"Oratory" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... than any other spot on the face of the earth, no matter what might be the other's importance; and, as West Lynne was now in want of a member, perhaps his opportunity had come. That he would make a good and efficient public servant, he believed; his talents were superior, his oratory persuasive, and he had the gift of a true and honest spirit. That he would have the interest of West Lynne, at heart was certain, and he knew that he should serve his constituents to the very best of his power and ability. They ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... man was at first ignorant. Impatience at detention in such a place warred with strict conceptions of duty, yet his excellent training in subservience to his Church and a ready gift of oratory assisted him in a decision to do the best he could for the new paroisse, heretofore so distinctively Catholic, of Juchereau de St. Ignace. That M. Poussette's congregation was more distingue than numerous did not for a moment affect the preacher on the warm, ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... Maid vainly tried to extort from her the secret.** In 1480, Boisy, who had been used to sleep in the bed of Charles VII., according to the odd custom of the time, told the secret to Sala. The Maid, in 1429, revealed to Charles the purpose of a secret prayer which he had made alone in his oratory, imploring light on the question of his legitimacy.*** M. Quicherat, no bigot, thinks that 'the authenticity of the revelation is beyond ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... the warrant was transacted without notable discussion or difference. Mr. Belcher's ticket for town officers, which he took pains to show to those around him, was unanimously adopted. When it came to the question of schools, Mr. Belcher indulged in a few flights of oratory. He thought it impossible for a town like Sevenoaks to spend too much money for schools. He felt himself indebted to the public school for all that he was, and all that he had won. The glory of America, in ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... Aristotle, in criticizing Greek oratory, declared that the first purpose of the conclusion was to conciliate the audience in favor of the speaker. As human nature has not changed much in the ages since, the statement still ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... to Grant, who could not and perhaps did not desire to understand him.... To him the Southerners were always the red-faced, swashbuckling slave-drivers he had fancied and pictured them in the days of his abolition oratory. More and more he lived in a rut of his own fancies, wise in books and counsels, gentle in his relations with the few who enjoyed his confidence; to the last a most ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... time of the good King Charles, when he knew not what step to take, and did nothing but think how to redeem his life: for as I have told you he was surrounded by enemies on all sides. The King in this extreme thought, went in one morning to his oratory all alone; and there he made a prayer to our Lord, in his heart, without pronouncing any words, in which he asked of Him devoutly that if he were indeed the true heir, descended from the royal House of France, and that justly ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... and pealing organs, artistic choirs, and costly edifices, and upholstered pews, and polished oratory which more and more avoids any reference to this alarming theme, afford rest and entertainment to the fashionable congregations that gather on the Lord's day, and are known to the world as the churches ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... exquisite fineness, and distinguishing sagacity, which as it was active and busy, so it was vigorous and manly, keeping even pace with a rich and strong imagination, always on the wing, and never tired with aspiring; there are many of his first essays in oratory, in epigram, elegy and epic, still handed about the university in manuscript, which shew a masterly hand, and though maimed and injured by frequent transcribing, make their way into our most celebrated miscellanies, where they mine ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... style: it is unartificial and bears the stamp of manly sincerity. As a reported piece of prose this declaration is easy to read and not difficult to believe. Many books have not been read; still more have been forgotten. As a piece of civic oratory this declaration is strikingly effective. Calculated to fall in with the bent of the popular mind, so familiar with all forms of forgetfulness, it has also the power to stir up a subtle emotion while it starts a train of thought—and what greater force can be expected ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... set his heart on rivalling Bourdaloue and Bossuet. Though an avowed freethinker, he had sate up all night at sea to compose sermons, and had with great difficulty been prevented from edifying the crew of a man of war with his pious oratory. [31] He now addressed the House of Peers, for the first time, with characteristic eloquence, sprightliness, and audacity. He blamed the Commons for not having taken a bolder line. "They have been afraid," he said, "to speak out. They have talked of apprehensions and jealousies. What ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... more difficult antagonist, because he could not be pinned down to any systematic doctrines or to any clear and logical development or statement of his thought. Indeed, Marx and Engels seemed more amused than concerned and simply treated his essays as a form of "hyper-revolutionary dress-parade oratory," to use a phrase of Liebknecht's. They ridiculed him as an "amorphous pan-destroyer," and made no attempt to refute his really ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... structure; elaborate in its inflections and syntax, delicate and subtle in its distinctions, rich in its vocabulary, highly cultivated in every department of writing, and flexible in an eminent degree; being thus equally adapted to every variety of style—plain unadorned narrative, impassioned oratory, poetry of every form, philosophical discussion, and severe logical reasoning: in a word, a language every way fitted to the wants of the gospel, which is given not for the infancy of the world but for its mature age, and which deals not so much with the details of particulars ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... without changing it entirely, yet give it, in different ages and climates, a different appearance; but we make their success depend, in a great degree, upon their subject, that is, upon circumstances which we measure by the circumstances of our own days. According to this prejudice, oratory depends more upon its subject than history, and poetry yet more than oratory. Our times, therefore, show more regard to Herodotus and Suetonius, than to Demosthenes and Cicero, and more to all these than to Homer or Virgil. Of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... literary society in his native town; and soon after his election, as Mr. Southey relates, "he lectured upon genius, and spoke extempore for about two hours, in such a manner, that he received the unanimous thanks of the society, and they elected this young Roscius of Oratory their Professor of Literature." He next became a writer in several of the Monthly Miscellanies; and (in 1803) put forth a volume of poems. A few words of unfortunate criticism in one of the Reviews, which in a few years more he would have learned to smile ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... him. The whispered disgrace had become a public record. Would he defend his son against the charges? All in all, it was a most sensational scandal—one sure to move a congregation more deeply than the richest oratory. ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... in good stead now, giving her self-possession, power of voice, and ease of gesture; while the purpose at her heart lent her the sort of simple eloquence that touches, persuades, and convinces better than logic, flattery, or oratory. ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... dinner, read aloud the manuscript of Tom Jones. [11] A reference to his fellow-Etonian may be found in one of the introductory chapters of that masterpiece, where Fielding, while again advocating the claims of learning, takes occasion to pay this sonorous tribute to Pitt's oratory: "Nor do I believe that all the imagination, fire, and judgment of Pitt, could have produced those orations that have made the senate of England in these our times a rival in eloquence to Greece and Rome, if he had not been so well read in the writings of Demosthenes ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... and are maneuvered, according to the exigencies of the scene, by means of cords running from their heads, arms, and legs to the top of the stage. To the management of the cords they owe all the vehemence of their passions and the grace of their oratory, not to mention a certain gliding, ungradual locomotion, ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... you had seen your own panegyric in the correspondence of Mrs. Waterhouse and Colonel Berkeley? To be sure their moral is not quite exact; but your passion is fully effective; and all poetry of the Asiatic kind—I mean Asiatic, as the Romans called Asiatic oratory,' and not because the scenery is Oriental—must be tried by that test only. I am not quite sure that I shall allow the Miss Byrons (legitimate or illegitimate) to read Lalla Rookh—in the first place, on account of this said passion; and, in the second, that they mayn't discover ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... they were in the sitting-room of the house, a small, high chamber with a stone floor, full of moving shadows cast by a wood-fire that flickered on a great hearth. Something of the character of an oratory was imparted to it by a tall crucifix, which reached almost to the ceiling on one side; the figure was painted of the natural colours, the cross was black. Under this stood a chest of some age and solidity, and when a lamp had been brought, and chairs set, the sacristan went to this ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... local celebration," thought Lynde. "Rural oratory and all that sort of thing. That ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... portrait of Daniel Webster is taken from a book just issued by the Fowler & Wells Co., New York, entitled, "A Natural System of Elocution and Oratory," founded upon analysis of the Human Constitution. By Thomas A. Hyde and William Hyde. Among other valuable subjects which this book contains is a description and analysis of ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... association to which they belong; and in many places the women wear the scapular or rosary around the neck as a part or complement of their dress. It may be said that there is no house or family, however poor it be, that does not have a domestic altar or oratory. There are some careless Christians among the Filipino people, vicious and scandalous because of their evil habits; there are even some who are ignorant of the most necessary things of their religion: but there are no unbelievers or ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... occupied by Fleur-de-Marie (we shall call her the Princess Amelia only officially), in the grand ducal palace, had been furnished by Rudolph's care, with extreme taste and elegance. From the balcony of the young girl's oratory could be seen, in the distance, the two towers of the Convent of St. Hermangilda, which, rising above immense masses of verdure, were themselves commanded by a high wooded mountain, at the foot of which the abbey stood. On a beautiful morning in summer, Fleur-de-Marie was allowing ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... Imagination, and Spirituality; that of Spurzheim is well expressed by the term Ideality, and the description given, but the word Poetry is rather too limited as the definition of Gall's organ. It gives brilliance to prose and to oratory, or even conversation, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... that eminent statesman, who, in the intervals of leisure, has always been a student of general literature. Mr. Blake's speeches afford abundant evidence of the brilliant talent of a public man who is both a student of books as well as of politics, and who, were the tendency of Parliamentary oratory something higher than mere practical debate, could rise fully to the height of some great argument. But oratory, in the real sense of the art, cannot exist in our system of government in a Colonial dependency where practical results ...
— The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People • John George Bourinot
... there was nothing especially peculiar or distinctive about Macaulay's oratory, save his intense personality and vivid earnestness. An educated man, thoroughly alive on any one theme, is always interesting. And it was Macaulay's policy never to speak in public on a theme that did ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... Dan, who had buckled his last strap, looked up to see why. He divined instantly, and that same sardonic smile passed over his face once more. Mr. Dalton was approaching, and the speaker, but now climbing the heights of oratory with the paper flourished like a standard before him, shrank suddenly into himself and seemed to fall away, as if he would annihilate himself if he could. Finding that impossible he sank into his ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... their testimony; the extreme indigence in which they had lived, though engaged, as they pretended, in a conspiracy with kings, princes, and nobles; the credit and opulence to which they were at present raised. With a simplicity and tenderness more persuasive than the greatest oratory, he still made protestations of his innocence; and could not forbear, every moment, expressing the most lively surprise and indignation at the audacious impudence of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... fuori le Mura, are excellent specimens of mediaeval architecture. Let students, archaeologists, and architects provide themselves with a chronological table of our sacred buildings, and select the best specimens for every quarter of a century, beginning with the oratory of Aquila and Prisca, mentioned in the Epistles, and ending with the latest contemporary creations; they cannot find a better subject for their education in art ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... of the Negro, his pre-eminence in the field of oratory is striking. Since the early nineteenth century until the present time, he is found giving eloquent voice to the story of his wrongs and his proscriptions. Crude though the earlier efforts may be, there is a certain grim eloquence in them that is touching, there must be, ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... courage to stand alone—that courage which is the first requisite of leadership in a great cause. The charm of Lincoln's oratory flooded all the rare depth and genuineness of his convictions and his sympathetic feelings were the strongest element in his nature. He was one of the greatest Americans ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... intellectual form of it, and counting the good points, but by the end he was not a little carried away. The peroration was undoubtedly very moving, very intimate, very modern, and Langham up to a certain point was extremely susceptible to oratory, as he was to music and acting. The critical judgment, however, at the root of him kept coolly repeating as he stood watching the people defile out of the church: 'This sort of thing will go down, will make a mark; Elsmere is at the ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Pat Brady had again come to his master, informing him that all the boys were to be on that evening at the whiskey shop, and using all his powers of oratory to induce him to come down; but Thady was firm, and he not only refused to come then, but plainly told Pat that he had entirely altered his mind, and that he did not intend to go down to them at all. He advised Pat also to give them up, hinting ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... for the time being. Some members said afterwards that they could hear their own watches ticking. Then Mr John Redmond, the Leader of the Irish Nationalist Party, rose and said, in a slow, and deliberate voice, which contrasted strikingly with his usual style of oratory: ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... the rules have been taken with a due regard to their fitness to exemplify the principles involved, and to show the various styles of reading, declamation and oratory, and the selections have been made in such a manner as to adapt them for use in schools, colleges and ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... then endeavoured to lessen all those objects which alarmed her most, and particularly the danger I was to encounter, upon which head I seemed a little to comfort her; but the probable length of my absence and the certain length of my voyage were circumstances which no oratory of mine could even palliate. 'O heavens!' said she, bursting into tears, 'can I bear to think that hundreds, thousands for aught I know, of miles or leagues, that lands and seas are between us? What is ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... and the King gave a supper that evening to the earls and barons of his army, where they made good cheer. On their taking leave the King remained alone with the lords of his bedchamber; he retired into his oratory, and, falling on his knees before the altar, prayed to God that if he should combat his enemies on the morrow, he might come off with honor. About midnight he went to bed and, rising early the next day, he and the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... centuries are songs of |77| feasting and pagan ceremonies rather than of the Holy Child and His Mother. There is no lack of fine Christmas verse in the Elizabethan and early Stuart periods, but for the most part it belongs to the oratory and the chamber rather than the hall. The Nativity has become a subject for private contemplation, for individual devotion, instead of, as in the later Middle Ages, a matter for common jubilation, a wonder-story that really happened, ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... priests, out of which were chosen by lot persons to preside as governors over the college; who were obliged to entertain the people with extraordinary chases of wild-beasts, and stage-plays, besides contests for prizes in oratory and poetry. He thrice bestowed upon the people a largess of three hundred sesterces each man; and, at a public show of gladiators, a very plentiful feast. At the festival of the Seven Hills [803], he distributed large hampers ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... Walpole Street, let us say, on the second floor of a quiet mansion, let out to hermits by a nobleman's butler, whose wife takes care of the lodgings. His cells consist of a refectory, a dormitory, and an adjacent oratory where he keeps his shower-bath and boots—the pretty boots trimly stretched on boot-trees and blacked to a nicety (not varnished) by the boy who waits on him. The barefooted business may suit superstitious ages and gentlemen of Alcantara, but does not become Mayfair and the nineteenth century. ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... then close by the presbytery, in a house half of wood, which blazed like tinder; there was nothing comparable to it in all the village. A domestic suddenly cried out that mademoiselle was in her oratory, probably in a trance. Not a soul dares venture through the flames to save her, though she is a saint. Monsieur le Cure hears the rumor of it; he steps in through the doorway through which the smoke is rolling; walks in as ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... was in a desperate state," said the count. "But Wagner came—he breathed words of hope in my ears, and I recovered rapidly; so rapidly and so completely that I feel not as if I had ever known indisposition save by name. I was, however, about to observe that there is an oratory in Signor Wagner's mansion; and there may the ceremony be performed. Fernand is, moreover, well acquainted with the language by which the deaf and dumb communicate their ideas; and through friendship for me he will break the tidings of my marriage ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... say to her in the noble words of a French writer, one of the many generous-hearted foreigners, whose affectionate admiration has been won by her sufferings and her constancy, the Rev. Adolphe Perraud, Priest of the Oratory, Paris:— ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... bring in higher objects, it is plain that the way to get anything in America is to talk about it. Silence is golden, no doubt, and like other gold remains in the bank-vaults, and does not just now circulate very freely as currency. Even literature in America is utterly second to oratory as a means of immediate influence. Of all sway, that of the orator is the most potent and most perishable; and the student and the artist are apt to hold themselves aloof from it, for this reason. But it is the one means in America to accomplish immediate results, and women who would take their ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... raised such a laugh against the apostle of temperance, that the meeting was fairly broken up, leaving the Wiltshire man triumphing in his victory over cold water and oratory, in the person of the lecturer. The dryness of his arguments prevailed against the refreshing and copious draughts of the pure element ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... on the 21st of January, Hayne rose to deliver his First Reply, and Webster five days later took the floor to begin his Second Reply—probably the greatest effort in the history of American legislative oratory—the little chamber then used by the Senate, but nowadays given over to the Supreme Court, presented a spectacle fairly to be described as historic. Every senator who could possibly be present answered at roll call. Here were Webster's more notable fellow New Englanders—John Holmes ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... 1805, the corporation of Harvard College elected Mr. Adams Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory on the Boylston foundation. After modifications of the statutes, which he suggested, were adopted, he accepted, and immediately entered upon a course of preparatory studies, reviving his knowledge of the Greek, ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... reassuring, healing by the mere incompatibility of disease or anxiety with his welcome presence. Even broken bones, it is said, have been known to unite at the sound of his voice: he is a born healer, as independent of mere treatment and skill as any Christian scientist. When he expands into oratory or scientific exposition, he is as energetic as Walpole; but it is with a bland, voluminous, atmospheric energy, which envelops its subject and its audience, and makes interruption or inattention impossible, and imposes veneration and credulity ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw
... went to Rome, and on his return introduced into England the institute of the Oratory. In 1854 he went to Dublin for four years as rector of the new Catholic university, and while there wrote his volume on the "Idea of a University," in which he expounds with wonderful clearness of thought and beauty of language his view of the aim of ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... general character and spirit. An examination of the scanty remains of that remote period will justify, to a considerable extent, the conjecture now made. It will appear that the poetry, the ethics, the oratory, the music, and even the physical science cultivated in the time of Samuel and David bore a close relation to the original object of the Levitical colleges, and were meant to promote the principles ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... no more presume To name a Parlour, or a Drawing Room; But, bending lowly to each, holy Story, Make this thy Chapel, and thine Oratory.] ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... behind us as a background. Wordsworth was in fine cue, and we had a glorious set-to,—on Homer, Shakespeare, Milton and Virgil. Lamb got exceedingly merry and exquisitely witty; and his fun in the midst of Wordsworth's solemn intonations of oratory was like the sarcasm and wit of the fool in the intervals of Lear's passion. He made a speech and voted me absent, and made them drink my health. "Now," said Lamb, "you old lake poet, you rascally poet, why do you call Voltaire dull?" We all defended Wordsworth, and affirmed ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... that was edged with flowering heath, and gained a jutting crag which seemed almost to overhang the water; and going on farther amongst the wind-brushed pines, we came to another spot which we had previously viewed from above. It was a little round stone oratory perched on the crest of a jutting pinnacle, and linked to the main rock by a narrow causeway which rested on a slender arch. It was lit by a lantern in the roof, and over the altar was the marble effigy ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... language this method is called "science," or "scientific." The critical habit of thought, if usual in a society, will pervade all its mores, because it is a way of taking up the problems of life. Men educated in it cannot be stampeded by stump orators and are never deceived by dithyrambic oratory. They are slow to believe. They can hold things as possible or probable in all degrees, without certainty and without pain. They can wait for evidence and weigh evidence, uninfluenced by the emphasis or confidence ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... that intercourse Has pass'd between your friends and ours; 1530 That as you trust us, in our way, To raise your members, and to lay, We send you others of our own, Denounc'd to hang themselves or drown; Or, frighted with our oratory, 1435 To leap down headlong many a story Have us'd all means to propagate Your mighty interests of state; Laid out our spiritual gifts to further Your great designs of rage and murther. 1540 For if the Saints are nam'd from blood, We only have made that title good; And if it were ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... story to tell, which he wished to treat artistically, never dreamed of expressing it except in the nobler medium of verse, in the epic, in the idyl, in the drama. Prose seemed to the Greeks, and even to the Latins who followed in their footsteps, as fit only for pedestrian purposes. Even oratory and history were almost rhythmic; and mere prose was too humble an instrument for those whom the Muses cherished. The Alexandrian vignettes of the gentle Theocritus may be regarded as anticipations of the modern short-story of urban local color; but this delicate ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... appellation of 'Bear-trap,' may I ask?" The smack of pulpit oratory was not often missing in the edifying discourse of ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... historians. I have found there, for instance, the Day of the Dupes related precisely as my father has related it to me, and several other curious things not less exact. This author has made such a stir that it is worth while to say something about him. He was a priest of the Oratory, and in much estimation as a man whose manners were without reproach. After a time, however, he was found to have disclosed a secret that had been entrusted to him, and to have acted the spy on behalf of the Jesuits. The proofs of his treason ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... among them; few are there among these lives that do not display the incipient bishop from the tenderest years. Bishop How of Wakefield composed hymns before he was eleven, and Archbishop Benson when scarcely older possessed a little oratory in which he conducted services and—a pleasant touch of the more secular boy—which he protected from a too inquisitive sister by means of a booby trap. It is rare that those marked for episcopal dignities go so far into the outer world as Archbishop Lang of York, who began as ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... amongst which the amount of money spent upon keeping up a place like Kencote bulked largely. When he had gone over the field a second time, and picked up the gleanings left over from his sheaves of oratory, he asked her, apparently as a matter of kindly curiosity, what she ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... for people who would undertake to move themselves, the third of the population of a planet, over a distance that meant years of voyaging. They might have tastes in costume that he did not share, and they might go in for elaborate oratory instead of matter-of-fact ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... of the Howard M.E. Church and took up that work at once. The "silver-tongued orator," Rev. Thomas Guard, was in charge of the church then, and his popularity drew large audiences, who were entertained not only with oratory but music also. The church choir was under the leadership of Mr. Geo. W. Jackson, who was one of the first to announce himself as a "voice builder." May 1, 1878, Mr. Stedman was seated as organist and director of music in Plymouth Congregational Church, a ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... be true? Methinks I could find a thousand arguments against it. Well, then, let yonder shaggy rock mid-deep in the surf—see! he is somewhat wrathful: he rages and roars and foams,—let that tall rock be my antagonist, and let me exercise my oratory like him of Athens who bandied words with an angry sea and got the victory. My maiden-speech is a triumphant one, for the gentleman in seaweed has nothing to offer in reply save an immitigable roaring. ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... good, Ensal, but it needs a supplement. Charles Sumner's oratory and Mrs. Stowe's affecting portraiture of poor old Uncle Tom were not sufficient of themselves to move the nation. There had to be a John Brown and a Harper's Ferry. Preserve that paper and send it forth. The blood of Earl Bluefield and his followers shed upon ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... purposes, so another may entangle them in the deceitful meshes of sophistry, and dazzle them by the glare of a false magnanimity, whose vainglorious crimes may be painted as virtues and even as sacrifices. Beneath the delightful charms of oratory and poetry, the poison steals imperceptibly into ear and heart. Above all others must the comic poet (seeing that his very occupation keeps him always on the slippery brink of this precipice,) take heed, lest he afford an opportunity for the lower and baser parts of human nature to display ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... lower story was an area enclosed by stone walls, into which the cattle, etc., were driven. An outside stone stair led to the upper story, where we were received by the head of the family, accompanied by a great concourse of Lamas. He conducted us to a beautiful little oratory at one end of the building, fitted up like a square temple, and lighted with latticed windows, covered with brilliant and tasteful paintings by Lhassan artists. The beams of the ceiling were supported by octagonal columns painted red, with broad ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... necessarily made a considerable change in this respect. Not only has the time of the Legislature become too precious to be wasted upon the mere gymnastics of rhetoric, but even those graces, with which true Oratory surrounds her statements, are but impatiently borne, where the statement itself is the primary and pressing object of the hearer. [Footnote: The new light that as been thrown on Political Science may also, perhaps, be assigned as a reason for this evident revolution in Parliamentary ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... lawyer, who had become a colonel by grace of a staff appointment in the Spanish War. He had a weakness for the poets, and his speeches were informed with that grace and sentiment which, we are fond of saying, is peculiar to Southern oratory. The Colonel, at all fitting occasions in our commonwealth, responded to "the ladies" in tender and moving phrases. He was a bachelor, and the ladies in the gallery saw ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... world. The altar-like transom, surmounted by the closed dead-lights in the stem, together with the dim little sky- light overhead, and the somber aspect of every thing around, gave the place the air of some subterranean oratory, say a Prayer Room of Peter the Hermit. But coils of rigging, bolts of canvas, articles of clothing, and disorderly heaps of rubbish, harmonized not with this impression. Two doors, one on each ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... trick of intellect which could possibly be employed by an experienced man of the world who has a wide knowledge of his fellows. Nothing which could be effected by pleasantness of demeanour, by moving oratory, by clouds of flattery, and by the occasional insertion of a coin into a palm did he leave undone; with the result that he was retired with less ignominy than was his companion, and escaped actual ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... capable of profiting men or kings! A just man, I say; and a valiant and veracious: but rugged as a wild bear; entirely inarticulate, as if dumb. No bursts of parliamentary eloquence in him, nor the least tendency that way. His talent for Stump-Oratory may be reckoned the minimum conceivable, or practically noted a ZERO. A man who would not have risen in modern Political Circles; man unchoosable at hustings or in caucus; man forever invisible, and very unadmirable if seen, to the Able Editor and those that hang by him. ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... his situation, we mean the talent for conducting political controversy. It is as necessary to an English statesman in the East that he should be able to write, as it is to a minister in this country that he should be able to speak. It is chiefly by the oratory of a public man here that the nation judges of his powers. It is from the letters and reports of a public man in India that the dispensers of patronage form their estimate of him. In each case, the talent which receives peculiar encouragement ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the arts of oratory, letter-writing, essay-writing, and all that sort of thing, among which there is one to which I wish particularly to call ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... summer morning Bishop Sidonius celebrated the Holy Eucharist for the mournful family in the oratory, a vaulted chamber underground, which had served the same purpose in the days of persecution, and had the ashes of two tortured martyrs of the AEmilian household, mistress and slave, enshrined together beneath the altar, which had since been ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... rank of gentlemen, and the character of men of honour. We do not assemble such numerous meetings as the Saints, the Whigs, or the Radicals, nor are our speeches delivered with so much vehemence. We even, I think, tacitly exclude oratory. In a word, our meetings seldom exceed the perfect number of the muses; and our object on these occasions is not so much to deliberate on plans of prospective benefits to mankind, as to enjoy the present time for ourselves, under the temperate ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... is small, but powerful, with a style of oratory somewhat illogical, but always convincing at the moment. There were a good many trifling objections to our leaving Miss Van Tyck and the hotel, but we scarcely remembered them until we and our luggage were skimming across ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... was very humble in explaining to Loman that he had forgotten (which was the case) the time. The meeting in the Fourth class-room lasted most of the afternoon; but as oratory in whispers is tedious, and constant repetition of the same sentiments, however patriotic, is monotonous, it flagged considerably in spirit towards the end, and degenerated into one of the usual wrangles between Guinea-pigs and Tadpoles, in the midst of which ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... appearance of force of oratory of, in campaign of 1877 mentioned appreciation by, of value of Tunisian protectorate comparison of Grevy and General amnesty, discussion of the. Germans, want of tact characteristic; position of women among; advance in comfort and elegance among. Germany, feeling in, over radicalism ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... stands an octagonal chapel or oratory, said to be built on the very spot where the first mass was celebrated after the landing of Magellan. Even the old stone fort is claimed by some earnest prevaricators as a relic of those early Spanish days, but as the architecture is clearly that of the eighteenth ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... taste; but his strength was that of imagination merely,—his genius was not sufficiently counterbalanced by judgment, and he has been at all times ranked as an elegant rather than a nervous writer. In his oratory, as well us his literary composition, he was too much addicted to a florid phraseology, and his hearers, during his lifetime, as well as his readers now, were often driven to consider his meaning, and not unfrequently to make one out for themselves. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various
... 4.—New Parliament met to-day in great force. Ambition stirs noble minds in different ways. Some embark on Parliamentary life with determination to outshine BRIGHT or GLADSTONE in field of oratory. Others will not be pacified till they emulate PITT. Others again aim at the lofty pedestal on which stands through the ages the man who is first in his place, on first day, of first Session, of new Parliament. Exciting race to-day. At ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 13, 1892 • Various
... hardly too much to say that the Negro is thrilled not so much by the moral as by the artistic and pictorial elements in religion. Every member of the race is an incipient poet, and all are enthralled by music and oratory. ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... himself for a moment, again joined his hands, and raising his eyes toward heaven ejaculated fervently, as if repeating his devotions in the oratory: "O Lord, thou knowest I would have spared her this bitter cup, but, between two evils, I have avoided the greater. If I forfeit my solemn promise, consider, O Lord, I pray thee, that I do it to avoid disgrace and exposure for her, and deign to ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... related to me this of Victorinus, I was on fire to imitate him; for for this very end had he related it. But when he had subjoined also, how in the days of the Emperor Julian a law was made, whereby Christians were forbidden to teach the liberal sciences or oratory; and how he, obeying this law, chose rather to give over the wordy school than Thy Word, by which Thou makest eloquent the tongues of the dumb; he seemed to me not more resolute than blessed, in having thus found opportunity to wait on Thee only. Which ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... imagination in the brain of the opium-eater is as free as that of genius itself, and the creations produced in that state by the pen or pencil are as wildly beautiful as those owed to the nobler influences. In years gone by, the oratory of the statesman in the senate has been kindled by semi-intoxication, when his noble utterances were set down by his auditors to the inspiration ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... the humor of the pioneer; the passion of old political battles; the yearning after spiritual truth and social readjustment; the baffled quest of beauty. Such a history must be broad enough for the Federalist and for Webster's oratory, for Beecher's sermons and Greeley's editorials, and the Lincoln-Douglas debates. It must picture the daily existence of our citizens from the beginning; their working ideas, their phrases and shibboleths ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... the members are a very favourable specimen of the parliamentary oratory of Queen Elizabeth's reign, as may be seen from the following delivered by Mr Martin. He is no philosopher, it will be observed, in political economy, but speaks from the actual grievances witnessed by him. 'I speak for a town that grieves and pines—for a country that groaneth ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... and last lady, whose house was very old, but the khan gave her a new house and new chariots after Easter. This lady was an idolater, yet she worshipped the cross, according to the directions of the monk and priests. From that place we returned to our oratory, the monks accompanying us with great howlings and outcries in their drunkenness, as they had been plentifully supplied with drink at every visit; but this is not considered as blameable or unseemly, either in man or woman in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... selection and also the selections on pages 202, 209, and 231 are fine examples of American oratory, such as was practiced by the statesmen and public speakers of the earlier years of our republic. Learn all that you can about Patrick Henry, Daniel Webster, Edward Everett, Theodore Parker, and other eminent orators. Before attempting to read ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... exhausted all his eloquence and imagination to work up a piteous scene, in which the queen is made to excite our compassion in the highest degree, and is furnished by that able pen with strains of pathetic oratory, which no part of her conduct affords us reason to believe she possessed. This scene is occasioned by the demand of delivering up her second son. Cardinal Bourchier archbishop of Canterbury is the instrument employed by the protector to effect this purpose. The ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... platforms. Yet I am told that the vogue of the sermon is passing; and (by journalists) that the leading article has largely superseded it. On that point I can offer you no personal evidence; but of civil oratory I am very sure that the whole pitch has been sensibly lowered since the day of Chatham, Burke, Sheridan; since the day of Brougham and Canning; nay, ever since the day of Bright, Gladstone, Disraeli. Burke, as everyone knows, once brought down a Brummagem dagger and cast ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... tragedies to memoirs, then to history, tales, translations of part of the "Odyssey," essays (by the Gentleman who left his Lodgings), and then to memoirs and histories again. Mr. Croker said of his "Don Carlos": "It is not easy to find any poetry, or even oratory, of the present day delivered with such cold and heavy diction, such distorted tropes and disjointed limbs of similes worn to ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... believe it has rarely, if ever happened, that one has attained to a symmetry and finished excellency of character, in the varieties of any one department of learning, who has not, at least in the early stages of education, received inspiration from the oratory and poetry of other times, when language was an index to the passions and emotions of the soul, and conveyed, not the names only, but the properties of things, the qualities of mind. The very vigor of thought and power of eloquence with which many, with a parricidal ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... with its embayed loggie and flanking turrets, is placed too close upon the city ramparts for its due effect. We are obliged to cross the deep ravine which separates it from a lower quarter of the town, and take our station near the Oratory of S. Giovanni Battista, before we can appreciate the beauty of its design, or the boldness of the group it forms with the cathedral dome and tower and the square masses of numerous out-buildings. Yet this peculiar position of the palace, though baffling to a close observer of its details, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... asked William Wirt, at the trial of Aaron Burr for treason, and many a schoolboy since has echoed the question, as many a schoolboy will hereafter, while impassioned oratory is music to the ear and witchery to the breast. The eloquent lawyer went on to answer himself, and painted in glowing colors a character which history sees in a colder light. But though Blennerhassett was not the ideal that Wirt imagined, he was the generous victim of ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... to follow them—But how? With a strong probability. If you have a mind to study this Oriental figure of rhetoric, the painche, here it is for you in its most complete perfection. No rhetorician ever gave an example of any figure of oratory that can ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Everyone knows the story of his wretched articulation and how he shut himself up and practised speaking with pebbles in his mouth in order to overcome it. Few of the great orators, indeed, seem to have succeeded in oratory without difficulty. Neither Cicero nor Burke spoke with the natural ease of many a young man in a Y.M.C.A. debating society. And the great writers, like the great orators, have been, in many instances, men doomed ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... pack-mules, peddlers and preachers called together their motley congregations, and the sound of axes clearing the timber was accompanied by fiddling and haranguing, the fighting of dogs, and the coarse tones of religious or business oratory. It was in the height of the era of the great period of the Dissenters in England, and Methodist, Baptist, and Calvinistic zealots were piercing to the boundaries of English-speaking people, wild forerunners of those organized bands of ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... threatening utterances, such as the address to the troops sailing for China in order to quell the Boxer rebellion, the constant association in all his speeches of the great idea of God, with the ravings of a megalomaniac, the frenzied oratory in which he indulged at the beginning of the War, have harmed Germany more than anything else. It is possible to lose nobly; but to have lost a great war after having won so many battles would not have harmed ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... spoken of in the preceding Lesson, is not the only order admissible in an English sentence; on the contrary, great freedom in the placing of words and phrases is sometimes allowable. Let the relation of the words be kept obvious and, consequently, the thought clear, and in poetry, in impassioned oratory, in excited speech of any kind, one may deviate ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... aimin' to hit from this tower of ourn wuz Washington, D.C. I wanted to visit the Capitol of our country, the center of our great civilization that stands like the sun in the solar system, sendin' out beams of power and wisdom and law and order, and justice and injustice, and money and oratory, and talk and talk, and wind and everything, to the uttermost points of our vast possessions, and from them clear to the ends of the earth. I wanted to see it, I wanted to like a dog. So we laid out ...
— Samantha on the Woman Question • Marietta Holley
... been a member of the Cabinet; every word which fell from him she found suggestive, illuminative, and seemed to treasure it in her mind. After dinner, Dyce received from her his cue for drawing-room oratory; he was led into large discourse, and Mrs. Toplady's eyes beamed the most intelligent sympathy. None the less did roguery still lurk at the corner of her lips, so that from time to time the philosopher ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... suitable for a prince in the thirteenth century included what was technically termed the eighteen sciences: "1. oratory, 2. general knowledge, 3. grammar, 4. poetry, 5. languages, 6. astronomy, 7. the art of giving counsel, 8. the means of attaining nirwana[1], 9. the discrimination of good and evil, 10. shooting with the bow, 11. management of ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... behind Mr. Webster, and near General Scott, and heard the whole of the speech. It was heavy in the extreme, and I confess that I was disappointed and tired long before it was finished. No doubt the speech was full of fact and argument, but it had none of the fire of oratory, or intensity of feeling, that marked ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... hounds. Finally the girl spoke aloud. "Until last August!" Katharine said. "Until last August! Poised kingdoms topple on the brink of ruin, now that you bid me come to you again. And I bade this devil's grandson come to me, as my lover!" Presently she went into her oratory and began ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... once began, and in a few minutes had so interested his hearers that they gazed in his face and hung upon his words with rapt attention, while he detailed the incidents of the combats with a degree of fluency and fervour that would have thrown the oratory of Glumm and Kettle quite into the shade had it been told ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... which Englishmen are not as much accustomed as Americans. They have a heavy, labored way of speaking, extremely painful to listeners accustomed to the ease of American speakers; and they were never weary of listening to the pleasing and graceful oratory of Mr. Lowell. He was called upon constantly to address the people, upon all sorts of occasions, and invariably received the highest praise for his efforts. Much regret was felt in England when he was called home; much also ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... and picturesqueness of phrase. In his most eloquent and sympathetic passages he is a thorough poet, splendidly imaginative and dramatic. J. R. Greene in his 'History of England' has well spoken of 'the characteristics of his oratory—its passionate ardor, its poetic fancy, its amazing prodigality of resources; the dazzling succession in which irony, pathos, invective, tenderness, the most brilliant word pictures, the coolest argument, followed each other.' Fundamental, lastly, ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... music at the Oratory, and said charming things about the connection between incense and the devotional spirit. Weeks listened to ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... Louis XIV the Comtesse de Lude devoted herself to the hunt with a frenzy born of an inordinate enthusiasm. At the head of a pack of hounds she knew no obstacle, and, on one occasion, penetrated on horseback, followed by her dogs, into the oratory of the nuns of the ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... among the principal leaders of the House, and certainly, few were the men in that house whether democrats or republicans, who could outrank them in oratory or ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... virtuous because he is something of a faineant, to put it mildly, eyed me very severely the other day and said that everyone reported that I had developed into a species of latter-day robber-chief, and had slain hundreds of people. He said all sorts of other things, too. I let him exhaust his oratory before I replied. Then I inquired regarding the definition of the term treasure-trove, which has become the consecrated phrase for all our many hypocrites. The generals and many of his colleagues ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... to an oratory, a religious place, the finer spirits of her kin had always found their way, to leave behind them there the more intimate relics of themselves. To Gaston its influence imparted early a taste for delicate things as being indispensable in all his pleasures to come; and, from ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... Curran, Grattan, and of the persecuting government tell that story. The blood of an Emmett has crowned a noble effort with martyrdom. His last speech will be read as long as school-books can perpetuate one of the finest efforts of oratory. ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... as member for Stafford. His first effort in oratory was a failure; but by study he became one of the most effective popular orators of his day. His speeches lose by reading: he abounded in gaudy figures, and is not without bombast; but his wonderful flow of words and his impassioned action dazzled his audience and kept it spellbound. His oratory, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... quite convinced by this burst of scornful oratory. She continued quietly, "You forget something, Harry. Your heroic young man might find it easy to do something wild—to fight with that gentleman in the West Indies, or murder him, or anything like that, just as you see ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... public speaking was an incident in the Prince of Wales' career which exercised considerable influence upon his personal popularity. The pronounced factors in his style were not oratory, gestures, or brilliancy. Plain in matter and manner the speeches always were; full of meat and substance they frequently were; neat and effective they were generally considered. Mr. Gladstone once went further ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... fanciful soul. Its introduction into Provence is said to have been in the time of John XXII.—the second of the Avignon Popes, who came to the Pontificate in the year 1316—and by the Fathers of the Oratory of Marseille: from which centre it rapidly spread abroad through the land until it became a necessary feature of the Christmas festival both ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... pack of them in there," he said, "next to Her Majesty's private closet. They have been praying all day in the oratory." ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... country render impossible. Music for the deaf! Eloquence without an audience!"] That of the pulpit only remains. But even of this—whether it be from want of the excitement and contagious emulation from the other fields of oratory, or from the peculiar genius of Lutheranism—no models have yet arisen that could, for one moment, sustain a comparison with those of England or France. The highest names in this department would not, to a foreign ear, carry with them any of that significance or promise ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... are not the men who carry away distinction the men of breadth, not depth? Is it not the wide acquaintance with a large field of knowledge, and the subtle power to know how other men regard these topics, that make the popular leader of the present day? and remember, it is talk, and not oratory, is the mode. You must be commonplace, and even vulgar, practical, dashed with a small morality, so as not to be classed with the low Radical; and if then you have a bit of high-faluting for the peroration, you'll do. The morning papers will call you a young man of great promise, ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... capturing his audience with his first sentence and bearing them along on the powerful pinions of his masterly oratory; and when his peroration was over the audience drew its breath and cheered wildly for many, many minutes. He then proceeded to deliver the valedictory to the class. After he had been speaking for some time, his voice began to break with emotion. As he drew near to the most affecting ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... as a talker rather than as a fighter. He was an orator, and his oratory was of a kind that was exactly suited to his surroundings. No man could more readily adapt himself to the humor of his hearers. He knew precisely how to put himself on their level. I have seen him face an audience that was distinctly unfriendly, that would scarcely give him a hearing; and in ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... ceased stirring up his brothers, Joseph and Lucien, who, being moved at his instance, were constantly attending clubs and popular meetings where they often delivered speeches and debated public matters, while Napoleon sat listening in silence, as he had no turn for oratory." "One day in December," the narrator continues, "I was sent for by his uncle already mentioned, in order to assist him in preparing his testament; and, after having settled his family concerns, the conversation turned upon politics, when, speaking of the improbability of Italy being revolutionized, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... tells his publishers in a very pleasant prefatory letter, this compilation was made in England, where it attained great popularity among those who never heard the preacher, and who found satisfaction in the first-rate or the second-rate, without being moved by the arts of oratory. Indeed, the book is one that must everywhere be welcome, both for its manner and for its matter. The application of the "Truths" is generally enforced by a felicitous apologue or figure; in some cases the lesson is conveyed in a beautiful metaphor standing alone. The extracts are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... great danger was, that, while conciliating the Conservatives by a show of concession, he should alienate his own party by seeming to concede too much. Now, that the effect which he aimed to produce excluded all declamation, all attempt at eloquence, anything like flights of oratory or striking figures of rhetoric, nobody understood ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... and fantastic oratory, utterly unexpected as it was, had as yet left their wits no time to set their tempers on fire; but when, weak from his wounds, he paused for breath, there was a haughty murmur from more than one young gentleman, who took his speech as an impertinent interference with ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... into a description of his oratory, then related how he had won over juries in several important cases. His arms, his hands were going, his eyes were glistening, his voice had that rich, sympathetic tone which characterizes the egotist when the subject is himself. Miss Severence listened without comment; indeed, he was not sure ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... of hour to-night, MEYSEY-THOMPSON handled it as if he loved it. MONTAGU, whilst musically jingling in trowser-pocket handful of newly-minted sovereigns, equally adulatory. Then Mr. G. walked in. It was reasonably thought in advance that Bimetallism would prove too much even for the charm of his oratory. Had evidently come down unprepared for special effort; neither sheaf of notes nor pomatum-pot. He listened to mover and seconder, and then just talked to entranced House, crowding up in every corner. Quite surprised, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 11, 1893 • Various
... the servants' hall, where one hundred and forty-five retainers had just done dinner and were drinking the Duke's health, singing and speechifying with vociferous applause, shouting, and clapping of hands. I never knew before that oratory had got down into the servants' hall, but learned that it is the custom for those to whom 'the gift of the gab' has been vouchsafed to harangue the others, the palm of eloquence being universally conceded to Mr. Tapps the head coachman, a man of great abdominal dignity, ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... often diffuse and roundabout, and its impression cumulative, like the poison of arsenic. As Galiani said of Nature that her dice were always loaded, so the wit must throw sixes every time. And what the same Galiani gave as a definition of sublime oratory may be applied to its dexterity of phrase: "It is the art of saying everything without being clapt in the Bastile, in a country where it is forbidden to say anything." Wit must also have the quality ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell |
