"Spoken word" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... spoken word of tenderness, but Davie leaned against his father in utter content, and little Norman clasped his arms round his knee. Jack eagerly helped to unsaddle the tired mare, not caring to speak, though as a general thing he had plenty to say. And Robert had enough to do with the ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... set down the dying for love, as a sentimentalism, can hardly be accepted as a clear authority. Assuredly he was not one to avoid the incurring of the immense debtorship in any way: but he was a bondsman still to the woman who had forsaken him, and a spoken word would have made it seem his duty to face that public scandal which was the last evil to him. What had so horrified the virtuous Benson, Richard had already beheld in Daphne's Bower; a simple kissing of the fair white hand! Doubtless the keyhole somehow added to Benson's horror. The two similar ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... chateau far away beyond the heaving water and the long, long, dusty roads—the solid stone chateau which had itself become the mere mist of a dream—had been done a year, and he had never yet, by so much as a single spoken word, disclosed to her the state of ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... things they say come not back to men nor women—the spoken word, the past life and the neglected opportunity. Wonder if we should make any more of them, Alice, if they ...
— Dear Brutus • J. M. Barrie
... up to march ahead of the sheriff out of the room, and his eyes met the eyes of Alice. She was not far away, and the cheer of their quick message was like a spoken word. She was wearing the same gray dress that she had worn on that day of days, with the one bright feather in her bonnet, and she smiled, nodding to him. And then the swirl of bobbing heads and moving bodies came between ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... promises and none of them rash, but no man could truthfully say that he ever broke one. I feel certain that he would have made good his spoken word even at the expense of his fortune ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... kind of a man who makes a spoken word of that sort more binding than a written pledge with a notarial seal." Again Daunt shook the Morrison hand. "I consider ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... suggest pathological decay. What Greece does is generally subtle and shrewd; what she says is often madness. She has little sense of humour, and takes offence where other nations would laugh. Thus she wins by statecraft and loses by politics. In thought, and in the spoken word, Greece is outmatched for instance by the Slavs; but in silent action and in administrative policy Greece more often excels her neighbours. You will always hear odious comparisons made in the Near East between Greek and Turk, to the disadvantage of the ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... better instrument than language by sign; therefore one is freer to express his thought and impress it upon the mind of another by speech than by gesture. The written word is a more potent instrument than the spoken word; therefore one is freer to act on the mind of his fellows when he knows how to picture the word to their eyes than when he simply knows how to speak it. The press is an instrument two or three hundred times more potent than ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... announced to the world in cold type! Absurd, is it not? It may be repeated in that form, but its initial power must come from the spoken word and vital personality of its author. But Christ's addresses were not "extemporaneous." All His life He had been preparing ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... Courteous, kind, and practised well, So a song did sing and tell Of the peril that befell. "Maiden fair that lingerest here, Gentle maid of merry cheer, Hair of gold, and eyes as clear As the water in a mere, Thou, meseems, hast spoken word To thy lover and thy lord, That would die for thee, his dear; Now beware the ill accord, Of the cloaked men of the sword, These have sworn and keep their word, They will put thee to the sword Save thou ...
— Aucassin and Nicolete • Andrew Lang
... his eyes big and grey. Before him on the board lay the great War-horn of the Wolfings carved out of the tusk of a sea-whale of the North and with many devices on it and the Wolf amidst them all; its golden mouth-piece and rim wrought finely with flowers. There it abode the blowing, until the spoken word of some messenger should set forth the tidings borne on the air by the ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... accomplishing the gift of speech. The individual thinker, by turning his thoughts into words, advances himself in the art and power of thought—unravels, clears up, and establishes the movements of "the shadowy tribes of mind." And so the federal republic of nations, by turning the spoken word into the written, advance their faculty of thinking, and their acquisition of thought. The thought has gained perpetuity when it is worded—the word has gained perpetuity when it is written. Reason waits her completed triumph from the written work, which converts, and alone can convert, the thought ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... nothing unworthy of them. And the Athenians erected to her memory a bronze lioness without a tongue, and placed it near the entrance to the Acropolis, signifying her dauntless courage by the nobleness of that animal, and by its being without a tongue her silence and fidelity. For no spoken word has done as much good as many unspoken ones. For at some future day we can give utterance if we like to what has been not said, but a word once spoken cannot be recalled, but flies about and runs all round the world. And this is the reason, I take it, why men ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... heard the first great Anarchist speaker—the inimitable John Most. It seemed to me then, and for many years after, that the spoken word hurled forth among the masses with such wonderful eloquence, such enthusiasm and fire, could never be erased from the human mind and soul. How could any one of all the multitudes who flocked to Most's meetings escape his prophetic voice! Surely they had but to hear him to throw off their ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... from the scientific point of view; a maker of hats would single out the dimensions of the head from among other human characteristics; an orator would consider man from the point of view of his susceptibility to the spoken word. But selection is the fundamental necessity which enables us to realize things; to emerge from the vague into the practical, from aimless contemplation into the ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... which she had suffered,—there were some minutes of the ride when he would have borne it, only to lose the thought of that. But Faith knew nothing of it all, except as she could feel once or twice a deep breath that was checked and hushed, and turned into some sweet low-spoken word to her; and her rest was very deep. So deep, that the stopping of the sleigh at last, was ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... and paper has been spent over the question whether the Chinese hieroglyphs are ideograms or phonograms, whether the character , for instance, conveys to those using it primarily the idea of Heaven, or the spoken word T'ien. It is necessarily both, in a sense; it would not be written language otherwise. And it is equally true that the letter-combination Heaven is in a way as much to us a picture of the idea as of ...
— Commentary Upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex - with a Concluding Note Upon the Linguistic Problem of the Maya Glyphs • William E. Gates
... Word of God, who 'was from the beginning with God, and was God,' and is manifested in these last times unto us. I am keeping well within the analogy of Scripture teaching when I see the perfecting of revelation by the spoken Word as reached in the revelation by the personal word; and when, in addition to the exhortation, to hide the Scripture in your hearts, and to hide the uttered will of God, however uttered, in your hearts, I add, let us hide Christ in our hearts. For He will 'dwell in our hearts ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... ordinary type of action, but we have already indicated a different type. In speaking of typewriting we said the stimulus might be either the copy or ideas. One can write from copy or dictation, in which the stimulus is the written or spoken word, but one can also write as one thinks of what one wishes to write. The latter is known as centrally initiated action. That is to say, the stimulus comes from within, in the brain, ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle
... feelings are only for the silent moments of perfect companionship. The spoken word, which indexes thought, robs them of half their charm and beauty. The girl felt something of this as the calm voice of her companion broke the ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... into English diplomat. Our English forte ('Geniality is not his forte,' &c.) is altered from the French fort without even the advantage of either keeping the French sound or distinguishing the spoken word from our fort; but who proposes to sacrifice the reader's convenience by correcting the 'ignorant' spelling? In the light of these parallels is it not the patrons of moral who deserve the imputation ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 3 (1920) - A Few Practical Suggestions • Society for Pure English
... Moreover, from the threshold step goes either watchful ward, Two dogs to wit, that follow close the footsteps of their lord. So to the chamber of his guest the hero goes his way, Well mindful of his spoken word and that well-promised stay. Nor less AEneas was afoot betimes that morning-tide, And Pallas and Achates went each one their lord beside. So met, they join their right hands there and in the house sit down, And win the joy of spoken words, that lawful now ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... experiences with our neighbors while occupying the steamer chairs. Friendships grew rapidly under these favorable conditions. Sometimes chats with new acquaintances which began in a mirthful way changed to talks of a serious kind as some spoken word recalled home and friends left behind, and conversations when prolonged became almost ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... for her there was no such possibility, and she felt it. She knew her own nature well. Her heart had spoken, and the word it said must roll on continually through the spaces of her mind. Who can recall the spoken word, and who can set a limit on its echoes? It is not so with most women, but here and there may be found a nature where it is so. Spirits like this poor girl's are too deep, and partake too much of a divine immutability, to shift and suit themselves to the changing ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... entry of death. They conversed hurriedly and guardedly, as if they mistrusted each other. In each of them two entities were now apparent—a surface consciousness, which talked and acted mechanically, and a secondary inner consciousness, watchful, and fearful of misinterpretation of the spoken word. The faculties which make up the human mind are different and complex, and mysteriously blended. It may be that when tragedy upsets the frail structure of human life the brute instincts of watchfulness and self-preservation come uppermost, guarding against ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... aphasia, that the subject hears and understands a spoken word—fully perceives it—and yet cannot pronounce it himself. And at that, there need be no paralysis of the speech organs. The brain injury has affected the motor speech-cooerdinating machinery, and deprived the individual of the power ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... always held, [7] contrasting with the low position accorded to the poet, must have produced its natural result. But though the practice of oratory was cultivated it was not reduced to an art. Technical treatises were the work of Greeks, and Romans under Greek influence. In the early period the "spoken word" was all-important. Even the writing down of speeches after delivery was rarely, if ever, resorted to. The first known instance occurs so late as the war with Pyrrhus, 280 B.C., when the old censor Appius ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... melody of brook or bird, Keener than any winds that breathe or blow; A magic music out of memory stirred, A strain that charms my heart to overflow With such vast yearning that my eyes are blurred. Oh, song of dreams, that I no more shall know! Bewildering carol without spoken word! Faint as a stream's voice murmuring under snow, Sad as a love forevermore deferred, Song of the arrow from the Master's bow, Sung in ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... striking form of oral tradition is legend. It arises among groups of men with whom the spoken word is the only means of transmission, in barbarous societies, or in classes of little culture, such as peasants or soldiers. In this case it is the whole group of facts which is transmitted orally and assumes the legendary form. There is a legendary period in the early history of every people: ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... be empty on paper, meaningless without the puckered lip, the interhiss, the brutal semi-snarl restrained by human mastery, the snap and jerk of wrist and gleam of steel-gray eye, that really told the tale, of which the spoken word was mere headline. Another, a subtler theme was theirs that night; not in the line but in the interline it ran; and listening to the hunter's ruder tale, I heard as one may hear the night bird singing in the storm; amid the glitter of the mica I caught the glint of gold, for theirs was a ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton
... a day crowded with misfortunes. In all likelihood, those two would never meet again. She needed no telling as to the risk he would soon be called on to face, and her anguish was made the more bitter by the necessity that they should go from each other's presence without a spoken word. ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... Company had its birth, the blind Milton was dictating his message and the liberated Bunyan preached the spoken word, the iniquitous Cabal Ministry was forming in England, and Panama was sacked by Morgan the buccaneer. New York merchants of Manhattan met every Friday at noon on the bridge over the Broad Street Canal for barter, South Carolina was ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... Though they have travelled far in space and thought, they have anchored their craft securely in the past. No writer that has handled prose or verse with a high seriousness has offended against the practice of the masters—save only Walt Whitman. The written word and the spoken word differ even more widely in America than elsewhere. The spoken word threw off the trammels of an uneasy restraint at the very outset. The written word still obeys the law of gradual development, which has always controlled it. If you contrast the English literature of to-day with the American, ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... come. But neither did his watchers; and when he had been in the room five minutes a serving-girl slipped in at the back, showed him a scared face, held out a scrap of paper and, when he had taken it, fled in a panic and without a spoken word. ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... the man obediently turned away, and, with a low-spoken word or two to the armed men who remained on guard outside the door, swung round the end of the house and walked aft, as we could tell by the sound of ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... seems to me, that one may do, is to love people, if one can. It is the mood from which sympathy and help spring that matters, not the spoken word or the material aid. In the worst troubles one cannot help people at all. The knowledge that others love you does not fill the aching gap made by the death of child or lover or friend. And now too, in these democratic days, when compassion and help are more or less organised, when ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... ether, but later, as she came out from under the anesthetic, she realized how very wretched she felt. The nurse leaned over to catch her first spoken word. ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... the yoke-encumbered[29] head, With their dilated nostrils spread, They silently inhale The clover-scented gale, And the vapors that arise From the well-watered and smoking soil For this rest in the furrow after toil, Their large and lustrous eyes Seem to thank the Lord, More than man's spoken word. ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... sprung into her mind in the act of uttering it, but now that it was spoken it instantly assumed the proportions of a fact, and seemed to furnish another justification for her wretchedness. Bessy was not naturally jealous, but her imagination was thrall to the spoken word, and it gave her a sudden incomprehensible relief to associate Justine with the ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... upper circles there was an over-fondness for German, French, and English words. Between them the two friends, by force of their great genius, cleared away the debris which made for sterility and erected in their stead a new structure out of living Russian words. The spoken word, born of the people, gave soul and wing to literature; only by coming to earth, the native earth, was it enabled to soar. Coming up from Little Russia, the Ukraine, with Cossack blood in his veins, Gogol injected his own healthy virus into an effete ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... and how its Apostolate could be inaugurated. To this end he was ready to devote all his efforts, and expend all his resources and those of the community of which he was the founder. It is true that no man of his time was better aware of the power of the spoken word, and few were more competent to use it, the natural and Pentecostal vehicle of the Holy Spirit to men's souls. But he also felt that the providence of God, in making the Press of our day an artificial medium of human intercourse more universal than the living voice ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... or spoken word in explanation of what we have come to feel about the thing offered, is after all a ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... His creatures. Whatever God makes, He makes in His own likeness, more or less so according to the degree of being which He imparts to the creature. And as whatever God does is like Him, and whatever God makes is like Him, so whatever God says is like Him: His spoken word answers to His inward word and thought. It holds of God as of every being who has a thought to think and a ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... polished politeness. He remained patient, undemonstrative, self-effacing, and respectful before her, his angular arm slightly but not obtrusively advanced, the offer of protection being in the act rather than in any spoken word, and ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... been contemptible in the offering of his love; his best had come out at that moment; if it does not come out then, somehow,—through face and tone, in some plain earnestness or simple nobleness, if not in fashion of the spoken word as very well it may not,—it must be small best that the ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... kind, for they had danced together a great deal; but they had always danced in silence. At the time, with his arm about her, silence had seemed enough; but in separation there is something wonderfully solid and comforting in the memory of a spoken word; it is like a coin in the pocket. And after Miss Severance had bidden him good night at the long glass door of the paneled ball-room without his saying anything of a future meeting, she had gone up-stairs ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... not every herb puts forth a flower; Nor every flower that blossoms fruit doth bear; Nor hath each spoken word a virtue rare; Nor every stone in earth its healing power: This thing is good when mellow, that when sour; One seems to grieve, within doth rest from care; Not every torch is brave that flaunts in air; There is what dead doth seem, yet flame doth shower. Wherefore it ill behoveth a wise ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... politics is going to do what he says until he does it. When he makes you a promise, just ask him to kindly put his name to it. I'm like a darkey—I've more confidence in a piece of paper with some writing on it than in the spoken word. Men mean well, and they'll promise a woman heaven or hell to get rid of her, but you can't trust them. How ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... with relentless hands. Clarice Wilder knew as well as she knew anything that her position was one of some peril, and that much more than she could weigh or measure at that moment lay beyond the next spoken word. She was telling herself to be careful, steadying her nerve and reining in a desire to pour out a flood of circumstantial evidence, calculated to convince the Head ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... O my Lord? Again Mount Carmel heard Not in the spoken word, Not in the earthquake's shock, Not in the thunder roll, But in ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... be reflected; and even his inmost conceptions and daily thoughts must be interpenetrated by its brightness and remodelled by its power. This indwelling light of the soul should be recognised in every creation of his pencil, expressive as a spoken word; and in this lies the peculiar vitality of Christian beauty, and the cause of the remarkable difference between Classic and Christian art." "Physical beauty is employed by the Christian painter ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... of dialogue, and dialogue, of course, is as often employed in the service of the story as in the service of the play. Yet it is not difficult to understand how in Lady Gregory the dialogue and in Mr. Yeats the love of the spoken word led, when opportunity was made, to writing for the stage, and for success on the stage. But in the case of "A.E." it is as difficult to find a foreshadowing of the playwright in the mystical poet as it would be to see in ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... reason which has held me there through all these years gone by—a desire to preach. I think I can say, in no spirit of boasting, that from my earliest days I have had an intense interest in the problem of truth, and a passion to interpret and defend by the spoken word, the truth as I saw it, to other men. It is just this passion, I suppose, which makes the preacher, as distinguished from the poet or the scientist. So Phillip Brooks would seem to suggest in his famous dictum, that preaching is "Truth (conveyed) through Personality." Furthermore, ...
— A Statement: On the Future of This Church • John Haynes Holmes
... earnestness, imagination, and force of intellect of the writer shine through it and irradiate his subjects. And yet the written is described by contemporaries to have been immeasurably surpassed by the spoken word, which carried away the hearer as in a whirlwind. And the man was even greater than his achievements. His character was one of singular simplicity, nobility, and lovableness, and produced a profound impression on all who came under his influence. The character of his intellect ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... bread with an odd smile. He did not look towards the speaker. He knew the voice perhaps, or he knew that the great truth that a man's character is ever bubbling to his lips, and every spoken word is a part ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... more unaccountable than the spell that often lurks in a spoken word. A thought may be present to the mind, and two minds conscious of the same thought, but as long as it remains unspoken their familiar talk flows quietly over ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... who enjoy the influence and popularity that oratory always will have. These men, however, are outstanding and their success illustrates the continuing power of oratory, but it gives no argument for the effectiveness of preaching in general. As a person having an instinctive bias for the spoken word, I have slowly been driven to the opinion that a great multitude of people feel differently and are more sincerely and more easily influenced by other means of bringing truth home to the hearts ...
— Rural Problems of Today • Ernest R. Groves
... my cards on the table, and indulged in a pantomime more graphic than spoken word. He shut his eyes, laid his cheek on one hand, and gave a groan of intense disgust, followed by certain gleeful chuckles, made the more expressive by the sly jerking of his thumb towards the dining room door and the bobbing up and down of his fore-finger in the direction of ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... their private desks. The first discovery they made was that all notes and papers pertaining to Vickery and the Boulevard Railway Company were missing, thus destroying every bit of evidence, beyond their spoken word, in that particular case. Other documents were missing also, and the trail of the corrupt politician was over all. She sent for Robert Joyce, the district attorney, and Bailey Armstrong, as city ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow
... be too volcanic and supermanly for a girl who was engaged to marry another man in June. George, as comforter, would be far too prone to trust to action rather than to the soothing power of the spoken word. George's idea of healing the wound, she felt, would be to push her into a cab and drive to ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... uncertainty whether Godolphin had really taken his play, or would ever produce it; yet at the bottom of his heart he confided in the promises which the actor lavished upon him in both the written and the spoken word. They had an agreement carefully drawn up as to all the business between them, but he knew that Godolphin would not be held by any clause of it that he wished to break; he did not believe that Godolphin understood what it bound him to, either when he signed it or afterward; but he was sure that ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... the reflection of light from the vibrating mirror, which thus bears along your voice, with which it becomes charged. Selenium, the chemical element used in the operation, transmits the sound to the telephone, and your spoken word is reproduced. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... of horses' hoofs behind the stable, Bell's half-spoken word, and the sharp bark of Le Gaire's levelled derringer. I felt the impact of the ball, and spun half around, the pressure of my finger discharging my own weapon in the air, yet kept my feet. I was shocked, dazed, but ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... master's shoulder. When the latter swung into the saddle, the wolf-dog came to his side, reared, and resting his forefeet on the stirrup stared up into the rider's face. The man nodded to him, whereat, as if he understood a spoken word, the dog dropped back and trotted ahead. The rider touched the reins and galloped down the easy slope. The little episode had given the effect of a three-cornered conversation. Yet the man had been as silent as ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... have said, "My blood speaks to you in my veins," but he could not consistently quote Bassanio's other words, "Madam, you have bereft me of all speech." From the presence of Evaleen he received access of eloquence; the two were conscious of a silent interchange of sentiments more meaningful than any spoken word. While Evaleen sat listening with responsive interest to some frank personal disclosures of the young man's hopes and ambitions, her attention was diverted by a slight sound on the porch. She glanced up, and saw, or thought ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... brain to interpret the movements of speech as seen by the eye, as it would have been trained by the same procedure to interpret the sounds of speech had the organ of transmission not been injured. But the idea must be constantly in the mind of the mother that her boy needs to see the spoken word at the very moment when the idea that it represents is in his mind, AS OFTEN as he would hear it if ...
— What the Mother of a Deaf Child Ought to Know • John Dutton Wright
... may be very silent in those who have waited long, for I did not hear a cry or a spoken word. Presently I dared to look, and was not surprised to find myself alone. The evergreen-clothed amphitheatre behind had many paths which would instantly hide climbers from view. The blue man and the woman with floating ...
— The Blue Man - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... I assert, did falsehood pass his lips, his mouth was equal to his seal and his spoken word to his written. Loyal as fine gold and whole as an egg." Chastellain repeats himself somewhat in the profusion of his eulogy, but such are the main points of his characterisation. Then ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... there is no possibility of what we may call accompanying it with personal illustrations[1] and demonstrations, if necessary or agreeable. But still it may be laid down, with some confidence, that the more the spoken word is heard in a letter the better, and the less that word is heard—the more it gives way to "book"-talk—the worse. Indeed this is not likely to be denied, though there remain as usual almost infinite possibilities of differences in personal opinion as to what constitutes ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... intent was I on his every low-spoken word that I scarce dared breathe as the story of my ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... speaks to man through his senses, something occurs exactly analogous to the process when man communicates with man through the spoken word. In both cases the perception, that is, the result of the process of perception, is something quite other than the sum of sensations underlying it. Per-ceiving by means of the senses is none other than a re-ceiving ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... apprehensions. He must know something of her thoughts, have a token from her of some feeling like his own; and, waiting, he stopped the Italian on the stairs. The latter knew his purpose immediately, without a spoken word; and he followed Howat's brusque gesture to his room. He hastily wrote a note; and the latter brought him back a reply, only partly satisfactory, with an air of relish. For the first time the affair had the hateful appearance of an intrigue, ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... answer on the spur of the moment. It was easy for him, in his first letter, to hark back to one of those idle questions of hers, and to make his reply to it an excuse for a letter. Such a communication would need no acknowledgment beyond a spoken word of thanks, which she would bestow upon him the next time they met. It should contain nothing warmer than the assurance of his anxiety to be of service to her, in anything she undertook, and a protestation of respectful friendship at ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... emotional. It is scarcely possible to say anything of an emotional nature in words without adventuring into depths or bogs of sentimentality from which one can only emerge greasy with dishonour. When we are happy we cannot say so with any degree of intelligibility: in such a context the spoken word is miserably inadequate, and must be supplemented by some bodily antic. If we are merry we must skip to be understood. If we are happy we must dance. If we are wildly and ecstatically joyous then we will become creators, and some new and beneficent ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... his similar work for his University; but I never heard him speak a disloyal word of any of his colleagues. No man could have advocated Imperialism as he did without making political enemies, and many a vigorous attack was made on him by young Canadians; but I do not recall any spoken word or any printed sentence of his that dragged his advocacy of Imperialism into the realm of party politics or personal controversy. I know how true and generous he was to one of his friends who always found in him a congenial fellow-worker in the things of ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... but true, that the spirit of conversation is often more important than the ideas expressed. This is especially true in social circles. Since speech is never used in solitude, we may take it for granted that the spoken word is an expression of the longing for human sympathy. Thus, it is a great accomplishment to be able to enter gently and agreeably into the moods and feelings of others, and to cultivate the feelings ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... crises in life with conclusions so evident that no spoken word can add to their clearness. There is no need of comment; neither is there room for doubt. The bare facts stand naked. No sophistry can dull their outlines nor soften the insistence of their high lights; nor can any reasoning explain away the results ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... possession; the things in the world most worth thinking about. To live daily in his company, to study his works with minute and loving care— in no spirit of pedantry searching for double endings, but in order to discover their secret, and to make the spoken word tell upon the hearts of man and woman—this might have been expected to produce great intellectual ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... this 'Big Foot Girl' broadcast," cried Helen, who was proud that her spoken word had been the inspiration for Mary's clever cartoon. "Come on! we'll have it stamped on our stationery, and write to everyone we know bespeaking their best attention when they see the poster ...
— Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures - Or Helping The Dormitory Fund • Alice Emerson
... sufficient distance behind, they followed him to a poor home in a little street, saw him enter, saw the light flash up and knew that he was living out in deed the doctrine he preached. Silent, they turned away. What his spoken word in The Temple could not do his ministry at midnight had accomplished, and they became loyal and devoted members ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... between soul and body, or more generally between spiritual and material, has been illustrated by the connection between the meaning of a sentence and the written or spoken word conveying that meaning. The writing or the speaking may be regarded as an incarnation of the meaning, a mode of stating or exhibiting its essence. As delivered, the sentence must have time relations; it has a beginning, middle, and end; it may be repeated, and the ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge |
