"Fluency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had finished our repast, various subjects of speculation were again introduced and discussed, greatly to my amusement. Wigurd displayed his usual ingenuity and ardour, and baffled all his antagonists by his vehemence and fluency. He had two great principles by which he tested the good or evil of every thing; and there were few questions in which he could not avail himself of one or the other. These ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... complicated system of photographing in colours is particularly lucid, and, indeed, the narrative is everywhere remarkable for its fluency ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... about the place for twenty-four hours on good terms with many townsmen, while Hipp, full of pluck and business, was posting me against all the dead walls of a farther village. Again and again I sketched the war-episodes I had followed, gaining fluency and confidence as by degrees my itinerant profession lost its novelty, but we as steadily lost money. The houses were invariably bad; we had the same fiery discussions every evening, but the same meagre receipts, and in every ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... the impetuosity of his speech and the earnestness of his voice and manner were so impressive, that they forced conviction upon his hearers even when his arguments did not reach their judgment. Such was the fluency and animation of his language, whether written or spoken, that though it was sometimes coarse and defective in taste, it was always, as will be seen from the examples quoted ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... came to Athens, he was a hearer of Antiochus of Ascalon, with whose fluency and elegance of diction he was much taken, although he did not approve of his innovations in doctrine. For Antiochus had now fallen off from the New Academy, as they call it, and forsaken the sect of Carneades, whether that he was moved by the argument of manifestness and the senses, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... we otherwise look for and rarely find in the far distance of favored antiquity lies so close to me in you. You need no longer be astonished that there are so few who are capable or worthy of understanding you. The wonderful naturalness, truth, and fluency of your description hide from the common herd of critics every thought of the difficulty, of the grandness of your art, and those who are capable of following the artist, who perceive the means by which ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... everybody felt that Musonius had done his duty in bringing the action. On the other hand, Demetrius, a professor of Cynic philosophy, earned discredit for defending an obvious criminal[344] more for ostentatious motives than from honest conviction. As for Publius, courage and fluency alike failed him at the critical moment. This trial was the signal for further reprisals against prosecutors. Junius Mauricus[345] accordingly petitioned Domitian that the senate might be allowed access to the minutes of the imperial cabinet, in order to find out who had applied for leave ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... such a company of grenadiers as her warlike sons formed. The whole race were at free quarters in the little castle nigh to Bruxelles which Frank had taken; rode his horses; drank his wine; and lived easily at the poor lad's charges. Mr. Esmond had always maintained a perfect fluency in the French, which was his mother tongue; and if this family (that spoke French with the twang which the Flemings use) discovered any inaccuracy in Mr. Simon's pronunciation, 'twas to be attributed to the latter's long residence in England, where he had married and remained ever since he ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... of utterance, and he was admitted to the benefit of the doubtful meaning. Still it must be admitted that all vulgarisms, as far as practicable, should be indignantly spurned from our noble English language—a language unequalled for excellence in fluency, capacity, and strength. A stern critic may also, and in truth, aver that terms are included on our roll the which are not altogether of maritime usage. This we have admitted, but the allegation will be greatly weakened ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... the control of Marko and Stefan and an assorted following of Bulgar cut-throats. Although the mutual hatchet had been interred a bare three weeks we found ourselves among friends. Thomas Atkins was soon talking Bulgarian with ease and fluency, while his "so-called superiors," as the company Bolshevik put it, celebrated the occasion by an international dinner in Marko's quarters. The dinner consisted chiefly of rum (provided by us) and red pepper (provided by ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... Science. I had received an excellent education in my youth and always had a taste for study, which I have taken pains to pursue in whatever part of the world I happened to be stationed. As a result I am able to converse with considerable fluency in English, as perhaps you have already observed, as well as in Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, Arabic, and, to a considerable ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... in a chair and buried his face in his hands. James began to talk, and as he talked his fluency ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... that he put forward his claims to the highest rank in Masonry; and, of course, added, thereby, immensely to the eclat of his position. He spoke English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German, Russian, Polish, the Scandinavian, and many of the Oriental tongues, with equal fluency; and pretended to have traveled over the whole earth, and even to have visited the most distant starry orbs frequently, in the course of a lifetime which, with continual transmigrations, he declared ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... accomplishment for a Chinese woman. Being unaccustomed to foreign manners, they would never eat at the same table with us, but would come in during the evening with their mother, to join the family circle and read aloud to us some of their father's official despatches. This they would do with remarkable fluency and intelligence. ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... Aguilar could turn Spanish into Maya, and Malinal could turn Maya into Mexican. This means of communication, round about though it might be, was at once established. The intervention of Aguilar soon became unnecessary, for Malinal presently learned to speak pure Castilian with fluency and grace. She received instruction from the worthy priests who accompanied the expedition and was {124} baptised under the name of Marina, and it is by that name that she is known in history. Her eminence is even greater than that unfortunate ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... the last. The person immediately evoked by the title of the work is poor Hetty Sorrel. Mrs. Poyser is too epigrammatic; her wisdom smells of the lamp. I do not mean to say that she is not natural, and that women of her class are not often gifted with her homely fluency, her penetration, and her turn for forcible analogies. But she is too sustained; her morality is too shrill,—too much in staccato; she too seldom subsides into the commonplace. Yet it cannot be denied that she puts things very happily. Remonstrating ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... often called upon us—several times in the course of a week. He generally addressed most of his conversation to my mother: and no wonder, for she could converse. I almost envied the unfettered, vigorous fluency of her discourse, and the strong sense evinced by everything she said—and yet, I did not; for, though I occasionally regretted my own deficiencies for his sake, it gave me very great pleasure to sit and hear the two beings I loved and honoured ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... plenty of iron in his blood, though it be the blood of generations of culture, and of an overripe civilization. We cannot say as much of Swinburne's poetry or prose. I do not think either will live. Bigness of words, and fluency, and copiousness of verse cannot make up for the want of a sane and rational philosophy. Arnold's poems always have real and tangible subject matter. His "Dover Beach" is a great stroke of poetic genius. Let me return to Poe: what largeness of thought did he bring to his subjects? Emerson spoke of ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... tempera by the brothers Giulio Cesare and Camillo Procaccini, men who, had they lived before the days of academics, might have done as well as any, except the few whom no academy can mould, but who, as it was, were carried away by fluency and facility. It is useless, however, to specify. There is not one of the many villages which can be seen from any rising ground in the neighbourhood, but what contains something that is picturesque and interesting, while the coup d'oeil, as a whole, is ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... Cuzco, Bertie was able to converse in Spanish with some fluency. On the way he rode either beside Dias and his wife, or with Jose; in either case an animated conversation was kept up, sometimes on the stirring events of the war of independence and the subsequent struggles, sometimes ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... Voluble as Osterman himself, he, nevertheless, had at his command a vast number of ready-made phrases, the staples of a political speaker, the stock in trade of the commercial lawyer, which rolled off his tongue with the most persuasive fluency. By degrees, in the course of his speech, he began to insinuate the idea that the wheat-growers had never expected to settle their difficulties with the Railroad by the work of a single commission; that they had counted upon a long, continued campaign of many years, ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... room; her voice seemed to have a curious magnetic effect on one; its tuneless vibrations seemed to irritate me; if she spoke loudly, her voice was rather shrill and unpleasant. She knew this, and carefully modulated it. I used to wonder over its smoothness and fluency. ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... richness; he could scarce have extracted all the honey out of 'Cherry Ripe'; he did not fear—he even ostentatiously displayed and seemed to revel in he shrillness of the instrument; but in fire, speed, precision, evenness, and fluency; in linked agility of jimmy—a technical expression, by your leave, answering to warblers on the bagpipe; and perhaps, above all, in that inspiring side-glance of the eye, with which he followed the effect and (as by a human appeal) ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... even to change my action. I am now convinced, for example, that I did wrong in joining in your plot against the innocent and most unfortunate Lelio. I told you so, you will remember, in the chapter which has just been concluded and though I do not know whether you perceived the ardour and fluency with which I expressed myself, I am still confident in my own heart that I spoke at that moment not only with the warm approval, but under the direct inspiration, of the author of the tale. I know, Spada, I tell you I know, that he loved me as I uttered these ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... spoke French with grace and fluency, and the girls thought it queer that there should be two languages—English and French—so they picked up a few words of French, too, and at the table would gravely say "Merci, Papa," and "S'il vous plait, Mamma." Then Mr. Austen proposed that at table no ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... leaders. In those days there were no penny papers and Theobald only took in the Spectator—for he was at that time on the Whig side in politics; besides this he used to receive the Ecclesiastical Gazette once a month, but he saw no other papers, and was amazed at the ease and fluency with which Dr Skinner ran from ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... French with perfect fluency, and only with the merest suspicion of a drawl in the intonation of the vowels, which suggested rather than proclaimed his nationality; and just now there was not the slightest tone of bitterness apparent in his deep-toned and mellow voice. Once more his friend would have protested, but ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... is at his father's side. What need to describe the sacred joy of those first few minutes, even if it were possible? But unrestrained tenderness between man and man, rare as it is, and, as it were, unaccustomed to itself, has no passionate fluency, no metaphor or poetry, such as man pours out to woman, and woman again to man. All its language lies in the tones, the looks, the little half-concealed gestures, hints which pass themselves off modestly in jest; and such was Tom's first interview with his father; till the old Isaac, having ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... resting against the oak, was another man, altogether a different type. He was frowning over the pages of Bagot's Italian Lakes, and he wasn't making much headway. He was Italian to the core, for all that he aped the English style and manner. He could speak the tongue with fluency, but he stumbled and faltered miserably over the soundless type. His clothes had the Piccadilly cut, and his mustache, erstwhile waxed and militant, was cropped at the corners, thoroughly insular. He was thirty, ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... college of Calcutta, or were suggested to him by those whose authority he respected, and to whose wishes he thought it incumbent upon him to attend. It may be added that Dr. Carey spoke Sanskrit with fluency and correctness." ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... just going to tell her with more fluency than politeness when he was interrupted. "That'll do," said the skipper, who had come behind them. "Go for'ard, you. There's been enough of this fooling; the lady thought you had taken the ship. Thompson, I'll take the helm; there's ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... us nonchalantly, saying: "It's all right—she's Totimalu, the Queen. Sign here, Queen," and he motioned for the obese beauty to hold the pencil. She did so, and then he stood up, and, while the cock-fight still went on, he read, with a fine Chicago fluency, what proved to be a proclamation. As will be seen, it was full of ellipses and was fragmentary in its character, though ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... mine was stirred To quenchless fluency, Which forced me to begin my tale, As now I ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 29, 1890 • Various
... is less frequent in the north of France than in the south. In the north-east it is least known, and most in the south-east. For example, all things being equal, for six stammerers in Paris there would be twenty-five in Lyons and seventy in Marseilles. The admitted garrulity or fluency of southern speaking is often the cause or the preface to stammering. Thus, comically concludes M. Claretie, oratorical habits threaten to make stammering become the order of the day, and for one Vergniaud there will be ten stutterers, and ten more stutterers for one ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... Want of means alone prevented her from executing her productions in marble. She was also familiar with the literature, not only of her own nation, but of the Latin, Spanish, Italian, and English languages, which she spoke with fluency and correctness, a rare accomplishment for a French woman. During the Empire and the Restoration she was intimate with Madame Recamier and Madame de Stael, and for penetration and readiness of mind and charm of manners was not unworthy to be named ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... all you expect of it; and like a chaste and virtuous woman, do you see to her, that she be not exposed to the designs of demagogues, and that her virtues creep along with her fair fame." The major delivered these remarks with so much ease and fluency, that the listeners stood in silence, and began to think the man they had had described to them for a fool, was in truth an eccentric politician, who was using this mode of discourse only as a means of deception. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... fluency, and from his long service in the vessels of New York, was almost an American to behold, yet Captain Riga was in fact a Russian by birth, though this was a fact that he strove to conceal. And though extravagant ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... an object that I had questioned the young man as to his knowledge of French. Trevanion had a large correspondence in foreign countries which was carried on in that language; and here I could be but of little help to him. He himself, though he spoke and wrote French with fluency and grammatical correctness, wanted that intimate knowledge of the most delicate and diplomatic of all languages to ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and even in our time, it is justly admired as a work of genius and invention. The idea however, of a perfect and immortal commonwealth, will always be found as chimerical as that of a perfect and immortal man. The style of this author wants ease and fluency; but the good matter which his work contains, makes compensation. He died ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... her hands to emphasise her helplessness, then let them drop to her sides again. There was a silence, for Maurice could not think of anything to say; her fluency made him tongue-tied. He struggled with his embarrassment until they were all but within earshot of the rest, at the bottom of ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... men while he listened. Of the blanket-vending, depot-haunting type was this young man, with a ready smile and a quick eye for a bargain and a smattering of English learned in his youth at a mission, and a larger vocabulary of Mexican that lent him fluency of speech when the mood to talk was on him. Half of his hair was cut so that it hung even with his ear-lobes. At the back it was long and looped up in the way a horse's tail is looped in muddy weather, and tied with a grimy red ribbon wound ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... usual kindness, prefaced the special matter of her application to Tom by making various inquiries about his mother and his own temporary change of situation. Thus far Tom was able to meet her questions with tolerable fluency, and no more embarrassment than was inseparable from the novelty of his situation. But, when she proceeded to question him about his knowledge of Captain Edward Nicholas, Tom faultered and betrayed the greatest confusion. The truth was that ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... my situation will plead for any want of fluency on my part; and I beg your lordships' indulgence if I am unnecessarily tedious. I have to thank the gentlemen of the jury for their recommendation, which I know was well meant; but knowing, as I do, what that mercy will be, I ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... his fluency developed very quickly when he spoke to her mother. As he leaned forward she could not help seeing his face, and she looked at him closely, for the first time, and with some curiosity. He was handsome, and had a wonderfully frank and good-humoured expression. He was not in the least ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... inevitable change of the exterior seems to have no effect on the "inner man." "In the Prince's conversation I found the same talent, the unrivalled esprit. The fluency and elocution, so entirely his own, were as graceful, and the memory was as perfect, as at any ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... round a group of shrubs, Courtnay after him. Finding him unpleasantly quick on his feet Tinker bolted into the shrubs. Courtnay plunged after him right into a well-grown specimen of the flowering cactus. It brought him up short. He began to swear, and though he could have sworn with equal fluency and infelicity in French, German, or Italian, in the depth of his genuine emotion he returned to the tongue of his boyhood, and swore in English. When he came out of the shrubs, adorned on one side of his face and ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... came in almost immediately, was charming, speaking English with fluency, although he has ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... rage, the Jewess kept her eyes steadily fixed upon Burrell, and held her hand within the bosom of her vest. When he paused, she addressed him at first in broken English, and then finding that she could not proceed with the eagerness and fluency her case required, ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... relations in which they actually stood to herself, the extent of her power over them, and of their power over her. The mysteries of emphyteusis, emphyteuma, and emphyteuta were still hidden to her, though her steward spoke of them with surprising loquacity and fluency. She laboured hard to understand the system upon which her tenants held their lands from her, and it was some time before she succeeded. It is easier to explain the matter at once than to follow Corona in ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... attention to the matters that could not be supervised at "long range." He found out how the pupils were improving in their reading, and especially in oral expression, in its syntax, its freedom from errors of construction, its clearness and fluency. He listed the common errors, directing his teachers to take them up in a systematic manner and eradicate them, and he did not fail to note at his next visit how much progress had been made. He noted the condition of the blackboard work, and kept a list of the improvements ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... lad, while he was running the streets with his pole in his hand, and his pot round his neck, learned first to read, and then to write what others might read. From studying the bills which he carried, he soon took to original composition; and it may be said of him, that in fluency of language and richness of imagery few surpassed him. In person Mr. Robinson was a genteel young man, though it cannot be said of him that he possessed manly beauty. He was slight and active, intelligent in his physiognomy, and polite ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... confirmed. As has been intimated, he entered as a pupil at Athens; but as the course of instruction in that institution was not in harmony with his tastes, he soon withdrew, applying himself afterwards to the study of the French and German languages (a ready fluency in both of which he finally acquired), and especially to the art dearer than all other studies. A recluse, owning and soliciting no guidance but that of his text-book, in the quiet of the woods, or, if that were inaccessible, the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... hope you received my note and last poem. I hope still more earnestly that you won't think I am putting my spite against your chastening hand into a presumptuous and troublesome fluency. ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... My country's honour and repute Demands that I translate for you The letter which Tattiana wrote. At Russ she was by no means clever And read our newspapers scarce ever, And in her native language she Possessed nor ease nor fluency, So she in French herself expressed. I cannot help it I declare, Though hitherto a lady ne'er In Russ her love made manifest, And never hath our language proud ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... still in favour of the principle of emancipation, and it was in leading the anti-Catholic party that Peel chiefly acquired his almost unrivalled parliamentary skill. He had, indeed, all the qualities of a great debater: courage, fluency, self-possession, complete command of every subject he treated, unfailing lucidity both in statement and reasoning; admirable skill in marshalling and disentangling great masses of facts, in meeting, evading, or retorting arguments, and detecting the weak points of the case of an opponent, ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... Geoffrey went out but little, spending his time in reading Spanish books and mastering the language as much as possible. He always conversed in that language with Mr. Burke, and at the end of six weeks was able to talk Spanish with some fluency. He now generally accompanied Mr. Burke if he went out, following him in the streets and standing behind his chair when he dined abroad. He was much amused at all he saw, making many acquaintances among ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... press has no effect upon this serious gathering. Its verbose platitudes and pretentious inanities continue to be repeated, furnishing almost as good an antithesis to science and philosophy as Mrs. Eddy and her disciples. There is no lack of fluency and ingenuity in the use of language, and occasionally there are glimmering and flashes of common sense, but to wander through the first report of the present session, in pursuit of a correct philosophic idea, is as unprofitable ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... the newspaper; and, as I was before struck with the fluency of style and the general talent which it displayed, I was now equally so with its common-placeness and want of originality on every subject; and it was evident to me that, whatever advantage these newspaper-writers might ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... Tschaikowsky, Mendelssohn and Longfellow, Nietzsche and Richard Strauss. Browning will stand up cheek by jowl with his one true affinity, Brahms. And the owner will sit by the quiet hearth reading to himself with equal fluency and joy from ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... or Clerical Hand is a writing that preserves a close affinity for the round regular hand of the average school-boy, with the difference that while the characters are formed on regular copybook model, the hand is written with considerable fluency and firmness. It is generally only a little out of the perpendicular, ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... hither and quickly slain. Come,—I will show thee a secret labyrinth by which thou canst gain the embankment of the river, and from thence betake thyself speedily home, . . if thou hast a home..." here he paused, and a keen, questioning glance flashed in his dark eyes. "But,—notwithstanding thy fluency of speech and fashion of attire, methinks thou hast the lost and solitary air of one who is a stranger in the city ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... simplest truth about them. The meaning of these two rules is this: From the beginning we must try to understand the grammar of music. Some of the great composers could in childhood write down music with the greatest fluency. Handel, even as a boy, wrote a new church composition for every Sunday. Mozart began to write music when less than five years old, and when he was yet a boy, in Rome, he wrote down a composition,[44] sung by the choir ...
— Music Talks with Children • Thomas Tapper
... crime," said Miss Tewksbury, pressing her thin lips together firmly. She had once been on the platform in some of the little country towns of New England, and had made quite a reputation for pith and fluency. ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... and foot, his form and stature were not unworthy of his rank; and his vigorous health, so essential to himself and to the world, was corroborated by temperance and exercise. In his familiar discourse he was grave and modest; and if he was ignorant of the Arabic language, he spoke with fluency and elegance the Persian and Turkish idioms. It was his delight to converse with the learned on topics of history and science; and the amusement of his leisure hours was the game of chess, which he improved or corrupted ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... than any one, and always with unfailing good-humour. There were times when he seemed to be furious, raging out in language especially his own, the vocabulary being wonderful, the names he called astounding in their fluency, novelty, and peculiarity; still the objects of these displays of temper were never his fellow-travellers, but the mules, and as soon as he had roared himself hoarse he stood wiping his perspiring face, smiling contentedly, to say to one, ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... additional course of lectures in a German university, he proceeded to Rome. A few weeks after my arrival there, I felt a tap on my shoulder at the dinner table, and, on looking up, I recognized my young Russian friend, who was already speaking Italian, with as much fluency as he had spoken English, French, and German, when we parted at ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... Queen Helen face to face, and other women now seemed unimportant. Whether or not he got into the graces of this Hamadryad did not greatly matter, one way or the other: and in consequence Jurgen talked with such fluency, such apposite remarks and such tenderness as ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... understood to be something of an orator. FLYNN will show House how all these qualities may be combined in one man. Does it by the tiresome twenty minutes, the lamentable half-hour; popping up on every question with comically judicial air; talking on with fatal feeble flatulent fluency, whilst GILL sits nursing his hat awaiting ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 26, 1892 • Various
... Campion's writings, when he put together his dainty Anthology. There is clear evidence[1] that Campion wrote not only the music but the words for his songs—that he was at once an eminent composer and a lyric poet of the first rank. He published a volume of Latin verse, which displays ease and fluency (though the prosody is occasionally erratic); as a masque-writer he was inferior only to Ben Jonson; he was the author of treatises on the arts of music and poetry; and he practised as a physician. It would ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... had just collected further evidence in support of a theory which chronically surprised him. Then he turned away and looked down over the vast untrodden tract of Africa that lay beneath them. He kept his eyes fixed there, after the manner of a man who has no fluency in personal comment. ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... with something that sounded remarkably like 'Hang Thun!' Then he went on, and said that I was all the world to him; that he could not live without me. I shook my head slowly, and did not reply. He spoke with a fluency that seemed to suggest practice, but I told him it could never be. Then he folded his arms, sitting moodily back in the boat, saying I had blighted his life. He did look handsome as he sat there in the moonlight, ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... most splendid and subtle one of all which flames through several pages of his Defensio Secunda. It is Milton now, almost alone, that we remember as Cromwell's laureate; but among the sub-laureates there were some by no means insignificant. Old George Wither, though his marvellous metrical fluency had now lapsed into doggrel and senility, had done his best by sending forth, in 1654-5, from some kind of military superintendentship he held in the county of Surrey (Wood calls it distinctly a Major-Generalship at last, but that is surely an exaggeration), two Oliverian ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... rhythm. A slight movement of curiosity in the rear benches, and a whisper that it was the maiden effort of a new preacher, helped to prolong the interruption. A heavy man of strong physical expression sprang to the rescue with a hysterical cry of "Glory!" and a tumultuous fluency of epithet and sacred adjuration. Still the meeting wavered. With one final paroxysmal cry, the powerful man threw his arms around his nearest neighbor and burst into silent tears. An anxious hush followed; the speaker still continued to ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... distance, for a sparrow sat betwixt us quite unalarmed on the breech of a piece of cannon. So soon as our eyes met, he drew near and addressed me in the French language, which he spoke with a good fluency but ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... conspicuously short, and of a bright, almost juvenile, complexion, very active in his movements and garrulous—or at least very talkative. His judgments were copious and frequent in the old days, and some at least I found entertaining. At times his fluency was really remarkable. He had a low opinion of eminent people—a thing I have been careful to suppress, and his dissertations had ever an irresponsible gaiety of manner that may have blinded me to their true want of merit. That, I say, was ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... fluency of speech in many men, and most women, is owing to a scarcity of matter, and a scarcity of words; for whoever is a master of language, and hath a mind full of ideas, will be apt, in speaking, to hesitate upon the choice of both; whereas common speakers have only one set of ideas, and ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... little scene from the immortal story of "Babes in the Wood." Jamie and Pokey came trotting in, hand in hand, and, having been through the parts many times before, acted with great ease and much fluency, audibly directing each other from time to time as they went along. The berries were picked, the way lost, tears shed, baby consolation administered, and then the little pair lay down among the brakes ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... his reduction in rank to pass unnoticed. He does not understand the French tongue, though he speaks it with great fluency and incredible success. He holds ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... upon him. Rosemary stood by the quay for a few minutes, uncertain what to do. Two or three deep-eyed, long-lashed Monegasque men smiled at her kindly, as Monegasque men and Italians smile at all children. She had learned to lisp French with comparative fluency, during the months she and "Angel" had spent in Paris; and now she asked where the people went who had come in on ...
— Rosemary in Search of a Father • C. N. Williamson
... simplicity, that astonishment soon gives way to softer emotions; all they do and say breathes the utmost frankness and sincerity. One circumstance which I cannot help remarking is, that after living so many years in this sequestered retreat, they speak French with equal fluency and purity. I was likewise much struck with the little resemblance there is between them. Lady Eleanor has a charming face, embellished with the glow of health; her whole appearance and manner announce ...
— The "Ladies of Llangollen" • John Hicklin
... If I had the Odyssey by me, I could parallel many passages where Virgil has evidently copied, but by no means improved, Homer. Nor can I think there is anything of this owing to the translators; for, from everything I have seen of Dryden, I think him, in genius and fluency of language, Pope's master. I have not perused Tasso enough to form an opinion: in some future letter you shall have my ideas of him; though I am conscious my criticisms must be very inaccurate and imperfect, as there I have ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... words were still ringing in the ears of his conscience-stricken accusers, Edward O'Meagher Condon commenced to speak. He was evidently more of an orator than either of those who had preceded him, and he spoke with remarkable fluency, grace, and vigour. The subjoined is a correct report of his ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... principle, to support itself against the force of ridicule. Half angry, half mortified, and, to say truth, half ashamed of his more manly and better purpose, Nigel was unable, and flattered himself it was unnecessary, to play the part of a rigid moral patriot, in presence of a young man whose current fluency of language, as well as his experience in the highest circles of society, gave him, in spite of Nigel's better and firmer thoughts, a temporary ascendency over him. He sought, therefore, to compromise the matter, and avoid farther debate, by frankly owning, that, if to return ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... that country; their complexion is dark, but not disagreeably so; their faces are oval, their features regular, their foreheads rather low, and their hands and feet small. The men are taller than the English peasantry, and far more active. They all speak the English language with fluency, and in their gait and demeanour are easy and graceful; in both points standing in striking contrast with the peasantry, who in speech are slow and uncouth, and in manner dogged ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... judge compelled every day to weigh the effect of opposite arguments. These things were in themselves an education, an education eminently fitted, not, indeed, to form exact or profound thinkers, but to give quickness to the perceptions, delicacy to the taste, fluency to the expression, and politeness to the manners. All this was overlooked. An Athenian who did not improve his mind by reading was, in Johnson's opinion, much such a person as a Cockney who made his mark, much such a person as black Frank before he went to school, and far inferior ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... reciter's wand and the accompaniment of the lyre or grace the comic or the tragic stage. Satires also do I write and riddles, histories also on diverse themes, speeches that the eloquent and dialogues that philosophers have praised. Nay, and I write all these and much besides with equal fluency in Greek and Latin, with equal pleasure, like ardour and uniform skill. Most excellent proconsul, I would I could offer all these works of mine not in fragments and quotations but in entirety and completeness! Would I might enjoy the priceless boon of your testimony to the merits of all ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... first went abroad, she had no fluency in talking French, although she was well acquainted with the literature. To show how, at every period of her life, she missed no opportunity of acquiring information or improvement, I may mention that many years after, when we were spending a summer in Siena, where the ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... give us shelter?" said Kennedy, who spoke German with tolerable fluency. "We have lost our way, and cannot stay ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... said in general that the chief is a man who, by his fluency of speech and by his penetration and sagacity in unraveling the intricate points of a dispute, by his personal prowess, combined with sagacity and fair dealing, has won influence. Personal prowess appeals to the Manbo, ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... world. "I had no conception that a poet could be the owner of such a paradise, and his house is as elegant as his scenes are charming." The poet, apart from his rapid treatment of Adamo, did not succeed independently in attaining to Hayley's fluency among these surroundings. "I am in truth so unaccountably local in the use of my pen," he wrote to Lady Hesketh, "that, like the man in the fable, who could leap well nowhere but at Rhodes, I seem ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... philologists, and extremely fond of the study of language. Grammar was favorite light reading, and the philosophy which lies at the root of human speech a frequent subject of discussion and research with them; but they none of them spoke foreign languages with ease or fluency. My uncle was a good Latin scholar, and read French, Italian, and Spanish, but spoke none of them; not even the first, in spite of his long residence in French Switzerland. The same was the case with my father, whose delight in the dry ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... Rover," rejoined Homespun, whose fluency returned with his senses, "I am an impoverished and undone man. My life has been one of weary and probationary hardships. Five ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... believe me when I say that I am sincerely delighted," returned the General, who had now, to a certain extent, recovered his senses; and inasmuch as, when occasion arose, he could speak with fluency, gravity, and a certain effect, he set himself to be expansive in his remarks, and went on: "We have been so dismayed and upset by the news of your indisposition! We had received such hopeless telegrams about ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... speak it with due respect for the sex), she is guilty of a fault which is somewhat too common among them; and having very little, except prejudice, on which to found an opinion, she makes up for want of argument by a wonderful fluency of abuse. A woman's religion is chiefly that of the heart, and not of the head. She goes through, for the most part, no tedious process of reasoning, no dreadful stages of doubt, no changes of faith: she loves God as she loves her husband—by a kind of instinctive devotion. Faith ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... whites fully gratified. He accompanied me to Washington, and, after remaining several months at the Columbia College, was sent by the Indian department to Philadelphia, where, among other things, he learned to read and write well, and speak the English language with some fluency. He will accompany me in a few days to the frontier of Missouri, where he will be sent with some one of the emigrant companies to the village at the ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... more impressive front than the American. For example, Britain has produced Ramsey MacDonald, who writes books and makes speeches with a rare grace; John Burns, who quotes Shakespeare or recites history with wonderful fluency; Keir Hardie, a miner from the ranks, who was possessed of a charming poetic fancy; Philip Snowden, who displays the spiritual qualities of a seer; and John Henderson, who combines philosophical power with skill in dialectics. On the other hand, the rank and file of American labor is more intelligent ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... character of Don Francisco de Lara—"Frank Lara," as he is familiarly known in the streets and saloons. Though Spanish in features, and speaking the language, he can also talk English with perfect fluency—French too, when called upon, with a little Portuguese and Italian. For, in truth, he is not a Spaniard, but only so by descent, being a Creole of New Orleans—that cosmopolitan city par excellence—hence ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... little dog could she remember him, but it was especially the animal, the giver very dimly. I alluded to our excursion—her eyes sparkled, all the details, even the most minute incidents came back to her, and she related with the utmost fluency, in a rapture of delight, a picnic with breakfast in a hut built of branches and an extravagant quantity of wine—which ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... Crockett was a grave, dignified woman, very courteous to her guests. The daughters were remarkably pretty, but very diffident. Though entirely uneducated, they could converse very easily, seeming to inherit their father's fluency of utterance. They were active and efficient in aiding their mother in her household work. Colonel Crockett, with much apparent pleasure, conducted his guest over the small patch of ground he had grubbed and was cultivating. He exhibited his ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... There were gloomy rocks on all sides, the dry bed of a forgotten river offered us an uncomfortable and often perilous path, and we passed several cairns of small stones. The Maalem left his mule in order to pick up stones and add one to each cairn, and as he did so he cursed Satan with great fluency.[16] ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... unfailing flow of lesser melodies where the charm is often greatest of all, and the main themes of each movement with a chain of derived phrases, one melody prevails and reappears throughout. The fluency is more striking here than elsewhere in Tschaikowsky. All the external sources,—all the glory of material art seem at his command. We are reminded of a certain great temptation to which all men are subject ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... which was very precious. He had a real feeling for literature, and he could impart his own passion with an admirable fluency. He could throw himself into sympathy with a writer and see all that was best in him, and then he could talk about him with understanding. Philip had read a great deal, but he had read without discrimination everything that he happened ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... a long time I heard Mme. Blunt mere talking with extreme fluency and I even caught the individual words, but I could not in the revulsion of my feelings get hold of the sense. She talked apparently of life in general, of its difficulties, moral and physical, of its surprising turns, of its unexpected contacts, of the choice and rare personalities that drift ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... he, in a loud but broken voice; and holding fast to the back of the chair, he poured out his soul and theirs before the Lord with all the fervour and the fluency of real feeling. There was no stumbling over misapplied texts now, no awkward objections in his throat, but only glowing Bible words of thankfulness and praise and joy. And every heart was uplifted and calm as they joined ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... well trained for legislative duty,—having served with distinction in both branches of the New-York Legislature and having been a member of the State Constitutional Convention of 1867. Not prominent as a debater, he yet spoke with directness and fluency, and was always listened to by the House. In all respects he was an admirable representative, watchfully caring ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... passages, trills, mordents, etc., until the difficulty with the left hand was remedied; after that I am sure I could make a real clavier player out of her. It is a pity; she has so much genius, reads respectably, has a great deal of natural fluency and plays with a great deal ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... said He in Spanish, which He had already learnt to speak with fluency and correctness. 'While you were with the Baron, I watched the moment when Dame Cunegonda was below stairs, and mounted into the chamber over that of Donna Agnes. I sang as loud as I could a little German air well-known to her, hoping that She would recollect ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... he became conscious that something in this young girl had silenced within him any inclination to gay effrontery, any talent for casual gallantry. Her lifted eyes, with their clear, half shy regard, had killed all fluency of tongue in him—slain utterly that light good-humour with which he had encountered ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers |
