"Elocutionary" Quotes from Famous Books
... beautiful ladies were accompanied by ravishing little girls who stood up in a glory of golden curls, frilled petticoats, and silk stockings, to recite pathetic or comic pieces, with trained expression and practised gestures that seemed to us the perfection of the elocutionary art. We were all a little bit stage-struck after these entertainments; but what was more, we were genuinely moved by the glimpses of a fairer world than ours which we caught through the music and poetry; the world in which the beautiful ... — The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... was led when there is but one card on the table. It shows that you are taking a deep interest in the game, and it makes the other players admire your elocutionary powers. ... — The Silly Syclopedia • Noah Lott
... reminiscences, I could tell you a tale of Stony Stratford (appropriately so-called, sir), where, as 'Juba' in Mr. Addison's tragedy of Cato, for two hours I piled the Pelion of passion upon the Ossa of elocutionary correctness, still without surmounting the zone of plant life; which in the Arts, sir, must extend higher than geographers concede. And yet I evoked laughter; from which I may conclude that my efforts amused. The great Demosthenes, sir, practised ... — Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... want to read stories and poems to my friends and to audiences—Miss Wilkins' and Mrs. Stuart's beautiful stories, and the poems of Holmes and Longfellow and others who speak to the heart. Not mere elocutionary reading, but simple reading, bringing out the author's meaning and giving people pleasure. I would charge an admission fee, and our dining-room would hold a good many; but I ought to have read somewhere ... — Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... and my fair friend announced herself as being nearly in readiness to make her first appearance. I was delighted with the rapid and satisfactory progress which she had made. The recitations with which she occasionally favored me, were delivered in the highest style of the elocutionary art, and convinced me that she was destined to meet with ... — My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... almost young enough to have passed for five-and-thirty. His manners were distinguished by a grave serenity. When he opened his lips, he spoke in a rich bass voice, with an easy flow of language, and a strict attention to the elocutionary claims of words in more than one syllable. Persuasion distilled from his mildly-curling lips; and, shabby as he was, perennial flowers of courtesy bloomed all over him from ... — No Name • Wilkie Collins
... with Judge Ryder, and that he had asked her how long I expected to stay in Rosville. Nothing eccentric had been discovered in his behavior; but she was convinced that he would astonish us before long. The first Wednesday after our party, I was absent from the elocutionary exercise; but the second came round, and I took my place as ... — The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... being a reference to the calling of the other speaker, who was a middleman in the vegetable and fruit-market. The first speaker, however, was not nearly exhausted yet—he had to thump his fists on the unfortunate spindley table, and work off several other oratorical poses and a deal of elocutionary voice-play, ere he was finished. I fairly rolled with enjoyment of the wonderful wit and humour of the crowd at the back, which, unless it be put down as the critical faculty, is an inexplicable phenomenon. Not one of the interrupters, if drafted on to the hustings, could have ... — Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... have a tongue in one's head, have the gift of the gab &c. n. pass one's lips, escape one's lips; fall from the lips, fall from the mouth. Adj. speaking &c., spoken &c. v.; oral, lingual, phonetic, not written, unwritten, outspoken; eloquent, elocutionary; oratorical, rhetorical; declamatory; grandiloquent &c. 577; talkative &c. 584; Ciceronian, nuncupative, Tullian. Adv. orally &c. adj.; by word of mouth, viva voce, from the lips of. Phr. quoth he, said he &c.; "action is eloquence" [Coriolanus]; "pour the full tide of ... — Roget's Thesaurus
... manners, affected an inordinate love of literature and an air of connoisseurship that contrasted rather strangely with his calling. Certainly there was not such another landlord to be seen upon the road between London and Bath; if, indeed, anywhere else. He was proud of his elocutionary powers, and in a full, sonorous voice he would read aloud select passages from Shakespeare and Milton to all such persons as evinced an inclination to listen to him—sometimes, indeed, to people who did not in the least ... — Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... together with the innovations of the new. There are specters that take a real part in the plot complication, and those that merely cast threatening looks at the living, or at least, are content to speak a piece and depart. Some spirits are dumb, while others are highly elocutionary. ... — Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... amphibology, amphiboly, dilogy. Associated Words: extempore, extemporaneous, extemporize, extemporization, impromptu, improvise, improvisation, brogue, aphasia, amnesia, oratory, elocution, rhetoric, oratorical, rhetorical, rhetorician, elocutionary, ... — Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... was followed by another. Elizabeth suffered even more agony in the next number, for this was a reading by John. Why he should have been chosen for an elocutionary performance no one could divine, except that he flatly refused to do anything else in public, and his teacher was determined he should do something. With Elizabeth's help, John had faithfully practiced in the privacy of his room, but had never once ... — 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... poet. Moreover, they were instructed that the room just to the right of the porch was a study added by Twynintuft himself in the year '87, and that the shattered shed in the background was originally an elocutionary laboratory which had seen the forming ... — The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various |