"Exordium" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... whom on all occasions he manifests a singular bitterness, of the credit generally given him of having aided materially in the recall of the Bourbons in 1814. But does he effect this by showing, as from this exordium we might expect, that his countrymen of the middle class, wearied of the costly triumphs and disasters of the empire, had begun to sigh for peace and their old kings? Not at all. He transfers the personal share in the drama from Prince Talleyrand to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... fortune drave them into those bitter extremes, requested Rosader to discourse, if it were not any way prejudicial unto him, the cause of his travel. Rosader, desirous any way to satisfy the courtesy of his favorable host, first beginning his exordium with a volley of sighs, and a few lukewarm tears, prosecuted his discourse, and told him from point to point all his fortunes: how he was the youngest son of Sir John of Bordeaux, his name Rosader, how his brother sundry times had wronged him, and ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... question than the scholar requires, to extract it entire:—"Venia," he says, "is here nothing else than what we, in the language of modesty, call an apology, and has respect to the very justification he has just offered in the foregoing exordium. For Tacitus there appeals to the usage, not of remote antiquity only, but of later times also, to justify his design of writing the biography of a distinguished man. There would have been no need of such an apology in other times. In other times, dispensing with ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... donate large sums of money to certain poor, but honest men, who adorn the lobby of the House, while they are waiting for generous patrons like unto you, then go home and calmly await the result. Your representative makes a speech, the exordium of which is Patriotism, the peroration of which is Star-Spangled Banner, and the central plum of which is your coal mine or iron mill. Your poor and honest friends wear out several pairs of shoes, the tariff bill ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 9, May 28, 1870 • Various
... College—"The Johnian Newton." His hit at the present Chief Secretary for Ireland,[22] when he was a junior Fellow of Trinity, is classical—"We are none of us infallible—not even the youngest of us." But it requires an eye-witness of the scene to do justice to the exordium of the Master's sermon on the Parable of the Talents, addressed in Trinity Chapel to what considers itself, and not without justice, the cleverest congregation in the world. "It would be obviously superfluous in a congregation ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... all the autumn. At the opening of the Opera House, on the 20th of November, Mrs. Yates, an actress whom he held in great esteem, delivered a poetical exordium of his composition. Beauclerc, in a letter to Lord Charlemont, pronounced it very good, and predicted that it would soon be in all the papers. It does not appear, however, to have been ever published. In his fitful state of mind Goldsmith ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... finding, in that grave old book, the just panegyric of woman's goodness, I discovered, to my great surprise, only a violent satire all spiced with texts borrowed from St. Augustine, the Roman laws and the ancient canons, with this sage conclusion, full worthy of the exordium:— ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... properly divides this poem into three parts; first, the exordium: next, a recital of the circumstances which preceded, and of those which accompanied the victory; lastly, a fuller description of the concluding event, the death of Sisera, and the disappointed hopes of his ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... me to see the people that I like!" is an exordium which has served for a manifesto in most homes. This phrase, with all the ideas that are concomitant, is oftenest employed by vain and ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... making use of which he was able to bring his illustrious qualities into play. The achievement in each case was afterwards due solely to his own ability, and the conquest which he made with difficulty was preserved with ease. This exordium is not without practical importance, as will be seen when we reach the application of the whole argument to the house of Medici at the conclusion of the treatise. The initial obstacles which an innovator has to overcome, meanwhile, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... still, while Podatadsky, by way of exordium, embraced her affectionately. Neither did she offer any opposition to his daring hands, as first they removed her long mantilla, and then threw back her black crape veil which had so faithfully concealed ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... to the conversations very well dressed, and, altogether, looked sumptuously. She began them with an exordium, in which she gave her leading views; and those exordiums were excellent, from the elevation of the tone, the ease and flow of discourse, and from the tact with which they were kept aloof from any excess, and from the gracefulness with which they were brought down, at last, to a possible level ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... consolation, nor its remnant as a sign of past triumphs, 'only this and nothing more,' as that wonderful man Poe makes his raven say. We never find our level until we go among people who know and care nothing about us, who have never 'heard of us'—that exordium of most greetings from folks of our own class. It is absolutely refreshing to be so unaffectedly despised and slighted—it does one a world of good, there is no doubt of that, especially when one's grandfather was a Revolutionary notability, and other antecedents of a piece—but men are ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... in his surplice, and taking his place at the altar, with his countenance pale as death, he read the exordium in an altered voice: "Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here, and in the face of this company, to join together this man and ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... either of having been an accomplice in a scheme now denounced by himself as a pirate's conspiracy, or of having betrayed, out of cowardice and cupidity, a faithful servant to foreign vengeance. That is the meaning of the exordium of this pamphlet published in November by the King's Printers, Bonham Norton and John Bill: 'Although Kings be not bound to give account of their actions to any but God alone; yet such are his Majesty's proceedings, as he hath always been willing to bring them ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... and state that he could not credit the existence of a Being, whose power was said to extend every where, but whom he had not yet seen, although he was now an old man. The aged sceptic is not a little conceited, as the following exordium to one of his speeches evinces: "It is very strange that I never meet with any one who is equal in sense to myself." The same old man, in one of his communicative moods, related to us the following tradition. The earth had been formed, but continued enveloped in total darkness, when ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... last public exordium, a contemptible fellow sought a quarrel with me, and obliged me to draw in my own defence, whom, on this occasion, I ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... tete-a-tete one should talk about persons, and in general Society about things. The state of the weather is always an excusable exordium, but it is convenient to have a paradox or heresy on the subject always ready so as to direct the conversation into other channels. Really domestic people are almost invariably bad talkers as their very virtues in home life ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... liberty to look at her, and he protests that he would never aspire to any higher privilege. It is gratifying to add that he follows her through many startling vicissitudes of fortune in a spirit worthy of this exordium, and of course is finally persuaded that he may allow himself a nearer approach to his goddess. The Maid of Honour has two lovers, who accept a rather similar position. One of them is unlucky enough to be always making mischief ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... history of Humboldt? The Sheba mine is in the hands of energetic San Francisco capitalists. It would seem that the ore is combined with metals that render it difficult of reduction with our imperfect mountain machinery. The proprietors have combined the capital and labor hinted at in my exordium. They are toiling and probing. Their tunnel has reached the length of one hundred feet. From primal assays alone, coupled with the development of the mine and public confidence in the continuance of effort, the stock had reared itself to eight hundred ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Prognostications. As it is not likely that I have a long Time to act on the Stage of this Life, for what with Head-Aches, hard Labour, Storms and broken Spectacles I feel my Blood chilling, and Time, that greedy Tyrant, devouring my whole Constitution," etc.,—an exordium which is certainly well adapted to excite our sympathy for Jonathan, even if it fail to inspire confidence in his "Prognostications," and leave us a little in the dark as to the necessary connection between "broken spectacles" and the "chilling of the blood." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... the whole affair. The Irish editor did not attempt to unite Malone's fragments—quite the contrary—he left Malone's first fragment as he found it; but he took the second fragment, namely, the exordium of the pretended will of John Shakspeare, and substituted it bodily as the exordium of the will of William Shakspeare, suppressing altogether the real exordium of the latter. So that this Irish ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 28. Saturday, May 11, 1850 • Various
... the churches. It was made the occasion of "charitable rebuke" and then of formal complaint against Roussel by his fellow canons, that he failed to repeat the angelic salutation, according to the orthodox practice, after the exordium of his sermon. To the combined exhortations and threats of his accusers Roussel replied in the chapter that, if he had done wrong, it belonged to the bishop to reprove him, but that as to himself he esteemed the repetition of the Lord's Prayer quite as ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... the lady of the house began, 'how wretchedly sorry I am to see you.' Paul bowed an assent to this, and could but acknowledge that the unpromising exordium was natural. 'My daughter has never had a secret from me in her life until within the last few months. She has written of you in her letters from time to time, but never led me to fancy that you were making love to her. I believe you are ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... descend upon such a place as Chippenden worried my father more than electoral anxieties. Jorian wrote, 'My best wishes to you. Be careful of your heads. The habit of the Anglo-Saxon is to conclude his burlesques with a play of cudgels. It is his notion of freedom, and at once the exordium and peroration of his eloquence. Spare me the Sussex ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... listened to Rogers' exordium on the duties of a citizen in an emergency, I remembered the "Standard Oil" code—"Everything for God (our God); God (our God) in everything." It was so essentially "Standard Oil," this willingness to commit even that greatest wrong, subverting the will ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... France and Great Britain. Livingston suggests that if Great Britain invade Louisiana, who can oppose her? Once more he refers to Great Britain's superior fleet. This interesting address concludes with the following exordium to France: "She will cheaply purchase the esteem of men and the favor of Heaven by the surrender of a distant wilderness, which can neither add to her wealth nor to her strength." This, as you will perceive, is quite a pointed remark. ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... then that Sypher entered on the exordium of the speech which convinced her of the diabolical noisomeness of the Jebusa Jones unguent. His peroration summed up the contest as that between ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... astounding exordium Paul eagerly pressed forward and entered the bureau. There certainly was Colonel Pendleton, in spotless evening dress; erect, flashing, and indignant; his aquiline nose lifted like a hawk's beak over his quarry, his ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... sole purpose is to apply "moral suasion" to the slaveholders themselves. As a matter of curiosity, I should like to know what their idea of this "moral suasion" is. Their discourses—yours is no exception—are all tirades, the exordium, argument and peroration, turning on the epithets "tyrants," "thieves," "murderers," addressed to us. They revile us as "atrocious monsters," "violators of the laws of nature, God and man," our homes the abode of every iniquity, our land a "brothel." We retort, that they ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... Greeley said, "Emancipation is first, the Union secondary. If they prefer slavery to liberty let the erring sisters go." Beecher was the all-round man of genius. His great speech in England began with an exordium at Manchester; he stated the arguments at Edinburgh, Glasgow and Liverpool; he pronounced the peroration at Exeter Hall, in London, and no such peroration and eloquence has been heard since Demosthenes' philippic against the tyrant of Macedon. But Beecher's criticisms ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... hyena of Exeter 'Change, looking almost as wild and feeling quite as savage. Presenting me to each and all of the splendid crowd which an idle curiosity, easily excited and as soon satisfied, had gathered round us, she prefaced every introduction with a little exordium which seemed to amuse every one but its object: 'Lord Erskine, this is the Wild Irish Girl whom you are so anxious to know. I assure you she talks quite as well as she writes.—Now, my dear, do tell my Lord Erskine some of those Irish stories you told us the other evening. Fancy yourself among ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... know. The situation was far beyond the poor lady's by-laws and regulations for the upbringing of families and the conduct of life. The elemental mother in her battled on the side of her only son—foolishly, irrationally, unkindly. Her exordium was as correct as could be. The tragedy shocked her, the scandal grieved her, the innuendoes of the Press she refused to believe; she sympathised with me deeply. But then she turned from me to Dale, and feminine unreason took possession of her pen. She bitterly reproached herself ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... exordium Mr. Sliverstone launches out into glowing praises of the conduct of Mrs. Sliverstone in the production of eight young children, and the subsequent rearing and fostering of the same; and thus the husband magnifies the wife, and ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... man who only writes what he believes will be more agreeable to you than the ornate laudations of those who have studied the art of compliment. For this reason, I will give insertion to nothing in this letter for which I have not the certainty both of experience and reason; and in the exordium, as in the rest of the work, I will write only as becomes a philosopher. There is a vast difference between real and apparent virtues; and there is also a great discrepancy between those real virtues that ...
— The Principles of Philosophy • Rene Descartes
... clipping; and with her head among the plants, listened attentively. Perhaps Miss Tox thought there was hope in this exordium, and ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... that this strange exordium dashed hopes which had already risen to a high pitch. Recovering myself as quickly as possible, however, I murmured that the honour of a visit from the King of Navarre was sufficient ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... this exordium; he replied, stepping into the road at the same time, "I've no money, and the ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... also the end, of all knowledge, against every merely formal dictate (their name is legion with practising Sophists of all ages) Peri brachylogias, kai eleeinologias, kai deinoseos, concerning freedom or precision, figure, emphasis, proportion of parts and the like, exordium and conclusion:—against all such the Platonic Socrates still protests, "You know what must be known before harmony can be attained, but not yet the laws of harmony itself,"—ta pro tragodias, Sophocles would object in like case, ta pro tragodias, ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... into taking another sponge-cake. "If they'd only let us walk about the corridors, or lounge in the House, it would be better. But to sit cooped up here is terrible. Worst of it is I've conned my speech over so often, got it mixed up; end turning up in middle; exordium marching in with rear-guard; was just right to go off at half-past six; now it's eight, and we won't be off ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 22nd, 1890 • Various
... Text. Annotatur hic qualiter puer quidam bis biennis in molendino aquatico submersus fuerat (et) ad inuocacionem beati regis henrici resuscitatus a mortuis anno dominice incarnacionis 1481. qui erat annus regni Edwardi quarti regis famosissimi vicesimus primus. Et primo ponitur exordium breue et ...
— Henry the Sixth - A Reprint of John Blacman's Memoir with Translation and Notes • John Blacman
... happiness in singularity; and dread a refinement of wisdom as a deviation into folly." Thus she dogmatically addresses a new married man; and to elucidate this pompous exordium, she adds, "I said that the person of your lady would not grow more pleasing to you, but pray let her never suspect that it grows less so: that a woman will pardon an affront to her understanding much sooner than one to her person, is well known; nor will any of ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... the young warriors for want of ardour in resisting Gudabirsi encroachments, were quoted as models of the "withering." Stimulated by the present of a Tobe, he composed a song in honor of the pilgrim: I will offer a literal translation of the exordium, though sentient of the fact that modesty ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... permits him to be present in the assemblies of the people, if any important affair come to be debated there, he will not fail to give his judgment of it; and in my opinion he would introduce his harangue by a very pleasant exordium, if he should begin with giving them to understand that he had never learnt anything of any man whatsoever; he must address himself to them in ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon
... the old-fashioned style of exordium by an old-fashioned foreman, who believed that the best results could be obtained by the most scurrilous abuse of his men—and the immediate efforts of Vienna ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... amazed speculation as to whither the orator was being led by this extraordinary exordium, but Mr ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... he continued, clearing his throat which had grown somewhat rusty from his pompous exordium "the late respected gentleman in question did not leave matters in as satisfactory a condition as might have been desired—in fact—eh—well, altogether, the residue of his once considerable fortune ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... by three attentive gentlemen who seemed much less interested in art than in nature, sat Miss Maitland, within easy though obstructed earshot. She could hardly help hearing, and with an inward sigh of satisfaction the artist gave himself over utterly to the exordium which for some inexplicable reason formed the nucleus of his idea of a properly conducted studio affair. He felt that he was going to be very eloquent, and he felt reasonably secure from interruption, for no one in that ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... invention of which all credit must be given to Lorenzo de' Medici, does not greatly differ from the Maggio in structure. It admitted, however, of great varieties, and was generally more complex in its interweaving of rhymes. Yet the essential principle of an exordium which should also serve for a refrain, was rarely, if ever, departed from. Two specimens of the Carnival Song will serve to bring into close contrast two very different aspects of Florentine history. The earlier was composed by Lorenzo de' Medici at the height of his power and in the summer of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... After the reading of the Gospel, the Very Reverend Fray Manuel Martin, an Augustinian from the province of Batangas, ascended the pulpit and kept the whole audience enraptured and hanging on his words, especially the Spaniards, during the exordium in Castilian, as he spoke with vigor and in such flowing and well-rounded periods that our hearts were filled with fervor and enthusiasm. This indeed is the term that should be used for what is felt, or what we feel, when the Virgin of our beloved Spain is considered, ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... After this lengthy exordium, Orris discreetly, changed the subject by wanting to know when he and Buck would be assigned again ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... friends of thy presence!" returned the Jinnee, who was apparently touched by this exordium, "for truly thou art a most excellent ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... you it is far from my intention to make any formal exordium, even if I knew the exact ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... Great with his Nephew the Heir-Apparent, every line of which betrays itself as false and spurious to a reader who has made any direct or effectual study of Frederick or his manners or affairs,—it is set forth, in the way of exordium to these pretended royal confessions, that 'notre maison,' our Family of Hohenzollern, ever since the first origin of it among the Swabian mountains, or its first descent therefrom into the Castle and Imperial Wardenship of Nurnberg, some six ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... how Browning wished his metrical movement to be judged. This is the exordium, and it is already full of his theory of life—the soul forced from within to aspire to the perfect whole, the necessary failure, the despair, the new impulse to love arising out of the despair; failure making fresh growth, fresh uncontentment. ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... forward swivelling of the ears. Wonderful to tell, they were actually listening. But in truth it was no wonder, for seldom in any, and assuredly never in that church, had there been heard such an exordium to a sermon. ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... But arriving and perceiving a crowd about it, and also, to his vast astonishment, a red baize carpet on the perron, and a butler bowing in the doorway with two footmen behind him, he coughed down his exordium, and led his daughter into the hall amid showers of rice and confetti. The bridegroom followed; and so did the wedding-guests, since no one ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... as the cause, and seeming well pleased that he could boast a deficiency so well befitting a warrior, that he had "no heart,"—his interior being framed of stone as hard as the flinty rock under his feet. This exordium finished, he proceeded to bestow sundry abusive epithets upon the prisoner, charging him with having put his young men to a great deal of needless trouble, besides having killed several; for which, he added, ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... disbelief of a Supreme Deity and state that he could not credit the existence of a Being whose power was said to extend everywhere but whom he had not yet seen, although he was now an old man. The aged sceptic is not a little conceited as the following exordium to one of his speeches evinces: "It is very strange that I never meet with anyone who is equal in sense to myself." The same old man in one of his communicative moods related to us the following tradition: The earth had ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... audience in these words: [50]"Messieurs, dans l'univers il n'ya qu'un soleil; dans le royaume de France il n'ya qu'un Roi; dans la medicine il n'ya que Charini." With this he placed his hand on his heart, bowed, and drew himself up with a look of the most glorious complacency. This exordium was received with the most rapturous applause by the crowd, who, from having often seen him in his progress through the kingdom, had known before that this was Charini himself, the celebrated itinerant worm doctor. "Gentlemen," he then proceeded, "it has been the noble object of my life to ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... greatly relished and enjoyed. And when hearing it sometimes regretted, with reference to at least one remarkable man, that he did not visit his flock quite so often as was desirable—many of the complainants' sole idea of a ministerial visit, meanwhile, being simply that it was a long exordium of agreeable gossip, with a short tail-piece of prayer stuck to its hinder end—we have strongly felt how immensely better it was that the assembled congregation should enjoy each year fifty-two Sabbaths of their minister at his best, than ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... words were clearly cut, simply and perfectly articulated. "It is often said that the day for speaking has passed, and that of action has arrived." It was a direct, plain introduction; not a florid exordium. The voice was clear and cold and distinct; not especially musical, not at all magnetic. The orator was incessantly moving; not rushing vehemently forward or stepping defiantly backward, with that quaint planting of the foot, ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... through the bitter and foul air, Listening unto my Leader, who said only, 'Look that from me thou be not separated.' Voices I heard, and every one appeared To supplicate for peace and misericord The Lamb of God who takes away our sins. Still Agnus Dei their exordium was; One word there was in all, and metre one, So that all harmony appeared among them. 'Master,' I said, 'are spirits those I hear?' And he to me: 'Thou apprehendest truly, And they the knot of anger go ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... little disarmed by this straightforward mode of procedure. He dropped unuttered the elaborate exordium he had been preparing on the tendency of young men to be led astray by speciously pleading schemers, and found himself replying mildly to questions about himself and various old friends of his, whom Drusus had known as a boy before he went to Athens. But finally the young man interrupted ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... the turning of the opening page. The writer who is secure in the knowledge that he has got a good thing coming, and has arranged the manner and details of its coming, cannot go far wrong with his exordium; he wants to get into action at once, and that is his best assurance that he will do it in the right way. But O! what a labor and sweat it is; what a planning and trimming; what a remodeling, curtailing, interlining; ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... of savagery in sentiment, and abrupt or broken in manner, but marked by the same wild poetry and harsh inversions as the older heathen ballads. Amongst them stand the lines on the fight of Brunanburh, whose exordium is quoted above. Its close forms one of the finest ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... before the horse, as the Irish orators frequently do in the honourable House, in whose speeches, especially those who have taken lessons in rhetoric, the per—per—what's the word?—frequently goes before the exordium. ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... beginning was suppressed because of its containing damaging reflections on the elders. Then the present opening (vv. 1—5) was borrowed from Θ, and is marked in both Cod. Chis. and Syro-Hex. as not part of the original work, but a foreign exordium. Rothstein (p. 184, note) thinks that in place of the present borrowed commencement there stood a short introductory remark on the two judging elders. Though lacking proof, this conjecture is well within ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... now passes to the results of his long and anxious thoughts: I have purposely twisted his exordium into an echo ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... on his knees, and, after a long exordium of penitent excuses, entreated the scholar to intercede in his favour ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... any way; neither exordium nor peroration, and the middle occasionally a little mixed. But a good sensible straightforward speech, and if DYKE had done no more than show that an important Ministerial measure could be explained within limit of an hour, he would not have lived ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 20, 1891 • Various
... was at this time joint manager of the Opera with Mrs. Brook. In November 1773, she spoke a Poetical exordium, by which it appeared that she intended mixing plays with operas, and entertaining the public with singing and declamation alternately; but permission could not be obtained from the Lord Chamberlain to put ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... the same as that which we have found less directly phrased in Crevecoeur. But let us quote the lines that follow the exordium—now we should find the ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... the exordium of a letter preceding its business-matter and in which the writer displays all his art. It ends with "Amm ba'd," lit.but after, equivalent to our "To proceed." This "Khitb" is mostly skipped over by modern statesmen who will say, "Now after the nonsense ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... exordium cast an element of embarrassment into the conversation, and tears were often ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... place designated for the lecture; and Captain de Banyan betrayed his interest in that memorable battle, where he had served on the staff of General Fremont, by going to sleep before the eloquent "participant" had got half-way through the exordium. Lieutenant Somers listened attentively until he was satisfied that Colonel Staggerback either was not in the battle, or that he had escorted "Bull Run Russell" off ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... says that his opening words were, "Sir, in this age of increased and increasing civilization." Says an eminent writer, by way of comment upon these words, "It almost oppresses the imagination to picture the shoreless sea of eloquence which rolls between that exordium and the oratory to which we still are listening and hope to listen for ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... nothing, and magnificently sinking the sense of fallen material grandeur in the more liberal resentment of depreciations done to his more lofty intellectual pretensions, "Have you heard" (his customary exordium)—"have you heard," said he, "how they treat me? they put me in comedy." Thought I—but his finger on his lips forbade any verbal interruption—"where could they have put you better?" Then, after a pause—"Where I formerly played Romeo, I now play Mercutio,"—and so again he ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... The exordium thus duly prepared, you must suppose, ladies, that the second act opens with a royal christening The Princess of Wales had been delivered of a second son. The Prince had intended his uncle, the Duke of York, Bishop of Osnaburg, should with his Majesty be godfathers. Nothing could equal the ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... upon this occasion the partisans of a gigantic innovation,—the most gigantic and the most dangerous that has been attempted in modern times,—I may compliment them upon the prudence they show in resolving to be its silent partisans." After this emphatic exordium, which electrified the House, and was followed by such a tempest of applause as for some time to drown the voice of the speaker, he proceeded at once to demonstrate the utter folly and error of contending ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... this temporary degradation of my higher feelings, and I trust that when the time arrives for the settlement of any pecuniary consideration which I am to derive from these irksome and uncongenial labours, my wounded self-respect may not be omitted from the reckoning. The above exordium may appear to you tedious, but it is only just to myself to remind you that you are not dealing with a vulgar hireling. My first step, after duly meditating your suggestions, was to find a fitting watch for the movements of Hawkehurst. ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... his not inappropriate exordium. 'To business. Mark me closely. I am an Australian. My name is John Dickson, though you mightn't think it from my unassuming appearance. You will be relieved to hear that I am rich, sir, very rich. You can't go into this sort ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... discovered. That he worked upon it appears from the extremely interesting fact, preserved by Phillips, that Satan's address to the Sun is part of a dramatic speech which, according to Milton's plan in 1642 or 1643, would have formed the exordium of his tragedy. Of the literary sources which may have originated or enriched the conception of "Paradise Lost" in Milton's mind we shall speak hereafter. It must suffice for the present to remark that his purpose had from the first been didactic. ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... some time after this amiable exordium to make the stranger understand the right a Capuchin had to ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... expressed no acquiescence. She certainly supposed that a formal offer was to be made and could not but think that so singular an exordium was never before made by a gentleman in a similar position. Mr. Slope had annoyed her by the excess of his ardour. It was quite clear that no such danger was to be feared from Mr. Stanhope. Prudential motives alone actuated him. Not only was he about to make love because his sister told ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... is to become very much animated,—to lash myself into a state of high excitement, and to hold forth as though I were making an exordium,—to talk with furious rapidity, using the most forcible expressions, the most emphatic ejaculations! Those unloose my tongue! My words hurl themselves impetuously forward, as zouaves in battle! Only, as you may conceive, this discourse is not of a very classic nature, and hardly suited ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... was the exordium. As an exordium, it was faultless. But it was destined to remain a fragment. It goes down to history as a perfect fragment, like the beginning of a pagan temple that the death ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... extempore, commenced with a beautiful and most eloquent apostrophe to learning, and to the enthusiasm which glows in the breasts of all her real votaries, rendering them alike indifferent to their personal ease, their temporal interests, danger, suffering, and tribulations of the spirit. After this exordium, which was pronounced to be unique for its simplicity and truth, he entered at once on the history ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... indeed he might in a situation so unusual and trying for a Roman before the days of Greek education; and the earliest speeches preserved in the literary age, e.g. those of Cato and the Gracchi, retained the religious exordium.[527] We have a trace of the Gracchan practice in a famous passage at the end of the work called Rhetorica ad Herennium of circ. 82 B.C., where the death of Ti. Gracchus is graphically described.[528] But there is no need to multiply examples of public religious formalism ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... grave face, in a loud, rapid, and sonorous tone of voice, startled the good people of the house, who sat mute and astonished at such an exordium from the worthy pastor: but no sooner had he uttered Brian Buie's name, giving him, at the same time, a fierce and authoritative look, than the latter started to his feet, and stepped down in a kind of alarm towards the door. The priest immediately ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... And with this exordium, the rough-and-ready surgeon took his departure, leaving Horatio Paget alone with the woman who ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... having some personal motive. In his fifteenth letter home, therefore, Smollett is assiduous in disclaiming anything of the kind. He begins by attempting an amende honorable, but before he has got well away from his exordium he insensibly and most characteristically diverges into the more congenial path of censure, and expands indeed into one of his most eloquent passages—a disquisition upon the French punctilio (conceived upon lines somewhat similar to Mercutio's ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... led off in his favor was California; and it was a representative of California who first sounded the charge for Douglas's cohorts in the House. In any other place and at any other time, Marshall's exordium would have overshot the mark. Indeed, in indorsing the attack of the Review on the old fogies in the party, he tore open wounds which it were best to let heal; but gauged by the prevailing standard of taste in politics, the speech ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... days ago—thus, after a pious exordium, the relation began—in that part of Italy called Marca, there came into a railway station a Capuchin friar of grave, thoughtful, melancholy aspect, who besought the station-master to allow him to go without ticket ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... unpack my trunk for my MS., from which I read him the titles of the chapters, and begged he would choose any book or character of a great astronomer he pleased. "Oh, let us have the beginning." I read him the first eighteen or twenty lines of the exordium, and then said I rather wished to come to modern times - I was more certain of my ground in high antiquity than after the time of Copernicus, and began my eighth chapter, entirely on Newton and his system. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... severe, and there was much hauteur in his manner. He ate scarcely anything, and his appearance was so remarkable, as to excite the wonder of all present. At length on the third or fourth day of the council, he arose with great dignity, and solemnity of air, and commenced speaking. His exordium was for the most part a beautiful and highly wrought enconium on the character and history of the Indians; particularly of his own people, in the past. They were taken back, as by a magic spell, to primitive times. The days of their renown, when the name and glory of their nation, ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... by this pompous and peevish exordium. It did not promise well; it sounded quite unlike Mr. Keith's usually bland address. Perhaps he had not yet breakfasted. "We ought to have waited," they thought. One of the listeners was ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... himself (the bishop) was sometimes too hasty, but it was soon over; he further said, that he should have consigned him to his own ordinary for examination, but for the particular interest he took in his welfare, for his and his friends' sake. From this exordium he proceeded to the touchstone question of the real presence in ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... assistance, as he understood, of Mr. Mill," likewise present. As soon as the Court broke up, I burst into Mill's room, boiling over with indignation, and exclaiming, "What an infamous shame!" and no doubt adding a good deal more that followed in natural sequence on such an exordium. "What's the matter?" replied Mill as soon as he could get a word in. "M——[the director] was quite right. The petition was the joint work of —— and myself."—"How can you be so perverse?" I retorted. "You know that I know you wrote every word of it."—"No," rejoined Mill, "you are mistaken: ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other
... infamous fiction of Spelling-Books: "A more lying, roundabout, puzzle-headed delusion than that by which we Confuse the clear instincts of truth in our accursed systems of spelling, was never concocted by the father of falsehood." Such was the exordium of this famous treatise. For instance, take the monosyllable Cat. What a brazen forehead you must have when you say to an infant, c, a, t,—spell Cat: that is, three sounds, forming a totally opposite compound,—opposite in every detail, opposite in the whole,—compose a poor ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... conceived as a conscious principle, is alien to ancient thought, at any rate at the time of Protagoras; and yet it may contain a grain of truth. When it is borne in mind that the incriminated passage represents the very exordium of the work of Protagoras, the impression cannot be avoided that he himself did not intend his work to disturb the established religion, but that he quite naively took up the existence of the gods as a subject, as good as any other, for dialectic discussion. All that ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... investigating the cause of the war, he begins thus: "That vilest of all wretches, Vologesus, entered upon the war for these reasons." Such is this historian's manner. Another, a close imitator of Thucydides, that he may set out as his master does, gives us an exordium that smells of the true Attic honey, and begins thus: "Creperius Calpurnianus, a citizen of Pompeia, hath written the history of the war between the Parthians and the Romans, showing how they fought with one another, commencing at the time when it first broke out." After this, need I inform ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... Mr. Lyons opened the cause very briefly.... And now came on the first trial of Patrick Henry's strength. No one had ever heard him speak,[53] and curiosity was on tiptoe. He rose very awkwardly, and faltered much in his exordium. The people hung their heads at so unpromising a commencement; the clergy were observed to exchange sly looks with each other; and his father is described as having almost sunk with confusion, from his seat. But these feelings ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... rather mysteriously in my last compels me again to proceed. But before I disclose it, I must require the most inviolable Secrecy, for if ever I find that it has transpired, all confidence, all Friendship between us has concluded. I do not mean this exordium as a threat to induce you to comply with my request but merely (whether you accede or not) to keep it a Secret. And although your compliance would essentially oblige me, yet, believe me, my esteem will not be diminished by your Refusal; nor shall I suffer ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... convenience and mutual esteem, and there is no reason to doubt that it conduced not only to Borrow's comfort and security, but also to his happiness. There were no children. The "daughter" whose accomplishments Borrow celebrated in the exordium to "Wild Wales" was his stepdaughter, Henrietta Clarke. He seemed now in an enviable position, with a small but agreeable freehold on the banks of Oulton Broad, able to indulge in "idleness and the pride of literature" to his heart's content. If he ...
— George Borrow - Times Literary Supplement, 10th July 1903 • Thomas Seccombe
... After a brief exordium, containing some general proposition on the subject of human testimony, which meant no more than to suggest the propriety of giving to the prisoner the benefit of what was doubtful and obscure in the testimony which had been taken ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... the quick with grief, and on the next day, Easter-Sunday, preached a most zealous and eloquent sermon, Against the Games and Shows of the Theatre and Circus. Indignation made him not so much as mention the paschal solemnity;{242} but by an abrupt exordium he burst into the most vehement pathos, as follows: "Are these things to be borne? Can they be tolerated? I appeal to yourselves, be you your own judges. Thus did God expostulate with the Jews."[17] This exclamation he often ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... all know who you are, Roger. You're the boy! When did you get drunk last?" Such-like greetings, together with a dead cat which was flung at him from the crowd, and which he dexterously parried with his stick, were the answers which he received to this exordium. ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... His exordium over, Mr. Choate proceeds to define and to discuss Nationality. We heartily agree with him in all he says in its praise, and draw attention, in passing, to a charming idyllic passage in which he speaks of the early influences which first develope in us its ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... The exordium to the fourth book, which sometimes rises into eloquence, glorifies fate as the ultimate divine power, but denies it either will or personality. He fortifies his argument, according to his wont, by a historical catalogue, which exemplifies the ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... exordium, the Professor beckoned with his hand,—once, twice, thrice,—and a figure came gliding upon the platform, enveloped in a long veil of silvery whiteness. It fell about her like the texture of a ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... it with a sense of blankness. The Chancellor's exordium and the Duke's remarks had rather primed him to a state of expectation, and he felt as if he had been balked of he knew not what. The green light contracted and died away into the gloom; then discontent mastered him. In his restless mood he had grasped at the situation, which had promised ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... myself with my fine company, when the sexton of the church came in to tell me that they were waiting for me in the vestry. With a full stomach and my head rather heated, I took my leave, ran to the church, and entered the pulpit. I went through the exordium with credit to myself, and I took breathing time; but scarcely had I pronounced the first sentences of the narration, before I forgot what I was saying, what I had to say, and in my endeavours to proceed, I fairly wandered from my subject and I lost myself entirely. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... makes me yawn. Better choose the bold, the frank, the generous, with all his faults; he may be rash, unthinking, wasting the powers whose force he knows not; but the capabilities of amendment are within him. What say you to my exordium?" ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... publication[12] by Dr. Cocker of the Michigan State University. In the "Theistic Conception of the World" he treats the first two chapters of the Bible as a poem, which he calls the "symbolical hymn of creation." It has an exordium, six strophes, each with its refrain, and an episode. He does not believe the sacred narrative intends to describe the exact mode of forming the world, nor even to set the successive events in order. It is an ascription, designed to embody in symbolical language the fact that all ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... out,[135] with some sentimental sing-song of my own to fill up,—and how does it take, eh? and where the devil is the second edition of my Satire, with additions? and my name on the title page? and more lines tagged to the end, with a new exordium and what not, hot from my anvil before I cleared the Channel? The Mediterranean and the Atlantic roll between me and criticism; and the thunders of the Hyperborean Review are deafened by ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... kinds of cases, demonstrativum, deliberativum and judiciale; he must know the proportionate value to the orator of inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria, and pronuntiatio, and how to manage each; he must know how to apply inventio in each of the six divisions of the speech: exordium, narratio, divisio, confirmatio, confutatio, conclusio. On the subject of adornment of style a relatively small task lay in memorizing illustrations of some sixty figures of speech—and so on ad infinitum. Inane cymbalon juventutis is indeed a fitting commentary ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... although gratitude was very good in its place, yet, when it was advisable to forget its object, then it was no longer good, but foolish, and improper, and unfashionable; but she checked herself in the midst of this exordium, by recollecting that the intellects of her pupil were unequal to all investigation, but that her inclination, youth, and temper could be more easily wrought upon. She began to load her with finery, take her to the play, though ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland |
