounded by the vapours of whisky-toddy, and the smoke of cutty pipes, till far into the short hours; then hurrying home, and lapsing ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... tall, bronzed, commanding, taciturn—but fluent when he did speak—or Kent, or Sumner, or little Jerry Carter himself. And once, a soldier stepped into the circle of firelight, his heels clicking sharply together; and Crittenden thought an uneasy ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... dreamed of such delicate motion, Fluent, and graceful, and ambient, Soft as the breeze flitting over the flowers, But swift as the summer lightning. I sat up again, but my strength was all spent, And no time left to recover it, And though she rose at our gate like a bird, ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... irresponsible as his eloquence was dazzling. In his twenty years of public life he had but one purpose—to please and to be praised; and to gain those ends he sacrificed consistency and discretion with a light heart. The beauty of his person and the fluent splendor of his speech went far towards the attainment of an ambition which was always frustrated by a fatal levity. In the fine phrase of Burke, he was a candidate for contradictory honors, and his great aim was to make ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... changes always improvements. Poe constantly rehandled his scanty show of verse, and usually bettered it. The Raven was the first of the few poems which he nearly brought to completion before printing. It may be that those who care for poetry lost little by his death. Fluent in prose, he never wrote verse for the sake of making a poem. When a refrain of image haunted him, the lyric that resulted was the inspiration, as he himself said, of a passion, not of a purpose. This was at intervals so rare as almost to justify the Fairfield theory that ...
— The Raven • Edgar Allan Poe
... Went to hear Mr. Spurgeon. House three-quarters full-say three thousand people. First hour, lacking one minute, taken up with two prayers, two ugly hymns, and Scripture-reading. Sermon three-quarters of an hour long. A fluent talker, good, sonorous voice. Topic treated in the unpleasant, old fashion: Man a mighty bad child, God working at him in forty ways and having a world of trouble ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... she had vainly sought came voluntarily, and in fluent speech she told him how her heart had so long consumed itself with yearning for him, and that she had now left everything behind to obey his summons; and he thanked her with eager warmth by raising the hand which clasped his to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... sentences than in other kinds of writing. Twenty words make a good average sentence length. It is necessary to remember that one's stories are read not only by the literati, but by the uneducated as well. One must make one's style, therefore, so fluent, so easy, that a man with a speaking vocabulary of five hundred words can read and enjoy ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... answered you a while ago, O Great One, as it was with Ingona, so was it and is it with me. I have no gift of fluent speech, but I pray you to recall what he said, and to believe that I agree with every word, and would ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... Wherever we find a well-mannered, soft-spoken, fussy old soul, with a taste for fine clothes and fine dinners, fond of court festivities, and heart and soul devoted to royalties, we promote him. If he speak French tolerably, we make him a Minister; if he be fluent, an ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... a member of Parliament, who was lamenting that he had failed to win the ear of the House. He was puzzled by the failure. He was a fluent speaker; he knew his subject with great thoroughness, and his character was irreproachable; and yet when he rose the House went out. He was like a dinner-bell. He couldn't understand it. Yet everybody else understood it quite well. It was because he was ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... waiting on table, and ringing the recitation bell. In spite of these menial services, he was popular in his class and had a number of aristocratic friends,—among them Philip Van Rensselaer. He was one of the best scholars in his class,—first in mathematics, and so fluent in Greek that to the end of his life he ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... lady (married to an Italian count) plied him with numerous questions in fluent French, spoken with an atrocious accent. Finally, she wished to hear the Abbe's views upon Melchisedech! In the midst of other questions and answers, the kindly little man managed to turn round to her with a cheery "Ah, Madame la Comtesse! pour le ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... his position to a nicety. His fluent adaptability was in its right place. Little Captain von Wegstetten would have no non-commissioned officer under him better calculated to satisfy his desires than Gustav Weise. If he had remained a social-democrat, thought Wolf to himself, he would simply have been a pliant tool in the hands ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... The negotiations with the bird-man had lasted a little longer than one would have expected. But then, of course, M. Feriaud was a foreigner, and Roland's French was not fluent. ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... warning that his life was in danger came to Sarpi from Caspar Schoppe, the publicist. Scioppius (so his contemporaries called him) was a man of doubtful character and unsteady principles, who, according as his interests varied, used a fluent pen and limpid Latin style for or against the Jesuit faction. History would hardly condescend to notice him but for the singular luck he had of coming at critical moments into contact with the three chief Italian thinkers of his time. We know already ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... deep beneath the personal relationship of George Sand and Gustave Flaubert; lie deep beneath their successors, who with more or less of amenity in their manners are still debating the same questions today. The main currents of the nineteenth century, with fluent and refluent tides, clash beneath the controversy; and as soon as one hears its "long withdrawing roar," and thinks it is dying away, and is become a part of ancient history, it begins again, and will be heard, no doubt, by the last man as a solemn accompaniment to his final contention ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... knees into his chair and glanced reflectively at Bernard Clowes, heu quantum mutatus. . . . When the body was wrecked, was there not nine times out of ten some corresponding mental warp? Bernard's fluent geniality struck him as too good to be true—it was not in Bernard's line: and why translate a close friendship into "meeting once or twice"? Was Bernard misled or mistaken, or was he laying a trap?—Not misled: the Laura Selincourt of Hyde's recollection was not ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... his own people. He is tall, rather corpulent, and has more of the negro feature than common, but has large eyes. He is very dark, and his people swear by "Black Sechele". He has great intelligence, reads well, and is a fluent speaker. Great numbers of the tribes formerly living under the Boers have taken refuge under his sway, and he is now greater in power than he was ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... attention to her story of the shooting of the stag, Stephen's feat when a boy of fourteen; she did not of course know as much of the history of the Archdales as did the petted young beauty to whom he had been talking before dinner, and she in the midst of her fluent account wondered in her own mind where she had heard it all, and remembered that it had been one of Katie's stories when ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... delightful," he would remark to me, "to realize once more that the chief end of man is not, after all, to have fluent meditations upon wrecks of lost empires—to discover beauty in hideousness because somebody else pretends to do so—to mumble praises about frescoes which are frightful to look at, and break your neck besides—to have profound emotions in Jerusalem and experience ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... Be it known to this fluent generation that I R. L. S., in the forty-third of my age and the twentieth of my professional life, wrote twenty-four pages in twenty-one days, working from six to eleven, and again in the afternoon from two to four or so, ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fail to be impressed by the aspect of the slight, pallid woman who seemed to gain height by reason of her slenderness, who moved toward her audience with such simple natural majesty, who wore and conducted her fluent classical draperies with such admirable and perfect grace. It was as though she had lived always so attired in tunic, peplum, and pallium—had known no other dress—not that she was of modern times playing at antiquity, she was ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... through the various grades of probation and preparation by which the Jesuit is trained for his arduous work, and was ordained priest in the year 1825. Being a ripe scholar, well versed in literature, ancient and modern, an able theologian, a fluent and impressive speaker, he soon took a foremost place amongst the leading ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... character of the road, and an extra allowance for expenses subscribed by the Bristol merchants. He thus describes his feelings: "It was past eight o'clock when I reached the Gloucester Coffee-House, and, the Bristol mail being on the point of going off, I mounted on the outside. The fine fluent motion of the mail soon laid me asleep. It is somewhat remarkable that the first easy or refreshing sleep which I had enjoyed for some months was on the outside of ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde
... of sound there is But his motion's gentle hiss, Till one fluent arm and hand Suddenly circles, and the wand Taps a bough far overhead, "Crack," and then all noise is dead. For he halts, and for a space Stands erect with upward face, Taut and tense to the white Message ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... party of us were going out through the P. & O. communication trench and, finding the mud too deep, we climbed out and walked across the open, whereat an old Colonel of some Highland regiment gave us a "beautiful calling." His discourse was a masterpiece of fluent soldier talk and, as a Scot usually does when excited, he lapsed into the "twa-talk" of his native Hielans. I can remember his last words, which were to the effect that: "Ye daft Cany-deens think ye're awfu' brave but I tell ye the noo it's no bravery; it's sheer stupidity." ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... melancholy view of life may have been caused simply by his unfortunate constitution; for everybody sees in the disease of his own liver a disorder of the universe; but it was also intensified by the natural reaction of a powerful nature against the fluent optimism of the time, which expressed itself in Pope's aphorism, Whatever is, is right. The strongest men of the time revolted against that attempt to cure a deep-seated disease by a few fine speeches. The form taken by Johnson's revolt ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... known of the course of study pursued by Joseph at Moor's School. When he entered it his knowledge must have been very slender, and as a young man he began to learn things ordinarily taught to a mere child. It is likely that he now became much more fluent than formerly in his use of the English tongue. From the beginning his progress was very rapid, and Dr Wheelock does not stint the praise that he bestows upon him: 'Joseph is indeed an excellent youth,' was his comment; 'he has ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood
... as he would any other treasure trove for which he had no use, in hopes of reward for its return, said Blake. It was queer, of course, that the Indian in whose pouch it was found should have been so fluent a speaker of English, yet many a Sioux knew enough of our tongue to swear volubly and talk ten words of vengeance to come. There were several ways, as Blake reasoned, by which that letter might have got into the hands of the ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... music on a tall tree beyond the garden hedge, and I am more grateful for the distance that divides us than for the song; for, just now, he does not sing so well as sometimes of an evening, when he is most fluent, and a listener, deceived by his sweetness and melody, writes to the papers to say that he has heard the nightingale. Just now his song is scrappy, composed of phrases that follow no order and do not fit or harmonize, and is like a poor imitation of ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... about equal to that of a European child of ten years old. A few, a very few, go beyond this, but these are exceptions, just as Shakespeare was an exception to the ordinary intellect of an Englishman. They are fluent talkers, but their ideas are borrowed. They are absolutely without originality, absolutely without inventive power. Living among white men, their imitative faculties enable them to attain a considerable amount of civilization. ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... Anglo-Canadian was quite so stolid, serious and impressive with homely common sense as Sir Lomer Gouin, the Premier of Quebec. This man spoke slowly, massively, almost gutturally like a Saxon, in fluent but accented English. He was far less excitable than the Premier of Ontario ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino |
