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More "Fluent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of Brevet Brigadier General John A. B. C. Smith soon completely dissipated this chagrin. My friend leaving us immediately, we had quite a long tete-a-tete, and I was not only pleased but really—instructed. I never heard a more fluent talker, or a man of greater general information. With becoming modesty, he forebore, nevertheless, to touch upon the theme I had just then most at heart—I mean the mysterious circumstances attending the Bugaboo war—and, on my own part, what I conceive to be a proper sense of delicacy forbade me ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Nueva Segovia is Don Fray Jose Hevia Campomanes, a religious of the Order of St. Dominic—who is most fluent in the Tagal language, and had been, for many years before, parish priest of Binondo, which parish he enriched with a fine cemetery. He took possession of his see June 19, 1890, but was made a prisoner at the outbreak of the revolution; and he still lies, as ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... honour in fluent Melanesian, was understood to say that he had only done his duty, that he was speechless with gratitude and that he would always regard Lord READING as a brother. A recherche vegetarian luncheon ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 4, 1919. • Various
... Presbyterian friends to the Episcopal bench, to enforce that very liturgy which they condemned. He was the chief speaker for the Presbyterians at the famous Savoy Conference, summoned to advise and consult upon the Book of Common Prayer. His antagonist was Dr. Gunning, ready, fluent, and impassioned. "They spent," as Gilbert Burnet says, "several days in logical arguing, to the diversion of the town, who looked upon them as a couple of fencers, engaged in a discussion which could not ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... good officer, gallant soldier, and loyal and kind to his men. He was a man of brilliant attainments and one of the most gifted and fluent speakers ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... artist at this period a Greek myth and a Christian legend were all one. Both afforded the occasion for displaying technical skill in fluent forms, devoid of any but voluptuous feeling; while both might be subordinated to rich effects of decoration.[116] To this point the intellectual culture of the fifteenth century had brought the plastic arts of Italy, by a process similar to that which ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... round while M'Gregor questioned the drover. The man was monosyllabic to a degree, as the real bushmen generally are. It is only the rowdy and the town-bushy that are fluent ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... Englishman deliberately hypocritical; but his tenacity, combined with his powerlessness to express his feelings, often gives him the appearance of a hypocrite. He is inarticulate, has not the clear and fluent cynicism of expansive natures wherewith to confess exactly how he stands. It is the habit of men of all nations to want to have things both ways; the Englishman is unfortunately so unable to express himself, even to himself, that he ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... named Joseph Hallevi, or the Levite. Like the others, he sold his land and carried the price of it to the feet of the Twelve. He was an intelligent man, with a devotion proof against everything, and a fluent speaker. The apostles attached him closely to themselves and called him Barnaba, that is to say, "the son of prophecy" or of "preaching." He was accounted, in fact, of the number of the prophets, that ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... what better can prevail, Or from the fluent tongue produce the tale, Than when two friends, alone, in peaceful place Confer, and wines and cates the table grace; But most, the kind inviter's cheerful face? Thus might we sit, with social goblets crown'd, Till the whole circle ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... the grave-digger, for Worshipful Master. Branwell was at one and the same time secretary to the Three Graces and to the Haworth Temperance Society. When he was not entertaining bagmen, he was either at Bradford painting bad portraits, or at Haworth pouring out verses, fearfully long, fatally fluent verses, and writing hysterical letters to the editor ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... is fluent and uncertain there is no describing it. He thought he had come to a decision last week; he found that the decision was shattered as soon as made. He had talked to the priest; he had resisted Marjorie; and yet to neither of ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... informed the commander in Spanish that was more fluent than elegant or precise,—his name was Peleg Scudder. He was master of the schooner General Court, of the port of Salem, in Massachusetts, on a trading voyage to the South Seas, but now driven by stress of weather into the bay of San Carlos. He begged permission to ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... reveal nothing; a face flat, hard, secret as a wall, wrinkled as an old banner. He was a hale, thick-set man, dressed in breeches of corduroy, and a sleeved waistcoat down to his knees of the same material. His fur cap was on the carpet beside his pack; and he had a fluent tongue in praise of his wares, as he hung his silks over Lettice's outstretched arm, or arranged the scarfs across ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... good scholar, a fluent speaker, and an earnest Christian. He was a delegate to the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Chicago in 1900. He is quite popular with the preachers and the people wherever he goes. A bright future is ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... the man hath no wit, that cannot from the rising of the Larke to the lodging of the Lambe, varie deserued prayse on my Palfray: it is a Theame as fluent as the Sea: Turne the Sands into eloquent tongues, and my Horse is argument for them all: 'tis a subiect for a Soueraigne to reason on, and for a Soueraignes Soueraigne to ride on: And for the World, familiar to vs, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... tall, bronzed, commanding, taciturn—but fluent when he did speak—or Kent, or Sumner, or little Jerry Carter himself. And once, a soldier stepped into the circle of firelight, his heels clicking sharply together; and Crittenden thought an uneasy movement ran around the group, and ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... temperament. We may speak loosely of the "static" and the "dynamic" temperaments, the former clinging to everything that is traditional, conservative, and abiding in art, religion, philosophy, politics, and life; the latter everywhere pointing to, and delighting in, the fluent, the novel, the evanescent. These extreme types, by no means rare or unreal, illustrate the deep-rooted need of investing either permanence or change with a more fundamental value. And to the value of the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... of Irving and Hawthorne, it shows an equal mastery of English in expressing, not only facts, events, and thoughts, but their very spirit and atmosphere. It is the exact mirror of the author's mind and character. It is fresh, simple, fluent, vigorous, flexible, never dazzling away attention from what it represents by the intrusion of verbal felicities which are pleasing apart from the vivid conceptions they attempt to convey. The uncritical reader is unconscious of its excellence because it is so excellent,—that is, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the chiefs is moved, and {then}, in fact appears what eloquence can do; and the fluent man receives the arms of a brave one. He, who so often has alone withstood both Hector, and the sword, and flames, and Jove {himself}, cannot {now} withstand his wrath alone, and grief conquers the man that is invincible. ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... intellectual but simple, sometimes metaphysical and always interesting technically in its fluent and variable rhythms. A collection of his best verse up to 1919 was published under the title, ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... on her brother's praise with fond and fluent tongue, she felt without being able to describe her feelings, that he had lost something of his original beauty. The breath of the world had passed over the mind and dimmed its purity. His was the joyous, reckless spirit that gave life to the convivial board; and temptations, which a ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... found words, and with Dick and Henry for audience made an impassioned speech in defence of vested interests and the sacred rights of property. Never in his life had he been so fluent or so inventive, and when he wound up a noble passage on the rights of the individual, in which he alluded to Sam as a fat sharper, he felt that his ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... fancy Mr. Chamberlain making such a fiasco. He is at the present time probably one of the most ready and fluent speakers we have, and although many strange things might happen in the House of Commons, one of the most astonishing would be to see Mr. Chamberlain break down in a speech. It would create a sensation in ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... Colonel, inspired by the bright eyes fixed upon him. "We haven't taken the road ourselves yet, but—pohn honor—we wouldn't mind doing it in a case like this." Then with the fluent, but somewhat exaggerated, phraseology of a man trained to "stump" speaking, he gave an account of the robbery and his own connection with it. He spoke of the swindling and treachery which had undoubtedly provoked Falkner to obtain restitution of his property ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... quietly. It took the women servants nearly two minutes to realize that he was using the most atrocious language. Then they fled. The three footmen stood their ground a little longer. Mr. Donovan raised his voice a little. He felt old powers returning to him. He became fluent. One by one the footmen slank away. Mr. Donovan went on, without passion or heat. He arrived at a terrific malediction which he had found effective many years before in dealing with Italian navvies. The ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... he rose, or rather tried to, felt for his hat, which, of course, had gone, with the idea of taking it off, and instantly addressed her in his beautiful and fluent Arabic, saying how glad he was to have this unexpected ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... pass, glad growing grass!- I climb the air with lissome mien; Unsheathing keen The vivid sheen Of springing green, I thrill the crude, exalt the crass Fine-flex'd and fluent from Earth's mass. ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... this method or his tropes are inadequate? That message will find method and imagery, articulation and melody. Though he were dumb, it would speak. If not,—if there be no such God's word in the man,—what care we how adroit, how fluent, how brilliant ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... letter of dedication, which I suppress, because, though it contained something relating to you which every one had been glad to hear, yet there was too much about politics, and poesy, and all things whatsoever, ending with that topic on which most men are fluent, and none very amusing—one's self. It might have been re-written—but to what purpose? My praise could add nothing to your well-earned and firmly-established fame; and with my most hearty admiration ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... capable of accomplishing with ordinary diligence and self-control. He resolved upon doing so many things, which he never did, that people came to speak of him as Constant the Inconstant. He was a fluent and brilliant writer, and cherished the ambition of writing works, "which the world would not willingly let die." But whilst Constant affected the highest thinking, unhappily he practised the lowest living; nor did the transcendentalism ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... by swearing away that life which her arts had rendered scarcely worth defending, could death have come unaccompanied by disgrace. With a manner betraying suppressed, but ill-concealed eagerness, and in language prompt and fluent, as if reciting by rote a carefully kept journal, she went on to detail every fault or neglect or impatient act of her relative, not sparing exposure of the most delicate domestic events, at the same ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... welfare of their subjects. Possibly some dull, unsympathetic Quaestor had failed to present the generous thoughts of the King in a sufficiently attractive shape to the minds of the people. This much at all events we know, that when the young Consiliarius, high-born, fluent, and learned, poured forth his stream of panegyric on 'Our Lord Theodoric'—a panegyric which, to an extent unusual with these orations, reflected the real feelings of the speaker, and all the finest passages of which were the genuine outcome of his own enthusiasm—the great Ostrogoth recognised ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... Princess, in exactly the same way you love Roy Garnett, and immeasurably less than you love Berkeley. That isn't what I wanted, dear. I'm a dull fellow, slow at understanding things, and I can't put my thoughts into graceful, fluent language; but I know what love is, and what I wanted you to feel is very different. Don't be unhappy about it—or me. I'll worry through the pain in time, or grow accustomed to it. It's tough, just at first, but I'll pull through somehow. It shall not spoil my life ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... the father and daughter; and the former seeing how entranced we were with each other's company, like a prudent parent, left us to ourselves. My French was much purer and more grammatical than hers, hers much more fluent than mine. Yet, notwithstanding this deficiency on both sides, we understood each other perfectly, and we had not been above two hours together alone, before I told her that I loved her for her very ignorance, and she had confessed to me that she loved me, because—because—the ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... this off lightly, as if she were in the habit of saying it, and Olive wondered whether it were a sincere disclaimer or only a phrase of the lips. The question was not a criticism, for she might have been satisfied that the girl was a mass of fluent catch-words and yet scarcely have liked her the less. It was just as she was that she liked her; she was so strange, so different from the girls one usually met, seemed to belong to some queer gipsy-land or transcendental Bohemia. ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... writing materials before Mr. Bruff, and asked him if he had any objection—before we separated for the night—to draw out, and sign, a plain statement of what he had seen. He at once took the pen, and produced the statement with the fluent readiness ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... then had an Audience to explain what he intended to state in Parliament this evening as the programme of his Ministerial Policy. It was very fluent and very able, but so completely the same as the Speech which he has since delivered, that I must refer to its account in the reports. When he came to the passage regarding the Church, the Queen expressed to him her ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... forgot any thing that he had read. He could repeat the whole of Paradise Lost by heart, and thought it probable that he could rewrite Sir Charles Grandison from memory. In his books, in his speeches in the House of Commons, and in private conversation—for he was an eager and fluent talker, running on often for hours at a stretch—he was never at a loss to fortify and illustrate his positions by citation after citation of dates, names, facts of all kinds, and passages quoted verbatim from his multifarious reading. The first of Macaulay's ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... in her manner, the expression of a gentle kindness that went out to him because he needed it. The walk had whipped the color into her cheeks and she bloomed in that squalid cell like a desert rose. There was in the fluent grace of the slender, young body a naive, virginal sweetness that took him by the throat. He knew that she believed in him and the trouble rolled from his heart like a cold, ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... the "great man," was the titular head of an Opposition numbering almost all the men of wit and genius in the kingdom. Lyttelton, Fielding's warmest friend, had become secretary to the Prince, and was recognised as a fluent leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons. Another friend, John Duke of Argyll, had joined the ranks of the Opposition in the Lords. On the whole the author of Pasquin, may well have hoped for a speedy fall of the "Colossos," with "its Brains of Lead, its Face of Brass, its Hands of ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... concentration peculiar to "Service men" the world over. As an accompaniment to their labours, in desultory fashion, they kept alive the embers of a facetious wrangling argument—their respective vocabularies, albeit more or less ensanguined, exhibiting a fluent and masterly range of quaint barrack-room idiom ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... the wound which had not hindered him from swimming the swollen Tiber; Claelia the hostage on her brazen steed; and many another, handed down inviolate from the days of the ancient kings. Here was the rostrum, beaked with the prows of ships, a fluent orator already haranguing the assembled people from its platform—there, the seat of the city Praetor, better known as the Puteal Libonis, with that officer in session on his curule chair, his six lictors leaning on their fasces at his back, as ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... when Garry's monumental fit of sulks bordered close on the ridiculous, but the needed triviality which would have precipitated the whole fabric to a terra-firma of absurdity failed to materialize. He cursed the rain, cursed it with his fluent precision which already had earned Fat Joe's admiring comment. He complained, querulously, like a half-aged boy, over the treacherous footing which the flooded alder brakes afforded. And once when ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... as little to be expected as that a poet should be able to write an explanatory criticism on his own poem. The English overlook this in their scheme of government, which requires that the members of the national executive should be orators, and the readiest and most fluent orators that can be found. The very fact (on which they are selected) that they are men of words makes it improbable that they are likewise men of deeds. And it is only tradition and old custom, founded on an obsolete state of things, that assigns any ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... pushing, and partly because he realised the companionship of both children as very dear just then. He had a great deal to say, and wanted to say it all at once, but words never came to him too easily; he had missed many an opportunity in life for the want of fluent and spontaneous address. He stammered and halted somewhat in his delivery. A new language with but a single word in it would have ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... Dickens, conquers us with an abundance like nature's. He feeds us out of a horn, of plenty. This, unfortunately, is possible only to writers of the first order. The others, when they attempt profusion, become fluent rather than abundant, facile of ink rather than generous of golden grain. Who does not agree with Pope that Dryden, though not Shakespeare, would have been a better poet if ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... Lieutenant Henry Wise, master of the Independence frigate, that we had left at Valparaiso. Wise had come off to pilot us to our anchorage. While giving orders to the man at the wheel, he, in his peculiar fluent style, told to us, gathered about him, that the Independence had sailed from Valparaiso a week after us and had been in Monterey a week; that the Californians had broken out into an insurrection; that the naval fleet under Commodore Stockton ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... us on the first French settlement in America, the valour and enterprise of the early adventurers, and the loss of Canada to France, at which the prince expressed deep regret. He was very copious and fluent in speech, and I was surprised at the good English he spoke; a little broken, indeed, like mine, but very intelligible. We continued talking late into the night, reclining in the cabin on the cushions in the stern of the boat. When we retired to rest, the prince lay on the locker, ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... move an amendment or make a speech would no longer leave the whole regulation of business to those who do; if they would bethink themselves that better qualifications for legislation exist, and may be found if sought for, than a fluent tongue, and the faculty of getting elected by a constituency, it would soon be recognized that, in legislation as well as administration, the only task to which a representative assembly can possibly be competent is not that of doing the work, but of causing it to be done; of determining ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... him to ask an explanation of her recent change of husbands, and before three Cardinals, whom he appointed to be her judges, the Queen pleaded her own cause. Not a blush tinged her cheek, no tremor altered her melodious voice as she stood before the red-robed Princes of the Church and narrated, in fluent Latin, the story of the assassination of Andrew, the death of her child, and her marriage with the murderer, Louis of Tarento, who stood by her side. The wily Pope noted behind her the proud Provencal nobles, the Villeneuves and d'Agoults, the de Baux ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... beneficent, iron rule of Carl Czerny. But he never looked his age. Seemingly seventy, a very vital threescore-and-ten, by the way, he was as light on his feet as were his fingers on the keyboard. A linguist, speaking without a trace of foreign accent three or four tongues, he was equally fluent in all. Once launched in an argument there was no stopping him. Nor was he an agreeable opponent. Torrents and cataracts of words poured ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... asked one of the listeners, as the speaker, a fluent, energetic young man, closed his recital of the atrocities he had witnessed. "Did they escape, or are they among ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... been listening open-mouthed to the other's fluent and tranquil speech, reddened at the allusion to himself and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... which is still according to modern ideas regarded as boyhood, was already entrusted with the uncontrolled management of his property and might perhaps find it necessary to make formal speeches to the assembled community, not only was great value set all along on the fluent and polished use of the mother-tongue, but efforts were early made to acquire a command of it in the years of boyhood. The Greek language also was already generally diffused in Italy in the time of Hannibal. In the higher circles a knowledge of that language, which was the general medium ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... or indirectly. The medieval translations from the Arabic should be retranslated into the new Hebrew, he held, and he furnished an example by recasting the first part of Maimuni's Moreh Nebukim. His modernized version, lucid and fluent, printed alongside of Ibn Tibbon's, presents a striking contrast to the stiffness and obscurity of the Provencal scholar's. Levin was also the first to write in the Yiddish, or Judeo-German, dialect, for the instruction of the masses, which made him the butt of more than one satire. But ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... caused this disintegration in a usually fairly fluent prattler with the sex was her whole mental attitude. I don't want to wrong anybody, so I won't go so far as to say that she actually wrote poetry, but her conversation, to my mind, was of a nature calculated to excite the liveliest suspicions. Well, I mean to say, when a girl ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... OWEN NARES, looking pretty and not too warlike in the gay uniform of a French Officer of Cavalry, played the hero's part with a very natural and fluent charm. I join in the general hope that this, the first play under his actor-management, will go well. It ought to, for though, in point of power to thrill, it did not quite confirm the promise of its sinister name and theme it was never for a moment dull, and its faults were ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 19, 1919 • Various
... him, "I hate a philosopher who is not wise in his own interest." It is related that once at a great banquet, when sitting over their wine, Kallisthenes was asked to speak in praise of the Macedonians, and that he at once poured forth such a fluent and splendid eulogy that all the company rose, vehemently applauding, and threw their garlands to him. At this Alexander remarked that, as ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... not take three minutes," he was obliged to confess was because he was "very well aware it would be the event of the occasion." "Immediately," said Mrs. Spencer, "you cannot imagine what an inspiration we all had to do it; for," added the slight, fair-haired, fluent lady, in a humorous manner that called forth laughter and applause, "I never yet was forbidden by a man to do a thing, but that I resolved to ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... He says, "The court being a continued maskarado, where she (the queen) and her ladies, like so many sea-nymphs or Nereides, appeared often in various dresses, to the ravishment of the beholders; the king himself not being a little delighted with such fluent elegancies as made the night more glorious than the day."[230] This is a direct proof that James was by no means cold or negligent in his attentions to his queen; and the letter which has been given is the picture of his ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... offices of both Sherwen and Raimonda, he had presented himself, under their escort, stiff and perspiring in his full official regalia, before Mr. Brewster; then before his daughter, whose solemnity, presently breaking down before his painfully rehearsed English, dissolved in fluent French, setting him at ease and making him her slave. Poor penitent Von Plaanden even apologized to Carroll, fortunately not having heard of the American's threat, and made a most favorable impression ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... spokesman. Emma Jane's talent did not lie in eloquent speech, but it would have been a valiant and a fluent child indeed who could have usurped Rebecca's privileges and tendencies in this direction, language being her native element, and words of assorted sizes springing ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... inhibitory hand and speeds them in the continuous current. That is, of course, something you get in greater quantity, though not such intense quality, in a London 'block,' but there is something more fluent, more mercurially impatient, in a New York street jam, which our nerves more vividly partake. Don't ask me to explain! I would rather not!" he ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... the words she had vainly sought came voluntarily, and in fluent speech she told him how her heart had so long consumed itself with yearning for him, and that she had now left everything behind to obey his summons; and he thanked her with eager warmth by raising the hand which clasped ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... monologue is the presence and personality of the silent or seldom-speaking listener so vividly felt. We see the wronged wife Elvire, we know her, and we trace the very progress of her moods, the very changes in her face, as she listens to the fluent talk of her husband. Don Juan (if we may so call him) is a distinct addition to Browning's portrait-gallery. Let no one suppose him to be a mere mouthpiece for dialectical disquisitions. He is this certainly, but his utterances are tinged with individual colour. This fact which, from the artistic ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... he returned, and reported that he was unable to find a single person who could speak a word of French. Doubtless many of the officers, who were of higher grade than any on board of the Chateaugay, were fluent enough in the language, but they were not to be found in the smaller vessels of the navy; for, whatever their rank before the war, they had all been advanced to the higher positions. Every one of the officers on board of this steamer had been the captain of a vessel, and had been ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... no means of explaining to the prisoners that they were to take their turn to get rations and water at a dump nearby. It was a war correspondent, young Valentine Williams, afterward a very gallant officer in the Irish Guards who gave the orders in fluent and incisive German. He began with a hoarse shout of "Achtung!" and that old word of command had an electrical effect on many of the men. Even those who had seemed asleep staggered to their feet and stood at attention. The habit of discipline ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... Shannon is presumed to have obtained, in abundance, the gift of that "civil courage" which makes an Irishman at ease and unconstrained in all places and under all circumstances; and he who has kissed the Blarney stone is assumed to be endowed with a fluent and persuasive tongue, altho it may be associated with insincerity; the term "Blarney" being generally used to characterize words that are meant neither ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... member, in advising and directing our measures in the Northern war. As a speaker, he could not be compared with his living colleague and namesake, whose deep conceptions, nervous style, and undaunted firmness, made him truly our bulwark in debate. But Mr. Samuel Adams, although not of fluent elocution, was so rigorously logical, so clear in his views, abundant in good sense, and master always of his subject, that he commanded the most profound attention whenever he rose in an assembly, by which the froth of declamation was heard with the most sovereign contempt. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... possession of any commanding one, that created his influence. He certainly was not a wit yet he was always gay, and always said things that made other people merry. His conversation was sparkling, interesting, and fluent, yet it was observed he never gave an opinion on any subject and never told an anecdote. Indeed, he would sometimes remark, when a man fell into his anecdotage, it was a sign for him to retire from the world. And yet Pinto rarely opened his mouth without everybody being stricken ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... fluent in thy speech," interrupted the king. "But there are details that the queen wishes to know. Thou art aware that in a frontier country like the province of Ecbatana, it is often necessary to protect the crops and the flocks from robbers. ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... either in the French or Flemish language, and was therefore obliged to ask their attention to the Bishop of Arras, who would act as his interpreter. Antony Perrenot accordingly arose, and in smooth, fluent, and well-turned commonplaces, expressed at great length the gratitude of Philip towards his father, with his firm determination to walk in the path of duty, and to obey his father's counsels and example in the future administration of the provinces. This long address ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... who presided over the first Indian National Congress at Bombay and delivered an opening address of which the moderation has rarely been emulated, and though the Congress movement originated in Bombay rather than in Bengal, the fluent spokesmen of Bengal very soon had the satisfaction of feeling that for the first time in Indian history Bengal might claim to be marching in ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... the room, and, without waiting for an introduction, held out her hand so cordially that I knew it must be one of his daughters. It was Madame de Lasteyrie, who, like her mother and sister, had shared his dungeon at Olmuetz. Her English, though perfectly intelligible, was not as fluent as her father's, but she had no difficulty in saying some pleasant things about family friendship which made me very happy. She lived in the same street, though not in the same house with the General, and that morning my good-fortune ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... indiscretion as the price of hiding a greater. The deputy was at home, writing in his study; he received me with an admirable unconsciousness of where I had come from. I was still in a state of excitement, and was glad to sit smoking quietly while his animated, fluent talk ran on. He was full of this Bill of his, and explained its provisions to me with the air of desiring that I should understand its spirit and aim, and of being willing then to leave it to my candid consideration. He did not attempt ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... Indian—riding-crop in one hand, the other supporting the girl and her babe—his mind was a blank. The thing was done almost before the impulse reached his brain. He wondered if he had struck the fellow, whom he was now arraigning furiously in fluent Hindustani, and whose sullen, shifty face was reminding ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... perhaps, as you are so fluent with your explanations, you will tell me why Mr. Guest has been removed to a part of the hotel which I am quite sure that no one knows anything about, is being attended by a doctor of most unprepossessing appearance, and a nurse who treats him as a ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... he himself could have thought it possible he should; for, to make the best of it, youth is easily attracted and filled with the present show, and easily forgets that which, from distance in time or space, has no show to show. Spending his evenings in the midst of merry faces, and ready tongues fluent with the tones of jollity, if not always of wit, which glided sometimes into no too earnest discussion of the difficult subjects occupying their student hours; surrounded by the vapours of whisky-toddy, and the smoke of cutty pipes, till far into the short ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... herself to the instruction of the young, and after teaching at Newburyport for a short time, she accepted a call to fill a vacancy in the academy at Elizabeth City, N. C., where she continued an earnest and appreciated teacher for a number of years. She became a fluent French scholar while at that institution, and her leisure hours were devoted to the fine arts. Her paintings and drawings were much admired for their correctness in outline, subdued coloring, ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... old. The new generation had outgrown his doctrines, and the Professor for whose hour the benches had filled themselves belonged to that new generation. Gabriel Andral was little more than half the age of Broussais, in the full prime and vigor of manhood at thirty-seven years. He was a rapid, fluent, fervid, and imaginative speaker, pleasing in aspect and manner,—a strong contrast to the harsh, vituperative old man who had just preceded him. His Clinique Medicale is still valuable as a collection of cases, and ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... music the soft air along, While fluent Greek a vowel'd undersong Kept up among the guests discoursing low At first, for scarcely was the wine at flow; But when the happy vintage touch'd their brains, Louder they talk, and louder come the strains Of powerful instruments—the gorgeous dyes, ...
— Lamia • John Keats
... involved which it may be well to consider. Useful work may be hindered owing to, first, the time and attention required for the meetings and discussions of the various councils, and the risk that clever and fluent talkers may prolong debate and generate friction and may perhaps exercise an undue influence. Probably this will not be found a serious danger. Experience over a considerable district shows that those who are chosen by the Trade Unions to represent them are usually clear-headed and businesslike ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... of the table on which he had been sitting and advanced towards her, speaking fluent French, with a curious suggestion of a Scotch accent that never appeared in his English. Peter watched with a smile on his face and a curious medley of feelings, while the Lieutenant explained, that they could not stop ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... with well-oiled tongues, quick at retort, and unyielding observers of the ancient customs. Then she selected a dozen sturdy champions, her relations and friends; and, lastly, the old hemp-beater of the parish, a fine and fluent talker, if ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... class are studying. He is aware that the pupil should experience something more than a kaleidoscopic view of isolated facts. He recognizes the folly of requiring four years of high school English for the purpose of cultivating clear, fluent, and accurate expression, only to relax the effort when the student comes into the history class. He knows that the precision, logic, and habit of definite thinking exacted by the pursuit of the scientific subjects should not be laid ...
— The Teaching of History • Ernest C. Hartwell
... long hold their place. She was an honest young woman, and she readily confessed that fluent manners and the air of the cavaliere servente were things she did not love. Carelessness suited well with a frayed jacket and the companionship of a hill burn and two ragged boys. So, comforting her pride with proverbs, she returned to Glenavelin ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... youngest or the oldest hands; was receiving the welcome of the playmates she best loved, and was silently yielding herself to the power which works all wonders with its benignant magic. Hour after hour she journeyed along that fluent road. Under bridges where early fishers lifted up their lines to let them through; past gardens tilled by unskilful townsmen who harvested an hour of strength to pay the daily tax the city levied on them; past honeymoon cottages where young wives walked with young husbands in the ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... Robespierre had but an insatiable ambition, founded on a vanity which made him think himself capable of filling the highest situation; and therefore gave him daring, when to dare is frequently to achieve. He mixed a false and overstrained, but rather fluent species of bombastic composition, with the grossest flattery to the lowest classes of the people; in consideration of which, they could not but receive as genuine the praises which he always bestowed on himself. His prudent resolution to ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... of trailed behind and watched the others use the hardware supplies, and then I tackled the chuck with the same weapons. It ain't much trouble to travel with the high-flyers after you find out their gait. I got along fine. I was feeling cool and agreeable, and pretty soon I was talking away fluent as you please, all about the ranch and the West, and telling 'em how the Indians eat grasshopper stew and snakes, and you never ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... or else he'd swallowed it; for as an easy and fluent converser Alvin headed the bill. Course, it's an odd line he hands out, the kind that keeps you guessin'. In spots it listens like highbrow book stuff, and then again it don't. But somehow I finds it sort of entertainin'. Besides, ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... primordial energies of the complex vision may be felt and realized without being expressed in words. The curse of what we call "cleverness" is that it hastens to find facile and fluent expression for what cannot be easily and fluently expressed. Education is too frequently a mere affair of words, a superficial encouragement of superficial expression. It is for this reason that many totally ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... said one of the graver guides, "we can recall few more melancholy examples of speculative aberration." Naturally the subject passed into popular literature, and figured very commonly in advertised programmes. The fluent Loligo, the formidable Shark, and a younger member of his remarkable family known as S. Catulus, made a special reputation by their numerous articles, eloquent, lively, or abusive, all on the same ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... the rich odors that it brought, she looked after the flower-petal that fluttered away with it, she saw the strong sunshine penetrating among the shadows of a jungly spot and catching a thousand points of color in the gloom, she recognized the constant fluent interchange among all the atoms of the universe;—why was she alone, capable of flight, chained to one spot?—She gazed around her at the squalor and the want, the brutish shapes and faces, her own no better, at the narrow huts; thought of the dull routine ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... perfectly shameful!" protested Bijou afresh. And so Sir Robert was overruled, and, much touched by this view of the matter, tried to express thanks on behalf of Miss Noel, bungled out a few short phrases, very different from his usually fluent utterances, shook Mr. Brown's hand heartily, sat down with a very red face, and then started up and dismissed the carriage, which, pending this decision, had ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... are as cosmopolitan as waiters and concierges, with as facile a gift for language and as unerring a scent for nationality. Sure enough, the fellow recognized mine, and positively challenged me with it in fairly fluent English with a Yankee twang. Encumbered with the mythical sister, of course I stuck to my lie, said I had been on an English ship so long that I had picked up the accent, and also gave him some words in broken English. At the same time I showed I thought him an impertinent nuisance, paid ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... eloquence at the Dragon of Wantly. At the White Horse, meanwhile, the friends of the de Courcy interest were treated perhaps to sounder political views; though not expressed in periods so intelligibly fluent as those ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... and urgently entreating the Governor of Panama to leave no stone unturned to find and surrender the seventeen Englishmen, on account of whom all this fuss and pother was being made, lest worse come of it. The Don was not a particularly fluent correspondent, but he grew almost eloquent when he strove to impress upon his fellow-governor the inexorable determination displayed by the young English captain, and he wound up by quoting two or three Spanish proverbs to the effect that of two evils it was always ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... position, and my father's name stifled scandal. Most of the others were orphans, being cheaply educated by distant relatives or guardians, or else the sons of poor widows who were easily bamboozled by Snuffy's fluent letters, and the religious leaflets which it was his custom to enclose. (In several of these cases, he was "managing" the poor women's "affairs" for them.) One or two boys belonged to people living abroad. Indeed, the worst bully in the school was a half-caste, whose smile, when he showed ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... much the aspect of a man who is going to be hanged. And his attempts at conversation with the maiden were not at all what might have been expected from the young minister whose graceful presence and fluent eloquence had been the boast of Magdalen. On her part the embarrassment was equally great. At length they were married,—a marriage based on a false idea of duty on each side. But no idea of duty, however strong or however false, could blind the eyes of this married pair to the terrible fact ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... interesting? As a matter of fact, considerable assemblies did gather, daily, to see the Indians perform their dances, or sing their songs, or to hear one of them relate their legends, which Christian translated into musical and fluent English. Bailey explained his own connection with the party by saying that they required some one to look after the more practical matters of lodging, food, etc., which Christian, a stranger in Europe, could not well do, and professed himself to be a mere hired accessory. It ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... the road, and an extra allowance for expenses subscribed by the Bristol merchants. He thus describes his feelings: "It was past eight o'clock when I reached the Gloucester Coffee-House, and, the Bristol mail being on the point of going off, I mounted on the outside. The fine fluent motion of the mail soon laid me asleep. It is somewhat remarkable that the first easy or refreshing sleep which I had enjoyed for some months was on ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde
... out her subject with a whole wardrobe of slop-shop epithets irrelevant in cut and size. To the invaluable knack of not disturbing the association of ideas in her audience, she added the gift of what may be called a confidential manner—so that her fluent generalizations about Goethe and his place in literature (the lecture was, of course, manufactured out of Lewes's book) had the flavor of personal experience, of views sympathetically exchanged with ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... cover all the demands of his nature. But the history of the efforts made to satisfy these demands might be broadly described as a history of errors—the error, in great part, consisting in ascribing fixity to that which is fluent, which varies as we vary, being gross when we are gross, and becoming, as our capacities widen, more abstract and sublime. On one great point the mind of Epicurus was at peace. He neither sought nor ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... waited vainly for the introduction of his work, and at the close of the session he rose sadly to leave the hall, when an elderly academician in whose hand he thought he had seen his treatise addressed a few words to him concerning his discovery in very fluent French and invited him to dine the following Thursday. Then the stranger suddenly disappeared, and Liebig, with the painful feeling of being considered a very uncivil fellow, was obliged to let the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... that period, religious service morning and evening, and school for three or four hours during the day—the heart of the youthful missionary was much cheered by noticing the regular attendance of the chief. Although not a fluent reader, the New Testament became his constant companion, and a change passed over him apparent to all. The lion at whose name many trembled became a lamb, and the love of Jesus Christ filled his heart. He who was formerly like a fire-brand, ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane
... burly Buggins, than whom no Goose had a more fluent use of his vernacular. He was not polished as Robinson, nor had he ever possessed the exquisite keenness of Crowdy. But in speaking he always hit the nail on the head, and carried his hearers with ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... at the pictures an alcoholic breath assailed me from the region of my left ear, and a voice said in thick but fluent French, "I see, by the way you admire the paintings, that you are foreigners." He was a short, puffy man with a baldish head ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... of a reserved nature is sometimes more attractive to women than the most fluent vivacity. Possibly there was also a melancholy grace in this sardonic soldier's manner that affected her, for she looked up, and ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... come on the second occasion of her going with Minna to see Dr. Dieckel. Minna, as they were walking quietly along together had suddenly begun in a broken English which soon turned to shy, fluent, animated German, to tell about a friend, an apotheker, a man, Miriam gathered—missing many links in her amazement—in a shop, the chemist's shop where her parents dealt, in the little country town in Pomerania which ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... the place in which I am compelled to receive you," proceeded Mrs. Lecount in fluent English, spoken with a foreign accent. "Mr. Vanstone is only here for a temporary purpose. We leave for the sea-side to-morrow afternoon, and it has not been thought worth while to set the house in proper order. Will you take a seat, and oblige me by mentioning ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... namby-pamby University voice was concerned to get information. He asked endless questions, chiefly of Gilkison, who was the only one who really understood his language. I thought I had never seen anyone quite so fluent and so futile, and yet there was a kind of feeble violence in him like a demented sheep. He was engaged in venting some private academic spite against society, and I thought that in a revolution he would be the class of lad I would personally conduct to the nearest lamp-post. And all the while ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... the British Princes, he thus speaks. My judgment in poetry has been once already censured by very good wits for commending Gondibert; but yet have they not disabled my testimony. For what authority is there in wit? a jester may have it; a man in drink may have it, and be fluent over night, and wise and dry in the morning: What is it? and who can tell whether it be better to have it or no? I will take the liberty to praise what I like as well as they, and reprehend what they like.'—Mr. Rymer in his preface to his translation of Rapin's Reflexions ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... mechanically. The brush, filled with thick paint, works like a trowel. In the hands of the Dutch and Flemish artists the brush was in direct communication with the brain, and moved slowly or rapidly, changing from the broadest and most emphatic stroke to the most delicate and fluent touch according to the nature of the work. But here all is square and heavy. The colour scheme, the blue dress and the green water—how theatrical, how its richness reeks of the French studio! How cosmopolitan and pedantic is this would-be ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... the air of a man who would be but too fluent and copious upon any subject in the world except ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington
... a demonstrative girl naturally; not ready with her tears, not liberal with her caresses, not fluent in her talk, Eunice was affected by my proposal in a manner wonderful to see. She suddenly developed into an excitable person—I declare she kissed me. "Oh," she burst out, "how clever you are! The very thing to write about; I'll ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... In our waking state, when our powers of volition are intact, the external impression is characterized by its fixity or its obdurate resistance to our wishes. On the other hand, the mental image is fluent, accommodating, and disappears and reappears according to the direction of our volitions. In sleep, through the suspension of the higher voluntary power of attention, the mental image seems to lord it over our minds just as the actual impression ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... from Nordland has his own adventures, his bonnes fortunes. There is a touch of Sterne about the book; not the exaggerated super-Sterne of Tristram Shandy, with eighteenth-century-futurist blanks and marbled pages, but the fluent, casual, follow-your-fancy Sterne of the Sentimental Journey. Yet the vagabond himself is unobtrusive, ready to step back and be a chronicler the moment other figures enter into constellation. He moves among youth, himself no longer young, and among gentlefolk, as one ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... commanding presence and sternly handsome, entered the room. She wore robes—robes; not clothes—ample and fluent. In her eye could be perceived the lambent flame of genius and soul. In her hand was a green bag of the capacity of a bushel, and an umbrella that also seemed to wear a robe, ample and fluent. She ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... me for troubling you to call on me," she said, in fluent and precise French, although with a somewhat foreign accent and manner of speech; "I should not have done it were you not the only trustworthy person from whom I can learn the necessary particulars of the terrible Rossberg accident. My husband, as perhaps ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... ordinarily fluent enough, would not come. Ideas fluttered away just out of reach. The sequence of a chapter had been in his head. Like the dagger, it had gone. He could not account for that disappearance, nor did he try. It would turn up again. So, ultimately, would the ousted sequence. For the latter's departure ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... to his own people. He is tall, rather corpulent, and has more of the negro feature than common, but has large eyes. He is very dark, and his people swear by "Black Sechele". He has great intelligence, reads well, and is a fluent speaker. Great numbers of the tribes formerly living under the Boers have taken refuge under his sway, and he is now greater in power than he was before the attack ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... body were allied equal graces of mind and character. Her conversation sparkled with wit and wisdom; she could hold fluent discourse in half a dozen tongues; she played and sang divinely, wrote elegant verses, and painted dainty pictures. Her manner was caressing and courteous; she was generous to a fault, with a heart as ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... our language well, for he immediately turned with gentle urbanity, and discerning, perhaps, something in my face which assured him of my sympathy and respect, entered into a fluent conversation with me that at once increased my admiration and awakened my pity. For I saw that his nature was strong and his feelings deep, and as the future could have nothing but shame and misery, I instinctively felt oppressed by the fate ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... Kaiser's blue-and-white-uniformed gunner in every function of his body and every corner of his soul, waking and sleeping, dying and dead, with fluent Scriptural curses. The crowded faces about her went white. Some of the women were crying, others ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... interpreter, a native Army sergeant, between you and Captain Travis," he said. "I don't know how good you are with native languages, Miss Shaw; the captain is not very fluent." ...
— Oomphel in the Sky • Henry Beam Piper
... hath no wit, that cannot, from the rising of the lark to the lodging of the lamb, vary deserved praise on my palfrey; it is a theme as fluent as the sea; turn the sands into eloquent tongues, and my horse is argument for them all; 'tis a subject for a sovereign to reason on, and for a sovereign's sovereign to ride on; and for the world (familiar to us and unknown), to lay apart their particular ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... not fluent in speech, but what he said was apposite, and listened to with the more interest as being known to come from the heart. He seldom attempted sallies of wit or humor, but no man received more pleasure from an exhibition of them by others; and, ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... fussy old soul, with a taste for fine clothes and fine dinners, fond of court festivities, and heart and soul devoted to royalties, we promote him. If he speak French tolerably, we make him a Minister; if he be fluent, ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... arithmetical progression, geometrical progression, harmonical progression^; percentage, permilage. figurate numbers^, pyramidal numbers, polygonal numbers. power, root, exponent, index, logarithm, antilogarithm; modulus, base. differential, integral, fluxion^, fluent. Adj. numeral, complementary, divisible, aliquot, reciprocal, prime, relatively prime, fractional, decimal, figurate^, incommensurable. proportional, exponential, logarithmic, logometric^, differential, fluxional^, integral, totitive^. positive, negative; rational, irrational; surd, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... penetration of mind altogether unique." The children of the fanatics of the Cevennes, while in their supposed prophetic ecstacies, spoke the purest dialect of French, and expressed themselves with singular propriety. The same facility of speaking in a fluent and exalted style while in the divinatory ecstacy, was remarked of old in the case of the Pythian priestess. "Though it cannot be divined," says Plutarch, in his "Inquiry," "why the Pythian priestess ceases ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... who acknowledged the honour in fluent Melanesian, was understood to say that he had only done his duty, that he was speechless with gratitude and that he would always regard Lord READING as a brother. A recherche vegetarian luncheon ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 4, 1919. • Various
... but a faint and discordant echo of the music welling in Toru's brain. For it must frankly be confessed that in the brief May-day of her existence she had not time to master our language as Blanco White did, or as Chamisso mastered German. To the end of her days, fluent and graceful as she was, she was not entirely conversant with English, especially with the colloquial turns of modern speech. Often a very fine thought is spoiled for hypercritical ears by the queer turn of expression which she has innocently given to it. ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... these Lestrigonians were most seriously in earnest in their chapelling. Yet no doubt they fomented the row, for the pastor himself was much too clever a man to proceed to such extremities. By nature he was a fluent speaker, rising to eloquence as eloquence is understood among that kind of audience. He carried them with him, quite swept them away. They came to hear him from miles round about; there were plenty of other chapels, but no one like the man at Bethel. Once ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... of long hairs, which he seemed to prize as a natural mark of royalty, or chieftainship. Indeed, there was a popular legend afloat that he was of true royal blood—a stray Bourbon, or something of the sort. His speech was singularly fluent and elegant. The Emperor was one of the celebrities that no visitor failed to see. It is said that his mind was unhinged by a sudden loss of fortune in the early days, by the treachery of a partner in trade. The sudden blow was deadly, and the quiet, thrifty, affable ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... Lalkhan, who explained volubly. Tom Crosbie grinned; he understood even fluent Hindustani. His wife did not. Peter looked a little uncomfortable. Lalkhan salaamed ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... was dressed after the Hungarian fashion, in a black velvet tunic, single breasted, with standing collar and transparent black buttons. He also wore an overcoat or sack of black velvet with broad fur and loose sleeves. He wore light kid gloves. Generally his English is fluent and distinct, with a marked foreign accent, though at times this is not at all apparent. He speaks rather slowly than otherwise, and occasionally hesitates for a word. His command of the language, astonishing as it is ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... it without much interest—Mother, oh, yes, Mother. Six crossed pages of St. Louis gossip and wanderingly fluent advice. She sets herself to read it, though, dutifully enough—she is ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... pollution-have gone forth from the rudiments and traditions of men-and had their lamps, but still lost their precious souls. They may bear office in the church, as Judas carried the bag, and as Demas! They may become preachers and ministers of the Gospel, with rare gifts, and a fluent tongue, like an angel, to speak of the hidden mysteries; but may die under the curse. They may have the gifts of the Spirit and prophecy, and be but a Balaam. They may stand thus until Christ come and reveal them. They may, with confidence, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... opportunities of giving expression to their sentiments, and showing that their hearts beat in unison with the great movement for human freedom which was then agitating the world. To their debates Emmet brought the aid of a fine intellect and a fluent utterance, and he soon became the orator of the ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... had failed to present the generous thoughts of the King in a sufficiently attractive shape to the minds of the people. This much at all events we know, that when the young Consiliarius, high-born, fluent, and learned, poured forth his stream of panegyric on 'Our Lord Theodoric'—a panegyric which, to an extent unusual with these orations, reflected the real feelings of the speaker, and all the finest passages of which ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... no more delicately veiled defensive tactics against Burt, and now her face was full of frank admiration of his skill as an angler and of interest in the wild scenes described. Burt had spent more time in society than over his books while at college, and was a fluent, easy talker. Webb felt that he suffered in contrast, that he was grave, heavy, dull, and old—no fit companion for the girl whose laughing eyes so often rested on his brother's face and responded to his mirth. ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... from the ancient counts of Holland. This illustrious origin, which in his own eyes formed a high claim to distinction, had not procured him any of those employments or dignities which he considered his due. He was presumptuous and rash, and rather a fluent speaker than an eloquent orator. Louis of Nassau was thoroughly inspired by the justice of the cause he espoused; De Brederode espoused it for the glory of becoming its champion. The first only wished for action; the latter longed ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... to think it).——No Applause therefore can be too high, for such Merit. And, let me abominate the contemptible Reserves of mean-spirited Men, who while they but hesitate their Esteem, with Restraint, can be fluent and uncheck'd in their Envy.——In an Age so deficient in Goodness, Every such Virtue, as That of this Author, is a salutary Angel, in Sodom. And One who cou'd stoop to conceal, a Delight he receives from the Worthy, wou'd ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson
... When they took their places at table, she had motioned to Gifford to sit beside her, and from that position it gradually forced itself upon his notice that Henshaw scarcely took his eyes off his hostess, addressing most of his conversation, and he was a fluent talker, to her. It was, of course, scarcely to be wondered at that this handsome, capable girl should call forth any man's admiration. Gifford himself was indeed beginning to fall desperately in love with her, but this naturally made Henshaw's rather obvious prepossession ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... explained, "were words selected and arranged to strike almost all the common complexes in analyzing and diagnosing. You'd think any intelligent person could give a fluent answer to them, perhaps a misleading answer. But try it yourself, Walter. You'll find you can't. You may start all right, but not all the words will be reacted to in the same time or with the same smoothness and ease. Yet, like the ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... Miss Mary C. Francis (O.) from the standpoint of a practical newspaper woman. Mrs. Chapman Catt, chairman of the national organization committee, made the last address, taking for a subject Eternal Justice. The Constitution said: "As a rapid, logical and fluent speaker it is doubtful if America ever has produced one more gifted, and the suffrage movement is fortunate in having so brilliant a ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... no further deviation from the original has been made than was necessary for the fluent reading and instant understanding of the Author: so much, however, is the language altered since Chaucer's time, especially in pronunciation, that much was to be removed, and its place supplied with as little incongruity as possible. The ancient accent has been retained in a few conjunctions, as ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... he said in his fluent English to the clerk who had taken the message, and showed his card. "On official business I wish to inspect the last telegram which ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... after one of the most strenuous days which Scott could remember: and that meant a good deal. Simpson's face was a sight! During his absence Griffith Taylor became meteorologist-in-chief. He was a greedy scientist, and he also wielded a fluent pen. Consequently his output during the year and a half which he spent with us was large, and ranged from the results of the two excellent scientific journeys which he led in the Western Mountains, to this work during the latter half of September. He was a most valued contributor ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... And when I say these words I mean them. And when I compared the human will to a drop in a crystal, and said I meant to define moral obligations, and not weaken them, this was what I intended to express: that the fluent, self-determining power of human beings is a very strictly limited agency in the universe. The chief planes of its enclosing solid are, of course, organization, education, condition. Organization may reduce the power of the will to nothing, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... learned. Mr. Binning's method was peculiar to himself, much after the haranguing way; he was no stranger to the rules of art, and knew well how to make his matter subservient to the subject he handled. His diction and language was easy and fluent, void of all affectation and bombast, and has a kind of undesigned negligent elegance which arrests the reader's attention. Considering the time he lived in, it might be said, that he carried the orator's prize from his contemporaries in ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... minimizing the change in present angle or point of view. His fertile mind played about it, strengthening it, building it up, polishing and perfecting; and in time he began to write, at first slowly, but soon with fluent ease. ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... the sound, as when out of Court the public is dissatisfied with a verdict. Are we expected to commit a social outrage in exposing our whole case to the public?—Imagine it for a moment as done. Men are ours at a word—or at least a word of invitation. Women we woo; fluent smooth versions of our tortures, mixed with permissible courtship, win the individual woman. And that unreasoning collective woman, icy, deadly, condemns the poor racked wretch who so much as remembers them! She is the enemy of Nature.—Tell us how? She is the slave of existing ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of four merry children' is distinguished by its charming realization of the quaintness and oddity and merriness of children, by its romantic, almost sentimental, pathos, and by its crisp, fluent ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... tracts of fluent heat began, And grew to seeming-random forms, 10 The seeming prey of cyclic storms, Till at ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... for the Spaniard, while he bowed to her. They all liked beer, they all liked olives. The Frenchman was fluent about "les moeurs Americaines." Elizabeth Eliza supposed he alluded to their not having set any table. The Turk smiled, the Russian was voluble. In the midst of the clang of the different languages, ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... 'This young man must be taken down, and I am truly sorry that the task devolves upon me.' He then proceeded, in a very overbearing way, and with an assumption of great superiority, to attack Lincoln and his speech. He was fluent and ready with the rough sarcasm of the stump, and he went on to ridicule the person, dress and arguments of Lincoln with so much success that Lincoln's friends feared that he would be ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... of Villoria in Castilla, and professed in the Dominican convent of San Pablo at Valladolid. On going to the Philippines he was sent first to the mission of Bataan, where his labors were uninterrupted and severe. He became fluent in the Tagil language, after Which he was assigned to the Chinese mission near Manila; and he composed and published several devotional treatises in both those languages. He was elected prior of Manila, but before his three years ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... this of the whole race of the Greeks: I grant them literary genius, I grant them skill in various accomplishments, I do not deny them elegance in conversation, acuteness of intellect, fluent oratory; to any other high qualities they may claim I make no objection: but the sacred obligation that lies upon a witness to speak the truth is what that nation ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... sharp rebuke to him for talking too much. To which Cecil replied that he had only answered when he was spoken to. This elicited a scolding for his impertinence, and produced further tart answers from the fluent young gentleman, which ended by his being dismissed in a fury to Jane, vice Charles, promoted ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... street without lifting his cap at least a dozen times. Bourcelles was so very friendly; no room for strangers there; a new-comer might remain a mystery, but he could not be unknown. Rogers found his halting French becoming rapidly fluent again. And every one knew so much about him—more ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... was treated as a joke, A boyish ebullition that soon would end in smoke; But when he took to writing in strict and fluent rhyme His family ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 7th, 1920 • Various
... then—why not? He might have been an Under-Secretary of State, later a Minister, and finally President of the Republic. True, as he himself knows, and readily admits, he is no orator; but then orators are not always the men who get on in France. Thiers was a ready and fluent speaker, but MacMahon could scarcely say (or learn by heart) twenty consecutive words. Grevy, it is true, could be long-winded, prosy, and didactic; but the powers of elocution which Carnot and Felix Faure possessed were infinitesimal. And so ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... She left for heav'n.—She died, and heav'n is her's! Be mine, the pensive solitary balm That recollection yields. Yes, angel pure! While memory holds her seat, thine image still Shall reign, shall triumph there; and when, as now, Imagination forms a nymph divine, To lead the fluent strain, thy modest blush, Thy mild demeanour, thy unpractis'd smile, Shall grace that nymph, and sweet Simplicity Be dress'd (ah, meek Maria!) ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... demonstrative girl naturally; not ready with her tears, not liberal with her caresses, not fluent in her talk, Eunice was affected by my proposal in a manner wonderful to see. She suddenly developed into an excitable person—I declare she kissed me. "Oh," she burst out, "how clever you are! The very thing to write about; I'll ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... never what you would call an eloquent or fluent speaker: his Somersetshire brogue was at times difficult of comprehension. He certainly was not fluent when he said to Mrs. Oldtimes: "Why thic—there—damn un Mrs. Oldtimes if he beant gwine and never zeed zich a ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... been too saved, I see, Too rescued; fear too dim to me That I could spell the prayer I knew so perfect yesterday, — That scalding one, "Sabachthani," Recited fluent here. ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... And then Mr. Brumley became aware of an effect away between the white-stemmed trees towards the house as if the Cambridge boat-race crew was indulging in a vigorous scrimmage. Drawing nearer this resolved itself into the fluent contours of Lady Beach-Mandarin, dressed in sky-blue and with a black summer straw hat larger than ever ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... black, wore a tam-o'-shanter with a huge black-headed pin thrust through it, clung to a bag, smiled with amiable patronage as she emerged, and at once, without reason, began to address Amedeo and the porters in fluent, incorrect, and too carefully pronounced Italian. Amedeo knew her—the Tabby who haunts Swiss and Italian hotels, the ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... And blow to chaff pretenders void of grist: Showing old tiger's claws, old crocodile's Yard-grin of eager grinders, slim to sight, Like forms in running water, oft when smiles, When pearly tears, when fluent lips delight: But never with the slayer's malice fired: As little as informs an infant's fist Clenched at the sneeze! Thou wouldst but have us be Good sons of mother soil, whereby to grow Branching on fairer skies, one stately tree; Broad of the tilth for flowering at the Court: ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... But in the rage which possessed the English ministry upon learning how Massachusetts had parried the attack made upon her liberties, some immediate victim was indispensable; and as Franklin was there present, they fell upon him. A fluent and foul-mouthed young barrister, Alexander Wedderburn by name, had by corrupt influence secured the post of solicitor-general; and he made use of the occasion of Franklin's submitting the petition for the removal ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... first and firmest conviction is that he is a profound Orientalist and a fluent speaker of Hindustani. As a matter of fact, he depends largely on ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... while I was speaking to them. I never saw any of them going to sleep; I never saw a look in the face of one of them which indicated that he was not profoundly interested. I was in their meeting last Sunday, and I told them about Sui Chung. Most of these Chinese can read. Some of them are very fluent talkers, and some are very intelligent. I suppose we have a thousand or fifteen hundred in this city, and a very large proportion of them, they tell me, can ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... fellowly shrines, No demagogue beat the pulpit-drum In the Age of the Antonines! The sting was not dreamed to be taken from death, No Paradise pledged or sought, But they reasoned of fate at the flowing feast, Nor stifled the fluent thought, We sham, we shuffle while faith declines— They were frank in ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... brethren in the Holy Land. In daily contact with so many diverse interests, Raphael's mind widened as imperceptibly as the body grows. He learned the manners of many men and committees—admired the genuine goodness of some of the Jewish philanthropists and the fluent oratory of all; even while he realized the pettiness of their outlook and their reluctance to face facts. They were timorous, with a dread of decisive action and definitive speech, suggesting the differential, ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... enough to stimulate any man. I felt the stimulus. I'm not generally considered fluent, or good at description, and I'm not much of a talker; but all that I ever lacked on ordinary occasions I made amends for on that evening. I began at the beginning, from the time I was ordered off. Then I led my spellbound audience over ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... are not always prophets—"music shall untune the sky," as a period when all the miseries it has inflicted on us shall be amply revenged by its perpetrating, or assisting at, this gigantic mischief. 'Tis then that your first-fiddle is but impertinent catgut—your fluent organ a vile box of whistles, fit representative of its Tube-al inventor—and the sweetest pipe ever resonant with the clear, music-breathing air of Italy, or bravely struggling against the damper atmosphere of our humid isle, sounds harsh and shrilly in our ears, instead of soothing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... for, to make the best of it, youth is easily attracted and filled with the present show, and easily forgets that which, from distance in time or space, has no show to show. Spending his evenings in the midst of merry faces, and ready tongues fluent with the tones of jollity, if not always of wit, which glided sometimes into no too earnest discussion of the difficult subjects occupying their student hours; surrounded by the vapours of whisky-toddy, and the smoke of ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... believe myself necessary to you at any time!" Philip is beginning, with fluent sentimentality, when, catching sight of Tedcastle, he stops abruptly. "Here is Luttrell," he says, in an injured tone, and seeing no further prospect of a tete-a-tete, ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... has nothing to change in what it tells us, we must conclude that, in what it tells us, it takes account neither of succession in what of it is specific nor of time in what there is in it that is fluent. It has no sign to express what strikes our consciousness in succession and duration. It no more applies to becoming, so far as that is moving, than the bridges thrown here and there across the stream follow the water that flows ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... consonant evaded after the Polynesian habit) was sent by Bishop Dordillon to South America, and there educated by the fathers. His French is fluent, his talk sensible and spirited, and in his capacity of ganger-in-chief, he is of excellent service to the French. With the prestige of his name and family, and with the stick when needful, he keeps the natives working and the roads ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the old women of our own sex! Wherever we find a well-mannered, soft-spoken, fussy old soul, with a taste for fine clothes and fine dinners, fond of court festivities, and heart and soul devoted to royalties, we promote him. If he speak French tolerably, we make him a Minister; if he be fluent, an Envoy Extraordinary. ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... the Indians was so ill with the fever and the medicine he had taken that he really looked as if he might not survive. The other Indians refused to leave their chief; while the Indian Miguel, whom I had employed subsequently, flatly refused to come along. Much time was wasted talking, Mr. Nery, a fluent speaker, haranguing the men, who lay around helpless, holding their heads between their hands or ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... which I suppress, because, though it contained something relating to you which every one had been glad to hear, yet there was too much about politics, and poesy, and all things whatsoever, ending with that topic on which most men are fluent, and none very amusing—one's self. It might have been re-written—but to what purpose? My praise could add nothing to your well-earned and firmly-established fame; and with my most hearty admiration of your talents, and delight in your conversation, you are already acquainted. In availing ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... one of the most difficult to paint;" but in sketching Tito's career, "the same wonderful power is maintained throughout, of stamping on our imagination with the full force of a master hand a character which seems naturally too fluent for the artist's purpose. There is not a more masterly piece of painting in English romance than this figure ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... not at any time fluent with her pen. She now found herself really unable to convey any intelligible account of what had happened. To state clearly all that she knew so that the conclusion should be obvious and patent to the ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... This letter, written in fluent and perfect French, is one of the best that we have of Gibbon. Deyverdun answered promptly, and met his friend's advances with at least equal warmth. The few letters that have been preserved of his connected with this subject give a highly favourable idea of his mind and character, ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... new and advanced methods, I examined my pupils preparatory to giving them lessons and arranging them in classes, in the ordinary way. I found that they could not read, but they could write in a truly fluent and unconventional style; they could not commit prosaical facts to memory, but they could sing songs containing any number of irrelevant stanzas. They could not "cipher," but they had witty and salient answers ready for any emergency. There seemed to be no particular distinction among them in regard ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... minor belongs to that class of Chopin's works mentioned in the beginning of this chapter, in which pleasing effects are made by fluent running work, containing more or less changing notes and other forms of dissonance—running work so fast that the ear does not follow each note, but skims along the melodic thread, as it were, the general impression of ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... a logical, fluent and earnest speaker, and his reputation as a student of educational and social problems has led to a frequent demand for his services on the part of committees concerned with legislative questions, and at assemblies of leading educators. He presided and delivered ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... went to bed the fancied insult he had suffered swelled to monstrous proportions in his fevered brain. Did Armstrong despise him? The thought was poison! He lay in brooding anger, and his mind was fluent in wrathful harangues in some imaginary encounter of the future, in which he was a glorious victor. He flowed in eloquent scorn of Armstrong and his ways. If I could talk like this always, he thought, what a fellow I would be! He seemed gifted with uncanny insight into Armstrong's character. He ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... and in the momentary silence Lucie came in and asked what madame wanted for the evening, and Adelaide in her fluent French began explaining that what she really desired most was that Lucie should not make so much noise in her room that monsieur could not sleep. In the midst of it she stopped and ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... will not admit that I was discouraged, but I was pretty nearly resigned to a life without fluent speech, nearly convinced that future efforts to find a cure for stammering would be fruitless and ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... of doing that is that it enables a young beginner to form his own style at the outset by careful and systematic writing. Spurgeon, often when a youth, read some of his sermons, although afterwards he never premeditated a single sentence for the pulpit. Dr. Richard S. Storrs was a most fluent extemporaneous speaker, but for twenty years he carefully wrote all his discourses. My own habit, after a time, was to write a portion of the sermon and turn away from my notes to interject thoughts that came in the heat of the moment and then turn to my manuscript. This was generally ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... and stared at her with renewed interest. He admitted to himself that she was one of the most fascinating women he had ever met, and wondered what vicissitude could have brought such a woman, who used classical illustrations, fluent, cultivated speech, and who was strong grace exemplified, to such a position. She seemed master of her surroundings, and yet not of them, looking down with a hard and lofty scorn on the very men from whom she made her living. He began to believe what was commonly said of her, that ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... all the demands of his nature. But the history of the efforts made to satisfy these demands might be broadly described as a history of errors—the error, in great part, consisting in ascribing fixity to that which is fluent, which varies as we vary, being gross when we are gross, and becoming, as our capacities widen, more abstract and sublime. On one great point the mind of Epicurus was at peace. He neither sought nor expected, here or hereafter, any personal profit from his relation to the gods. And ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... forth. It would be no easy matter to describe a discourse which lasted a couple of hours, or indeed to say very precisely what it was about. It was a rambling, desultory reference to his travels and adventures in fluent and sometimes eloquent language, and not without an occasional dash of humour and drollery. He illustrated the truth of the Scriptures by examples drawn from his personal observation and the habits, expressions, and belief of the present ...
— 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
... he, with characteristic antagonism, chose radical Birmingham for his coveted seat in Parliament, but alas! he has not lived to hazard the election. He was a neat, fluent, and epigrammatic speaker, as potent with his tongue as with his sword; and as for the pen (albeit his handwriting must have puzzled compositors), the myriads of readers who have enjoyed his stirring books in print, can testify how brilliant and eloquent he was for the matter ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... press in A.H. 1270 (A.D. 1853) also in two vols. 8vo of two Jilds each (pp. 249, 245; 192, 176). Since then several other editions have been published at Cawnpore, at Lakhnau[FN4] and also at Bombay. This translation is written in an easy fluent style, omitting all coarseness of expression or objectionable passages, in language easily understood, and at the same time in good and elegant Hindustani. It is therefore extremely popular, and selections from the 4th Jild have been taken as text books for the Indian Civil Service examinations. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... an ear To murmur of the lewedness behind, With facond* voice said, "Hold your tongues there, *eloquent, fluent And I shall soon, I hope, a counsel find, You to deliver, and from this noise unbind; I charge of ev'ry flock* ye shall one call, *class of fowl To say the verdict of you ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... his dinner, may only be biding his time, waiting an excuse to deliver you over to their insatiable maw, to be dealt with according to the rules of their society. Or, perhaps the lady who in the first flush of your acquaintance quite dazzles you with her fluent chat upon multitudinous topics, suddenly, upon finding you unguardedly expressing opinions not approved by the high priests of mediocrity, lets fall her mask, and shows herself to your astonished gaze a secret emissary, ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... is an art in which one may become proficient by giving it attention, just as one becomes the master of any other art by taking thought and probing into underlying principles. So in the art of talking well, even naturally fluent talkers need by faithful pains to get beyond the point where they only happen to talk. They need to attain that conscious power over conversational situations which gives them precision and grace in adapting means to ends ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... and everyone hurried to occupy his seat. In the wings there was no one save the author and three or four of his friends. The opening scenes were received as usual with indifference; the following ones with a little more cordiality; the versification was fluent and polished, and, as you know, the public appreciates sugar-coated phrases. At last the moment arrived for Clotilde's entrance, and a faint murmur of curiosity and expectation ran through the audience. She spoke her lines discreetly, ...
— First Love (Little Blue Book #1195) - And Other Fascinating Stories of Spanish Life • Various
... their stay abroad in residence at Gozlar; and he appears, in short, to have made in every way the best use of his time. On 24th June 1799 he gave his leave-taking supper at Gottingen, replying to the toast of his health in fluent German but with an execrable accent; and the next day presumably he ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... threw the party into deeper consternation than before. The little ex-burglar was not a fluent talker at best, but he now excelled himself in brevity. In three minutes he had concluded his story, and preparations were well under way for ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... the blue curtain she stood talking to her partner after the dance; and he did not go to speak to her, but remained looking. They only danced together twice; and that evening was realized by him in a strangely intense and durable perception of faint scent and fluent rhythm. The sense of her motion, of her frailness, lingered in his soul ever afterwards. And he remembered ever afterwards the moments he spent with her in a distant corner—the palm, the gold of the screen, the movement of her white skirt as she sat down. All was, as it were, bitten ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... a liquid or fluent part of the body, comprehended in it, for the preservation of it; and is either innate or born with us, or adventitious and acquisite. The radical or innate, is daily supplied by nourishment, which some call cambium, and make those secondary ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... years, he has lectured in many towns from Maine to California and he is welcomed everywhere. His specialty is the customs, laws, religion, etc., of the Sioux. Witty, fluent, intellectual, trained in both methods of education, he is eminently fitted to explain, in an inimitable and attractive manner, the customs, beliefs and superstitions of the Indian. He describes not only the life and training of the boy, but the real Indian as no white man could possibly ...
— Among the Sioux - A Story of the Twin Cities and the Two Dakotas • R. J. Creswell
... conscientious man could plant his foot and make a firm stand. Men such as you, able and ready to work in behalf of these combinations, will of course get the work to do, but you will have little or no power given you in their direction: the direction will be apparently in the hands of a few fluent gabbers; and yet even they will not be the actual directors—they will be but the exponents and voices of the general mediocre sentiment and inferior sense of the mass as a whole, and acceptable ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... a fluent talker, and I was ass enough to listen to him. By the end of half an hour he had persuaded me that the question was bound up with the inalienable rights of man, and that if I paid that fourteen and tenpence ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... the death- scene of Gaunt, as well the part which precedes as the part which follows the actual appearance of his nephew on the stage; and into these scenes the intrusion of rhyme is rare and brief. They are written almost wholly in pure and fluent rather than vigorous or various blank verse; though I cannot discern in any of them an equality in power and passion to the magnificent scene of abdication in Marlowe's Edward II. This play, I think, ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... eloquence of this oration, it yet possessed not the power of inducing one among those whom it addressed to forget the sensation of his present suffering, and to fix his attention on the vision of future advantage, spread before all listeners by the fluent priest. With the same murmurs of querulous complaint, and the same expressions of impotent hatred and defiance of the Goths which had fallen from them as they entered the church, the populace now departed from it, to receive from ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... the both, of the ball of the Khedive," he continued in his English, which was, though amazingly fluent and ready, a literal sounding translation of the French, which was in reality his mother tongue. "My sister thinks she can arrange that invitation. You are sure that you will be returned ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... win the good opinion of Miss Sarah Pemberton, who was not in general inclined to think well of young men especially of officers in the army, whom she designated generally as an impudent, profligate set, with fluent tongues and insinuating manners, whose chief occupation in life was to break the hearts of young girls foolish enough ...
— Clara Maynard - The True and the False - A Tale of the Times • W.H.G. Kingston
... glad to see the noble Athenian in his own city. His fame for eloquence and prudence is already in Tyre and Babylon," spoke the stranger, never taking his steel-blue eyes from the orator's face. The accent was Oriental, but the Greek was fluent. The prince—for prince he was, whatever his nation—pressed his hand closer. Almost involuntarily Democrates's hand responded. They clasped tightly; then, as if Lycon feared a word too much, the unknown released his hold, bowed with inimitable though silent courtesy, and was gone ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... the instrument over and danced round it impotently. Littimer had never seen him in such a raging fury before. The language of the man was an outrage, filthy, revolting, profane. No yelling, drunken Hooligan could have been more fluent, ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... self-expression. Nor is the Englishman deliberately hypocritical; but his tenacity, combined with his powerlessness to express his feelings, often gives him the appearance of a hypocrite. He is inarticulate, has not the clear and fluent cynicism of expansive natures wherewith to confess exactly how he stands. It is the habit of men of all nations to want to have things both ways; the Englishman is unfortunately so unable to express himself, even to himself, that ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... was saying in a fluent, abominable, literal translation into Spanish. "Take the knife so... thumb upwards. Stab down in the soft between the neck and the shoulder-blade. You get right into the lungs with the point. I've tried it: ten times. Never stick the back. The chances are he moves, and you hit a bone. ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... recollections of Miss Wooler,' writes Miss Nussey, 'are, that she was short and stout, but graceful in her movements, very fluent in conversation and with a very sweet voice. She had Charlotte and myself to stay with her sometimes after we left school. We had delightful sitting-up times with her when the pupils had gone to bed. She would treat us so confidentially, relating her six years' residence in the ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... a void of darkness beneath him,— night made visible by street lamps; and he found himself suddenly and acutely sensible of the wonder and mystery of the City: the City whose secret life ran fluent upon the hot, hard pavements below, whose voice throbbed, sibilant, vague, strident, inarticulate, upon the night air; the City of which he was a part equally with the girl in grey, whom he had never before seen, and ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... a river; it rushes onward, by expression of ideas, making room for thoughts to follow, and the dull elf, whose mouth is a mill-dam, finds his fancies and thoughts accumulate on his brain, till that organ is dull and sodden as is his facial aspect. Why is it that some can only be fluent from the point of a pen, while others can only address their fellows effectively by word of mouth? Of course there are conversational monsters as well as other violations of nature's creative processes. And the more thought that talk holds in solution, the more grateful the offering. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... was still more mortified, when, talking in a company with fluent vivacity, and, as he flattered himself, to the admiration of all present, a German who sat next him, and perceived Johnson rolling himself as if about to speak, suddenly stopped him, saying, 'Stay, stay—Toctor Shonson is going to zay zomething.' This was no doubt very provoking, especially ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... door as if he saw a ghost. Just behind Mr. Allen stood a Jap, with a friendly grin on his face, but a Jap all the same, most certainly and without the slightest doubt a Jap. He looked around the bare office and said in fluent English: "I must ask you to remain in this room for the present." With these words he raised his revolver and kept a sharp ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... performance, Mr. Davidson, which I can not entirely commend. It is fluent, to be sure, but it lacks variety. A true artist would have interspersed those finer shades and gradations of meaning which go to express the numerous and clashing emotions which must necessarily agitate your venerable bosom. You surely mean more than damn. ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... language, all sparkling with felicitations and protestations about his "chateau,"— "madame sa mere, la digne chatelaine:" also his looks; which, indeed, were very flourishing, and at the moment additionally embellished by the good-natured but amused smile with which he always listened to Madame's fluent and florid French. In short, Madame shone in her very best phase that day, and came in and went out quite a living catherine-wheel of compliments, delight, and affability. Half purposely, and half to ask some question about ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... made his speech, and it was fluent, fast, and florid. Without giving it word for word, which would be tedious, I could not adequately set before the reader's eye the speaker's pleasing picture of world-wide commercial love and harmony which was to be produced by a railway from Salt Lake City to Vera Cruz, ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... the Three Graces and to the Haworth Temperance Society. When he was not entertaining bagmen, he was either at Bradford painting bad portraits, or at Haworth pouring out verses, fearfully long, fatally fluent verses, and writing hysterical letters to the editor ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... the most fluent manner, the foregoing affidavit, which existed only in his own brain, my brother Downright desired the court to take ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... services of Townshend. His conduct was as irresponsible as his eloquence was dazzling. In his twenty years of public life he had but one purpose—to please and to be praised; and to gain those ends he sacrificed consistency and discretion with a light heart. The beauty of his person and the fluent splendor of his speech went far towards the attainment of an ambition which was always frustrated by a fatal levity. In the fine phrase of Burke, he was a candidate for contradictory honors, and his great aim was to make those ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... of high renown are all comprised in thee; By them may Fortune never cease thy bounder slave to be! Munificence and knowledge sure, glory and piety, Fair fluent speech and ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... tasteful ornaments of cowrie-shells, surmounted by plumes of ostrich-feathers, which drooped over the back of the neck. After the dance, the old chief addressed them in a long and vehement speech; he was followed by several other speakers, all of whom were remarkably fluent, and the resolution of the meeting was declared "that the nogaras were to be beaten, and men collected to accompany the Turks on a razzia in the ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... a subject fitted to fix attention upon any writer, and on the other hand, a writer brilliantly qualified to fix attention upon any subject. Unhappily, a third indispensable condition, viz.—that the writer should personally know England—was entirely overlooked. Salmasius had a fluent command of Latin; and, supported by a learned theme, he generally left a dazzling impression even upon those who hated his person, or disputed his conclusions. But, coming into collision with politics, personal as well as speculative, and with questions of real life, fitted to call for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... Mahony's periods were fluent and florid, and the words chosen occasionally rather for their grandeur and melody than for their exact connexion with the context or bearing upon his meaning. The consequence was a certain gorgeous haziness and bewilderment, which made the task of translating ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... gift of fluent and graceful expression is also widely diffused, and in common with Mrs Thomas Stevenson and her son, not a few of the Balfour connection have been very charming letter writers, in the days when letters were worth receiving, and ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... to talk hastily on other matters, an art in which he was an adept, for it was his gift to be fluent on anything or nothing. But although Archie had the grace or the timidity to suffer him to rattle on, he was by no means done with the subject. When he came home to dinner, he was greeted with a sly demand, how things were looking "Cauldstaneslap ways." Frank took his first glass of port ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Shakespeare, a Browning or a Dickens, conquers us with an abundance like nature's. He feeds us out of a horn, of plenty. This, unfortunately, is possible only to writers of the first order. The others, when they attempt profusion, become fluent rather than abundant, facile of ink rather than generous of golden grain. Who does not agree with Pope that Dryden, though not Shakespeare, would have been a better poet ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... sir, it would surely be most unusual for a man like you to go to war," he began, and for quite ten minutes he proceeded to set forth in fluent and excited speech a number of reasons why the idea of Barry's going to war was absurd and preposterous to him. It must be confessed that Barry was the only one of the men who appeared to give much heed to him. They seemed to be dazed by the stupendous ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... amazing and disturbing to him because he could not remember the time or occasion when the knack of fluent ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... through the courtesy of Captain Koenig, was assigned one of the larger cabins, near the captain's own. Hamilton spoke to Captain Koenig in fluent German. The German captain seemed to take considerable interest ...
— The Boy Allies with Uncle Sams Cruisers • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... of either of these, your only chance is Latin. At first I found great difficulty in brushing up anything sufficiently conversational, more especially as it was necessary to broaden out the vowels in the high Roman fashion; but a little practice soon made me more fluent, and I got at last to brandish my "Pergratum est," etc. in the face of a new acquaintance, without any misgivings. On this occasion I thought it more prudent to let Sigurdr make the necessary arrangements for our journey, and in a few minutes I ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... the Discourse that I have discovered before 1730 appears in volume two (1711) of a three-volume translation of Boileau's works. This, however, is not the same translation as the one accompanying Harte's Essay; it is noticeably less fluent and lacks (as does the French) the subtitle "arraigning persons ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... polite and sociable they are," said L'Isle. "Unlike the unmannered and almost languageless English peasant, they are unembarrassed and social, fluent, and often eloquent." ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... herself so quickly that the one or two eye-witnesses of this scene, such as Mrs. Uniacke and Charles Langholm, who saw that it had a serious meaning, without dreaming what that meaning was, were each in hopes that no one else had seen as much as they. Sir Baldwin plunged at once into amiable and fluent conversation, and before many moments Rachel's replies were infected with an approximate assurance and ease; then Langholm turned to his juvenile companion, and put a question in the form ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... one or two dissentient Liberals, and then Sefborough himself closed the debate. His speech was masterly and fluent; but though any disquietude he may have felt was well disguised under a tone of reassuring ease, the attempt to rehabilitate his position—already weakened in more than one direction—was a task beyond ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... vindictive as its greetings are courteous and kind-hearted. I have often heard it said by the Persians and Tatars who live along the Lower Volga that there is no language to swear in like the Russian; and I must admit that they illustrated and proved their assertion when occasion offered in the most fluent and incontrovertible manner; but I am convinced, after having heard the curses of experts in all parts of the East, that for variety, ingenuity and force the profanity of the Caucasian mountaineers is unsurpassed. They are by no means satisfied with damning their adversary's ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... entertaining as it was penetrating; his allusions and quotations, as far as they were English and within my reach, were apt and ingenious - and the wild and sudden flights of his fancy, bursting forth from his creative imagination in language fluent, forcible, and varied, had a charm for my ear and my attention wholly new and ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... and social mentor upon the plains. Of course, we could not speak Mongol, but both my wife and I know some Chinese and our cook-boy Lu was possessed of a species of "pidgin English" which, by using a good deal of imagination, we could understand at times. Since our lama spoke fluent Chinese, he acted as interpreter with the Mongols, and we had no difficulty. It is wonderful how much you can do with sign language when you really have to, especially if the other fellow tries to understand. You always can be sure that the Mongols will ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... and dabbling in chemistry, Shelley was not wholly neglectful of Etonian studies. He acquired a fluent, if not a correct, knowledge of both Greek and Latin, and astonished his contemporaries by the facility with which he produced verses in the latter language. His powers of memory were extraordinary, and the rapidity with which he read a book, ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... noonday. Nor was his conversation altogether light and mirthful. There were at times bursts of high enthusiasm, at which he would himself laugh heartily a moment afterward—there were touches of passing romance and poetry blending in an under-current with his fluent mirth; and, above all, there was an evident strain of right feeling, of appreciation of all that was great and generous and good, predominant above romance and wit, perceptible in every ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... children as very dear just then. He had a great deal to say, and wanted to say it all at once, but words never came to him too easily; he had missed many an opportunity in life for the want of fluent and spontaneous address. He stammered and halted somewhat in his delivery. A new language with but a single word in it would have ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... time," replied my friend, "that your confidence in smooth features and fluent accents should have ended long ago. Till I gained from my present profession some knowledge of the world, a knowledge which was not gained in a moment, and has not cost a trifle, I was equally wise in my own conceit; and, in order to decide upon the truth of ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... disappointing though they were, these missives helped him through the days; but he looked forward to them rather as a pretext for replies than for their actual contents. Undine was never at a loss for the spoken word: Ralph had often wondered at her verbal range and her fluent use of terms outside the current vocabulary. She had certainly not picked these up in books, since she never opened one: they seemed rather like some odd transmission of her preaching grandparent's oratory. But in her brief and colourless letters ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... the Misses Hernandez, with whom you scarcely exchanged a word at dinner, and whom I invited for you and your fluent Spanish. They are charming girls, even if they are a little stupid. But what can I do? If I am to live here, I must have a few young people around me, if only to make the place cheerful for others. Do ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... sitting down into unexpected laps. Expostulations, apologies, and so on. Somebody had gnawed a piece from one of the wheels, and we lurched through the scenery with a banging metallic clangour which made conversation difficult, in spite of which Jo astonished the natives by her colloquial and fluent Serbian. We had an enormous director of a sanitary department and a plump wife, evidently risen, but fat people rise in Serbia automatically like balloons. We had three meagre old gentlemen, one unshaven for a week, one whiskered ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... Scenes," there is a shimmering "Dragon Fly," a monody, "Ophelia," with a pedal-point of two periods on the tonic, and a fluent "Barcarolle" with a deal ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... another lady. She was on the whole a superior kind of person. A fair poetess, a good musician, and a fluent speaker, with good enunciation, and graceful in her movements. All these admirable qualities I noticed myself, and heard them spoken of by others. As my acquaintance with her commenced at the time when I was not on the best of terms with my former companion, I was glad to enjoy ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... translations from the Arabic should be retranslated into the new Hebrew, he held, and he furnished an example by recasting the first part of Maimuni's Moreh Nebukim. His modernized version, lucid and fluent, printed alongside of Ibn Tibbon's, presents a striking contrast to the stiffness and obscurity of the Provencal scholar's. Levin was also the first to write in the Yiddish, or Judeo-German, dialect, for the instruction of the masses, which made him the butt of more than one ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... from an over-fluent tongue rather than a resolute will, was determined to make himself heard. He addressed the driver again. Italian in the mouth of Italians is a deep-voiced stream, with unexpected cataracts and boulders ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... works; who represent their ecclesiastical orders as special highways to heaven? What is their theory? They teach, as you observe, that cause is produced by effect. Just as if mere muscular tissue that is not a tongue becomes a tongue by fluent speaking, or becomes mouth and throat by virtue of much drinking; as if running makes feet; keen hearing, an ear; smelling, a nose; nourishment at the mother's breast, a child; suspension from the apple-tree, an apple. Beautiful specimens, indeed, would these be—fine tongues, throats ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... much interest—Mother, oh, yes, Mother. Six crossed pages of St. Louis gossip and wanderingly fluent advice. She sets herself to read it, though, dutifully enough—she is under ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... was a man who had seen many changes, And always changed as true as any needle; His Polar Star being one which rather ranges, And not the fixed—he knew the way to wheedle: So vile he 'scaped the doom which oft avenges; And being fluent (save indeed when fee'd ill), He lied with such a fervour of intention— There was no doubt he earned his ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... that fluent sweet-tongu'd Greek, Who lisp'd at first, in future times speak plain By Art he gladly found what he did seek A full requital of his, striving pain Art can do much, but this maxima's most sure A weak or wounded brain ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... when he claimed to have found inaccuracies in Froude's transcripts from the Simancas manuscripts without knowing a word of Spanish. But he was seldom so frank as that. It was not often that he forgot his two objects of holding up Froude as the fluent, facile ignoramus, and himself as the profound, ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... struck as though by poison. Also there are other springs, whose gushing waters are said to resemble the quality of the bowl of Ceres. There are also fires, which, though they cannot consume linen, yet devour so fluent a thing as water. Also there is a rock, which flies over mountain-steeps, not from any outward impulse, but of its ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... powerful and beautiful story.... It fulfils every requirement of artistic fiction. It brings out what is most impressive in human action, without owing any of its effectiveness to sensationalism or artifice. It is natural, fluent in evolution, accordant with experience, graphic in description, penetrating in analysis, and absorbing ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... going to sleep; I never saw a look in the face of one of them which indicated that he was not profoundly interested. I was in their meeting last Sunday, and I told them about Sui Chung. Most of these Chinese can read. Some of them are very fluent talkers, and some are very intelligent. I suppose we have a thousand or fifteen hundred in this city, and a very large proportion of them, they tell me, can read the ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... Francqui for, as his good angel had prophesied, his one word of English met every requirement and he got the assignment. Since that time, I might add, he has acquired a fluent command of the English language. Francqui has always been willing to take a chance and lead ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... no especial culture that we know of, and with little originality of character. In these respects he presented a remarkable contrast to Columbus, who was a man of various accomplishments, large minded, enthusiastic, fluent, affectionate, inventive. And so, whereas Columbus had always treated the natives with consideration and humanity, Ovando soon began to rule them with a rod of iron. We must not linger too long over his administration of what we may call Columbus's kingdom, but there is one sad episode which ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... Spider is still at table. I take away her dish. Naught remains of the Locust but his skin, hardly altered in shape, but utterly drained and perforated in several places. The method, therefore, was changed during the night. To extract the non-fluent residue, the viscera and muscles, the stiff cuticle had to be tapped here, there and elsewhere, after which the tattered husk, placed bodily in the press of the mandibles, would have been chewed, re-chewed and finally reduced ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... and width for the rings to travel pleasantly, yet not to make one ring, because of wind upon the water! In the days that were not more than two years old, Springhaven could have taken all this news, with a swiftly expanding and smoothly fluent circle, with a lift of self-importance at the centre of the movement, and a heave of gentle interest in the far reflective corners. Even now, with a tumult of things to consider, and a tempest of ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... opportunity of hearing a new violinist of real promise. But Alma had not brought her violin; lest she should make herself cheap, she never played now at people's houses. The critic had to be satisfied with hearing her talk and gazing upon her beauty. Alma was become a very fluent talker, and her voice had the quality which fixes attention. At luncheon, whilst half-a-dozen persons lent willing ear, she compared Sarasate's playing of Beethoven's Concerto with that of Joachim, and declared that Sarasate's cadenza ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... heard, said he, was only because I insisted on her going to bed! By these words Louisa discovered how he had imposed upon the man, and cried out she was not his wife; but as she spoke very bad Italian, and the man understood no French, the count being very fluent in that language, had much the advantage, the innkeeper was fully satisfied, and they were again left alone, having a second opportunity to prosecute his ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... a yell from Nulty; but Toddles hung on like grim death. Hawkeye was bawling fluent profanity and seeing red. Toddles heard one and sensed the other—and he clung grimly on. He was all doubled up around Hawkeye's knees, and in that position Hawkeye couldn't get at him very well; and, besides, Toddles had his ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... before I began to speak, he [my father] committed me to the care of a German,... totally ignorant of our language, but very fluent, and a great critic, in Latin. This man, whom he had fetched out of his own country, and whom he entertained with a very great salary, for this only end, had me continually with him: to him there were also joined two ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... be superfluous to point out the fluent elegance of this poem, or to dwell farther upon the astonishing fact that anything so purely Renaissance in tone should have been produced ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... fight, and he could also think. He was no brawling ruffian, no ordinary rake. Remembering what Scotland was in those days, Bothwell might well seem in reality a princely figure. He knew Italian; he was at home in French; he could write fluent Latin. He was a collector of books and a reader of them also. He was perhaps the only Scottish noble of his time who had a book-plate of his own. Here is something more than a mere reveler. Here is a man of varied accomplishments ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... the country attorney very often united the functions of solicitor and counsel. As a result of this double life, the attorney acquired the peculiar intellectual defects of the barrister, and retained the heavy responsibilities of the attorney. He grew talkative and fluent, and lost his lucidity of judgment, the first necessity for the conduct of affairs. If a man of more than ordinary ability tries to do the work of two men, he is apt to find that the two men are mediocrities. The Paris attorney never spends himself in forensic eloquence; and as he seldom attempts ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... lady will allow me," began Dete again, in her usual fluent manner, "I myself had lost count of her exact age; she is certainly a little younger, but not much; I cannot say precisely, but I think she ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... enough, but sharp disagreement arose in 1864. He had propounded a particular plan for the reconstruction of Southern States. Senator Wade, the formidable Chairman of the Joint Committee on the War, and Henry Winter Davis, a keen, acrid, and fluent man who was powerful with the House, carried a Bill under which a State could only be reconstructed on their own plan, which differed from Lincoln's. The Bill came to Lincoln for signature in the last hours of the session, and, amidst ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... an active creative legend by the efforts to realize it in life. Being an antithesis to the analytical novel, this novel treats of sex, not as a psychology but as a philosophy; nuances are avoided, the feminine figure becomes a symbol, drawn, not photographically but broadly, in fluent, even exaggerated Botticellian outlines. I might go even further and say that as a symbol of Russian revolution the figure of Elisaveta is perhaps meant to stand out with the statuesque boldness of the Victory of Samothrace. The feminine figure, nude or thinly draped, has been used as symbol ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... picture-book that always lies ready for the turning of the youngest or the oldest hands; was receiving the welcome of the playmates she best loved, and was silently yielding herself to the power which works all wonders with its benignant magic. Hour after hour she journeyed along that fluent road. Under bridges where early fishers lifted up their lines to let them through; past gardens tilled by unskilful townsmen who harvested an hour of strength to pay the daily tax the city levied ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... curled, but she still kept silence. Hugo thought that her eye rested with some complacency upon the silver beads; but she did not express a tithe of the pleasure and surprise which flowed so readily from Mrs. Heron's fluent tongue. ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... freedom; his voice swells, and the foes of the Republic tremble. His name is Danton; his violence is a poor cloak to his odious moderatism, and his base corruption is manifest at last. The conspirator, the agent of the foreigner is that fluent stammerer, the man who clapped the first cockade of revolution in his hat, that pamphleteer who, in his ironical and cruel patriotism, nicknamed himself, 'The procureur of the Lantern.' His name is Camille Desmoulins. He threw off the mask by defending the Generals, ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... thought,—if, instead of striking these, he jangles the chords, stick a fact into him like a stiletto. But remember that talking is one of the fine arts,—the noblest, the most important, and the most difficult,—and that its fluent harmonies may be spoiled by the intrusion of a single harsh note. Therefore conversation which is suggestive rather than argumentative, which lets out the most of each talker's results of thought, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... were not realized. As a beginner, her first steps were necessarily slow; but she took pains, and had no bad habits or evil accents to unlearn, and after a while she "got hold" of the language and went on more rapidly. Marian's fluent chatter stimulated her to try to talk as fast also, though Mademoiselle Bougereau, their teacher, found a great deal of fault with Marian, and said that many of the phrases which came so glibly out of her mouth partook of the nature of slang, and were not finished or elegant French. ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... thoroughly under the painful pressure of the new revelation Tito was making of himself, for her resistance to find any strong vent. As that fluent talk fell on her ears there was a rising contempt within her, which only made her more conscious of her bruised, despairing love, her love for the Tito she had married and believed in. Her nature, possessed with the ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... these missives helped him through the days; but he looked forward to them rather as a pretext for replies than for their actual contents. Undine was never at a loss for the spoken word: Ralph had often wondered at her verbal range and her fluent use of terms outside the current vocabulary. She had certainly not picked these up in books, since she never opened one: they seemed rather like some odd transmission of her preaching grandparent's oratory. But in her brief and colourless letters she repeated the same bald statements ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... mortified, when talking in a company with fluent vivacity, and, as he flattered himself, to the admiration of all who were present; a German who sat next him, and perceived Johnson rolling himself, as if about to speak, suddenly stopped him, saying, 'Stay, stay,—Toctor Shonson is going to say something.' This ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... great open space, and around which extended a vast throng of knights, nobles, and common people. Peter the Hermit stood by the pope's side, and told the story of the miseries and humiliations of the Christians in Jerusalem in that fiery and fluent oratory which had stirred the soul of all Europe. Pope Urban followed in an impassioned address, recounting the sufferings of the Christian pilgrims, and calling upon the people of France to rise ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... ill-feeling!—true religion, too, for these Lestrigonians were most seriously in earnest in their chapelling. Yet no doubt they fomented the row, for the pastor himself was much too clever a man to proceed to such extremities. By nature he was a fluent speaker, rising to eloquence as eloquence is understood among that kind of audience. He carried them with him, quite swept them away. They came to hear him from miles round about; there were plenty of other chapels, ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... deficient. Tall, slender, elderly, with a fine bald head, a mild countenance, a most insinuating address, and a general air of faded gentility, Mr. Thomas Long was exactly the foreman to give respectability to his employer; whilst bold, fluent, rapid, loud, dashing in aspect and manner, with a great fund of animal spirits, and a prodigious stock of assurance and conceit, respectability was, to say the truth, the precise qualification which Mr. Joseph Hanson ...
— Mr. Joseph Hanson, The Haberdasher • Mary Russell Mitford
... large audience,—men and women. "Robert Winston, Esq.," was the orator of the evening. He was a fluent speaker, and had a good deal of humor. He began about the early Anglo-Saxon guilds, and the banding together of craftsmen when towns grew large and prosperous, and labor was performed in the workshops, ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... gladdening west is sinister With sounds of nameless battle overseas; Though when we turn and question in suspense If these things be indeed after these ways, And what things are to follow after these, Our fluent men of place and consequence Fumble and fill their mouths with hollow phrase, Or for the end-all of deep arguments Intone their dull commercial liturgies— I dare not yet believe! My ears are shut! I will not hear the thin satiric praise And muffled laughter of our enemies, Bidding us never sheathe ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... acknowledged the honour in fluent Melanesian, was understood to say that he had only done his duty, that he was speechless with gratitude and that he would always regard Lord READING as a brother. A recherche vegetarian luncheon was then served, after which Lord ROTHERMERE presented each member ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 4, 1919. • Various
... be very glad to see the noble Athenian in his own city. His fame for eloquence and prudence is already in Tyre and Babylon," spoke the stranger, never taking his steel-blue eyes from the orator's face. The accent was Oriental, but the Greek was fluent. The prince—for prince he was, whatever his nation—pressed his hand closer. Almost involuntarily Democrates's hand responded. They clasped tightly; then, as if Lycon feared a word too much, the unknown released his hold, bowed with ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... felt a defiance against his aristocracy beat in every pulse; for, however grandly he might look back to the long ancestry of the Brookes and the Grevilles, she had a glowing consciousness that her own blood, rapid and fluent, flowed in her veins from Adam of Saltsberg; and, at length, provoked by the dullness of a taciturnity that, in the midst of such renowned interlocutors, produced as narcotic a torpor as could have ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... correspondence on hand, relating to an engagement with a new patient; and, with her, correspondence was no light matter. Pride had always stood between Mrs. Bailey and culture, ever since she got her schooling done. Otherwise she might have acquired style and a fluent caligraphy. As it was, her style was uncertain and her method slow. Knowing this—without admitting it—she was influenced by hearing a six o'clock post referred to, having previously thought her letters went an ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... quite simply, Love is blind. We might go further and say, Love is deaf. That would be a profound and obvious truth. We might go further still and say, Love is dumb. But that would be a profound and obvious lie. For love is always an extraordinarily fluent talker. Love is a wind-bag, filled with ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... itself before them, a dun-white band flung across the darkening down. A veil of grey air was drawn across the landscape. To their left the further moors streamed to the horizon, line after line, curve after curve, fluent in the watery air. Nearer, on the hillside to their right, under the haze that drenched its green to darkness, the furze threw ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... informed the Commander, in Spanish that was more fluent than elegant or precise—his name was Peleg Scudder. He was master of the schooner GENERAL COURT, of the port of Salem in Massachusetts, on a trading voyage to the South Seas, but now driven by stress of weather into the bay of San Carlos. He begged permission to ride out the gale under ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... height above her, and who, now that her first romantic admiration of his lofty bearing has worn off, and her fretful little refinements of taste and sentiment are not instinctively responded to, is thrown into no wholesome household collision with a fluent man, fluent in prose and rhyme. Lady Feverel, when she first entered on her duties at Raynham, was jealous of her husband's friend. By degrees she tolerated him. In time he touched his guitar in her chamber, and they played Rizzio and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... from fluent lips, and mirth distract the breast, Through midnight hours that yield no more their former hope of rest; 'Tis but as ivy-leaves around the ruin'd turret wreathe, All green and wildly fresh without, but worn ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... Albany Register, and from his earliest youth had been as zealous a Republican as he was warm and disinterested in his friendships. To friend and foe he was alike cordial and generous. He possessed an open mind, not so eloquent as Van Ness, and less brilliant, perhaps, in conversation; but the fluent splendour of his speech and the beauty of his person and manners went as far toward the attainment of his ambition. He had been elected clerk of the Assembly continuously since 1803, until his popularity among the members, whom he served with uniform ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... want to bump up and down the sandy plain again, so a lively conversation goes on in Dutch about the road between one of my gentlemen and somebody who looks like a "stuck-vat" upon short legs. The dialogue is fluent and lively, beginning with "Ja, ja!" and ending with "All right!" but it leads to our hitting off the right track exactly, and coming out at a lovely little cottage-villa under the mountain, where we rest and lunch and then stroll about up the hill spurs, through myrtle hedges and shady oak avenues. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... her that she would suffer in no kind of way, that we must use her school for a week or so and that any loss or damage that she incurred would of course be made up to her. She was then, of a sudden, immensely fluent, explaining that her husband—"a most excellent husband to me in every way one might say"—had been dead fifteen years now, that her two sons were both fighting for the Austrians, that she looked after the school assisted ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... finally told her the whole story, she laughing and weeping in turn. To her, as to him, it seemed incredible that such overwhelming disasters could have grown out of so small a cause, and, being a fluent French scholar, she demanded a sight of the fatal piece of pasteboard. In vain her husband tried to divert her by proposing a trip through Italy. She would consent to nothing until she had seen the mysterious card which Burwell was now convinced he ought long ago to have destroyed. After refusing ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... intent may be imagined. Again, a man who has sincerely devoted himself to gaining the esteem of his charges does not like to hear himself described, even at a distance, as "Popularity Prout" by a dark and scowling Celt with a fluent tongue. A rumor that stories—unusual stories—are told in the form-rooms, between the lights, by a boy who does not command his confidence, agitates such a man; and even elaborate and tender politeness—for the courtesy wise-grown men offer to a bewildered ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... Western State, where the persevering, but at present circumscribed, cycler has not yet had time to penetrate, and the bicycle is therefore to them a wonder to be gazed at and commented on, generally - it must be admitted - in language more fluent as to words than in knowledge of the subject discussed. Not far from where the trail leads out of Crow Creek bottom on to the higher table-land, I find the grassy plain smoother than the wagon-trail, and bowl along for a short distance ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... Drances, and fluent is ever thy speech at the moment war calls for action; and when the fathers are summoned thou art there the first. But we need no words to fill our senate-house, safely as thou wingest them while the mounded walls keep off the enemy, and the trenches swim not yet with blood. ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... competitors entered for the contest; but Ghiberti's and Brunelleschi's efforts were alone considered seriously. A comparison of these two reliefs proves that Ghiberti, at any rate, had a finer sense of grouping. He filled the space at his disposal more easily and his hand was more fluent; but there is a very engaging vivacity in the other work, the realistic details of which are so arresting as to make one regret that Brunelleschi had for sculpture so little time. In S. Maria Novella is that crucifix in wood which he carved for his friend Donatello, ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... carriages at Breslau station, that the revolution had broken out at Vienna, that the rails were torn up, the Bahn-hof burnt, the military defeated and driven from the town. William Grey's official papers, aided by his fluent German, enabled us to pass the barriers, and find our way into the city. He went straight to the Embassy, and sent me on to the 'Erzherzog Carl' in the Karnthner Thor Strasse, at that time the best hotel in Vienna. It being still ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... persistency that was maddening. A young French sailor who did not look more than seventeen, and was splashed all over with blood from having fallen in one of the worst places, kept striking them two and three at a time, and cursing them in fluent Breton, in the hope of bringing them to reason. "Eh bien, mes belles! Vous ne finissez pas," he ended despairingly, and rushed off again to see whether he could find ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... for troubling you to call on me," she said, in fluent and precise French, although with a somewhat foreign accent and manner of speech; "I should not have done it were you not the only trustworthy person from whom I can learn the necessary particulars of the terrible Rossberg accident. ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... society was a Cypriote, named Joseph Hallevi, or the Levite. Like the others, he sold his land and carried the price of it to the feet of the Twelve. He was an intelligent man, with a devotion proof against everything, and a fluent speaker. The apostles attached him closely to themselves and called him Barnaba, that is to say, "the son of prophecy" or of "preaching." He was accounted, in fact, of the number of the prophets, that ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... in a certain order of mind. His phrases about "dire calamity" and so on mean nothing; the whole tenor of his writing proves that he represents, and consciously, one of the forces which go to bring war about; his part in the business is a fluent irresponsibility, which casts scorn on all who reluct at the "inevitable." Persistent prophecy is a familiar way ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... tended to damp the ardor of some who wanted to come, as well as that of sympathizers. The road was not idle, however. Orlando's coming was hailed with great satisfaction. He was twenty-nine years of age, full black, possessed considerable intelligence, and was fluent in speech; fully qualified to give clear statements as to the condition of Slavery in Richmond, etc. While the Committee listened to his narrations with much interest, they only took note of how he had fared, and the character ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... the Indians was after the manner of a great "Pow-wow." The Indians are fluent and eloquent speakers, though they indulge ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... have been something marvellous. The sweet, persuasive voice, the fluent speech, and occasionally a flash of the old energy, were all we who knew her in later years were granted, to show us what had been; but it was enough to confirm the accounts given by those who had felt ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... bearing little weight, was gratefully accepted by the German clavichord players, and, reacting, became one of the determining agents of the piano music and style of playing of the Vienna school. Thus arose a fluent execution of a rich figuration and brilliant passage playing, with but little inclination to sonorousness of effect, lasting from the time of Mozart's immediate followers to that of Henri Herz; a period of half a century. Knee-pedals, as we ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... was evidently no stranger to the coast, and Bones, who watched the man's canoe being loaded that afternoon, and heard his fluent observations on the slackness of his paddlers, realized that his acquaintance with Central Africa was an extensive one. He cursed in Swahili and Portuguese, and his language was forcible and impolite. ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... me a strangely potent sense of personality. Such subtle intermingling of seer with thing seen is the outcome only of long and intricate brooding, a process not too favoured by modern life, yet without which we achieve little but a fluent chaos of clever insignificant impressions, a kind of glorified journalism, holding much the same relation to the deeply-impregnated work of Turgenev, Hardy, and Conrad, as a film bears ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... girl naturally; not ready with her tears, not liberal with her caresses, not fluent in her talk, Eunice was affected by my proposal in a manner wonderful to see. She suddenly developed into an excitable person—I declare she kissed me. "Oh," she burst out, "how clever you are! The very thing to write about; I'll do ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... I dare answer for the Author, His Modesty misguides him to think it).——No Applause therefore can be too high, for such Merit. And, let me abominate the contemptible Reserves of mean-spirited Men, who while they but hesitate their Esteem, with Restraint, can be fluent and uncheck'd in their Envy.——In an Age so deficient in Goodness, Every such Virtue, as That of this Author, is a salutary Angel, in Sodom. And One who cou'd stoop to conceal, a Delight he receives from the Worthy, wou'd be equally ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson
... are natures whose perceptiveness outruns their power of expression—and these are, as a rule, the dissatisfied, unhappy temperaments that one encounters; there are others whose power of expression outruns their perceptiveness, and these are facile, fluent, empty, agreeable writers. ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... in German for a few minutes, I limping along behind the more fluent Pousette and Bulle. Then I said something in an aside to Blount, and the officer broke into the conversation in perfectly good English. He turned out to be a volunteer officer from Hamburg, who had spent some thirty ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... been a fluent speaker in public, while in private life a natural indolence of disposition, improved, so to say, by an Eastern life, had made him so sparing of his words, that at times when he was ill or indisposed he could never be said to converse at all, ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... "In tracts of fluent heat began, The seeming prey of cyclic storms, The home of seeming random forms, Till, at the ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... the last resort based upon an important document penned at the instance of the Duke of Florence by Vasari to Buonarroti, not long before the old man's death in Rome. This epistle has so weighty a bearing upon the matter in hand that I shall here translate it. Careful study of its fluent periods will convince an unprejudiced mind that the sacristy, as we now see it, is even less representative of its maker's design than it was when Vasari wrote. The frescoes of Giovanni da Udine are gone. It will also show ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... all right, or else he'd swallowed it; for as an easy and fluent converser Alvin headed the bill. Course, it's an odd line he hands out, the kind that keeps you guessin'. In spots it listens like highbrow book stuff, and then again it don't. But somehow I finds it sort of ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... brother at a disadvantage, and he grew fluent and caustic as he went on, almost changing places with Howard, who took the rake out of the boy's hands and followed, raking up ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... science lifts its modern type, Hist'ry her Pot, Divinity her Pipe, While proud philosophy repines to shew, Dishonest sight! his breeches rent below; Imbrown'd with native bronze, lo! Henley stands, Tuning his voice and balancing his hands. How fluent nonsense trickles from his tongue! How sweet the periods, neither said nor sung! Still break the benches, Henley! with thy strain, While SHERLOCK, HARE, and GIBSON, preach in vain. Oh great restorer of the good old stage, Preacher ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... to Deadman's Bay, I had become acquainted with a Scotch gentleman, who was employed on the medical staff of the U.S. army, I believe, as a supernumerary, or candidate for a commission as a surgeon. He was a most agreeable companion, of good natural parts, fluent in conversation, intelligent in remark, free from egotism, and well educated, I believe, at Cambridge, in England. We soon became attached to each other. He accompanied me in my rambles, and we were almost inseparable companions during ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... Expostulations, apologies, and so on. Somebody had gnawed a piece from one of the wheels, and we lurched through the scenery with a banging metallic clangour which made conversation difficult, in spite of which Jo astonished the natives by her colloquial and fluent Serbian. We had an enormous director of a sanitary department and a plump wife, evidently risen, but fat people rise in Serbia automatically like balloons. We had three meagre old gentlemen, one unshaven for a week, one whiskered ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... sculpture than painting. Each paragraph, almost every sentence is a perfectly chiselled whole, impressive by no brilliance or outside polish, so much as by the inward intensity of which it is the symbol. Thus his writing is never fluent or easy, but it has a moral dignity rare ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... like this, fluent and unnecessary. Perhaps no verses in English were ever made so exactly in the approved fashion of modern Latin verses. Warton writes pleasantly, his cento of reminiscences is skilful, and his own epithets are sometimes ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh
... words were no sooner uttered, than I felt my fluent civility suddenly begin to coagulate; the attention I paid my guest became forced and unnatural. I was no longer at my ease; and though I bowed, strained, and endeavoured to be, if possible, more respectful than ever, yet I really could hardly prevent my lips ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... Saint Louis, which I accepted from Corcelle, is to me my duty, and I will sustain it in the best way in my power.... Ah! that ancient France, how one feels her grandeur here, and what a part she is known to have had in Christianity! It is that chord which I should like to have heard vibrate in a fluent writer like you, and not eternally those paradoxes, those sophisms. But what matters it to you who date from yesterday and who boast of it," he added, almost sadly, "that in the most insignificant corners of this city centuries of history ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... a fool. In the discussion of graver matters—politics, law, and history—that arose in the smoking-room, he was not to be put down by more fluent tongues; demolished sophistry by solid reasoning, impregnable assertions, and an array of facts that might be prolix, but was always formidable—in short, sustained fully the character ascribed to him by his brother-in-law, of a ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... and his duty required him to be so, no more proves that he had a cold heart than does the fact that he was silent, dignified, and reserved. Cold-blooded men are not fierce in seeking to redress the wrongs of others, nor are the fluent of speech the only kind and generous members of the ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... Paul and apostolic figures in the cartoons or on the Vatican walls. The German artist's manner is less rhetorical, but his conception is hardly less grandiose; and his taste does not so closely border on over-emphasis, but neither is it so conscious or so fluent. Technically it seems to me that the chief influence is a recollection of the large canvases of Jan and Hubert Van Eyck and Hubert Van der Goes which Duerer had admired in the Netherlands; these had strengthened and directed the bias of his self-culture ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... so cheerful was he, and light-hearted, as if his brief manhood had passed away, with its burden of cares and anxieties, and his boyish freedom and gladsomeness had come back again. The secret cause remained undiscovered; for Martha, fluent in tongue as she was, had enough discretion to keep her own counsel, and seal up her lips as close as wax, when it was necessary. The people puzzled themselves in vain; and Black Thompson left off hinting at revenge to Stephen. Even the master, when the boy passed him with ...
— Fern's Hollow • Hesba Stretton
... our leaders, Morris?" asked one of the listeners, as the speaker, a fluent, energetic young man, closed his recital of the atrocities he had witnessed. "Did they escape, or are they among the ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... has, luckily for me, been less obdurate than the language, or, between the two, I should have lost my remains of sanity. By the way, she is not an Armenian but a Venetian, as I believe I told you in my last. As for Italian, I am fluent enough, even in its Venetian modification, which is something like the Somersetshire version of English; and as for the more classical dialects, I had not forgot my former practice much ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... from my lips. I lacked not words now; fast I narrated; fluent I told my tale; it streamed on my tongue. I went back to the night in the park; I mentioned the medicated draught—why it was given—its goading effect—how it had torn rest from under my head, shaken me from my couch, carried me abroad with the lure of a vivid yet solemn fancy—a ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... good man's understanding when he disagrees with our views. Now I am quite willing to admit that Manning was a most amiable and well-meaning person; but I am unable to consider him seriously as a reasoner. The spectacle which he presented on this occasion, at least, was that of a fluent popular preacher, clutched by a powerful logician, and put into a witness-box to be thoroughly cross-examined. The one quality I can discover in his articles is a certain dexterity in evading plain issues ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... all he had seen and heard; that he wanted the troops to know that both he and the Queen always kept them in their thoughts, and that he meant to see all of them again, with his own eye, as soon as the war was over. The General gave it out very well, (he is fluent in Hindustani,) and it made a great ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... that little foreign accent that made it so pathetic, although, in spite of some odd blunders, she had become almost fluent in the English tongue. There was still no indication of tears in either her voice or her eyes, as she leaned back in the padded chair, her head supported by its top, and her long bare arms with their picturesque Greek bracelets resting wearily on ...
— A Beautiful Alien • Julia Magruder
... 1765. As he descended the Ohio he carefully plotted the river's windings and wrote out an interesting description of the fauna and flora observed. All went well until he reached the mouth of the Wabash. There the party was set upon by a band of Kickapoos, who killed half a dozen of his men. Fluent apologies were at once offered. They had made the attack, they explained, only because the French had reported that the Indians with Croghan's band were Cherokees, the Kickapoos' most deadly enemies. Now that their mistake ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... man hath no wit that cannot, from the rising of the lark to the lodging of the lamb, vary deserved praise on my palfrey. It is a theme as fluent as the sea; turn the sands into eloquent tongues, and my horse is argument for them all. 'Tis a subject for a sovereign to reason on, and for a sovereign's sovereign to ride on; and for the world, familiar to us and unknown, to lay apart their particular functions and ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... she recounts in the nightly half-hour which she spends with me when I am endeavoring to compose myself for sleep. Francesca is fluent at all times, but once seated on the foot of my bed she ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... habitues of these places. In the restaurant Stefan was detested, but tolerated for the sake of his wife. "Beauty and the Beast" they were dubbed. But in the hotel cafe he made himself more agreeable, and was liked for his charming appearance, his fluent French, and his quick mentality. The "Villagers," as these people called themselves, owing to their proximity to New York's old Greenwich Village, admired Mary with ardor, and liked her, but for a time were baffled by her innate English reserve. Mentally they stood round her like a litter ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... powerful weapon of assault, by this skilful advocate. He has been so much in office that he may be said to have been educated in public life. He is most thoroughly versed in all the tactics of debate. He is not only remarkably fluent in his elocution, but remarkably correct. He seldom miscalls or repeats a word. His style is not overloaded with ornament, and yet he draws liberally upon the treasury of rhetoric. His figures are often beautiful and striking, never incongruous. He is always ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of some incident he had seen in South Africa when sketching there for a London weekly, telling it graphically, incisively—he was not fluent. He etched in speech; he did not paint. She looked up at him once or twice as if some thought was running parallel with his story. He caught the look. He had just come to the close of his narrative. Presently she put out her hand and ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... powers of the mind are actively, (not mechanically) employed, while the individual is at the same time called on to exercise his powers of speech and hearing on something else, this faculty of extemporaneous speaking is cultivated, and rendered more easy and fluent. Whereas, on the contrary, the most extensive acquaintance with words, even when combined with much knowledge, has but little influence in making a ready speaker. Many of the most voluble of our species have but a very scanty vocabulary, ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... evenings became a fluent though drowsy talker, might have wandered on like this till her bed-time, had not Mrs. Hilary here appeared, in her dressing-gown. She sat down, and said, trying to sound natural and not annoyed and failing. "I heard so much talk, I thought I would come down and ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... operations and products of the Understanding alone; hence physical science cannot cover all the demands of his nature. But the history of the efforts made to satisfy these demands might be broadly described as a history of errors—the error, in great part, consisting in ascribing fixity to that which is fluent, which varies as we vary, being gross when we are gross, and becoming, as our capacities widen, more abstract and sublime. On one great point the mind of Epicurus was at peace. He neither sought nor ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... before husband, her affection remaining chiefly where it was before marriage. But if the moralist desires yet more solid virtues, he need only inquire of the first Sevillan he meets, who will give at shortest notice, in choice and fluent language, a far more impressive list than I ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... you, because you have special advantages in the matter of putting it. We older people are all fixed and fossils, as you are very fond of telling us. The iron has cooled and gone into rigid shapes with us. It is all fluent with you. You may become pretty nearly what you like. I do not mean in regard to circumstances: other considerations come in to determine these; but circumstances are second, character is first; and I do say, in regard to character, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... to time he took a bottle from his pocket and swallowed a portion of its contents, becoming fluent in his language as they proceeded on their way. Margaret remained silent, growing more and more frightened every time the bottle came out. At last he offered it to her. She declined it with cold politeness, which ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... minutes to realize that he was using the most atrocious language. Then they fled. The three footmen stood their ground a little longer. Mr. Donovan raised his voice a little. He felt old powers returning to him. He became fluent. One by one the footmen slank away. Mr. Donovan went on, without passion or heat. He arrived at a terrific malediction which he had found effective many years before in dealing with Italian navvies. The major domo ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... he appears to have favorably impressed the members of the House. Modest in demeanor, earnest in manner, and fluent in speech, he at once commanded the respect ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... though he refused to do or say anything but grunt, as The Pilot said to me afterwards, in a rage. It is true, Williams, the storekeeper just come from "across the line," did all the talking, but no one paid much attention to his fluent fatuities except as they represented the unexpressed mind of the dour, exasperating little Scotchman, who sat silent but for an "ay" now and then, so expressive and conclusive that everyone knew what he meant, and ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... passions when he discovered the extent of my ignorance and the amazing circumstance that whilst Fra Gervasio had made of me a fluent Latin scholar, he had kept me in utter ignorance of the classic writers, and almost in as great an ignorance of history itself. This the pedant set himself at once to redress, and amongst the earliest works he gave me as preparation were Latin translations of Thucydides ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... terrace down which she was walking into a deepening sea. Dreams ill-flavored as Orestes' filled her nights, and how tired she was must have sopped into her pillow, but her capacity for the present lessened her dread and made more bearable the fluent and fateful ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... were looking at the pictures an alcoholic breath assailed me from the region of my left ear, and a voice said in thick but fluent French, "I see, by the way you admire the paintings, that you are foreigners." He was a short, puffy man with a baldish head as ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... of Nueva Segovia is Don Fray Jose Hevia Campomanes, a religious of the Order of St. Dominic—who is most fluent in the Tagal language, and had been, for many years before, parish priest of Binondo, which parish he enriched with a fine cemetery. He took possession of his see June 19, 1890, but was made a prisoner at the outbreak ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... they tore and gorged and quarreled till, some fifteen minutes later, their last foothold sank beneath them. Then, with dripping beaks and talons, they all flapped back to their cliffs; and slowly the fluent sand smoothed itself to shining complacency over the tomb of the diplodocus, hiding and sealing away the stupendous skeleton for half ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... a visit to the United States in the year Eighteen Hundred Seventy-two, and lectured in most of the principal cities, and at all the great colleges. He was a most fascinating speaker, fluent, direct, easy, and his whole discourse ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
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