"Grandiloquent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... weapon, a curved simitar inlaid with gold, and reposing in a scabbard of gilt metal and purple velvet. In its wrapping of brown paper and twine it suspiciously resembled a child's toy, and Prince Michael's grandiloquent manner added a touch of buffoonery to a farewell scene made poignant ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... trust, therefore, if they do seriously resist their besiegers, that the assurances of the Government that there are ample supplies of food and of ammunition, are not part of the system of official lying which was pursued by their predecessors; and I hope that the grandiloquent boasts and brave words that one hears from morning to night will ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... Grandiloquent sketches were passing and interchanging before his mind's eye—Penrod, in noble raiment, marching down the staring street, his shoulders swaying professionally, the roar of the horn he bore submerging all other sounds; ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... who use that very vague, grandiloquent word 'Ambrosial' know that it has reference to the 'ambrosia' ([Greek: ambrotos], immortal), the food of the gods! It has, however, a secondary signification, namely, that of an unguent, or perfume, hence fragrant; and this is probably the prevailing idea ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... wish to take callow writing too seriously, but I reproduce from an oratorical contest the following bit of premature pragmatism, doubtless due much more to temperament than to perception, because I am still ready to subscribe to it, although the grandiloquent style is, I hope, a thing of the past: "Those who believe that Justice is but a poetical longing within us, the enthusiast who thinks it will come in the form of a millennium, those who see it established by the strong arm of a hero, are not ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... true, dad," he remarked with a grandiloquent air. "I was just going into the Cri—let me see, on Tuesday night it was—when whom should I run up against but little Tommy Soampton with a pal, and we all had drinks together. He was a quiet-looking chap, not dressed half ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that she never went into society without a sinking at the heart, dreading the welcome that would be accorded her on the morrow of a disclosure. To her hints, her entreaties, Jenkins had replied at first with vague phrases, with grandiloquent gestures: "Do you doubt me? ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... "Not so grandiloquent, my little abbe," replied De Bouillon, superciliously. "Methinks, were I so disposed, I might snap the feeble thread of your existence, without any extraordinary display of valor, but I have no desire to deprive ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... particularly in vogue among the Highlanders. I see no reason, therefore, to doubt the general authenticity of this speech. Exactly as it stands in the Nairne Papers probably Dundee did not deliver it; the style being somewhat more grandiloquent than he was in the habit of employing. But its general purpose, which I have endeavoured to give in a paraphrase, seems to be very much what such a man would have said at such a moment. The authority for Mackay's ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... Contemplations—he had now got in prose, by that of the smaller, more isolated, and less contaminated[109] island, into his own proper country, the dominion of the Angel of the Visions of the Sea. He has told us in his own grandiloquent way, which so often led him wrong, that when he settled to exile in the Channel Islands, his son Francois observed, "Je traduirai Shakespeare," and he said, "Je contemplerai l'ocean." He did; and good came of it. Students of his biography ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... with his usual modesty; for this man, who was often so grandiloquent on the subject of his country, was very meek on the subject of himself. To give his own words would be to assign a very unimportant part to the chief actor in a very remarkable affair, so that the facts themselves may be more appropriately stated. These facts Lord Chetwynde gathered from ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... early, a slight and unimpressive figure in somewhat worn field-grey, the German khaki. The "debate" having begun, I noticed how he listened eagerly to every word spoken, jotting down notes incessantly for the evident purpose of replying to the grandiloquent utterances about our "glorious army of Kultur-bearers" which were falling from the lips of "patriotic" party orators. Liebknecht had earned the displeasure of the House a few days before by asking some embarrassing questions about Turkish massacres ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... with occasional visits to some sick person in the village; with long walks alone over the moors, and with the composition of his 'Cottage in the Wood' and those grandiloquent sermons which still linger in the memory of Haworth. Occasionally a clergyman from one of the neighbouring villages would walk over to see him; but as Mrs. Bronte had died so soon after her arrival at Haworth their wives never ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... difficult points of the law. His mature works do not show any profound knowledge either of the Halakah or of the Haggadah, so that the statement is not to be taken strictly. It is probably nothing more than a grandiloquent way of saying that he was a precocious child, who impressed his elders. Paul, too, claimed that he was "a Pharisee of the Pharisees, and zealous beyond those of his own age in the Jews' religion," and yet he can hardly be regarded as an authority on the tradition. The autobiography ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... be inclined to smile at this grandiloquent prophecy of the fruits of an evening school, in the light of present difficulties of instilling four standards into the bulk of the childhood of the nation, it is impossible to move a step among the footprints of the common ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... describe what, at so small a distance from the days of Luther and Calvin, may be supposed to have been the feeling among the Polish Unitarians; whereas Dr. Pusey's jacet (lies low, in the present tense) does as certainly partake somewhat of the grandiloquent. That no "boast," however, was intended, becomes probable, when we consider that the distich was designed to convey a feeling of reverence towards Socinus rather than an ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 59, December 14, 1850 • Various
... always spontaneous. It not only appears simultaneously in various countries, but manifests itself in widely separated groups in the same country; in every city it embraces the "smart set" and the hard-driven working women; sometimes it is sectarian and dogmatic, at others philosophic and grandiloquent, but it is always vital ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... pension during the last years of his life from Lord Rolle. During this period he dictated his memoirs for publication in Sidmouth, to an editor who unconsciously gave the book a delicious touch of humour by putting into the mouth of this son of a Devon shoemaker the grandiloquent phrases of an early ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... nation is a grandiloquent fallacy in the interests of commerce and ambition, political and military. All the great and good, clever and charming people belong to one secret nation, for which there is no name unless it be the Chosen People. These are the lost tribes of love, ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... a sovereign, and with a twitch of the thumb, he sent it high in the air. "Heads, you win. Tails, I win." Then catching it as it fell: "By Jove, you have it. Present my compliments to Mistress Jean," he cried, with a grandiloquent bow, "and tell her how near she came to being Mrs. ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson
... would wait upon his lordship the next morning at 11 A.M.; and that from the lady was as simply a request that Mrs Quiverful would do the same by her, though it was couched in somewhat longer and more grandiloquent phraseology. ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... massive, immense, gross, voluminous, capacious, extensive; pregnant; arrogant, overbearing, lordly, magisterial, pompous; bombastic, grandiose, grandiloquent, highflown, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... the same Imoko was deputed to accompany him, bearing a despatch* in which, to China's simple "greeting," Japan returned a "respectful address;" to China's expression of ineffable superiority Japan replied that the coming of the embassy had "dissolved her long-harboured cares;" and to China's grandiloquent prolixity Japan made answer with half a dozen brief lines. Imoko was now accompanied by eight students four of literature and four of religion. Thus was established, and for long afterwards maintained, a bridge over which the literature, arts, ethics, and philosophies of China ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... palace was built, and Kaotsou celebrated its completion with festivities continued for several weeks. On one occasion during this period, uplifted with a full sense of the dignity to which he had attained, his pride found vent in the grandiloquent remark, "To-day I feel that I am indeed emperor, and perceive all the difference between a subject ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... Igi-dug-gu,[312] all emphasizing his skill, he is the artificer who aids the kings in their building operations. The similarity of the roles of Nabu and Ea, as gods of wisdom and the arts, might easily have led to a confusion. Fortunately, the grandiloquent and all-embracing titles accorded to the former did not alter his character as essentially the god who presides over the art of writing, while Ea retains the control over the architectural achievements,—the great colossi, in the first instance, that ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... contrast between all this poetry and the real prose fact of going to sea! No man, the proverb says, is a hero to his valet de chambre. Certainly, no poet, no hero, no inspired prophet, ever lost so much on near acquaintance as this same mystic, grandiloquent old Ocean. The one step from the sublime to the ridiculous is never taken with such alacrity as ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... appellations. Among Anglo-American hunters, it is called the panther—in their patois, "painter." In most parts of South America, as well as in Mexico, it receives the grandiloquent title of "lion" (leon), and in the Peruvian countries is called the "puma," or "poma." The absence of stripes, such as those of the tiger—or spots, as upon the leopard—or rosettes, as upon the jaguar, have suggested the name of the naturalists, concolor. Discolor was formerly in use; but ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... Hannah's company, but not—not her writings!' It is only fair to say that Mrs. Walford has thoroughly carried out the views she expresses in this passage, for she gives us nothing of Hannah More's grandiloquent literary productions, and yet succeeds in making us know her thoroughly. The whole book is well written, but the biography of Hannah More is a wonderfully brilliant sketch, and deserves ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... well," replied Frank, who was falling into a trick of addressing the stately Krooman in the same grandiloquent fashion as the latter was in the habit of using, "I place my trust ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... batting an eye at Monsieur's grandiloquent outburst—which seemed to me the absolute frustration of our plan, "we don't know this man. He's a tramp we picked up at Key West. Do you recognize his credentials, or would you say ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... vogue in the church to which the Rev. Bruno Leathwaite Chilvers ministered. Everybody knows Mr. Chilvers; at least everybody who loves George Gissing knows that very excellent gentleman. Mr. Chilvers loved to adorn his dainty discourses with certain words of strangely grandiloquent sound. '"Nullifidian," "morbific," "renascent"—these were among his favourites. Once or twice he spoke of "psychogenesis" with an emphatic enunciation which seemed to invite respectful wonder. In using Latin words which have become fixed in the English ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Polish, and possibly other languages. Bonaparte was a great lover of Ossian, and carried about with him a copy of Cesarotti's Italian version. A resemblance has been fancied between MacPherson's manner and the grandiloquent style of Bonaparte's bulletins and dispatches.[36] In Germany Ossian naturally took most strongly. He was translated into hexameters by a Vienna Jesuit named Michael Denis[37] and produced many imitations. Herder gave three translations from "Ossian" in his "Stimmen ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... conceal his contempt of his imprisoner from the ducal servants. Alfonso excelled the grandiloquent poet himself in his love of pomp and worship; and as he had no particular merits to warrant it, his victim bantered his love of titles. He says, in a letter to the duke's steward, "If it is the pleasure of the Most Serene Signor Duke, Most Clement and Most Invincible, to keep me in ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... ordered the armament of fourteen ships of the line. On this the national assembly voted that it had the right to decide on questions of war, and on May 22 declared that the French nation renounced wars of conquest. This grandiloquent decree destroyed the effect of the armament. Nevertheless, Spain was set on war; fleets were gathered at Ferrol and Cadiz, and a loan of L4,000,000 was arranged. Florida Blanca seems to have relied ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... each at the top of a separate page on a scratch- block, intending to fill them out in the usual somewhat grandiloquent fashion which seems to belong to that kind of literature. I supposed I had a ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... Homerically to his chosen friends. These voyageurs are professional canoe-men; adventurers extending, sparsely, from the waters of French Canada to those of Oregon,—and sometimes back. Honest old Quatreaux! I mentioned his "residence" just now, and the term is truly grandiloquent in its application. The residence of old Quatreaux was a log cabane, about twenty feet square. Planks, laid loosely upon the cross-ties of the rafters, formed the up-stairs of the building: up-ladder ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Jerome, on the contrary, always liked to emphasise his part as JUDGE when correcting us, and clearly did it as much for his own satisfaction as for our good. He loved authority. Nevertheless, I always found his grandiloquent French phrases (which he pronounced with a strong emphasis on all the final syllables) inexpressibly disgusting, whereas Karl, when angry, had never said anything beyond, "What a foolish puppet-comedy it is!" or "You boys are as irritating as Spanish fly!" (which he always called ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... keep before your mind the thought that you're the only servant, who has followed me as an attendant out of town, and you give way to fear that you will, on your return, have to bear the consequences. You hence have recourse to these grandiloquent arguments to shove words of counsel down my throat! I've come here now with the sole object of satisfying certain rites, and then going to partake of the banquet and be a spectator of the plays; and I never mentioned one single word about any ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... was a short, stout, red-faced old gentleman, with a bald head and a somewhat pompous manner, came forward and welcomed me warmly, saying 119all sorts of complimentary things to me in extremely high-flown and grandiloquent language, and referring to my having saved his son's life, in doing which, however, he quite won my heart by the evident pride and affection with which he spoke of Freddy. The lady of the house was a little, round, merry-looking woman, ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... (de Leg. i. 2) ranks him very low. That his credit as an historian was sacrificed to a childish credulity and a foolish love of fable and adventure is sufficiently testified by the pretty numerous fragments which still remain (Pauly). Demetrius Phalereus, quoted by Pearce, quotes a grandiloquent description of the wasp taken from Kleitarchus, "feeding on the mountainside, her home ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... speech of the instant that playlet dialogue needs— the short, sharp, seemingly thoughtless but vividly pulsating words of everyday life. If today men talked in long speeches filled with grandiloquent periods, the playlet would mimic their length and tone, but men today do not speak that way and the playlet must mimic today's shortness and crispness. As Alexander Black says, "The language of the moment is the bridge; that carries us straight to the heart of the whole world, and all the past. ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... prophet and descendant, Pereo, the mayordomo, moved in an atmosphere of superstitious adulation and respect among the domestics and common people. This recognition of his power he received at times with a certain exaltation of grandiloquent pride beyond the conception of any but a Spanish servant, and at times with a certain dull, pained vacancy of perception and an expression of frightened bewilderment which also went far to establish his reputation as an ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... shouted Sir Peter. Adelaide could, despite the whip and rein with which he held her, exasperate and irritate him—by no means more thoroughly than by pretending that she did not understand his grandiloquent allusions, and the vague grandness of the commands which he sometimes gave. "I mean you to go, and your little sister here, and Arkwright too. I don't know about myself. Now, I am going to ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... spite of its complex inflections, when once a vocabulary is acquired, it is more easy and natural for a modern than his ancestral Latin itself. Latin is the stiffer tongue; it is by nature at once laconic and grandiloquent, and the exceptional condensation and transposition of which it is capable make its effects entirely foreign to a modern, scarcely inflected, tongue. Take, for ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... what is fiction and what is actuality in it. With regard to the 'conversation' during the bombardment, it represents in its totality what I believe the ordinary soldier feels. He loathes the war, and the grandiloquent speeches of politicians irritate him by their failure to realize how loathesome war is. At the same time he knows he has got to go through with it, and only longs for the chance to hurry up. In the 'Diary,' ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... medley while the fit lasts, and afterward a staid course of better accustomed messes; a few further variations on this lawless theme of authorship, and then to try simpler tunes; briefly, and yet to be grandiloquent, as a last round of this giddy climax, after noisy clashing Chaos there shall roll out, "perfect, smooth, and round," green young worldlets, moving in quiet harmony, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... ourselves. All things are free and easy for all. The glorious principle of equality instituted lately has swept away—swept away the inviderous distinctions of class and color. The millenium has come!" He made a grandiloquent gesture with ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... battles of senseless civil wars, barbarously executed in ferocious proscriptions, as though the government of the country had been a struggle of lust between bands of absurd devils let loose upon the land with sabres and uniforms and grandiloquent phrases. And on all the lips she found a weary desire for peace, the dread of officialdom with its nightmarish parody of administration without law, without security, ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... Tom with his broad white shirt front, his white, pointed beard, and his grandiloquent flow of talk; at Sue's side sat Jack Prince, pausing in his open admiration of Sue to cast an eye on the handsome New York girl at Sam's end of the table or to puncture, with a flash of his terse common sense, some balloon of theory launched by Williams of the University, ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... hypothesis at variance with all the teachings of Nature? Or, suppose for a moment we admit the explanation, and then seriously ask ourselves how much the wiser are we; what does the explanation explain? Is it any more than a grandiloquent way of announcing the fact, that we really know nothing about the matter? A phenomenon is explained when it is shown to be a case of some general law of Nature; but the supernatural interposition of the Creator ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... out-Herod Herod, run riot, talk at random. heighten, overcolor[obs3]; color highly, color too highly; broder[obs3]; flourish; color &c. (misrepresent) 544; puff &c (boast) 884. Adj. exaggerated &c. v.; overwrought; bombastic &c. (grandiloquent) 577; hyperbolical[obs3], on stilts; fabulous, extravagant, preposterous, egregious, outre[Fr], highflying[obs3]. Adv. hyperbolically &c adj. Phr. excitabat enim fluctus in ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... colonies, in the presence of American officials, and hope-inspiring expressions which fell from their lips before Aguinaldo's return to Cavite from exile, strengthened that conviction. Sympathetic avowals and grandiloquent phrases, such as "for the sake of humanity," and "the cause of civilization," which were so freely bandied about at the time by unauthorized Americans, drew Aguinaldo into the error of believing that some sort of bond really existed between the United States and the Philippine ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... ways, but an irrepressible tendency to fine writing is associated with the greater number of them. Give a clever young medical student a book about aural or dental surgery to review, and the chances are ten to one that the criticism will be little else than a high-flown grandiloquent treatise on the wonders of the creation. A regular "literary hack" will ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... reared a temple to his chosen deity devoted much space to statues of himself, with grandiloquent accounts in hieroglyphs of his exploits in war and peace and of the many peoples who paid him tribute. Rameses appears to have had most of the evil traits of the arbitrary despot. With unlimited ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... he said had been lent to him by Prof. Francis Bacon, of New Haven, as a great rarity. It was a little privately printed pamphlet written by a Southern youth, named S. Watson Wolston, a Yale student of 1845, and was an absurd romance of the hyperflorid, grandiloquent sort, entitled, "Love Triumphant, or the Enemy Conquered." Its heroine's name was Ambulinia, and its flowery, half-meaningless periods and impossible situations delighted Clemens beyond measure. He begged Cable to lend it to him, to read at the Saturday ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... passions are not unduly aroused, is apt to take a very prosaic and dispassionate view of such matters, and when he has reached his conclusion based upon everyday, commonplace morality, he is not apt to be shaken even by an imposing array of names, fortified by an enthusiastic excess of grandiloquent adjectives. The aristocracy of brains has no monopoly of truth, which is often best grasped by ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... must always "begin." This is an excellent example of unreflecting or half-reflecting purism. "Commence" is a very old word; it is used by the best writers; it is easily pronounceable and not in the least grandiloquent; indeed it has precisely the length and cadence of its competitor. But somebody or other one day observed that it was Latin, whereas "begin" was Saxon; and since then there has been a systematic attempt, in several quarters, to hound the innocent and useful synonym out of the language. ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... political and economic measures to meet the terrific rise in population. The advent of the factory system, due especially to the development of machinery at the beginning of the nineteenth century, upset all the grandiloquent theories of the previous era. To meet the new situation created by the industrial revolution arose the new science of "political economy," or economics. Old political methods proved inadequate to keep pace ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... all women, regardless of creed. This young woman displayed more courage, more enthusiasm, more wit, to be sure also more precise knowledge of Judaism, than thousands of men of our time, young and old, who fancy grandiloquent periods sufficient to solve the great religious ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... foreign countries or at least to the Foreign Settlements for safety. The cautious work quietly and do not desire to earn merit but merely try to avoid giving offence. The scholars and politicians are grandiloquent and discourse upon their subjects in a sublime vein, but they are no better than the corrupt officials. As for our President, he can remain at the head of the State for a few years. At most he may hold office ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... and to the person writing. Pupils of high school age know the meaning of many words which are too "bookish" for daily use by them. Edward Everett Hale might use expressions which would not be suitable for a freshman's composition. Taste and good judgment will help you to avoid the unsuitable or grandiloquent. ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... evinced the usual curiosity to know all about the strangers, whence they came whither they were going, the object of their journey, and the adventures they had experienced. All these, of course, were ample and eloquently set forth by the communicative old chief. To all his grandiloquent account of the bald-headed chief and his countrymen, the Big Hearts of the East, his cousin listened with great attention, and replied in the customary style of Indian welcome. He then desired the party to await his return, and, springing into his canoe, darted across the river. ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... I. "I delight in doing so. It is from envy. By all the standards that you know he is the most egregious and grandiloquent and gorgeous fool in all the world. That's why ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... I was down at the old place, like her shadow (her shadow, indeed!). I had elected her my confidante and adviser, and poured all my precious opinions and plans—my very scrapes—into her curious, patient ears. Mad, have you forgotten how once, like an old-fashioned, grandiloquent muff, I showed you the picture of a perfect woman in a book of poetry—'Paradise Lost' it might have been, and 'Eve' for any special appropriateness in the picture—and broadly hinted my private idea that the perfect woman was fulfilled ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... poet who is often inopportunely witty has the opposite vice of bombastic absurdity. The source of all grandiloquence is the want of taking for a criterion the true qualities of the object described or the emotion expressed. The grandiloquent man is never bent on saying what he feels or what he sees, but on producing a certain effect on his audience; hence he may float away into utter inanity without meeting any criterion to arrest him. Here lies the distinction between ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... you," I said, "that my pilgrimage this morning has no other object than to find one. I begin to fear that I have written too much lately. At any rate, the well of my inspiration, if I may use so grandiloquent a ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of thinking of course. Mrs. Purdick happened to say "You are certainly unorthodox, Mr. Huttle." Mr. Huttle, with a peculiar expression (I can see it now) said in a slow rich voice: "Mrs. Purdick, 'orthodox' is a grandiloquent word implying sticking-in- the-mud. If Columbus and Stephenson had been orthodox, there would neither have been the discovery of America nor the steam-engine." There was quite a silence. It appeared to me that such teaching was absolutely dangerous, and yet ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
... sensation always clinging to his thoughts. At present, however, she was not inclined to judge him too hardly; although visibly unstrung, unwise in his sweeping condemnation, coarse in his anger, and somewhat grandiloquent in his pose, there was still much of real heroism in his mental attitude. Braced by the fiercest party spirit, he stood staunch in his loyalty to Smith and the cause, with no thought of yielding an inch of ground ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... the attorney said. "The fresh air will give you an appetite. Behold, you're already becoming a famous man! I shall preserve these documents safely as they are tremendously important to our town, our state, our country!" And a grandiloquent gesture accompanied the words. "Come back in a little while, my friend, then we'll see how much food ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... of the present ministry partake of Reinhard's earnestness and faith. Gallicisms and technical terminology are no longer proclaimed to the peasants, while the artisan is no more entertained with grandiloquent descriptions of the last night of Socrates, or with Ciceronian laudations of the Schoolmen.[83] The popular attendance at the public services is greatly on the increase, and the congregations are expressing in no ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... cremation. Let's have her believe in cremation. And Captain Jack; oh! he's got a terrible voice, like this, ROW-ROW-ROW see? and whiskers, very fierce; and he says, 'Belay there!' and 'Avast!' and is very grandiloquent and orotund and gallant when it comes to women. Oh, he's the devil of a man when it comes ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... a glow of pride, in the ever living object of his life's devotion—of gratitude almost—that he recalled the noble simplicity with which the woman, whom he had just heard classed among the every-day sinners of society, had, without one grandiloquent word, without even losing her womanly softness, kept her lover as well as herself in the path of her lofty ideal—till the end. And yet she did love him: at the last awful moment, sinking into the very jaws of death, ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... placid contentment, of the mere enjoyment of sunshine and air. She recalled drearily the clock-like revolutions of the year which brought bull-fights, races, rodeos, church celebrations; her mother's anecdotes of the Indians; her father's manifold interests, ever the theme of his tongue; Reinaldo's grandiloquent accounts of his exploits and intentions; Prudencia's infinite nothings. She hated the balls of which she was La Favorita, the everlasting serenades, the whole life of pleasure which made that period of California the most perfected Arcadia ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... he, in a grandiloquent tone, when I had completed my examination of the beetle, "I sent for you, that I might have your counsel and assistance in furthering the views of Fate and ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... Manbodom. These ceremonial chants are performed not only during religious celebrations but more commonly at night. The greater part of the night is often worn away with a protracted diffuse narration in which is described, with grandiloquent circumlocution and copious imagery, the doings of ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... noticed that Riemann even changes the arrangement of the bars. This prelude is dramatic almost to an operatic degree. Sonorous, rather grandiloquent, it is a study in declamation, the declamation of the slow movement in the F minor concerto. Schumann may have had the first phrase in his mind when he wrote his Aufschwung. This page of Chopin's, the torso of a larger ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... I expected you in a gondola of state!" said Jack, with a playfully grandiloquent gesture, as Jasper's abundance filled the doorway. "But it is all the more compliment to ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... particularly well calculated to sway a popular assembly which yet had none of the characteristics of a mob. A sonorous voice; a figure and bearing which, though stiff and ungainly, were singularly dignified; an inexhaustible copiousness of grandiloquent phrase; a peculiar vein of sarcasm which froze like ice and cut like steel—these were some of the characteristics of the oratory which from 1782 to 1806 at once awed and ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... this and similar passages in the British metropolis to have been originally from the French capital. Thus, in Paris are the Passage des Panoramas; the Passage Delorme; the Passage d'Artois; the Passage Feydeau; the Passage de Caire; and the Passage Montesquieu. A more grandiloquent name applied by the French to some of their passages is galerie: we remember the Galerie Vivienne as one of the most splendid specimens, with its marchands of artificial luxuries. The Galerie ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 541, Saturday, April 7, 1832 • Various
... shouted the marshals with grandiloquent gestures of their be-ribboned rods, the band blared out again and the teams began to move toward the west. The men stood up to look ahead, while the boys in the back end of the wagons craned perilously over the edge of the box to see how long the line was. It seemed enormous to them, ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... simplified it, Addison gave it grace; and each leader set a fashion which was followed by a host of young writers. Hardly had the Addisonian style crossed the Atlantic, to be the model for American writers for a century, when London acclaimed a new prose fashion—a ponderous, grandiloquent fashion, characterized by mouth-filling words, antithetical sentences, rounded periods, sonorous commonplaces—which was eagerly adopted by orators and historians especially. The man who did more than any other to set this new oratorical fashion in motion ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... Eminently qualified for the task Almost supernatural charm In glowing and exaggerated phrases Somewhat rich and austere An inexhaustible theme Grave and undeniable faults Perfectly chosen language All the characteristics of a mob Given to grandiloquent phrase Peculiar vein of sarcasm Froze like ice and cut like steel A generous tribute to an eminent rival Cold and stately composure Fiery and passionate enthusiasm Extraordinary violence of nature A brilliant and delightful play Rare and striking ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... of the English character, but Cardinal Wiseman, at least, could not plead ignorance of the real issues at stake; and therefore his grandiloquent and, under all the circumstances, ridiculous pastoral letter, which he dated 'From out of the Flaminian Gate at Rome,' was justly regarded as an insult to the religious convictions of the vast ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... Senor Don Diego had had time to come back unless he had been captured. Now he, Yaqui Juan, whom the young master had once saved, would go to him, to bring him back, or to die with him. The solemn, grandiloquent words had nothing of melodrama in them, falling from his grave lips. He took no pains to conceal his deep ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... waiting for the signal of "revolt," which some fiery spirits among these young men are to raise before I dare express my real opinions concerning questions about which we older men had to fight, in the teeth of fierce public opposition and obloquy—of something which might almost justify even the grandiloquent epithet of a Reign of Terror—before our excellent ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... at once before Pierre's eyes arose a vision of the sumptuous tombs of the Appian Way, displaying the domineering pride of a whole civilisation in the sunlight—tombs of vast dimensions, with a profusion of marbles, grandiloquent inscriptions, and masterpieces of sculptured-work. Ah! what an extraordinary contrast between that pompous avenue of death, conducting, like a highway of triumph, to the regal Eternal City, when compared ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... something might be effected at New York, Washington ordered General Heath, who was in command in the Highlands, to move down towards the city with a considerable force. Heath did so, and in a rather grandiloquent summons called upon Fort Independence to surrender. The enemy, however, stood their ground, and Heath, after a few days, retreated, having done nothing, and exposed himself to ridicule for not having followed up his words ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... that during these seventy years various edicts claiming the country we issued by Louis XIV.; but as the French during all that time did not attempt to occupy a single foot of territory in Madagascar, these grandiloquent proclamations can hardly be considered as of much value. As has been remarked, French pretensions were greatest when ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... and to pass and harbor all deserters, escaped prisoners, or spies; to give information to the enemy of the movements of our troops, of exposed or weakened positions, of inviting opportunities of attack, and to guide and assist the enemy either in advance or retreat." This society bore the grandiloquent name "Heroes of America" and had extended its operations into Tennessee ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... were salaaming and genuflecting and using grandiloquent phrases the bally leopard got loose, somehow. Maybe some one let him loose; I don't know. Anyhow, he made for the king, who was too thunderstruck to dodge. The rest of 'em took to their heels, you may lay odds on that. Now, I had an honest liking for the king. Seeing the brute make for him, ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... to know that in this country, during the early years of our leading universities, Hebrew not only formed, a subject of instruction, but also appeared upon the Commencement programs. Upon such grandiloquent occasions you will find that side by side with a poem in Greek there figured a speech in Hebrew. What the Hebrew was like that was poured out there I have difficulty in imagining. But that the ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... letters to Borrow were preserved by him. Three of them are in my possession. Others were secured by Dr. Knapp, who made far too little use of them. They are all written in Danish on foreign notepaper: flowery, grandiloquent productions we may admit, but if we may judge a man by his correspondents, we have a revelation of a more human Borrow than the correspondence with the ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... who had laughed and fought and whistled under the window of her room. He stepped from the thick of the circle near Rickety and responded to the voice of the crowd by waving his hat. It would have been a trifle too grandiloquent had ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... Mr. Clifford, who entered the room at this moment. His mock applause was accompanied by a clamorous clapping of his hands. I felt my cheeks burn, and my blood boil. The truth is, I was not free from the consciousness that I had suffered some of the grandiloquent to appear in my manner while speaking the sentence which had provoked the ridicule of my uncle. The sarcasm acquired increase of sting in consequence of its being partially well-merited. I replied with some little show of temper, which the imploring glances of Julia did not altogether ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... you, my father or my uncle would have helped me out had I written to them, but I could not do that. So long as I was able to keep a roof over my head, I remained silent. I was in the world and I intended to keep going without asking a cent from anyone. Besides, the grandiloquent plans for travel and success which I had so confidently outlined to Burton ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... descriptions in a series of letters to his friend Mrs. Thrale, which he afterwards wrote out in more pompous style for publication. The letters are current, witty, and simple; the published work is stilted and grandiloquent. ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... affections than his intellect,—that child is the only student that ever gets the sort of intimacy which I am now thinking of, with a literary personage. I do not remember, indeed, ever caring much about any of the stalwart Doctor's grandiloquent productions, except his two stern and masculine poems, "London," and "The Vanity of Human Wishes"; it was as a man, a talker, and a humorist, that I knew and loved him, appreciating many of his ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Anglo-Saxon race" must continue forever to exercise exclusive control and direction of the government of this so-called Republic, it becomes important to every citizen who values his birthright to know who are included in this grandiloquent term. It is of course perfectly obvious that the writer or speaker who used this expression—perhaps Mr. Grady of Georgia—did not say what he meant. It is not probable that he meant to exclude from full citizenship the Celts ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... touched potently as they had been by the surging recollections of the last half-hour, were faintly stirred again in Miss Redmond's heart by the stranger's grandiloquent words. Unconsciously her features relaxed, ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... ways to the question of their origin. Now and then we encountered a sentence, like Prof. Owens "axiom of the continuous operation of the ordained becoming of living things," which haunted us like an apparition. For, dim as our conception must needs be as to what such oracular and grandiloquent phrases might really mean, we felt confident that they presaged no good to old beliefs. Foreseeing, yet deprecating, the coming time of trouble, we still hoped that, with some repairs and makeshifts, the old views might last out our days. Apres nous ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... strange to see the Englishwomen, as they dance with the peasants transfigured with a kind of brilliant surprise. All the while the peasants are very courteous, but quiet. They see the women dilate and flash, they think they have found a footing, they are certain. So the male dancers are quiet, but even grandiloquent, their feet nimble, their bodies wild ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... stand-point of the President, and with his views of the efficiency of legislative restrictions upon banks, we do not see how he could consistently avoid recommending the instant action of Congress. On the heel of his grandiloquent description of the evils of redundant paper money,—evils which are felt all over the country,— it is a lamentably impotent conclusion to say, "After all, we can't do much to help it! Yes, let us confide piously in 'the wisdom and patriotism of the State legislatures,'"—which are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... not for the fact that they afforded an opportunity of making some remarks—which seemed to me to be worth making—about the influence of photography in modern art, I should have left the public to find for itself the value of this attempt, in the grandiloquent words of the catalogue, "to bring before my countrymen the aesthetic and artistic capabilities, and the beauty in various forms, that are to be found in our great Indian Empire." To criticise the pictures in detail is impossible; ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... magnify him in an archaeological, fossiliferous, and antediluvian point of view. Applied to any other creature than the Leviathan —to an ant or a flea —such portly terms might justly be deemed unwarrantably grandiloquent. But when Leviathan is the text, the case is altered. Fain am I to stagger to this emprise under the weightiest words of the dictionary. And here be it said, that whenever it has been convenient to consult one in the course of these dissertations, I have invariably ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... went to bed pondering on the strange attitude of the newspaper mind toward so matter-of-fact a quality as honesty; and he dreamed of a roomful of advertisers listening in sodden silence to his own grandiloquent announcement, "Gentlemen: honesty is the best policy," while, in a corner, McGuire Ellis and Max Veltman clasped each other in ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... injected his eyes with blood. He ground his teeth, his mouth filled with curses, his hands clenched till they grew white and bloodless. Was the Railroad to triumph then in the end? After all those months of preparation, after all those grandiloquent resolutions, after all the arrogant presumption of the League! The League! what a farce; what had it amounted to when the crisis came? Was the Trust to crush them all so easily? Was S. Behrman to swallow Los Muertos? S. Behrman! Presley saw him plainly, huge, rotund, white; saw his jowl ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... the dining-room I think the whole room becomes transformed for him into the banquet room of a palace, and the cheap bracket lamps against the wall turn into a blaze of light and the boarders are all courtiers, and he becomes more and more grandiloquent. He waves his hand towards Uncle Henry and refers to him as "my brother the Admiral," and to me as "the Princess at my side." Some of the people, the meaner ones, begin to laugh and to whisper, and others look uncomfortable and sorry. And it is always ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... friendship. For the poor man is compelled to be the friend of the rich, and the weak requires the aid of the strong, and the sick man of the physician; and every one who is ignorant, has to love and court him who knows.' And indeed he went on to say in grandiloquent language, that the idea of friendship existing between similars is not the truth, but the very reverse of the truth, and that the most opposed are the most friendly; for that everything desires not like but that which is most unlike: for example, the dry desires the ...
— Lysis • Plato
... stretched out over the icy pavement, and the filthy rags that barely cover their bodies. Two men stumble out of a wineshop arm in arm, poor men in corduroy, who walk along unsteadily in their worn canvas shoes, making grandiloquent gestures of pity, tearing down the cold hard facades with drunken generous phrases, buoyed up by the warmth of the wine in ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... theories of Scriptural doctrines, was construed into a denial of those doctrines. My endeavor to strip religious subjects of needless mystery, was represented as an attempt to substitute a vain philosophy for the Gospel of Christ. An expression of dissatisfaction with a grandiloquent but foolish and mischievous sermon on the "Cross of Christ," was set down as a proof that my views on the sacrifice of Christ were not evangelical. My endeavors to show that Christianity was in harmony with reason, ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... did much towards fixing it as the habit of English dramatic poetry. Tamburlaine had a sudden, a great, and long-continued popularity. And its success may have been partly owing to its faults, inasmuch as the public ear, long used to rhyme, needed some compensation in the way of grandiloquent stuffing, which was here ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... gnaws more potently than conscience," said Pike, with a grandiloquent gesture. "I had sought alms and been refused at that mill. Lurking about I saw you leave the summer-house and spied the gold pen. I can give you a pawn ticket for that," said Mr. Pike sadly. "But I saw, too, the value of your scenario ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... sounded so infernally grandiloquent to Old Man Grant that his hand actually trembled with emotion as he signed it—at my suggestion. You know I'd hate to be tried for forgery. Then I shook hands with him and started for Panama once more—only this time I kept right on going; and I didn't spare the fuel ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... he wanted to be cheered? He could very easily have stated Ireland's case truthfully, and have proclaimed a benevolent neutrality (if he cared to use the grandiloquent words) on the part of this country. He would have gotten his cheers, he would in a few months have gotten Home Rule in return for Irish soldiers. He would have received politically whatever England could have safely given him. But, alas, these carefulnesses ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens
... will suppress it quickly in justice to me, knowing, as you must know, that a badge gives courage to the wearer, putting a conviction into the heart that one is not alone, but a soldier in a great army walking in step towards a definite end. This sounds somewhat grandiloquent, but it seems to me somewhat like the truth. Trying to get into step is interesting and instructive, and the novitiate, though hardly bearable at times, is better than sitting in the lonely guest-room. Mother Hilda's instruction in the novitiate seems childish, ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... could think of more grandiloquent words to express him, I'd use them," said Marise defiantly, launching out into yet more outrageous flights of rhetoric. "I could stand for hours on a street corner, admiring the completeness with which he is transfigured out of the human limitations of his mere personality, ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... rewarded his victorious general with the honorable designation of Italienski, or the Italian, and, in his grandiloquent fashion, issued a ukase commanding all people to regard Suwarrow as the greatest commander the ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... was to the young Church Missionary Society that he betook himself. So great, in fact, and so various were the plans which Marsden entertained for the welfare of the many races in which he was interested, that the grandiloquent words of his biographer seem not too strong: "As the obscure chaplain from Botany Bay paced the Strand, from the Colonial Office at Whitehall to the chambers in the city where a few pious men were laying plans for ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... in the vaults of the National treasury, diverted from the regular channels of trade by an ignorant set of legislators who have not gumption enough to reduce unnecessary and burdensome taxation without upsetting the industries of the country—with all its grandiloquent exhibition of happiness and prosperity, the laboring classes of the country starve to death, or eke out an existence ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... immense accumulations of the wealth of the ages—ingots of Emerson and Whitman, for example, gems of Voltaire, and I can't tell what other superfluous coinage!" (And I waved my hand in the most grandiloquent manner.) "I've also quite a store of knowledge of corn and calves and cucumbers, and I've a boundless domain of exceedingly valuable landscapes. I am prepared to give bountifully of all these varied riches (for ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... individual cases we will not apply to public. All men consent that swindling for a horse is swindling,—they punish the culprit and condemn the fault. But in a State there is no such unanimity. Swindling, Lord help you! is called by some fine name; and cheating grows grandiloquent, and styles itself "Policy." In consequence of this there is always a battle between those who call things by their right names and those who pertinaciously give them the wrong ones. Hence all sorts of confusion. This confusion extends very soon to the laws made for individual cases; and ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the consciousness that he was using rather grandiloquent language in the wording of this enigmatical little speech, that caused the good professor to look so red and embarrassed. Abbie drew her hand away, and laid her finger on ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... he, in a grandiloquent tone when I had completed my examination of the beetle, "I sent for you, that I might have your counsel and assistance in furthering the views of ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... he replied without hesitation in the grandiloquent tone he loved to assume upon occasions. "But do you think," he added presently, "that a man can acquire virtue unless it has been ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... perfect flower of Douglas's vaunted experiment of "popular sovereignty"—a result they professed fully to appreciate. "Hitherto," said the Judiciary Committee of the House in a long and grandiloquent report, "Congress have retained to themselves the power to mold and shape all the territorial governments according to their own peculiar notions, and to restrict within very limited and contracted bounds both the natural as well as the political rights of the bold ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... flimsy texture, and are generally intended to be nonsensical, but the nonsense has much spirit in it. They are usually preceded by a dedication of mock solemnity to some one of her family. It would seem that the grandiloquent dedications prevalent in those days had not escaped her youthful penetration. Perhaps the most characteristic feature in these early productions is that, however puerile the matter, they are always composed in pure simple ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... fellow-citizens, his relations, his friends will all hail his return with joy. Let us beware of jabbering with Socrates and of disdaining the sublime notes of the tragic Muse. To pass an idle life reeling off grandiloquent speeches and foolish quibbles, is the ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... his diplomacy. It is clean—AND clever. It is the big stick held in a velvet glove. It is supremely able. He seeks a great advantage with a modest air, in contrast to the Greek who seeks a modest advantage with a grandiloquent air. ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... even ask for their parole nor impose a restriction of any sort upon them. The Spaniards' astonishment on being captured had been very great, but it was greater still when they received this information. I did not hear what the Admiral said, but I know he made a very long speech, full of grandiloquent words, that he pressed his hands to his heart very often, and in other ways endeavoured to show his sense of British magnanimity. Evening coming on, he and his countrymen took their departure in their respective boats, ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... familiar letters. Lady Arthur Russell was the most pungent talker of the three, Lady Sligo the most reminiscent and, in the proper, not the derived sense, the most woman-of-the-worldly. I mean by this that she dealt most with the figures of the great world, but by no means in a grandiloquent, consequential, or Beaconsfieldian sense. She had travelled a great deal and seen an enormous number of people in every country of Europe as well as in England, and, therefore, she was and is more cosmopolitan in her talk ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... foreign policy the dignity, which other countries of far less importance are able to sustain. No wonder that her writers are pointing out that instead of being satisfied with immense long-winded despatches and notes, couched in grandiloquent language, which Spanish Foreign Ministers seem to think amply sufficient, strong nations have a habit of sending an iron-clad, or two or three cruisers to back up their demands, and that no other European country but Spain thinks it safe or wise to leave her coasts and ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... son, and a member of St. John's, Cambridge. He had come to London about this time, and instituted a series of lectures on universal knowledge and primitive Christianity. He styled himself a Rationalist, a title then more honourable than it is now; and in grandiloquent language, 'spouted' on religious subjects to an audience admitted at a shilling a-head. On one occasion he announced a disputation among any two of his hearers, offering to give an impartial hearing and judgment to both. Selwyn and the young Lord Carteret were prepared, and stood up, the one ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... match for Elizabeth and not without advantages on many counts. You see, it's time I married, myself; she feels that very strongly and I think her decision to accept Ingle is partly due to her wish to make all clear for a new mistress of my household,—though that's putting it in a rather grandiloquent way." He laughed. "And as you probably guess, I have an idea that some such arrangement might be somewhere on the wings of the wind on its ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... difference!" retorted Soloviev. "It may be even grandiloquent, but still that makes no difference! As an elder of our garret commune, I declare Liuba an honourable member with full rights!" He got up, made a sweeping gesture with his hand, and ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... in an energetic tone, with the evident intention of assuring me that the speaker was himself "a man of the right sort"; but I did not attribute much importance to it, for I have occasionally heard henpecked husbands talk in this grandiloquent way when their wives were out of hearing. Altogether I was by no means convinced that the system of providing for the widows and orphans of the clergy by means of mariages de convenance was a good one, but I determined to suspend my judgment until I should ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... associated politicians and lawyers. Not infrequently, however, did it happen that some charters and grants were obtained by politicians and lawyers who, at best, were impecunious sharpers. Their greatest asset was a devious knowledge of how to get something for nothing. With a grandiloquent front and a superb bluff they would organize a company to build a railroad from this to that point; an undertaking costing millions, while perhaps they could not pay their board bill. An arrangement with a printer to turn out stock issues on credit was easy; with the promise of batches ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... doubt and a sort of fear for him. He seemed to me a lost little creature, too silly to be silent, in a vast implacable condemnation. I was full of pity and a sort of tenderness for my aunt Susan, who was doomed to follow his erratic fortunes mocked by his grandiloquent promises. ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... Roger Halbard Melton, of Humcroft, Salop (he always gives this name and address in full, which is his way of showing contempt), would be sure to have some relevant matter, and that he would have him written to on the subject. This he did. The Chancellor wrote him in his most grandiloquent style. Mr. E. R. H. Melton, of H., S., replied by return post. His letter is a document which speaks ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... With grandiloquent gesture he raised another of the tindery fragments and ignited it from the first. Another, and he had the beginning of a fire. He lit another piece, and, when he had it blazing, dropped it behind him and kept on ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... comparison with Tommy Ashe—who had become a doer, a creator in the common need, while he remained a gleaner in the field of self-interest. Thompson rather resented that imputation. Privately he considered Tommy's speech a trifle grandiloquent. He began to think he had underestimated Tommy, in ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... make it and I adore it!" said Rebecca, who was in a grandiloquent mood. "Why don't you like ...
— The Flag-raising • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... guided by fate. He then became confused in mind—dazed, as it were. In odd vagary, as his ice-raft floated on down the river, he peopled the darkness about him with imaginary foes, and "squared off" at them pugnaciously. His blood warming with this exercise, he began delivering in grandiloquent tones the address which he had declaimed at school, when a voice from the darkness near at hand brought him ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... equally of Walt Whitman and Artemas Ward. Yet it is not burlesque. It appears to have been written in good faith, and for this reason the incongruity of such a grandiloquent rhapsody on such a prosaic subject is all the more noticeable. As an example of "fine writing" it has seldom been surpassed, and for sheer nonsense it is unequaled ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... which is much finer than many guess. The descriptions there of the world-cities, Athens, Rome, Jerusalem, have the same classic thrill of reserved awe and infinite reverence that some of Dante's lines possess—only, with Milton, the thing is longer drawn out and more grandiloquent. Satan's speech about his own implacable fatality, "his harbour, and his ultimate repose," and that allusion to Our Lord's gentleness, like "the cool intermission of a summer's cloud" are both in the ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... at the ludicrous spectacle of four lads rubbing their eyes, scratching their heads, shaking themselves straight in their clothes, and looking as if there never had been half an idea in one of their minds. But Yaspard shouted in grandiloquent style— ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... bellow; and ended in a whisper. The retainers looked in each other's faces. Who was the maddest—their lord or the shabby bo[u]zu? A long silence followed. Jubei no longer stood in grandiloquent pose. He squatted down before the ideographs. At last he said—"The poem contains much matter. Deign to allow time for the solution." His voice was gentle and courteous to this future victim of his intelligence. The priest nodded a genial assent. Before ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... of that day. She said she had written before and torn the confession up ... it was so difficult to be just to him and true to herself.... It was a roundabout, involved, youthfully grandiloquent epistle in which Mildred announced that her love for Owen was dead, that nothing could ever resuscitate it; that she could not, would not, ever marry him, and that she had returned in an accompanying packet his ring, and presents, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... proceedings of Congress in from ten to twelve days after their occurrence, and news from the Connecticut elections three weeks late. Subjects relating to religion and politics were heard pro and con in articles, or rather letters, signed with grandiloquent pseudonyms and frequently marked "Papers, please copy" in order to secure for them a larger public. Fantastic bits of natural science, or what purported to be such, and stilted admonitions to virtue, as well as poems, eulogies, and obituaries, were admitted ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... was by far the handsomest of the three, was marked by his big lion-like head and well whiskered cheeks, by his muscular shoulders, his long back, and his splendid tail, fluffy as a feather duster. There was something theatrical and grandiloquent about him, and he seemed to pose like an actor who attracts admiration. His motions were slow, undulating, and full of majesty; he seemed to be always stepping on a table covered with china ornaments and Venetian glass, so circumspectly did he select the place where he put down his foot. ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... Mr. Potts, and she knew that her father's biography was doomed. Against her mother's wish it could not, with any grace, any dignity, be published. Mr. Potts would put forth appreciation of his departed chief in the small, grandiloquent review to which he contributed—he had only delayed because of the greater project—but such a tribute would be a sealing of public failure rather than the kindling of public recognition. Already her father, by that ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... of the groundlings, this must have been delivered in grandiloquent mimicry with all the paraphernalia of the tragic style. Horace notes a kindred manifestation of this tendency (to which he himself is pleasingly addicted), in Ep. ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... heard the cadences of his song with a thrill of pleasure. Then I saw him come driving by my farm, sitting on the spring seat of his one-horse wagon, and if he chanced to see me in my field, he would take off his hat and make me a grandiloquent bow, but never for a moment stop his singing. And so he passed by the house and I, with a smile, saw him moving up the hill in the north road, until finally his voice, still singing, ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... of manners has fallen into disrepute. Sir Charles Grandison is a comical rather than a courtly figure to this generation; and the man whose manners may be described as Grandisonian is usually called a pompous and grandiloquent old prig. Certainly the elaborately dressed gentleman speaking to a lady only with polished courtesy of phrase, and avoiding in her presence all coarse words and acts, handing her in the minuet with inexpressible grace and deference, and showing an exquisite homage in every ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... for Bostonians, if a few of the attractions of the "only court," which could not reasonably be expected, were not lacking—say an occasional walk round of the Intransigentes, to show their political muscles; a grandiloquent, frothy word-tempest in the Congress, and the Sunday cock-fight. I am speaking, be it understood, of San Sebastian in ordinary summers. A short twelvemonth before my visit, a pair of pouting English lips told ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... brilliant as on this afternoon, for they dined while it was still daylight and hardly evening. He told her of the customs of the country, of the people; and slyly and effectively he satirized some of his grandiloquent guests. Not unduly, for one of them, the most renowned in the island, came to him after dinner as he sat talking to Sheila, and said: "I'm very sorry, your honour, but good Almighty God, I must go home and cool coppers." Then he gave Sheila a hot yet clammy ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... now as ever, invincible so far as men were concerned. He did, however, allow the hint to escape him that Prussia, which was still bound by her treaty, might hope for some territorial increase, and that Austria might expect Illyria. Such ideas, expressed in grandiloquent phrase, could not be regarded as indicating a pacific feeling. Every social class in France had a grievance; yet amid the din of arms, and in the dazzling splendors of military preparation, even the retraction of the Concordat attracted little attention, and a ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... without benefit of clergy; so he, with effrontery only the more deeply burnt in, and conscience the more callous from each conviction, will still lie on, so long as lungs are left, and vulgar listeners can be found in the scum of town populations. How grandiloquent was Mr Cobden with his "new facts," brand new, as he solemnly assured the House of Commons, which was not convulsed with irrepressible derision on the announcement! How swelled he, "big with the fate" of corn and colony, as the mighty secret burst from his labouring breast, "that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... first things to attract the attention of the reader, in the dingy files of some newspaper of 1812-15, is the grotesque names under which many of the privateers sailed. The grandiloquent style of the regular navy vanishes, and in its place we find homely names; such as "Jack's Favorite," "Lovely Lass," "Row-boat," "Saucy Jack," or "True-blooded Yankee." Some names are clearly political allusions,—as the "Orders in Council" and the "Fair Trade." ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... country, has given us by far the fullest and most significant discussion of that party's policy. He says that an enlightened bourgeoisie will be just as likely to be Socialist as the working classes, and that therefore the class struggle is merely "a grandiloquent and aggressive figure of speech."[114] Struggle of some kind, he concedes, is necessary. But the more important form of struggle in present-day society, he says, is the trade rivalry between nations and not the rivalry between social classes.[115] Here at the outset is a complete ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... worry about that," he mumbled vaguely. "What a grandiloquent kid you are! I hope you'll have a better time than you think, if you do go ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... by his bright and lovable nature he contributed greatly to the happiness of his sister Jane. She tells us that he could not help being amusing, and she was so good a judge of that quality that we accept her opinion of Henry's humour without demur; but he became so grandiloquent when wishing to be serious that he certainly must have wanted that last and rarest gift of a humorist—the art of laughing ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh |
