"Oratorical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fell into the hands of Francois Lambert, son of a former private secretary of the papal legate entrusted with the government of the Comtat Venaissin. He was a man of vivid imagination, keen religious sensibilities, and marked oratorical powers. He had at the age of fifteen been so deeply impressed by the saintly appearance of the Franciscans as to seek admission to their monastery as a novice. No sooner did he assume, a year later (1503), ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... the prize at the Floral games at Toulouse. The prize consisted of an eglantine or wild rose in gold. Before he became a dramatic author, he was an actor and a very bad actor. Being nominated member of the National Convention, he distinguished himself in that assembly, not by oratorical talents, but by a great deal of villainy. He did not think as he acted or spoke. When the montagnards[4] or mountaineers, that is, those monsters who were always thirsting for blood, divided, he appeared for some time to belong to the party ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... is true that a deputation waited upon him to solicit him to take the chair on the 5th of November, but the gallant Colonel modestly declined, much to the disappointment of the young gentlemen who presented the requisition; so much so indeed, that, after exhausting their oratorical powers, they slightly hinted ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... some time. I let Horace know that I preferred rail fences, even old ones, to a wire fence, and that I thought a farm should not be too large, else it might keep one away from his friends. And what, I asked, is corn compared with a friend? Oh, I grew really oratorical! I gave it as my opinion that there should be vines around the house (Waste of time, said Horace), and that no farmer should permit anyone to paint medicine advertisements on his barn (Brings you ten dollars a year, said Horace), and ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... wise in his own folly," went on the encouraged Mr. Evans, and then, alas! a victim to the slight oratorical thrill these words brought him,—"honestly uttering what every last man believes and feels about woman in his heart and yet what no sane man running for office can say ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... use it. The hair swept carelessly away from the broad forehead and grew rather long behind, yet the length did not suggest, as it often does, effeminacy. He was masculine in everything—look, gesture, speech. Sparing of gesture, sparing of emphasis, careless of mere rhetorical or oratorical art, he had nevertheless the secret of the highest art of all, whether in oratory ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... oratorical talent in Richmond, we have his own explicit testimony. He told a class of law students once that he owed his success in life to a habit early formed, and for some years continued, of reading daily in a book of history or science, and declaiming the substance of ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... preacher began, she cast up one distressed and disappointed look, then dropped her head again. This preacher was Guillaume Erard, an oratorical celebrity. He got his text from the Twelve Lies. He emptied upon Joan al the calumnies in detail that had been bottled up in that mass of venom, and called her all the brutal names that the Twelve were labeled with, working himself into a whirlwind of fury ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... race on that Sunday morning in 1848. And I suppose that Crummell's eulogy on Clarkson, delivered in New York City in 1846, in its grandeur of thought, sublimity of sentiment and splendor of style, surpasses any oratorical effort of any colored man in the antebellum days. From that time until his death in 1898, Crummell swayed both ...
— Alexander Crummell: An Apostle of Negro Culture - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 20 • William H. Ferris
... misfits. Both his voice and his gestures are, he says, too large for him. But that, as ALGERNON BORTHWICK shrewdly points out, is professional jealousy supervening on the arrogance of excessive stature. The SQUIRE, though not lacking in moods of generosity, cannot abear a rival in the oratorical field. Had things turned out differently to-night, he might have enjoyed the advantage of addressing House at this favourable hour, whilst its withers were ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. July 4, 1891 • Various
... course," he hurried to add with oratorical emphasis. "Nothing like that! There never was anything mean or sneaking about Jeddy, s'far as I can recollect. Just mischievous—mischievous and up and coming all the time. But there were folks," Judge Maynard's voice became heavy with righteous accusation—"it's ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... fifty dollahs! Twenty-five! Fifteen! Ten! Why, gentlemen! Not ten dollahs? Remembah, this is the Blue-Grass Region of Kentucky—the land of Boone an' Kenton, the home of Henry Clay!" he added, in an oratorical crescendo. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... young wife of an aged nobleman. He fled to Holland, but was captured and imprisoned. Being at length liberated, he turned to literature and politics, and soon gained celebrity in both. His magnificent oratorical powers brought him rapidly to the front in the period immediately anterior to the outbreak of the Revolution. Mirabeau's "Memoirs, by Himself, his Father, his Uncle, and his Adopted Son," published in eight volumes in 1834, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... character so complex and diversified, one may ask what was the dominant feature, what was the supreme quality, the one characteristic which marked the nature of the man. Was it his incomparable genius for finance? Was it his splendid oratorical powers? Was it his marvellous fecundity of mind? In my estimation it was not any one of these qualities. Great as they were, there was one still more marked, and if I have to give my own impression, I would ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... dogmas, were to bring the reign of eternal happiness to all the peoples. Man had broken for ever with a past of barbarity and darkness. The regenerated world would in future be illuminated by the lucid radiance of pure reason. On all hands the most brilliant oratorical ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... in the spring term, I entered an oratorical contest among the various classes. As the day of competition approached, it did not seem possible that the event was so near at hand, but it came. In the chapel the classes assembled together, with their invited guests. The high platform was carpeted, and gaily festooned with college ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
... free opinions, persist in asserting that his divination was guess-work, and that conscience had no part in urging him to speak. That warning voice proved vain; the Party from whom he separated, proceeded—confiding in splendid oratorical talents and ardent feelings rashly wedded to novel expectations, when common sense, uninquisitive experience, and a modest reliance on old habits of judgement, when either these, or a philosophic penetration, were the only qualities ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... deep for my intellect, and I had not the patience to read them twice. I was so absolutely sure of the power of my mind that I ascribed my lack of understanding to the poet. Then his poems were so different from the easy, rhythmic, oratorical verses on which I had been brought up. In Palamas, I missed those pleasant trivialities which attract a boy's mind in poetry. One thing, however, was clear to me even then. Dark and unintelligible though his poems ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... a speech at Springfield when the town was crammed by the spectators attending the State Fair. It was rated the greatest oratorical effort of his career, and demolished Douglas' political stand. The State, previously Democratic, slid upon and crushed out Douglas' Kansas-Nebraska Bill, and a Whig legislature was chosen. Having "the senatorship in his eye," or even a dearer if not a nearer object, Lincoln resigned the ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... Lords, having welcomed the Bishop of DURHAM—a notable addition to the oratorical strength of the Episcopal Bench—proceeded to show that even the lay peers had not much to learn in the matter of polite invective. Lord GAINFORD invited them to declare that the Government should forthwith reduce its swollen Departmental staffs ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various
... I sat, and in a voice that sounded thin as a fly's after the oratorical bass of the last speaker, ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... carriage into the City. The ponies were all alive, the driver's eye keen as a bird's; her courage and her judgment equal. She wound in and out among the huge vehicles with perfect composure; and on those occasions when, the traffic being interrupted, the oratorical powers were useful to fill up the time, she shone with singular brilliance. The West End is too often in debt to the City, but, in the matter of chaff, it was not so this day; for whenever she took a peck she returned a bushel; and so she rattled to the ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... the orators of the land made pilgrimages, stopping one day in a place, putting themselves on exhibition, and giving the people a taste of their quality at fifty cents per head. Recently, there has been a relapse of the oratorical fever. Every city from Leadville to Boston has its College of Oratory, or School of Expression, wherein a newly discovered "Natural Method" is divulged for a consideration. Some of these "Colleges" have done much good; one in particular I know, that fosters a fine spirit of sympathy, ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... distinguished services to his country and to the world at large. After a brief response through his interpreter, Li left the banquet hall at eight-thirty, and went to his night's rest. His hosts, however, were not to be balked of their evening's entertainment, and the oratorical feast was continued ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... to the brain again as soon as the shock was over. The press could not let pass the most glorious opportunity in its history for head-lines; there were more mass meetings than even the press could grapple with, and all the latent oratorical ability in the country burst into flower. It seemed to Betty when she rose in the night and leaned out of her window that she could hear the roar of the great ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... particular faith. It is reported how he defended his theology with his splendid oratory, and how when this failed he resorted to his fists. His oratory was said to be simply overwhelming. They recounted how, in his oratorical frenzies, he used to fling his homespun coat in the air and crack the heels of his red-topped boots together with an emphasis that would stop the mouth of the most impudent gainsayer. They told how by this masterful eloquence ...
— The Deacon of Dobbinsville - A Story Based on Actual Happenings • John A. Morrison
... your hearers half so much, as the utterance of a string of commonplaces, after you have once secured their attention. The richness of the dessert should come at the close, not at the beginning, of the oratorical feast. ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... value copiousness and fertility of illustration. Nothing could be more unlike this normal legal manner than the style of Bacon. "No man," says Ben Jonson, speaking in one of those vivid little notes of his, of his oratorical method, "no man ever coughed or turned aside from him without loss." He is a master of the aphoristic style. He compresses his wisdom into the quintessential form of an epigram; so complete and concentrated is his form ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... the young man stared at the field and at the moving mass of men. He became oratorical in his thoughts. "Here is a big man," he muttered. "Here is a Napoleon, a Caesar of labour come to Chicago. He is not like the little leaders. His mind is not sicklied over with the pale cast of thought. He does not think that the big natural impulses of ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... Queensberry" emphasizes. This term "Marquis of Queensberry" has been given to that management which is thought of as a mental and physical contest, waged "according to the rules of the game." These two names are most valuable pictorially, or in furnishing oratorical material. They are constant reminders of the constant desire of the managers to get all the work that is possible out of the men, but they are scarcely descriptive in any satisfactory sense, and the visions they summon, while they are ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... afforded by a comparison of the noble speech of Fame in "The tragicall legend of Robert Duke of Normandie" (Bullen, pp. 25, 27) with Shelley's still finer "Hymn of Apollo." There is hardly any instance of direct verbal resemblance; but the metre, the strain of sentiment, the oratorical pose, the mental and moral attitude of the two poems are so much alike as to justify the assertion that the younger owes its form and much of its ...
— The Battaile of Agincourt • Michael Drayton
... says Byron, in one of his note-books (quoted by Moore, 'Life', p. 20), "were much more oratorical and martial than poetical; and Dr. Drury, my grand patron (our head-master), had a great notion that I should turn out an orator, from my fluency, my turbulence, my voice, my copiousness of declamation, and my action. ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... a gesture to silence the tinker, for he had thrown himself into an oratorical attitude, and shouted out the new commandments at the top of his voice, emphasizing each clause with his right fist brought down each time more passionately on the palm of his left hand. But his humor had grown savage, and with his eyes glowing like hot ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... called at her village, and slept in one of the huts without leave. If her family was to be suspected of dealing in evil charms, why were Masiko's people not to be thought guilty of leaving the same in her hut? She advanced and receded in true oratorical style, belaboring her own servants as well for allowing the offense, and, as usual in more civilized feminine lectures, she leaned over the objects of her ire, and screamed forth all their faults and failings ever since they were born, and her despair of ever seeing them become better, ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... most brilliant Germans now living, recently appeared with great success in the character of a philologist before the Academy of Useful Sciences at Erfurt. A much larger audience than usual present, drawn thither by the oratorical reputation of the General, who was announced to deliver an essay on the Development of the Celtic Race in England, and especially in Wales. Great was the astonishment, when, instead of the usual thick manuscript, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... giving him free play and a fair hearing, the result of allowing the people to judge for themselves, has been a prolonged spectacle of political hari-kiri which has had a wholesome though negative educational influence. The most accomplished oratorical Pierrot of our day, who changes his political philosophy as easily as he changes his costume, has seen one hundred and sixty cities and towns in America turn to government by commission, and has kept the heraldic donkey always just out of reach of the political carrots, ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... line. It brought to view the presence in our land of two sets of earnest thinkers, with diametrically opposite views touching slavery, who could not permanently live together under one constitution. May, Phillips, Weld, Whittier, the Tappans, and many other men of intellect, of oratorical power, and of wealth, drew to Garrison's side. State abolition societies were organized all over the North, the Underground Railroad was hard worked in helping fugitives to Canada, and fiery prophets harangued wherever they could get a hearing, demanding ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... mind and body grown sensitive to the edge of bewilderment among many impressions. They speak to us that we may give them certainty, by seeing what they have seen; and so it is, that enlargement of experience does not come from those oratorical thinkers, or from those decisive rhythms that move large numbers of men, but from writers that seem by contrast as feminine as the soul when it explores in Blake's picture the recesses of the grave, carrying its faint lamp trembling and astonished; ...
— Synge And The Ireland Of His Time • William Butler Yeats
... could not conceal her disapproval of the "other-worldliness" of Mrs. Besant, Mrs. Bright, and her daughter. Some remarkable and, to me, most amusing discussions took place among the three; but often, during Mrs. Besant's most sustained oratorical flights, Miss Anthony's interest would wander, and she would drop a remark that showed she had not heard a word. She had a great admiration for Mrs. Besant's intellect; but she disapproved of her flowing and picturesque white robes, of her bare feet, of her incessant ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... career of Cicero henceforth is largely covered by the general article on ROME: History, II. "The Republic," ad fin. The year of his consulship (63) was one of amazing activity, both administrative and oratorical. Besides the three speeches against Publius Rullus and the four against Catiline, he delivered a number of others, among which that on behalf of Gaius Rabirius is especially notable. The charge was that Rabirius (q.v.) had killed Saturninus in 100 ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... barn-like room, furnished simply with one long table and half a dozen chairs. Here were five men besides Bayne Trevors. All except Trevors and the man who had opened the door were seated; Trevors, at the far end of the room, was standing, an oratorical arm ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... orator requires something more than mere force of words. He must feel, while he speaks, the pulse of his audience, and instinctively regulate every sentence by reference to their feelings. All contemporary evidence shows that in this kind of oratorical tact Burke was eminently deficient. His nickname, "The Dinner-bell of the House of Commons," speaks for his effect on the mind of the average M.P. "In vain," said: Moore, "did Burke's genius put forth its superb plumage, glittering all over with the hundred ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... the point that this effect was not exclusively oratorical, nor merely magnetic. Chiefly it was what the world has always seen and always will see when it beholds a strong man in deadly earnest ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... faith in the creed of all theatrical producers is that if anything goes wrong it must be the fault of the assistant stage manager and Mr. Bunbury was evidently orthodox in his views. He was showing oratorical gifts of no mean order. The paper-knife seemed to inspire him. Gradually, Sally began to get the feeling that this harmless, necessary stage-property was the source from which sprang most, if not all, of the trouble in the world. It had disappeared ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... jealous of the fame of other orators of his time; but there is no just ground for this. No man approached him in reputation except Richard Lalor Shiel. O'Connell did not betray in public any jealousy of this great oratorical rival; but he often indicated, where he did not profess it, a distrust of his good faith— and the suspicions of the leader were not ill founded: Shiel was never in earnest in his arguments for the separation ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... destruction to yourselves! Unbind that man! leave my house in peace! go home, and learn to practise a little of the mercy of which you will yourselves soon stand in need." His venerable aspect, and the power and authority of his words, awed even that drunken crew. But Silas, vain of his oratorical powers, was enraged that anybody should dispute his influence with the crowd. Holding the branch with one hand, and gesticulating violently with the other, ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... lawsuits for the press. Although he is, at heart, only a very moderate Liberalist, this young man, with the very chic side whiskers, defends the most republican of "beards," if it can be called defending; for in spite of his fine oratorical efforts, his clients are regularly favored with the maximum of punishment. But they are all delighted with it, for the title of "political convict" is one very much in demand among the irreconcilables. They are all convinced that the time is near when they will overthrow the ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... considered as an oratorical contest with prizes awarded accordingly if so desired. It ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... was carried through merely by the energetic advocacy of Senators McDonald, Sargent and Hoar, whose oratorical efforts were reenforced by the presence of Mrs. Lockwood. After the struggle was over, all the senators who advocated the bill were made the recipients of bouquets, while the three senators whose names we have given received large baskets of flowers. This is a pleasing omen of that purification ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... commented Iff, following him upstairs, "you can't do something for that oratorical weakness of yours. Ever try choking it down? Or would that ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... weariful shuttlecock of gallantry Determine that the future is in our debt, and draw on it Faith works miracles. At least it allows time for them He whipped himself up to one of his oratorical frenzies I was discontented, and could not speak my discontent No Act to compel a man to deny what appears in the papers Puns are the smallpox of the language Stultification of one's feelings and ideas They dare not. The ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger
... kept his oratorical arm extended during the going out, as if he were repressing with infinite solicitude and by a wonderful moral power the vehement passions of the multitude, applied himself to raising their spirits. Had not the ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... Harvey characteristic came into play. He did not assume the lofty role of mentor or prophet; he very tactfully and gently tucked the young Indianian under his wing. Thenceforth there were no more oratorical blunders. ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... phrases, and fluencies, was alternately smoking and declaiming, Neal with his grey hair, his tall spare form, and his air of old-fashioned punctilium, would sit near, fixing the speaker with his pale-blue eyes,—a little threateningly; always ready to shatter an exuberance, to check an oratorical flow by some quick double-edged word that would make Manisty trip and stammer; showing, too, all the time, by his evident shrinking, by certain impregnable reserves, or by the banter that hid a feeling too keen to show itself, how great is ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Sutter, General Vallejo, Thomas O. Larkin, Dr. Semple, Wright, Hastings, Brown, McCarver, Rodman S. Price, Snyder, and others lend their aid. From the first day the advocates of slavery and freedom battle in oratorical storm. The forensic conflict rages for days; first on the matter of freedom, ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... the Sanitary Commission and its authorized historian, afterward the provost of the University of Pennsylvania, indicate the remarkable qualities of leadership possessed by Dr. Bellows. These were undoubtedly added to and made more impressive by his oratorical genius, that was of a very high order. Dr. Hedge spoke of the miraculous power of speech possessed by Dr. Bellows, when he was at his best, as being "incomparably better than anything he could have possibly compassed by careful preparation ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... of the figures at the top of the cliff, Hollanden established himself in an oratorical pose on a great weather-beaten stone. "Well—you must understand—I started my career—my career, you understand—with a determination to be a prophet, and, although I have ended in being an acrobat, a trained bear of the magazines, and a juggler of comic paragraphs, there was once carved upon ...
— The Third Violet • Stephen Crane
... hand, the leader of the party of natives spoke to them, and restrained their impatience; then, advancing before the rest, he waved his hand, and throwing himself into an oratorical attitude, made a little speech, thanking Rokoa for his gifts, and welcoming us to the island. The language which he spoke was a dialect of the Tahitian, differing from it so slightly that I had no difficulty in ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... noblemen before mentioned; and gave himself as much trouble to procure cards of invitation for the lad to some good houses, as if he had been a mamma with a daughter to marry, and not an old half-pay officer in a wig. And he boasted everywhere of the boy's great talents, and remarkable oratorical powers; and of the brilliant degree he was going to take. Lord Runnymede would take him on his embassy, or the Duke would bring him in for one of his boroughs, he wrote over and over again to Helen; who, for her part, was too ready ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... flight of Congress may be regarded as a blessing. But Congressmen do not brighten. PUNCHINELLO listens in vain for the swan song of SUMNER, and looks longingly, without being gratified by the spectacle of the oratorical funeral pyre of NYE. Almost the only gleam of humor he discerns in his weekly wading through the watery and windy wastes of the Congressional Globe is a comic ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... age, on condition that the priest shall gather up, during the week, from the literary and scientific publications of the whole world, the gems of current thought and information, digest them carefully, and pour them forth, in attractive form, for their delectation on Sunday. As a sort of oratorical and poetical reviewer, essayist and rhapsodist, the parson and his church had survived the ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... an idea as to how Sheridan's oratorical powers impressed his contemporaries, it is perhaps enough to repeat what Burke said of his second speech against Warren Hastings, namely, that it was "the most astonishing effort of eloquence, argument, and wit united of which there is any record or tradition", and to add that when, after three ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... man, a skinner by trade, by name Melchior Hoffmann. He had been an enthusiastic adherent of the Reformation, and it was not long before he joined the Strassburg Anabaptists and made his mark in their community. Owing to his personal magnetism and oratorical gifts, Melchior soon came to be regarded as a specially ordained prophet and to have acquired corresponding influence. After a few months Hoffmann seems to have left Strassburg for a propagandist tour along the Rhine. The tour, apparently, had great success, the Baptist ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... This use is ancient, as is shown on medals and statues, and is supposed by some to refer to the horns of animals slaughtered in sacrifice. The position of the fingers, Fig. 80, is also given as one of Quintilian's oratorical gestures by the words "Duo quoque medii sub pollicem veniunt," and is said by him to be vehement and connected with reproach or argument. In the present case, as a response to an impertinent or disagreeable petition, it simply means, "instead ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... his court. He had long and frequent conversations with them about the Holy Land, the state of the Christian Church in the dominions of the grand soldan, and of the policy and conduct of that arch-infidel toward it. The portly prior of the Franciscan convent was full and round and oratorical in his replies, and the king expressed himself much pleased with the eloquence of his periods; but the politic monarch was observed to lend a close and attentive ear to the whispering voice of the lowly companion, "whose discourse," ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... his wife in that same oratorical manner previously noted, as he entered the house, "I've found such a poor family. They have moved into the old saloon below Solmson's. You know how open that is." This was delivered in the most dramatic style after he had indicated something important by throwing ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... inroads of the brilliant but insincere epigrammatic style. This latter style was fostered largely by the importance assigned to the controversia and suasoria as opposed to the more realistic methods of oratorical training during the last ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... in. Hutchinson, from the mill. Terry Mackenzie, Rodney Page, in evening clothes and on his way from the opera to something or other. In a corner Graham and Delight talked. The rector, in a high state of exaltation, was inclined to be oratorical and a trifle noisy. He dilated on the vast army that would rise overnight, at the call. He considered the raising of a company from his own church, and nominated Clayton as its captain. Nolan ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the powers that be were slow to recognize the desire of the students for instruction in public speaking, there were many more or less unofficial avenues for those who desired to give vent to their oratorical impulses. Two escape valves existed almost from the first, the old literary societies, and the class exhibitions and Commencement programs which have been mentioned. The first literary society, Phi Phi Alpha, was ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... principle, a firm Tory, though without rancor. He was very High Church, but had no sympathy with the Oxford movement or Catholicism. He preached careful and sober sermons, without oratorical display and with rigid avoidance of levity. He would not make the church a field either for fireworks or jokes, or even for displays of scholarship or intellectual gymnastics. In his opinion, religious establishments were kept up to advance ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... French peasant was in no worse condition than the working classes of other lands, including Britain, Italy and Germany. That the Revolution first broke out in France and not in the other countries named is to be traced to journalistic and oratorical agitators ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... was all but perfect: lucid, argumentation, frank, at least in seeming, bland, persuasive; always singularly respectful not only to the House, but to the humblest member of it; his speeches partook more of the lecture and less of oratorical display than those of most other public men with anything like his reputation; but they were admirably suited to an educated and deliberative assembly like the House of Commons—and hence he influenced—almost ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... sherry, Mr Bright's priming was said to be a glass of a particular old port, and there was a malicious whisper to the effect that Mr Lowe, whilst Chancellor of the Exchequer made ready to enter the oratorical arena by taking a glass of iced water at the bar, being moved to his choice of a stimulant by considerations of economy. Mr Disraeli then was reported to the gallery as having taken his half-bottle, and very shortly afterwards he slipped into the House from behind the Speaker's ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... trouble of answering it, but decided in the negative. Yet doubtless, at the present moment, if Lord Grenville—master as he is of all the knowledge that belongs to a statesman and a scholar—were asked to point out from the stores of his reading the few models of oratorical composition, to the perusal of which he could most frequently, and with unwearied admiration, return, this slighted and unanswered speech would be ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... contemporaries, created for themselves a new style, such as was naturally developed in them by reading the earlier authors, and through their own relations to their readers and not hearers. Livy clung to the language, style, and the full-sounding period of the oratorical style, though even he in many points deviated from the natural refinement of a Caesar and a Cicero; but Sallust gave up the oratorical period, divided the long-spun, full-sounding, and well-finished oratorical sentence into several short sentences; and ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... conspiracy. Though they had belonged to the army of Conde and had shared in the late attempts against the life of the Emperor, that magnanimous sovereign had erased their names from the list of emigres. This was the return they made for his clemency! In short, all the oratorical declamations of the Bourbons against the Bonapartists, which in our day are repeated against the republicans and the legitimists by the Younger Branch, flourished in the speech. These trite commonplaces, which might have some meaning under a fixed government, seem farcical in the mouth of administrators ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... had blown taps, kept the multitude in tears for half an hour. John Barclay's address at the Opera House that afternoon—the address on "The Soldier and the Scholar"—was so completely overshadowed by the colonel's oratorical flight that Jane teased her husband about the eclipse for a month, and never could make him laugh. Moreover, the Banner that week printed the colonel's oration in full and referred to John's address as "a few sensible remarks by Hon. John Barclay on the duty ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... wonder!" Little O'Grady made a last sudden grab. "Oh, this, this!" He dropped the sheet and threw up both hands. Then, being still seated on the cot, he threw up both feet. Then he placed his feet upon the floor and rose on them and gave Ignace Prochnow a set oratorical appreciation of his qualities as a thinker and a draughtsman, and then, swept away by a sudden impulse to spread the news of this magnificent new "find" right under their own roof, he rushed downstairs to communicate his ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... up—or, if there is but one other, she. So far, so good. But now that everybody is up, new subjects of conversation, as if catching this rising infection, come up also. You are in a position in which, except by rather too oratorical or dramatic a gesture, you cannot look at your watch; more than that, if you bore a person sitting down and wondering when you are going to get up, you bore far worse a person standing up and wondering when you will go away. That you ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... agree that it was "bound to"—yet, being pressed, was driven to admit that "it might," and, retiring from what was developing into an oratorical contest, repeated a warning about not ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... fitted for college at the Boston Latin School, where he was distinguished both for scholarship, faultless behavior, and fine declamations. Charles Sumner was his companion there, as well as in college and at the law-school. They are both said to have given striking proof of their oratorical talent, though perhaps not more so than many others have before and since. He entered at Harvard in 1827, while Sumner was a sophomore, and Dr. Holmes and his celebrated twenty-niners were in their junior year. His college life was a dream of ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... critic ask how Corporal Trim could come by all this.—I've told him it should be explained;—but so he stood before my father, my uncle Toby, and Dr. Slop,—so swayed his body, so contrasted his limbs, and with such an oratorical sweep throughout the whole figure,—a statuary might have modelled from it;—nay, I doubt whether the oldest Fellow of a College,—or the Hebrew Professor himself, could have much ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... regarded him from the beginning as the foremost man in the faculty. That he had colleagues whose mental endowments were superior to his he himself at all times freely admitted. He is said to have laid no claim to either oratorical power or professional erudition. He was not a logician, he was not brilliant, and his deliverances were spiced with neither humor nor wit. And yet, says one of his biographers, in ability to enchain the students' attention, to impress them with the value of his instructions and his greatness as ...
— Pioneer Surgery in Kentucky - A Sketch • David W. Yandell
... sustained by the Dialogus de Oratoribus, ascribed to Tacitus, wherein it is said that Brutus's style of eloquence was censured as otiosum et disjunctum. Verplanck remarks, "the disjunctum, the broken-up style, without oratorical continuity, is precisely that assumed by the dramatist." Gollancz finds a probable original of this speech in Belleforest's Histoires Tragiques (Hamlet); Dowden thinks Shakespeare received hints from the English version (1578) of ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... not observed that, during this eloquent passage, Diggle had more than once glanced beyond him, as though his mind were not wholly occupied with his oratorical efforts. It was therefore something of a shock that he heard him say ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... with Alexander, when he yet wished to seem averse to war, resembled those oratorical paraphrases which do not prevent us from coming to the conclusion we wish. The two Emperors equally desired war; the one with the view of consolidating his power, and the other in the hope of freeing himself from a yoke which threatened ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... she is en route to join her husband, a captain in the army at Algiers; but, alas! grace a Dieu, there's no chance of a transport so long as this cursed pestilence blockades Marseilles! Do you know the man on your right?—No! Bien! that's the celebrated S——, the oratorical advocate about whom the papers rang when Louis Philippe began his assault on the press. He's on his way to Algiers too, and will be more successful in liberalizing the Arabs than the French. That old chap over yonder with the snuffy nose, the snuffy wig, and snuffy coat, is a grand speculator ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... in this strife deserves specific notice. At a meeting of the Association, held on the 26th of May, the question was incidentally introduced. Mr. Michael George Conway, a man of considerable literary and oratorical powers, but not distinguished for any very rigid piety, introduced the subject, evidently with the view of exciting Mr. O'Connell's impulsive character against the species of restraint under which his ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... to help give the college yell on Main Street the night his literary society won a debate. Anyway, he got ten days, and he was due in three days to orate for Siwash against the whole Northwest. It was the biggest event of the school year—the oratorical contest. We'd won seven of them—more than any other school in the sixteen states—and we stood a good show with Maxwell. We were crazy to win. Of course nobody ever goes to the contests; but we all stay up all night to hear the results, and when we win, which we do once every other college ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... thrill behind him in his hearer's minds." But even Pericles would not have possessed the persuasion and charm of which Eupolis speaks merely owing to his conciseness or to his keenness, or to both (for they are different attributes), unless he had also possessed consummate oratorical power. In order to delight and carry conviction an orator must have ample time and room allowed him, for he alone can leave a thrill in his hearers' minds who plants his weapon besides merely puncturing the skin. ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... at different points in the piazza. A vendor of old-clothes, in the act of hanging out a pair of long hose, had distractedly hung them round his neck in his eagerness to join the nearest group; an oratorical cheesemonger, with a piece of cheese in one hand and a knife in the other, was incautiously making notes of his emphatic pauses on that excellent specimen of marzolino; and elderly market-women, with their egg-baskets in a dangerously oblique position, contributed ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... relates, influenced by the example of Seneca: but how different a lesson might he have learned from the Greeks! We do not, it is true, in conversation, connect our language so closely as in an oratorical harangue, but the opposite extreme is equally unnatural. Even in our common discourses, we observe a certain continuity, we give a development both to arguments and objections, and in an instant passion ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... political future, when he was returned for the great commercial city of Bristol by a popular constituency. The six years during which he sat for Bristol were the most splendid portion of his career. Other portions perhaps contributed as much if not more to his literary or oratorical reputation; but this brought out in very bold relief the great traits of character which will always endear his memory to the lovers of national liberty, and place him high among the framers of great political ideals. In the first place, he propounded boldly to the Bristol ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... they were not all equally sincere. Many of them were only able to see in the movement an opportunity of rising above their class by affecting to despise it. For the majority it was an intellectual pastime, an oratorical enthusiasm which they never took altogether seriously. There is a certain pleasure in believing that you believe in a cause, that you are fighting, or will fight, for it,—or at least could fight. There is a by no means negligible ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... teaching that important branch of study." Willard had advanced to the higher grade of Algebra and Grammar, had added Philosophy to the list of his studies, and having cultivated a natural turn for public speaking, was elected on the eighteenth of December, 1857, a member of the Oratorical Society—an association connected with the institution. His boy experiences were very similar to those which happen to all lads in academic life. He had his chums, among whom were Brayton Abbott and Ozias Johnson; he had his little flirtations with misses of his ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... indulging in oratorical debate, and political writers were dipping their pens in gall, the Americans had been actively engaged with the sword. During the winter, both the British army in Boston, and the blockading army of the Americans, by which that town was surrounded, had undergone many miseries. Washington, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... managing little man with no great belief in my oratorical powers, was sticking his face up ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... people of America that such a building will pay. For one thing, it gave certain Western capitalists heart to erect the Fine Arts Building in Chicago. And now in a dozen cities of the United States there are great auditoriums where big events, musical and oratorical, bring the people together in a way that enlarges their spiritual horizon. Andrew Carnegie has ever had a passion for music. At Skibo Castle the meals are announced by bagpipe. Of course I admit that whether the bagpipe is a musical instrument or not is a matter of argument, for just what constitutes ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... will arise and take the place and play the part of those that we outlive. The beauty of the expected beat in verse, the beauty in prose of its larger and more lawless melody, patent as they are to English hearing, are already silent in the ears of our next neighbours; for in France the oratorical accent and the pattern of the web have almost or altogether succeeded to their places; and the French prose writer would be astounded at the labours of his brother across the Channel, and how a good quarter of his toil, above all invita Minerva, is to avoid writing verse. So wonderfully ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of these could best the mental training that my Talmud education had given me. As a consequence, I found things irksomely slow. Still, the teacher—a young East Side dude, hazel-eyed, apple-faced, and girlish of feature and voice—was a talkative fellow, with oratorical proclivities, and his garrulousness was of great value to me. He was of German descent and, as I subsequently learned from private conversations with him, his mother was American-born, like himself, so English was his mother-tongue in ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... pretty confidently stated that both Madison and Monroe owed their success and eminence more to their engaging manners than to great intellectual powers. They were even notably deficient in that oratorical ability which counted for so much in the political era with which they were connected. They rarely spoke in Congress. When speaking, Madison was hesitating, and was heard with difficulty; but his quietness and modesty, his consideration for others, ...
— George Washington's Rules of Civility - Traced to their Sources and Restored by Moncure D. Conway • Moncure D. Conway
... with Bishop McTyeire, see Dr. Winchell's own account in the Nashville American of July 19, 1878. For the further course of the attack in the denominational organ of Dr. Winchell's oppressors, see the Nashville Christian Advocate, April 26, 1879. For the oratorical declaration of the Tennessee Conference upon the matter, see the Nashville American, October 15, 1878; and for the "ode" regarding the "harmony of science and revelation" as supported at the university, see the same journal ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... in his oratorical gifts, the like of which has never before nor since been witnessed in Italy. He was a born orator; as vehement as Demosthenes, as passionate as Chrysostom, as electrical as Bernard. Nothing could withstand him; he was a torrent that bore everything before him. His voice ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... However much her demagogues may have exerted their oratorical powers at home, they carefully avoided perilling either life or limb in the cause of the revolution. A more numerous band of fighting men of English origin, in Garibaldi's ranks, would have shown more sympathy with rebellion in some Italian ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... been good to Rev. Daniel Webster Davis, blessing him with intellectual force, blessing him with poetic utterance, blessing him with oratorical ability, blessing him in domestic felicity. Not yet in his prime, yet so richly endowed in the gifts which make men strong and powerful, it is hoped that he may be spared many years to work in the Master's vineyard, and many ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... public manner which contrasted so singularly with his amiability and good humor in private life. Jackson remained quietly at the Hermitage, replying to correspondents and acknowledging expressions of support, but leaving to his managers the work of winning the voters. Clay, whose oratorical gifts would have made him an invincible twentieth century campaigner, contented himself with a few interviews and speeches. The candidate who normally would have taken most active personal part in the campaign was Crawford. But in August, 1823—six months before the ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg |
