"Volubility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... well, that the language of common people, when giving utterance to passionate emotions, is highly figurative; and hence he concludes not so well fit for a lyrical ballad. Their volubility is great, nor few their flowers of speech. But who ever heard them, but by the merest accident, spout verses? Rhyme do they never—the utmost they reach is occasional blanks. But their prose! Ye gods! how they do talk! The washerwoman absolutely froths ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... appeared, accompanied by three blacks, one of whom he formally introduced to us as Naggernook. He was apparently, judging by his withered skin and white hair and beard, a very old man; but he had not lost the use of his tongue, for he chattered away with extraordinary volubility, as if wishing to impress some matter of importance upon us—though what it was, of course we could not understand. The sight of the wombat roasting before the fire excited his interest, and he inquired of Pullingo how we had obtained it. Pullingo, pointing ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... view which Red did not share. He would willingly have made her a present of the difference, but he did not in the least intend to be choused out of it by man nor woman. They had a very funny debate in private, wherein the feminine tried to dominate the masculine principle by sheer volubility and found to its disgust that the method didn't work. Red listened most respectfully and always replied, "Yes ma'am, but we don't want that paint. Get us some good paint—bully old paint with stick'um ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... there was a general row—a row, conceivable only by residents of Africa, or those whose ears have been regaled with the chattering of a "wilderness of monkeys." Our lusty factotum was astonished. The Cockney aspirated his h's with uncommon volubility. We hastened from one to the other to inquire the cause; nor was it until near half an hour had been wasted in palaver, that I found they considered themselves slighted, first of all because we had not fired a salvo in their honor, and secondly because we failed to spread ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... enclosure is the famous Fontana Aretusa, but there is nothing about it that reminds one of the fountains of the Crystal Palace or of Versailles. One first catches sight of a pond and then of a spring bubbling into it with irresistible volubility at the north end; at the south end the water tumbles out into the harbour through a hole in the sea wall. The surface of the pond is below the level of the passeggiata and probably the bed of it is below the level of the water in the ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... grandame," he said. "No, mother, I am not hurting her," and indeed the surprise seemed to have taken away her rage and volubility, and unresistingly she allowed him to seat her in a chair. Still holding her arm, he made his clear boyish voice resound through the hall, saying, "Retainers all, know that, as I am your lord and master, so is my honoured mother lady ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... itself can do no good, nor that renowned [721]lantern of Epictetus, by which if any man studied, he should be as wise as he was. But all will not serve; rhetoricians, in ostentationem loquacitatis multa agitant, out of their volubility of tongue, will talk much to no purpose, orators can persuade other men what they will, quo volunt, unde volunt, move, pacify, &c., but cannot settle their own brains, what saith Tully? Malo indisertam prudentiam, quam loquacem, stultitiam; and as [722]Seneca seconds him, a wise man's ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... exacting with her servants, grasping and avaricious with all; singing a piece from "Norma" in a voice, about the size of a thread No. 150, that showed traces of former excellence; or cheapening a bushel of corn meal with equal volubility. What a character! Full of little secrets and mysteries. "Now, my dear, I don't ask you to tell a story, you know; but if the others ask you if you knew it, just look surprised and say, 'Oh, dear me, when did it happen?' 'Cause ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... of the night he was awakened suddenly by a shout from Madou, who was singing and talking in his own language with frightful volubility. Delirium had begun. ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... I year tell, Miss F'raishy—sho'," Mingo assented, with great heartiness. But Mrs. Bivins's volubility would hardly wait for this perfunctory indorsement. She talked as she arranged the dishes, and occasionally she would hold a piece of crockery suspended in the air as she emphasised her words. She dropped into a mortuary strain—"Poor pa! I don't never ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... in the mines. He had not a word of English. . If the young girls were nimble with their feet, they were not less so with their tongues, as they kept up an incessant gabble with each other and with the guide. I understood little of what they said, their volubility preventing me from catching more than a few words. After we had gone about two miles and a half, they darted away with surprising swiftness down a hill towards a distant house, where, as I learned from my guide, the father of the eldest lived. We ascended a hill, passed between two craggy elevations, ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... and sat down side by side. The Major walked across and took a vacant seat on the other side of Janie. The slightest look of surprise showed on Harry Tristram's face. A duel began. Duplay had readiness, suavity, volubility, a trick of flattering deference; on Harry's side were a stronger suggestion of power and an assumption, rather attractive, that he must be listened to. Janie liked this air of his, even while she resented it; here, in his own county at least, a Tristram of Blent was somebody. Bob Broadley ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... The volubility of his guides, restrained during the repast by the more important business of satisfying their appetites, now broke out to his great disturbance. They chattered almost incessantly during great part of the night with the host, whom they were probably entertaining ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... affairs, and seemed chiefly concerned to re-establish her own reputation for respectability, which she seemed to consider as being somewhat shattered by that of her lodger. Mr. Dunn was embarrassed both by her volubility and by her obvious determination to fasten upon him a certain amount of responsibility for the character and conduct ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... From the brilliant volubility before noticed, admiration and astonishment followed Mr. C. like a shadow, through the whole course of his peregrinations. This new "Review, Newspaper, and Annual Register," was largely patronized; for who would not give fourpence ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... two of mine own. At the end of five minutes I thrust my fingers in my ears out of sheer consideration for his vocal organs, and turn away; but the next moment he is fronting me again, and repeating himself with ever-increasing volubility. Finding my dulness quite impenetrable, he searches out another loquacious mortal, and by the aid of the tiny beam-scales every Chinaman carries for weighing broken silver, they finally make it understood that for six big rounds (dollars) ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... orderly, Mick, by the way, is one of the most wonderful and plausible fellows I have met out here. To say he could talk a donkey's hind leg off would be a mild way of describing his excessive volubility—he would chatter a centipede's legs off. Often when he comes in, with another orderly's broom, to make a pretence of sweeping the tent out, and leaning on the stick, starts retailing stories of mystery and imagination, I lay down the book I am trying to ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... violently: Huxter's fists, plunged into the pockets of his paletot, clenched themselves involuntarily, and armed themselves, as it were, in ambush: Mrs. Bolton began to talk with all her might, and with a wonderful volubility: and Lor! she was so 'appy to see Mr. Pendennis, and how well he was a lookin', and we'd been talkin' about Mr. P. only jest before; hadn't we, Fanny? and if this was the famous Hepsom races that they talked so much about, she didn't care, for her part, if she never ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... into figures again, nervously at first. Soon he recovered his volubility, and, calling on one of the elder boys to name two rows of figures for division, wrote them out and dashed down the quotient; then flung in the working at top speed, showing how the quotient was obtained; next rubbed out all but the original divisor and dividend, and, swinging ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Truesdale was profoundly impressed by his sister's aspect under these novel conditions; Bertie Patterson seemed to find in her the incarnation of all the town's philanthropy; even Aunt Lydia was almost too deeply affected to chirp and chatter with her wonted volubility. ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... purchaser read the writing which hung from my neck, he looked me over carefully, answering with affirmative nods of the head to what the merchant, with his usual volubility, was saying to him in Latin. Often he stopped to measure, with his spread out fingers, the size of my chest, the thickness of my arms, or the ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... a good judge of character. You have a full development of language devoted rather to accuracy and definiteness of meaning than volubility; and yet I doubt not you talk fast when excited—that belongs to your temperament. Your intellect is active and your mind more naturally runs in the channel of intellect than of feeling. It seeks ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... of the genuineness of the mise-en-scene La Boulaye had prepared, answered him with the explanation of how he had been struck by the falling lamp, whereupon Charlot fell to cursing lamps and crumblings with horrid volubility. That done he would have risen, but that La Boulaye, entering at that moment, insisted that he ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... like a rubber ball, and instantly began kicking vigorously right and left at our struggling figures. It gives me pleasure to record that the Spaniard, being on top, received by far the worst of it, yet I might also bear testimony to the vigor of the priest's legs, while we shared equally in the volubility ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... all this was designed, did not seem more enthusiastic than myself. Most of her time was spent in a corner, staring confusedly at the assembled company, and contemplating in silent amazement the volubility of ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... assisting to remove its housings, and the alforjas, or bags. His tongue had become unloosed, as if by sorcery; and far from being unable to speak, he proved that, when it suited his purpose, he could discourse with wonderful volubility. The donkey was soon tied to the manger, and a large measure of barley emptied before it, the greatest part of which the Gypsy boy presently removed, his father having purposely omitted to mix the barley with the straw, with which the Spanish mangers are always kept filled. The guests were hurried ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... wisdom, or the somewhat limited view that talking is only to be practised when it chances to be useful. Are we never to discuss the obvious or to deplore the inevitable? From so stern a code human nature revolts, and the storm of volubility went on in spite of the silence of the Dean of St. Neot's. Even this silence was imperfect in so far as the Dean said a word or two in private to Morewood when he visited him in his studio, and the pair were looking at Quisante's picture. ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... you see the flabby devil was running that show. White men with long staves in their hands appeared languidly from amongst the buildings, strolling up to take a look at me, and then retired out of sight somewhere. One of them, a stout, excitable chap with black moustaches, informed me with great volubility and many digressions, as soon as I told him who I was, that my steamer was at the bottom of the river. I was thunderstruck. What, how, why? Oh, it was 'all right.' The 'manager himself' was there. All quite correct. 'Everybody had ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... to free himself. With a countenance, in which rage and entreaty were ludicrously blended, he turned towards the priest, whose earnest expostulations were addressed, in vain, to the exasperated assailants. The corporal kept his hold tenaciously, questioning him with a volubility known only to Frenchmen, and, enraged that he was neither understood nor answered, he concluded each sentence with a shake, which jarred every sinew in the stout frame of the Scotchman. It is doubtful to what extremes the affray might have been carried, ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... at a bargain, and always on the lookout for squalls. Here, and there one spied out the flannel shirt and coarse canvas trousers of a seaman—a runaway, in all probability, from a South Sea whaler; while one or two stray negroes chattered with all the volubility of their race, shaking their woolly heads and showing their white teeth. I got into conversation with one tall American; he was a native-born Kentuckian, and full of the bantam sort of consequence of his race. He predicted wonderful things from the discovery of the mineral treasures of ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks
... office, delighted with having another opportunity of displaying his ingenuity at the expense of the hard-headed veteran. He returned with a satchel full of papers, and began to read a long deposition with professional volubility. By this time a crowd had collected, listening with outstretched necks and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... see it; said the weather was against a child born in India—blamed the east wind. Even when the family doctor tried to let him know that the child was not likely to be long for this world, he was angry, with all the unreasonable volubility of a man who thinks others are deceiving him, rather than grieved for the peril of the little life and the anguish of the ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... the newsboy when he passed through the car with his towering load of varicolored periodicals, and rather than be forced to the final resort of the unaccompanied traveler, she welcomed the advent of an acquaintance possessed of volubility of an ejaculatory, eruptive variety. After many gentle jets and spurts of gossip much remained to be told, as the lady hastily gathered up her impedimenta preparatory to ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... a joyous exclamation from the Judge. He had discovered the Old Man's rifle in the corner, where it had been at first overlooked. "He ain't gone yet, gentlemen—for yer's his rifle," he broke in, with a feverish return of volubility, and a high excited falsetto. "He wouldn't have left this behind. No! I knowed it from the first. He's just outside a bit, foraging for wood and water. No, sir! Coming along here I said to Union Mills—didn't I?—'Bet your life the Old Man's not far off, ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... the volubility of relieved feelings. When he stopped, out of breath, Madison said, "I have had a visitor ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... passed along the Chiaja towards their hotel. As they gained the broad and open space on which it stood, with the lovely sea before them, sleeping in the arms of the curving shore, Maltravers, who had hitherto listened in silence to the volubility of ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... way the old dowager rattled on remorselessly to Mr. Esmond, who was quite astounded with her present volubility, contrasting it with her former haughty behaviour to him. But she had taken him into favour for the moment, and chose not only to like him, as far as her nature permitted, but to be afraid of him; and he found himself ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... characters to commit actions unnatural to them, and, above all, to utter speeches natural neither to them nor to any one whatever. Thus, in "Othello," altho that is, perhaps, I will not say the best, but the least bad and the least encumbered by pompous volubility, the characters of Othello, Iago, Cassio, Emilia, according to Shakespeare, are much less natural and lifelike than in the Italian romance. Shakespeare's Othello suffers from epilepsy, of which he has an attack on ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... pause here for a second or so, but as Mount Dunstan exhibited no signs of intending to use violence, and, on the contrary, continued to inspect the catalogue, he broke forth with renewed cheery volubility: ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the babbling volubility of one whose manners have been corrupted by occasional sojourns in the city. "Oh, 'Niram!" I cried protestingly, as I opened the package and took out an exquisitely wrought old-fashioned collar. "Oh, 'Niram! How could your stepmother ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... of man elevated or purified by all the maddening inventions of science? How indeed! Are we made better men by being whirled about the globe by machinery, by the increased opportunities for limitless volubility, or by the ingenious devices for mutual destruction? And how are we morally advantaged by the knowledge of the infinite depths of space, the composition of the stars and the motions of ...
— Great Testimony - against scientific cruelty • Stephen Coleridge
... fair lady, with a profile like Marie Antoinette; she dressed in white with violet ribbons, and wore much ancient jewelry. A loud-voiced, energetic woman, who bewailed the sack of her house at Lyons, scolded her children, and cursed the Germans with equal volubility and spirit. When silent she was the picture of a patrician beauty; but, alas! her voice destroyed the charm, and her manners—great heavens, what things that woman did! Picking her pearly teeth with a hair-pin, and knocking her darlings into their chairs ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... to believe anything the bees tell you if only you will get us a cup of tea," interrupted Isabella, cutting short the stream of the good woman's volubility. "Now come in," she continued, ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... Siberian girl who this Aphanassi was whom she could not love. She became more composed, and with enchanting grace, and almost French volubility, she informed me that the summer before a Baskir family had travelled further to the north than these tribes are accustomed to do, and had brought their flocks into the neighbourhood of the zavode of Tchornaia; ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... advanced a step or two toward the Pope, who had not moved, and smiling, with an expression half-serious, half-ironical, proceeded in a new vein, in which were blended something of the elevated and the petty, of the pompous and the trivial, as was often his usage—all the time speaking with the volubility so often exhibited ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... night before the clock struck twelve. Each man present had some humorous or thrilling experience to relate, with the exception of a certain glum and dark-browed gentleman, who sat somewhat apart from the rest, and who said nothing. His reticence was in such marked contrast to the volubility about him that he finally attracted universal attention, and more than one of the merry-makers near him asked if he had not some anecdote to add to the rest. But though he replied with sufficient politeness, it was evident that he had no intention ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... countess's portrait. The task was prolonged by that rattle-brained woman who always came late, alleging that she had been busy. Many days the artist did not take a stroke with his brush; they spent the time chatting. At other times the master listened in silence while she with her ceaseless volubility made fun of her friends and related their secret defects, their most intimate habits, their mysterious amours, with a kind of relish, as if all women were her enemies. In the midst of one of these confidential ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... with foreign manners; but her daughter's opportunities of explaining them to her were unexpectedly forestalled by her own tone of large acquaintance with them. One of the things that nipped in the bud all response to her volubility was Maisie's surprised retreat before the fact that Continental life was what she had been almost brought up on. It was Mrs. Beale, disconcertingly, who began to explain it to her friends; it was she who, wherever they turned, was ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... as he saw her, notwithstanding the noise of the wind and waves, he would let loose upon her with such power and volubility that every one would laugh, although they pitied her greatly. When he arrived at the dock he would relieve his mind, while unloading the fish, in such an expressive manner that he attracted around him all the loafers of the neighborhood. The words ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... to you but to me. She knew I should like it if you could carry out your idea. Not because she cared for you but because she did think of me," Miss Tita went on with her unexpected, persuasive volubility. "You could see them—you could use them." She stopped, seeing that I perceived the sense of that conditional—stopped long enough for me to give some sign which I did not give. She must have been conscious, however, that though my face showed the greatest embarrassment ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... awed by his grim silence in the days when he ruled above all law in Ascalon, were surprised now by his volubility. Under provocation Craddock could say as much as the next man, it appeared. Unquestionably, he could express his limited thoughts in words luridly strange. He wearied of this arraignment at last, and ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... our oars waiting for our ship. She was coming down on us with swelling sails, looking delicately tall and exquisitely noble through the mist. The captain of the brig, who sat in the stern sheets by my side with his face in his hands, raised his head and began to speak with a sort of sombre volubility. They had lost their masts and sprung a leak in a hurricane; drifted for weeks, always at the pumps, met more bad weather; the ships they sighted failed to make them out, the leak gained upon them slowly, and the seas had left them nothing to make a raft of. It was ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... swore at them to more purpose; for he, too, having undergone equal risk with the rest of the party, had equally good reasons for being angry; and giving utterance to a long string of execrations with all the volubility of a Bearnais, he further threatened them with ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... swelled the group of similar school hats already collected on the platform; ecstatic greetings were exchanged, urgent questions asked and hasty answers given, and items of choice information poured forth with the utmost volubility of which the English tongue is capable. Urged by brief directions from a mistress in charge, the chattering crew surged towards a siding, and made for a particular corridor carriage marked "Reserved". Here handbags, umbrellas, wraps, and lunch-baskets were hastily stowed away in the racks, and, ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... he described the new township which had been lately formed in the north-west part of the state, advising my father and Mr McDermont to become purchasers of the finest allotments which he had to offer for sale. Mr Chouse was a man of great volubility of tongue, unbounded assurance, with a look of determination which showed that he would ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... one whose glance is ever at sacred things, one who, as it were, administers the treasures of the kingdom of God, can fittingly touch this subject. It would be easy for me to be a cheap wit, to rake up the old scandal of Mother Eve, to even declaim with windy volubility that a woman betrayed the capital, that a woman lost Mark Anthony the world and left old Troy in ashes. But far be it from me! Rather would I assume a loftier mood; rather would I strike a loftier note, and, with blind Homer, ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... Bowles—and William Roscoe, the author of the "Life of Lorenzo de Medici," attacked him in an edition of Pope which he brought out in 1824. The rash detractor of the little Twitnam nightingale soon found himself engaged single-handed against a host; but he was equal to the occasion, in volubility if not in logic, and poured out a series of pamphlets, covering in all some thousand pages, and concluding with "A Final Appeal to the Literary Public" (1825), followed by "more last words of Baxter," in the shape of "Lessons in Criticism ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... Salemina. "When she returned to America, it is no flattery to say that in dress, attitude, inflection, manner, she was a thorough Parisienne. There was an elegant superficiality and a superficial elegance about her that I can never forget, nor yet her extraordinary volubility in a foreign language,—the fluency with which she expressed her inmost soul on all topics without the aid of a single irregular verb, for these she was never able to acquire; oh, it was wonderful, but there was no affectation about it; she had simply ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... dominions in every quarter; though appropriating, alike in peace and in war, all the territory she could lay her hands upon, she could inveigh against the inordinate ambition of other nations with the most surprising volubility. ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... his cursing, the Italian broke in with a volubility of oaths that reduced the boy to sullen silence. Having eased his mind, Luigi proceeded to drag the sack into the ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... countess and Lady Selina, as well as Fanny, and was, therefore, not a particular question; but, having hoped this, and the earl remaining silent, he got confused, turned red, hummed and hawed a little, sat down, and then, endeavouring to drown his confusion in volubility, began talking quickly about his anxiety to make final arrangements concerning matters, which, of course, he had most deeply at heart; and, at last, ran himself fairly aground, from not knowing whether, under the present circumstances, he ought to speak of his affianced to her guardian ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... point behind us, and stood there with her eyes fixed upon the picture. I glanced at her once; her gaze was steady, but perfectly blank. Then she joined us again, and struck into the stream of my volubility. ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... my dear sir," he said, becomin again affable, to reconcile me, I suppose, to the unfortunate blunder, an' speakin wi' great volubility, "my name is Smith, which, I suppose, is yours too, sir. I'm from London. Now, you see, my dear sir, my brother Bob, who lives in Ireland, and whom I haven't seen for some years, was to have met me here last night, agreeably ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... being weighed by two unshaven and hulking men in blue smocks. Three or four Arab touts, in excessively shabby European clothes and turbans, surrounded Domini with offers of assistance. One, the dirtiest of the group, with a gaping eye-socket, in which there was no eye, succeeded by his passionate volubility and impudence in attaching himself to her in a sort of official capacity. He spoke fluent, but faulty, French, which attracted Suzanne, and, being abnormally muscular and active, in an amazingly short ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... to the gallows, is seen in the condemned cell; her son by her side, and the fatal cart in the back-ground. Having been brought up genteelly, she declines the mode of conveyance provided for her journey to Tyburn with the utmost volubility. Being about to be hanged merely does not seem to affect her so poignantly as the disgraceful "drag" she is doomed to take her last journey in. She swoons at the idea; and the curtain falls to end her wicked career, and the sufferings of an ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 21, 1841 • Various
... be Legislators; and avoid the gabblers. Wisdom is rarely loquacious. Weight and depth of thought are unfavorable to volubility. The shallow and superficial are generally voluble and often pass for eloquent. More words, less thought,—is the general rule. The man who endeavors to say something worth remembering in every sentence, becomes fastidious, and condenses like Tacitus. The vulgar love a more diffuse stream. ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... of impotent rage passed over the country when the nature and acceptance of the Japanese Ultimatum became generally known. The Chinese, always an emotional people, responding with quasi-feminine volubility to oppressive acts, cried aloud at the ignominy of the diplomacy which had so cruelly crucified them. One and all declared that the day of shame which had been so harshly imposed upon them would never be forgotten and that Japan would indeed pay ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... surprised me in my little neighbor was her volubility, for I had never found her kin talkative. She made remarks to herself, doubtless both witty and wise, but sounding to her dull-eared hearers, it must be confessed, like squeaky twitters; and somewhat later, ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... mind her business! I know what I'm about!" Tim said to some one near him, while Mr. Bills rang the changes on that dollar with astonishing volubility, and Tom kept his eyes on Jack for a ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... standing, and have heard many eminent Pleaders in my Time, as well as other eloquent Speakers of both Universities, yet I agree with you, that Women are better qualified to succeed in Oratory than the Men, and believe this is to be resolved into natural Causes. You have mentioned only the Volubility of their Tongue; but what do you think of the silent Flattery of their pretty Faces, and the Perswasion which even an insipid Discourse carries with it when flowing from beautiful Lips, to which it would be cruel to deny ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... talking to Madame Sennier. He was even sitting down beside her. She spoke, evidently with volubility, making rapid gestures with her hands. Then she paused. She was listening attentively to Heath. Mrs. Shiffney and Elliot listened, too, as if absorbed. Heath's French must really be excellent. Why had he—? If only she could hear what he was saying! She tingled with curiosity. ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... He will steal, sir, an egg out of a cloister.... He professes not keeping of oaths, in breaking them, he is stronger than Hercules. He will lie, sir, with such volubility, that you would think truth were a fool: drunkenness is his best virtue; ... he has everything that an honest man should not have; what an honest man ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... climate fibers would be in danger of losing this wonderful sensibility, or, at least, that they would very often be put out of tune. It is not the same case with an ordinary voice, where the variety of divisions run through and the volubility with which they are executed bear no proportion to ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... hands were raised, the next they were clenched downwards as if about to strike the floor. Again they were lifted menacingly, and there seemed danger, for one rested upon a knife in his belt, but only for it to be beaten furiously in the other. Quick angry words, delivered with the greatest volubility, followed; and then, turning and looking round in the most scornful manner, the man seemed to fire a volley of words at the whole party ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... and in some measure this gloom of failure underlying their success is a necessary character of all lovely and spiritual creations in this world. Now Michael Angelo's works, because of their Southern impetuosity and volubility, are not so instinct with this divine sorrow, this immobility of the soul face to face with evil, as is Duerer's Melancholy. He inspires and exhilarates us more, but takes us out of ourselves ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... from her volubility of tongue seemed likely to stretch the discourse to an immoderate length, when I suddenly cut all short by ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... Piper's countenance brightened up with the good news this man gave him; assuring me that we should "find water all about: no more want water." In return for all this intelligence I presented the old man with an iron tomahawk which he placed under him as he sat; and he continued to address me with great volubility for some time. I was told by Piper that he was merely saying how glad he was, and enumerating (apparently with a sort of poetic fervour) the various uses to which he could apply the axe I had given him. I left these ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... reputation of almost all her acquaintance, and excited great attention from the party, which had been joined by several during her truly interesting intelligence. Every other topic in a moment gave way to this delightful amusement, and each with volubility contributed his or her share to the ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... Jorge, whose present volubility was in striking contrast to his reticence on the boat the year before, "I had occasion to come up to Bodega Central—another legend, if I must confess it. And there Don Carlos ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... acting," she said, with terrible volubility, "toward people who devote themselves to magic arts— entreaty and menaces. You would not yield to the first of these means, hence, I must employ the second. Stay," she added, "perhaps this ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... the differently gifted individuality of the artist. The average Corean seems to learn things quickly, but of what they learn, some things remain rooted in their brains, while others appear to escape from it the moment they have been grasped. There is a good deal of volubility about their utterances, and, though visibly they do not seem very subject to strong emotions, judging from their conversation, one would feel inclined to say that they were. Another thing that led me to this suspicion was the observation that the average Corean is much given to dreaming, ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... upon him, was swearing abundance of oaths, and making tell thousands of exclamations, in proof of his innocence. Nothing, however, could stop the volubility of his wife, or calm her rage. By this time she had worked her passion up to such a pitch, that oath succeeded oath; and blasphemy blasphemy, in one raging, unceasing torrent. From her husband she fell on ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... blessed this little Polish lady, and her volubility, and her extravagant, subtle, honest flattery of her dear adopted daughter! It gave him liberty to steep himself in the rich consciousness of Natalie's presence; he could listen in silence for the sound of her voice—he could covertly watch the beauty of her shapely hands—without being considered ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... they would continue, did not the silly mamma tell them not to tease her. Observe that, when out with the nurse-maid, each little one runs up to her with the new flower it has gathered, to show her how pretty it is, and to get her also to say it is pretty. Listen to the eager volubility with which every urchin describes any novelty he has been to see, if only he can find some one who will attend with any interest. Does not the induction lie on the surface? Is it not clear that we must ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... ancient chambermaid (who is no servant, but just a woman, in the strictly domestic sense of that fashionable word) reluctantly opened the door. French and Italian were alike incomprehensible to this lady, and de Vasselot was still explaining with much volubility, and a wealth of gesture, that the man he sought wore a tonsure, when Clement himself, affable and supremely indifferent to the scantiness ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... the gate Dot's volubility quite suddenly died down. She plucked a white rose, to fill in the pause and fastened it in her friend's dress. Her fingers trembled unmistakably as she did it, and Anne looked at her ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... replied May, in her volubility effacing any shy attempt at greeting on Dora's part, "I am so sorry for Tray's rudeness in going into your shop without being invited; but I do think he knew you again, I am almost sure of it," she said eagerly, as ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... is certainly characteristic of this neurasthenic. This specimen from the pathological museum of Messrs. Wilde and Strauss appears in a state which causes alarm lest his internal mechanism fly asunder and scatter his corporeal parts about the scene. The crepitating volubility with which Strauss endows him is a marvelously ingenious conceit; but it leans heavily for its effect, we fear, on the amazing skill of Mr. Burrian, not only in cackling out the words synchronously with the orchestral part, but in emotionally coloring them and blending them in ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... attorneys. I devoutly wish I had time to describe the scene at length; but greater events are pressing upon me. The two conveyancers fenced with one another for some time very guardedly and good-humoredly: pleasant was it to observe the conscious condescension of Mortmain, the anxious energy and volubility of Frankpledge. When Mr. Mortmain said anything that seemed weighty or pointed, Quirk looked with an elated air, a quick triumphant glance, at Gammon; who, in his turn, whenever Mr. Frankpledge quoted an "old case" from Bendloe, Godbolt, or the Year Books, (which, having always ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... I went on with an impassioned volubility altogether strange to my custom, recalling to him the tender intimacy in which she and I had grown up from babyhood; the early tacit understanding that we were to inherit the Cedars and all its belongings, ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... Carducci, with an Italian's volubility, commenced to hurl imprecations upon the heads of the unknown sons of dogs who dared to tamper with his master's safe, and while we were engaged in putting the scattered papers in order the door-bell rang, and the clerk went to attend ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... that gun out an inch furder I'll kill ye as shore as thar's a God in heaven." And at that moment the door opened and Pleasant Trouble swung in on his crutch and grinned. Doctor Jim then heard the tongue-lashing of his life. The woman's volubility was like a mill-race, and her command of vitriolic epithets was beyond his ken. She recited what Juno had done, Doctor Jim was doing, the things Jerry had done and left ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox
... "bully," unable to see that Laura evinced only a mild interest in the performance. On each propitious occasion he had made love to her extravagantly. He continually protested his profound respect with a volubility and earnestness that was quite ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... liked this doubtful smile, and thought the owner genial: much as he had hurt her, she held out her hand to bid him a friendly good-night. He patted the little hand kindly, and then he and Madame went down-stairs together; she talking in her highest tide of spirits and volubility, he listening with an air of good-natured amenity, dashed with that unconscious roguish archness I find it ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... the airs and graces and ceremonies and hauteur of the French Blood-royal. When I charged her with being Malfort's mistress, and bade her pack her traps and come home with me, she deafened me with her angry volubility. I to slander her—I, her father, when there was no one in Paris, from the Place Royale to the Louvre, more looked up to! But when I questioned my old friends they answered with enigmatical smiles, and assured me that they knew nothing against my daughter's character worse than all the world was ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... nicety the sweets and sours of boot-blacking against the buona mano; the rest is pure commerce. So now, the deliberate insolence of the flushed Borgia towards his host was a thing to be dumb at; yet Passavente redoubled his volubility. ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... posts, I should think it of great advantage to the despatch of publick affairs, if they would content themselves with voting for their pay, without any ambition of other service, or adding the praise of volubility ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... huge knitted brows, and a perpendicular wall of brain, too large for his puny body. He was not only, I soon discovered, a water-drinker, but a strict "vegetarian" also; to which, perhaps, he owed a great deal of the almost preternatural clearness, volubility, and sensitiveness of his mind. But whether from his ascetic habits, or the un-healthiness of his trade, the marks of ill-health were upon him; and his sallow cheek, and ever-working ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... murmured to his wife, "I haven't a doubt in my mind," and nodded significantly at the preoccupied little shape in his arms. His manner with the child was imperceptibly adroit, and very soon her prattle began to be heard. Mary was just turning to offer a gentle check to this rising volubility, when up jumped the little one to a standing posture on the gentleman's knee, and, all unsolicited and with silent clapping of hands, plumped out her ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... confectioner's, the usual ices and cakes for Pansy, but this time—a concession also to the tyrant Pansy—a glass of lemon soda and a biscuit for the colonel. He was coughing over his unaccustomed beverage, and Pansy, her equanimity and volubility restored by sweets, was chirruping at his side; the large saloon was filling up with customers—mainly ladies and children, embarrassing to him as the only man present, when suddenly Pansy's attention was diverted by another arrival. It was a good-looking ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... and talked away with great volubility to Mrs. Bolton. He asked about the undertaking business, and how many mutes went down with Lady Estrich's remains; and about the Inn, and who lived there. He seemed very much interested about Mr. Campion's cab and horse, and had met that gentleman ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... copyist; not without a touch of his master's more serious eloquence, but with less than little of his peculiar energy and humor. That rushing wind of satire, that storm of resonant invective, that inexhaustible volubility of contempt, which rages through the controversial writings of the lesser poet, has sunk to a comparative whisper; the roar of his Homeric or Rabelaisian laughter to a somewhat forced and artificial chuckle. This "News from Hell, brought by the Devil's Carrier," and containing "The ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... her deliberate volubility, neither hesitating nor hurrying, her meaning, for all its grandiloquence of setting, very definite, and Jack looked a little dazed, as though from the ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... The volubility of Benoit assigns divers long speeches to Briseida, in which favourable interpreters have seen the germ of the future Cressid; and in which any fair critic may see the suggestion of her. But it is little more than a suggestion. Of the full ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... any rate, I prevailed on him to return to his room, when he took my arm, and, seating himself on the bedside, recited to me the paradigms of the more anomalous Greek verbs with great volubility for twenty minutes on end—that is to say, until Mrs. Stimcoe returned with the doctor safely tucked under ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... the squalling gamblers, and talking and looking on with eager interest. In one place of the bazaar we found a hundred people at least listening to a story- teller who delivered his tale with excellent action, voice, and volubility: in another they were playing a sort of thimble-rig with coffee-cups, all intent upon the game, and the player himself very wild lest one of our party, who had discovered where the pea lay, should tell the ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was a blond German boy whose taciturnity attracted her volubility and vivacity. She mistook his stolidness for depth, and it was a long time before she realized that his silence was not due to the weight of his thoughts but to the fact that he had nothing to say. In her last year at high school she found herself singled out for ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... Sackville. The poems of Skelton (d. 1529) are singularly though coarsely energetic. He was the tutor of Henry VIII., and during the greater part of the reign of his pupil he continued to satirize social and ecclesiastical abuses. His poems are exceedingly curious and grotesque, and the volubility with which he vents his acrid humors is truly surprising. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1516-1547), opened a new era in English poetry, and by his foreign studies, and his refinement of taste and ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... elaborate calculations of contingencies, with exhaustive analyses and statistical statements piled up in breathless eagerness one on the top of the other. And then her pen, in the virulence of its volubility, would rush on to the discussion of individuals, to the denunciation of an incompetent surgeon or the ridicule of a self- sufficient nurse. Her sarcasm searched the ranks of the officials with the deadly and unsparing precision of a machine-gun. Her nicknames ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... matter; albeit we might derive therefrom the unsupported inference that a poet "fat and scant of breath" would write in lines of a foot each, while the more able-bodied bard, with the capacious lungs of a pearl-diver, would deliver himself all across his page, with "the spacious volubility of a drumming decasyllabon." ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... volubility, and her haranguing echoed in Dick's ears with the meaningless sound of a water-tap heard splashing on the flagstones of an ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... always merry and bright in spite of her denunciations of the "Sale Boches—les brigands, les bandits!" and Mademoiselle put my knowledge of French to a severe but pleasant test. She spoke with alarming rapidity, her words tumbling over one another in a cascade of volubility delightful to hear but difficult to follow. She had a strong mind—masterly in her methods of business—so that she could serve six customers at once and make each one think that her attention was entirely devoted to his needs—and a very ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... stupid little body after all. Last of all they reach the sacred privacy of Trixy's own room, and there she displays her ball dress. She expiates on its make and its merits, in professional language, and with a volubility that ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... usually are; and persons who called on her, who lacked delicacy of feeling, not only wearied her, but sometimes caused her positive suffering. In such cases she fortified herself with what she called a strong dose of conversation; would talk with great volubility on all possible subjects, as if in this manner to keep the unpleasant influence at a distance. "I wish all good people," she said, "were pleasant, and all the bad people disagreeable; for then life would be a more simple affair than it is now. The world is such a mixture that I never quite ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... of structure and form. But he spoilt his vehicle by a careless diffuseness, by a violent categorical tendency, and by other faults which may be called faults of breeding rather than faults of art—a ghastly volubility, an indiscretion, a lust for description rather than suggestion; and thus he has numbered no followers, and ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... into several other rooms, at the doors of which, pausing on the outside, we could hear the volubility, and sometimes the wrangling, of the female inhabitants within, but invariably found silence and peace, when we stepped over the threshold. The women were grouped together in their sitting-rooms, sometimes three or four, sometimes a larger number, classified by ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... lustre to her transcendent brightness, she suddenly found herself surrounded in the garden by Lady Maud and her friends. The daughter of Lord de Mowbray, who could conceive nothing but humility as the cause of her alarmed look, attempted to re-assure her by condescending volubility, turning often to her friends and praising in admiring ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... versatile a spirit. He was a year or so older than I, rather tall than short, lightly but strongly built, with a keen, smiling, subtle face, a finely-developed forehead, light wavy hair, and gray eyes, very penetrating and bright. There was a pleasing kind of eagerness and volubility in his manner of talking, and a slight imperfection, not amounting to a lisp, in his utterance, which imparted a naive charm to his speech. He used expressive and rapid gestures with his hands and arms, and there ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... some drawing materials, I amused the Indians with a sketch of the interior of the tent and its inhabitants. An old woman, who was relating with great volubility an account of some quarrel with the traders at Cumberland House, broke off from her narration when she perceived my design; supposing, perhaps, that I was employing some charm against her; for the Indians have been taught ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... miller to proceed with his harangue without interruption, can only be accounted for on the score of the loudness of tone on which he piqued himself with so much justice. When she did take up the word, her reply made up in volubility and virulence for any deficiency in sound, concluding by a formal renunciation of her nephew, and a command to his zealous advocate never again to appear within her doors. Upon which, honest John vowed ...
— Aunt Deborah • Mary Russell Mitford
... visitors arrived, believed we were disengaged, opened the door, and admitted Mrs. Rosamond Allerton and her aunt, Miss Stewart. Before we could interpose with a word, the Widow Thorneycroft burst out with the whole story in a torrent of exultant Volubility that it was impossible to ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... heard how the fire-faced man said the word "damn" with great volubility and variety of cadence, and other words to the same effect, and how the little group around him hung upon his words and said to each ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... who had proceeded with such volubility that his face was perfectly crimson, here paused for breath. The silence awoke Mr. Justice Stareleigh, who immediately wrote down something with a pen without any ink in it, and looked unusually profound, to impress the jury with the belief that he always thought ...
— The Law and Lawyers of Pickwick - A Lecture • Frank Lockwood |
