"Phrasing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... part of Hyllus, spoke his lines exceedingly well. Perhaps the chorus was a little too classical—that is to say, too stiff and lackadaisical; but the phrasing was always pretty and sometimes unexpected, ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... invite a friend to come to you at a given day and hour, and to accept or decline said invitation would appear a matter scarcely worth considering. This rash conclusion, however, disappears from view when it is recollected that the proper phrasing, the suitable signature, and the appropriate paper, are all matters of the nicest choice, and indicate with the most unerring accuracy the good or ill breeding of the ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... was not my voice should rouse her dreams to passion. . . So our letters continued to jar. Then suddenly she wrote me one doubting whether she could ever care for any one who was a Socialist and did not believe in Church, and then hard upon it came another note with unexpected novelties of phrasing. She thought we were not suited to each other, we differed so in tastes and ideas, she had long thought of releasing me from our engagement. In fact, though I really did not apprehend it fully at the first shock, I was dismissed. ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... me after they're fed," she thought, and derived an obscure satisfaction from her phrasing, and thought it again. ...
— Miss Lulu Bett • Zona Gale
... hand which Harkness was holding. He was still phrasing a conventional greeting as she flung him a gay laugh and a look from brown eyes that smiled encouragement. She was gone before ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... an extract from the prospectus of a Kentucky 'Female College.' Female college sounds well enough; but since the phrasing it in that unjustifiable way was done purely in the interest of brevity, it seems to me that she-college would have been still better—because shorter, and means the same thing: that is, if either phrase means anything ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... grasp of this new idea. It seemed to her that in phrasing it she had hit upon the explanation of her situation which she had been so long seeking, and it was with a resolve to scourge this weakness out of her life that she now ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... composition was calculated to produce rested on a fundamental idea which was quite simple, yet startling in its development. Unfortunately I worked it out rather hurriedly. In not very carefully chosen phrasing the orchestra was to represent the ocean, and, as far as might be, the ship upon it. A forcible, pathetically yearning and aspiring theme was the only comprehensible idea amid the swirl of enveloping sound. When the whole had been repeated, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... mixture—all three together—may be developed to the highest art by the skill of the individual, often, indeed, only by a good ear for it. Whenever expression of the word's significance, beauty of the vocal material, and perfection of phrasing are found united in the highest degree, it is due either to knowledge or to a natural skill in the innumerable ways of fitting the sung word to the particular resonance—connections that are suitable to realize its significance, and hence its spirit. ...
— How to Sing - [Meine Gesangskunst] • Lilli Lehmann
... really as full as Carson's phrasing would seem to suggest. The court was told that Rufus Isaacs had bought 10,000 shares—but not from whom he had bought them: that he had paid market price, but not what the price was, nor that the shares were not on ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... passages that have less importance for the modern child than they may have had for that of the eighteenth century. The story is thus rendered more compact, and contains nothing to draw attention away from the fine qualities mentioned above. The quaint phrasing of the title, in itself one of the proofs of Goldsmith's authorship, furnishes a good comment on the meaning of the story: "The history of little Goody Two-Shoes/otherwise called Mrs. Margery Two-Shoes/the means by which she acquired her learning and wisdom, and in consequence thereof ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... be admitted by Mr. Swinburne's least indulgent critics that his poetry displays throughout a marvellous power of execution. He runs over all the lyrical and elegiac chords with unabated facility; his metrical variations and musical phrasing bring out and extend the capacity and fertility of our language as a poetic instrument; he is master of his materials. No doubt there is some repetition, some iteration, which becomes slightly wearisome, of his favourite rhymes, indicating, what has been observed independently of reference ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... half thought that the speaker wished that John would fail—that he grudged him a triumph. None the less, the first verse, sung feebly, with wrong phrasing and imperfect articulation, revealed the quality of the boy's voice; and this quality Desmond recognized, as he would have recognized a fine painting or a bit of perfect porcelain. All his short life ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... be most bitterly incensed against me, whereas I was in no way incensed against him. In the first instance, he had offended without premeditation, for he had not known who I was; his subsequent insolence might find excuse in the peremptory phrasing of my demand for apology, too curt, perhaps, for a young and untried man. Honour forced me to fight, but nothing forced me to hate, and I asked no better than that we should both escape with as little hurt as the laws of the game allowed. His mood was different; he had been bearded, and was ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... was a painful pause. Jimmy's mind was phrasing words to describe the scene. The eleven old men, waiting to hear from the other three. The dead stillness of the group, hardly breathing; the mask-like features of Lorenzo Tonti, the suffused features and protuberant eyes of Fletcher, the high cheek bones of Stanislav ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... the Twins received the sun. In May the sun is in the sign of the zodiac known as Gemini, or the Twins. Dryden here copies a favorite phrasing of Chaucer, though not used by him ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... Inexact phrasing throughout: Health is first in every line of activity. A man who has it does not hold it with enough respect, and make ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... (and, we may add, his associates), writes his latest editor, "grasped the fact that in prose no less than in poetry, the reader demanded to be led onward by a succession of half imperceptible shocks of pleasure in the beauty and vigour of diction, or in the ingenuity of phrasing, in sentence after sentence—pleasure inseparable from that caused by a perception of the nice adaptation of words to thought, pleasure quite other than that derivable from the acquisition of fresh knowledge[84]." The ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... melodic divisions are so minute and vague between these smaller particles of the musical sentence,—it is advisable to give no heed to any factor smaller than the "motive," and to undertake the analysis of nothing less than the latter; for even the most scrupulous "phrasing," in the playing of a composition, must avoid the risk of incoherency almost certain to result from distinctly separating all the figures. The melodies in Ex. 8 should not betray the ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius
... the trail marks left by this Great Council of Chiefs—the last Great Indian Council that will ever be held on American soil. The story most faithfully records the idiom and phrasing and atmosphere of the Indian's speech as it came from Indian lips. The language of the landscape where the Indian made his home, where he fought his battles and lived his life, where this solemn council was held, is manifest in the accompanying ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... neither the emotion nor the ardor of Lacordaire. He was too much a priest and too little a man. Yet, here and there in the rhetoric of his sermons, flashed interesting effects of large and solid phrasing or touches of ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... sitting up in a dressing sack, and turning the pages of a weekly publication that dealt in news of local high life. Its chief item, to-day, was the announcement of a dance she was to give shortly—at the club, as usual—and she had just finished for the second time the commentator's glib and unctuous phrasing. ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... interrupted. Her excitement had been growing ever since she learned the visitor's name and, although her husband did not notice the peculiar phrasing of the ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... not easy to read, in the dim light of the Colonel's Bed, thanks to its crabbed orthography and its long formal phrasing, but gradually I made out its ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... much opposed to the general theory of acting, and the story is told with great gusto of a boy who was sent to see Garrick, we believe, and who was greatly delighted with the fine phrasing and swagger of a supernumerary, but could not understand why people applauded such an ordinary bumpkin as Garrick, who did not differ a whit from all the country boobies he had ever seen. It is insisted that the actor must persuade the spectator that ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... the straying from the one straight, progressive path, let us consider this expression: 'The wages of sin is death'. This leads us to the question: what is death? Do you remember what Drummond says? He first explains in a most interesting way what life is, using the scientist's phrasing. A human being, for instance, is in direct contact with all about him—earth, air, sun, other human beings, etc. In biological language he is said to be 'in correspondence with his environment,' and by virtue of this correspondence ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... wonder of the everyday world, the life and variety of nature and human activities. The first is a very simple and rich approach. By every possible means help children in the family to think of God as the great and good Father of us all. Do this in the phrasing of prayers and graces, in the answers to their questions, in the casual word. Why should we assume that the Fatherhood of God is for the adult alone? And why should it be that this rich concept dawns on us ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... his remarks. Lady Caroline had sent him to the cottage to be stern, and his firm resolve to be stern lent his style of speech something of the measured solemnity and careful phrasing of his occasional orations in ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... book, and by no means a small one, to go into this matter of phrasing which I am now discussing. Even in such a book there would doubtless be many points which would be open to assaults for sticklers in psychological technology. I am not issuing a propaganda or writing a thesis for the purpose of having something to defend, but merely ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... meet, even at the risk of unseating poor little Susan in his affections. This pained the gentle and humble-minded girl, who, without having tasted the world's pleasures, had meekly consecrated herself to the lowly duties which lay nearest to her. For Bathsheba's phrasing of life was in the monosyllables of a rigid faith. Her conceptions of the human soul were all simplicity and purity, but elementary. She could not conceive the vast license the creative energy allows ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... Carranza was the best of the three and that Villa was not so bad as he had been painted. But the phrase that remained with the British diplomat was that one so characteristically Wilsonian: "I propose to teach the South American Republics to elect good men." In its attitude, its phrasing, it held the ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... carefully all the twenty pages assigned to Ezra Pound in The New Poetry Anthology, edited by Miss Monroe (a greater space, I believe, than was awarded to any other poet), that I can now repeat just one line—or, rather, two lines, such is Mr. Pound's odd way of phrasing his ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... scarce knew what to call it; but without prejudice to her consciousness, all the same, that women got out of predicaments better than men. The predicament of course wasn't definite or phraseable—and the way they let all phrasing pass was presently to recur to our young woman as a characteristic triumph of the civilised state; but she took it for granted, insistently, with a small private flare of passion, because the one thing she could ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... Douglas reported from his committee a joint resolution for the admission of Texas, "on an equal footing with the original states in all respects whatever."[209] There was a certain pleonasm about this phrasing that revealed the hand of the chairman: the simple statement must be reinforced both for legal security and for rhetorical effect. Six days later, after but a single speech, the resolution went to a third reading and was passed by a large majority.[210] ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... stars many a time and oft that he had nothing to do with bringing her up. That was Marilla's exclusive duty; if it had been his he would have been worried over frequent conflicts between inclination and said duty. As it was, he was free to, "spoil Anne"—Marilla's phrasing—as much as he liked. But it was not such a bad arrangement after all; a little "appreciation" sometimes does quite as much good as all the conscientious "bringing up" ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... at the end of a familiar dialogue something startlingly dramatic; but such composition, with him, seems easy, and while the descriptions are marvelously well established in his stories, the reverse is true of Flaubert's, which always appear a little veneered. Maupassant's phrasing, however dramatic it may be, remains easy ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... want with a fine place like that? He'd have to keep five or six servants, if he went there. The most feasible surmise that could be arrived at was, that Jan was about to establish a mad-house—as Deerham was in the habit of phrasing a receptacle for insane patients—of the private, genteel order. Deerham felt very curious; and Jan, being a person whom they felt at ease to question without ceremony, was besieged upon the subject. Jan's ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... in the ordinary elementary school, the veriest mumbling on the part of the child being accepted by his teacher (who follows him with an open book in his hand), provided that he can read correctly and with some attempt at "phrasing." Indeed, the indistinct utterance of so many school children may be attributed to the fact that they have read aloud to their teachers for many years, and that during the whole of that time a very low standard of distinctness has ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... after all, was a part of the divine plan, and they would have the privilege of serving the glorified Saints, even though they were denied Godhood. She half-believed that even this mission of service was almost more of glory than they merited; for, in the phrasing of Bishop Wright, they "made a hell all the time and raised devils to keep it going." They had slain the Prophets of the Lord and hunted his people, and the best of them were lucky, indeed, to escape the fire that ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... all the while, he told me, his thoughts were going back to the scene in the bath-room. He had no security that it wouldn't be repeated and with a far different conclusion. He had a passing impulse to ask Jannie to call off her subliminal thugs; the phrasing is my own. There was no doubt in his disordered mind that it was she who, at the instigation of the elder Meekers, was trying to remove him in the effort to secure ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... defying such presumptuous interference, was not fortunate in phrasing his declaration that Morrison had no right ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... went in search of the wireless room. Soon one returned. "The air's full o' talk," he said. "Casey's at the receiver, still listening, but I made out only a few words like 'Charleston,' 'Brooklyn,' 'jail,' 'pirates,' 'Pensacola,' and one phrasing ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... vehemence in anger would excite me to the point of forgetting the fiction, and cause me to commit involuntarily lamentable outbursts. Hence I applied myself to overcome the tendency to singsong in my voice, the exuberance of my rendering of passion, the exclamatory quality of my phrasing, the precipitation of my pronunciation, and the ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... to the talk at the next table, because the orchestra was quiet and the conversation unrestrained; then, too, a nautical phrasing caught my ear and aroused my attention. For I had been a lifelong student of nautical matters. A side glance showed me the speaker, a white-haired, sunburned old fellow in immaculate evening dress. With ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... for her sleep had been light and troubled. She dressed hastily and sat down to compose a note which could be altered slightly in case she found some one better than the half-breed; but before she was half through the phrasing she heard a slight disturbance below her window and a muttering in guttural tones from a strange voice. Glancing hastily out, she saw some Indians below, talking with one of the men, who was shaking his head and motioning to them that they must go on, that ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... understood the voice. Wagner's interminable dissonances were insupportable. That these two composers imagine that to sing is simply to degoiser the note; but the art of singing, or technic was considered by them to be secondary and insignificant Phrasing or any sort of finesse was superfluous. The orchestra must be all powerful. "If Wagner gets the upper hand," Rossini continued, "as he is sure to do, for people will run after the New, then what will become of the art of singing? No ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... supplemented by the evidence of the British Museum autograph. The Steingraeber edition of the clavier works, edited by Dr Hans Bischoff, is incomparably the best, giving all the variants in footnotes and clearly distinguishing the extremely intelligent nuances and phrasing signs of the editor from the rare but significant indications of Bach himself. Nor does this wealth of scholarship interfere with the presentation of a straightforward, single text; though in addition there is every necessary explanation of the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... was quite different. Your mother's art was in her phrasing and in the ideal appearance ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... of the Court when reported as a bill for calling the synod. Although the Court "made no question of their lawful power by the word of God to assemble the churches, or their messengers upon occasion of counsell, or anything which may concern the practice of the churches," it decided to modify the phrasing of the order.—H. M. Dexter, Congr. as seen, p. 436. Magnalia, ii, 209. Mass. Col. Rec. ii, 154-156, ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... him that until he learned not to exclude any of the picture he would never do big work. Her words had a tantalizing way of coming back to him, things she had tossed off in the long ago of their visit to New York together. He longed for her vivid phrasing, her quick dart at the heart of the things they talked of. It seemed incredible now that he had ever taken her as a matter of course. As for the enigma of her marrying him, he ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... Item by item, line by line, the printed draft of the Constitution was considered. It is not possible, nor is it necessary, to follow that work minutely; much of it was purely formal, and yet any one who has had experience with committee reports knows how much importance attaches to matters of phrasing. Just as the Virginia Plan was made more acceptable to the majority by changes in wording that seem to us insignificant, so modifications in phrasing slowly won support for the ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... The careful observation of the three foregoing aspects of articulation leads at once to the fourth; namely, the expressive value of words in direct relation to the interpretation itself. This is closely connected with phrasing, and the phrase, which is the larger "thought word," should be studied as the communicating link between the articulation of the part and interpretation as it relates to literature itself. In connection with this comes the consideration of slides and the finer ...
— Expressive Voice Culture - Including the Emerson System • Jessie Eldridge Southwick
... and advice in the rendering of several puzzling passages. But my greatest debt I owe to my wife, whose name, if justice were done, should be added to my own as joint translator of the volume. Though she is entirely unacquainted with the Polish language, nearly every page of the book in its phrasing bears traces of her correcting hand. The preparation of the volume for the press and the reading of the proof have been made ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... the afternoon of a pleasant summer day in the year 191-, if one may borrow a mode of phrasing that once found favour with the readers of the late G. P. R. James, a solitary balloonist—replacing the solitary horseman of the classic romances—might have been observed wending his way across Franconia in a north-easterly ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... below, is a curving, dark-shaded, turquoise body of water called Lecco; to the right there lies the queen of lakes, the crown of Italy, a corn-flower sapphire known as Como. Over and about it—this terrace—poets have raved and tousled their neglected locks in vain to find the perfect phrasing; novelists have come and gone and have carried away peace and inspiration; and painters have painted it from a thousand points of view, and perhaps are painting it from another thousand this very minute. It is the Place of Honeymoons. Rich ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... and instantly carried. Then followed a much flustered discussion of the form and phrasing of the proposed telegram, but, after everything seemed to have been settled, someone ascertained by telephone that the telegraph company would not accept messages containing words customarily defined as profane; so the telegram had to be rewritten. This ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... drink and myself a lemonade. I didn't want to drink that lemonade. I wanted to take it home and stand it under a glass shade. He himself drank what I was told was a foreign drink in a tiny glass. He lingered over it, untouched, while he discussed with us the exact phrasing of the symphony for the star man's song; then, at the call, with a sweep of his almighty arm he carried the glass to his lips with a "To you, my boy!" held it poised for a moment, set it down, and strode away, followed by rapt ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... after he had written the passage, "determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold," the idea continues hot in his mind; for, after smouldering a few moments, it flames forth again, is written again in the same phrasing, with the same show of emphasis, before he bethinks himself to erase it. Then, too, the words Christian and MEN are the only words emphasized by careful pen-printing in large letters;—and this labored movement ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... D'Ambois that it is characterised by "dwarfish thought dressed up in gigantic words," that it is "a hideous mingle of false poetry and true nonsense"? The accusation of "nonsense" recoils upon its maker. Involved, obscure, inflated as Chapman's phrasing not infrequently is, it is not mere rhodomontade, sound, and fury, signifying nothing. There are some passages (as the Notes testify) where the thread of his meaning seems to disappear amidst his fertile imagery, but even here one feels ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... girls with the eyes of April, the hearts of June'" (early spring and early summer would be the more accurate Indian phrasing). ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... compare them with corresponding idioms in other languages. Then we realize that only the Dutch, the Finns, and the Scandinavians can {9} approach the English-speaking peoples in the common use of sea terms. Other foreigners employ different phrasing altogether. Their landsmen never 'clear the decks for action,' are never 'brought up with a round turn,' or even 'taken aback,' as if by the wind on the wrong side. They never have 'three sheets in the wind,' even when they do get 'half seas over.' ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... her plays is au fond that of many a comedy of to-day: that the situations and phrasing in which she presents her amorous intrigues and merry cuckoldoms do not conform with modern exposition of these themes we also show yet would not name, is but our surface gloss of verbal reticence; we hint, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... fall upon the ear in melodious cadence; but if the utterance be harsh and discordant they fail to interest, fall upon deaf ears, and are as barren as seed sown on fallow ground. In language, nothing conduces so emphatically to the harmony of sounds as perfect phrasing—that is, the emphasizing of the relation of clause to clause, and of sentence to sentence by the systematic grouping of words. The phrase consists usually of a few words which denote a single idea that forms a separate part of a sentence. In this respect it ...
— Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases • Grenville Kleiser
... contents of the bottle had gone by the sententiousness of my friend's phrasing, the slight turgidity, so to speak, of ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... that blind the mind, and looked out into the unknown. Amid stiff, abrupt sentences I wandered; and, presently, I had no fault to charge against their abrupt tellings; for, better far than my own ambitious phrasing, is this mutilated story capable of bringing home all that the old Recluse, of the vanished house, ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... but all follow the same grammatical rules. A correct style in singing consists in the careful observance of the principles of Technique; a perfect Diction; the appropriate Colouring of each sentiment expressed; attention to the musical and poetic Accents; judicious and effective Phrasing (whether musical or verbal), so that the meaning of both composer and poet may be placed in ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... with its well balanced phrasing took Lavinia's fancy, and absorbed in the music she forgot her audience. She saw how the words were wedded to the notes and watched where the trills and graces came in. Pepusch played the air right through; waited a minute or so ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... betray a young unformed style. To analyze the art, however, would be to take the poem more seriously than Vergil intended it to be when he wrote currente calamo. Yet we may say that on the whole the modulation of the verse, the treatment of the caesural pauses[7] and the phrasing compare rather favorably with the Catullan hexameters which obviously served as its models, that in the best lines the poet shows himself sensitive to delicate effects, and that the pastoral scene—which Horace compliments a few years later—is, despite its imitative ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... for he declared he had no wish to transplant for good. All that was needed was a short season of wage-earning abroad, that the labourer might return home with savings which would set him for the future on a higher economic plane. The letter was temperate and academic in phrasing, the speculation of a publicist rather than the declaration of a Minister. But in Liberals, who remembered the pandemonium raised over the Chinese in South Africa, it ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... phrases of courtesy toward a formal people, and as the officers of the French Guard were gentlemen of birth, he would have them to perceive in him their equal at a glance. On the other hand, a bare excess of phrasing distorted him to a likeness of Mascarille playing Marquis. How to be English and think French! The business was as laborious as if he had started on the rough sea of the Channel to get at them in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the table with his fist. His own praises had fired him, though his marvellous memory that could hold even the complete libretti of operas had been little in doubt as to Heine's phrasing. ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... after a feast—how gladly we listen to this poet with his serene faith in God, and immortal life, and the soul's unending development! "Hope hard in the subtle thing that's Spirit," he cries in the Prologue to "Pacchiarotto": and this, in manifold phrasing, is his leit-motif, his fundamental idea, in unbroken line from the "Pauline" of his twenty-first to the "Asolando" of his seventy-sixth year. This superb phalanx of faith—what ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... is phrasing. This is the grouping together of words, phrases, clauses, and other units so that their meaning and significance may be easily grasped by a listener. As has been already said, pauses serve as punctuation ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... phrases or refrains like blocks for building many stories. If we could work out some such technique as this, we could keep the intimacy, the flexibility, the waywardness of the spoken story and still give the children the charm of careful thinking and careful phrasing. Many such phrases have been fashioned by people sensitive to the quality of sound. Every nursery ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... sat in the third seat from the back found the phrasing strangely familiar. He seemed to know what was coming. Sure enough, it was almost word for word the arguments the women had used when they came before the House. The audience was in a pleasant mood, and laughed at every point. It really ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... piano and her hands fell inevitably into phrasing the "unfinished symphony." She became aware that her mother laid down the stitching and Mr. Elton's evening paper ceased to crackle. As she stopped her father stood behind her. He bent and kissed the little parting ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... very short. They have no preliminary measures, but at once voice the actuating emotion; that done, they come to a close. Although they are so short, they have form and in their structure follow in simple lines the rules of phrasing and motivization taught in our schools. These songs, speaking in general terms, partake more of the character of motifs than of musical compositions. They do not stand alone or apart from the ceremonials or pleasures of which they form an ...
— Indian Games and Dances with Native Songs • Alice C. Fletcher
... beribboned bosoms of his illustrious compatriots heaved with emotion; their faces—or such parts of their faces as were visible above the whiskerline—flushed with enthusiasm, and most vociferously they applauded his masterly phrasing and his tracing-out of the evolution of the tango, all the way from its Genesis, as it were, to its Revelation. I judge the revelation particularly appealed to them—that part of ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... p. 61. It would, of course, have been easy to give references from other authors; but there is an extraordinary family-likeness between the writers of this School, extending down to the very phrasing of their ideas. ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... the two outer fingers merely preventing it from falling to one side or the other. Occasionally these two fingers will act in concert or opposition, according to the requirements of expression and phrasing. When playing loudly it becomes necessary that a more decided purchase of the bow be maintained, especially in rapid forte passages. Then the inner fingers come into play and hold the bow firmly against the thumb. The two outer fingers then are solely concerned with regulating the pressure ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... attempted has been accomplished; and the best of it is that the auditor at the end of a large hall experiences this sense of satisfaction quite as fully as the persons sitting in the first row of seats. Without good attacks there can be no intellectual singing or speaking, no broad phrasing, and much more that all should aim at who come before the public, and which listeners have, indeed, a right to expect. But just because many persons feel this to be true, they make serious errors in attempting ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... more than I can say, and they are perfect dears, most of the people who entertain us;—so gay and merry and kind;—and we are growing quite accustomed to the voices and the odd grammar and phrasing. At first you get a singing in your head from the noise of a room full of people speaking. They simply scream, and it makes a peculiar echo, as if the walls were metal. Everyone talks at once, and no one ever listens to anything the person ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... have bought you before," but he changed the retort to a less offensive phrasing—"We have had no difficulty heretofore in arriving at some practical and sensible modus vivendi, and we shouldn't have now. But as a condition binding upon any sort of an arrangement, I am here to say that we can't ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... handling of blank verse is also remarkable. Lovers of Milton may regret the massive grandeur of an earlier style; but, as in every art, so in poetry, we pay for advance in technical accomplishment, in suppleness and melodious phrasing, by the loss of other qualities which are difficult ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... were to be "endangered" through the mere incitement to such subjective sentiments; then the law would necessarily have said: any person who disturbs the public peace by inciting. If such had been the phrasing of the law, then it might perhaps be held that such disturbance always follows when instigation to hatred ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... one of the finest episodes in the great Iliad of India, and, in fact, is hardly surpassed for profound thought, deep feeling, and exquisite phrasing, in the whole literature of India. Telang holds that the song is at least as old as the 4th century, and is inclined to regard it as an original part of the epic. According to most scholars, however, the "Divine Song" was added at a later period, and, in fact, in its present form ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... admiration from the others at the conciseness and precision with which he presented his views. It was cause for wonder, too, that they should find themselves agreeing with him so often, and they admired, also, the felicity of phrasing with which he continued to present all these things as the views of a great public, thus giving the despatch the flavor of news rather than opinion. When it was finished—and it would fill two full columns of the Monitor—the line was quite clearly drawn between what Jimmy Grayson could do and ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... contained the first personal note which had come from his lips. Barbara did not answer immediately, and Steve thought that she was phrasing her own reply. He could not know that she wanted a moment in which to contemplate the little hint of diffidence in his voice and to wonder at herself for not having wondered before if he had not, many, many times, been very ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... the answers: "I see absolutely nothing; I am occupied altogether with the pleasure of the music: I live entirely in a world of sound. In accordance with my knowledge of harmony, I analyze the harmonies but not for long. I follow the development of the phrasing." "I see nothing: I am given up wholly to my impressions. I believe that the chief effect of music is to heighten in ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... they stagger on smooth roads and talk confusedly." It cannot be said that any psychological observations of the fool's or of the rich man's mind are recorded here. If I sift those maxims more carefully, I cannot find more than two score which, stripped of their picturesque phrasing, could really enter into that world system of naive psychology. And yet even this figure is still too high. Of those forty, most are after all epigrams, generalizations of some chance cases, exaggerations of a bit of truth, or expressions ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... without saying that little enough of this verse is dull: it nearly all has character, a distinct personal flavour in phrasing and motive. Yet this flavour is best known to the public in its development by the first of brilliant young men to be influenced by Mr. Belloc's style, as apart from his ideas. We may pause a moment to examine this point, for its own special interest ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... read the war news and try to visualize the grim reality behind the official phrasing of the communiques. And gradually he became calm, and was almost startled when Amaryllis, who had been watching him furtively and had begun to wonder if he was really so interested in ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... This easy phrasing is a game of yours That you may win to lose. I beg your pardon, But you that have the sight will not employ The will to see with it. If you did so, There might be fewer ditches dug for others In your perspective; and there might be fewer Contemporary motes of prejudice ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... father, my dear father, Thou call'dst me fondly, but some moments past, Thy gentle child. I call my saint to witness I would be such. To say I love this man Is shallow phrasing. Since man's image first Flung its wild shadow on my virgin soul, It has borne no other reflex. I know well Thou deemest he was forgotten; this day's passion Passed as unused confrontment, and so transient As it was turbulent. No, no, full oft, ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... achieved an object fondly cherished. His past life,—alas! what has he done with it? His actual life, broken fragment though it be, is at rest now. But still the everlasting question,—mocking terrible question, with its phrasing of farce and its enigmas of tragical sense,—"WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT?" Do with what? The all that remains to him, the all he holds! the all which man himself, betwixt Free-will and Pre-decree, is permitted to do. Ask not ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... here and there what we often notice in the speech of those who have been educated in isolated places far from that babel of polite energies which we call the world; something that may be described as a bookish cast appearing oddly in the midst of phrasing distinctly rustic and local,—a peculiarity not easy to transfer from one language ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... part of this description is quite masterly—worthy, I am inclined to say, of Flaubert. But unless you are familiar with the quiet, undemonstrative nature of the scenery described, you can hardly estimate the perfect justice of the sentiment and phrasing with which Gissing succeeds in ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... and in it make one of his characters say, "Here, devil, empty the quoins into the standing galley and the imposing stone into the hell-box; assemble the comps around the frisket and let them jeff for takes and be quick about it," I should recognize a mistake or two in the phrasing, and would know that the writer was only a printer ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... the clock of the Metropolitan tower. The bronze hand pointed to the stroke of six. As he looked, the first note of the quarter chimes rang out. The car swung the corner and headed down the street. McCarthy stepped forward. The sweet chimes ceased their fourfold phrasing, and the great bell began its spaced ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... then shattered before his amazed eyes,—this is a situation in which the male animal is apt to behave inequably. In the language of the estimable Herr Doctor von Herzlich, he will seek those avenues of modification in which the least struggle is required. In the simpler phrasing of Uncle Peter Bines, he will ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... great series of international undertakings made by Japan since the first Anglo-Japanese Treaty of 1902, clearly believes that the stately Elizabethan manner which still characterizes British official phrasing is an admirable method to be here employed. The preamble is quite English; it is so English that one is almost lulled into believing that one's previous reasoning has been at fault and that Japan is only demanding what she is entitled to. ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... of Ch. XV and through XVI and XVII are a number of those personal passages, which I have postponed to a subsequent lecture upon Jeremiah's spiritual struggles,(438) and also several passages which by outlook and phrasing belong to a later age. The impression left by this miscellany is that of a collection of sayings put together by an editor out of some Oracles by our Prophet himself and deliverances by other prophets on the same or similar themes. In pursuance of ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... good stenographer does not end when she leaves school. She should be able not only to take down and transcribe notes neatly and correctly. She should be able to spell and punctuate correctly and to make the minor changes in phrasing and diction that so often can make a good letter of a poor one. The most fatal disease that can overtake a stenographer (or any one else) is the habit ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... Saturday we soon found out why we had come here, to use the rather obscure phrasing of the man of the party, for it speedily transpired that Miss Cassandra had brought us here with deliberate intent to lead us from the straight and narrow path of sightseeing into the devious and beguiling ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... understood clearly that the things which would naturally have come to her on her father's death belonged in a certain sense to Mr. Richard Pilkington of Shaftesbury Avenue. Mr. Schofield, poor man, had approached this branch of his subject gently and gingerly, with every delicacy of phrasing that his fancy could suggest. He leaned back in his chair and looked at her through half-closed eyes, respectfully veiling the shrewdness of his gaze. Lucia had at first displayed so little interest and intelligence that ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... printed word. With appreciation, which comes at the end, when the critic and the criticised are about to part, it is otherwise. The sea appreciation of one's humble talents has the permanency of the written word, seldom the charm of variety, is formal in its phrasing. There the literary master has the superiority, though he, too, can in effect but say—and often says it in the very phrase—"I can highly recommend." Only usually he uses the word "We," there being some occult virtue ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... peer for prompt and pithy and witty and humorous sayings. None has equalled him, certainly none has surpassed him, in the felicity of phrasing with which he clothed these children of his fancy. Aldrich was always brilliant, he couldn't help it, he is a fire-opal set round with rose diamonds; when he is not speaking, you know that his dainty fancies are twinkling and glimmering around in ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... of Juliet, speaking the words of haste, makes her audience wait to hear them. Nothing more incongruous than Juliet's harry of phrase and the actress's leisure of phrasing. None act, none speak, as though there were such a thing as impulse in a play. To drop behind is the only idea of arriving. The nurse ceases to be absurd, for there is no one readier with a reply than she. Or, rather, her delays are so altered ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... should use before he spoke again. His respect for Oscar's pecuniary position was great; but his respect for himself—especially at the present crisis—was, if possible, greater still. In deference to the first sentiment he was as polite, and in deference to the second he was as positive, in phrasing his remonstrance, as a man could be. "Permit me to remind you, dear Oscar, that my claim to interfere, as Lucilla's father, is at least equal to yours," proceeded the rector. "In the hour of my daughter's need, it is my parental duty to be present. If you go to your cousin's house, my position imperatively ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... first Latin Irene learnt, and its quaint phrasing to this day influenced her thoughts of mortality. Standing by her mother's grave, she often repeated to herself "seu potius exuviae," and wondered whether her father's faith in science excluded the hope of that old-world reasoning. She would not have dared ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... Gods of Greece' surpassed his earlier efforts. To please Wieland he aimed at Horatian correctness, and he came near hitting the mark. There is no progress toward lightness of touch or melody of phrasing,—Schiller was not the man for tuneful titillation of the ear,—but the poem is tolerably free from the bizarre hyperboles that mar its predecessors. It is intellectual, argumentative, but suffused at the same time with genuine ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... students that he could not lecture without that piece of chalk to fumble in his fingers, and once he had been stricken to impotence by their hiding his supply. He came and looked under his grey eyebrows at the rising tiers of young fresh faces, and spoke with his accustomed studied commonness of phrasing. ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... impossibile', is a sally that can only be meant to concern appearances of absurdity. There are others like them in Luther's book on Freewill in Bondage, as when he says (ch. 174): 'Si placet tibi Deus indignos coronans, non debet displicere immeritos damnans.' Which being reduced to more temperate phrasing, means: If you approve that God give eternal glory to those who are not better than the rest, you should not disapprove that he abandon those who are not worse than the rest. And to judge that he speaks only of appearances of injustice, one ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... elements are separable only in thought, not in reality. Poetry is not common thought expressed in an uncommon manner; it is not an artificial phrasing of even the higher emotions. The higher emotions have a phrasing of their own; they fall naturally—whether as the result of instinct or of habit need not here be considered—into fitting forms. The form may be rhyme; it may be blank ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... idealism with Posa for its hero. As finally completed in the summer of 1787, Don Carlos had twice the length of an ordinary stage-play and, withal, a certain lack of artistic unity. But its sonorous verse, its fine phrasing of large ideas, and its noble dignity of style settled forever the question of Schiller's power as a dramatic poet. The third act especially is instinct with the best ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... purpose of the committee to frame an amendment which should protect whites as well as blacks and operate in behalf of corporations as well as individuals. In other words, Conkling was making the interesting contention that his committee had had a far wider and deeper purpose in mind in phrasing the Amendment than had been commonly understood and that the demand for the protection of the negro from harsh southern legislation had been utilized to answer the request of business for federal assistance. The safety of the negro was put to the fore; the purpose of the committee to strengthen ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... that all this fine phrasing, this copious draft from classical sources, was intended to quench the ardor of his curiosity. Diggle's explanation was very lame; the fury depicted on the pursuer's face could scarcely be due to a mere accidental jostling in the street. And Diggle was certainly ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... one—one adverse criticism of her position always caused her defense to collapse. So she collected all the material she could get on the subject of personal responsibility and sacrifice. Her husband's brilliant way of phrasing became a delight to her. But always, as she listened, vague ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... to Understand Music," "Studies in Phrasing," "Twenty Lessons to a Beginner," "Primer of Musical Forms," Associate Editor of Mason's ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... his Sussex life, Now seemed to Lake this day. Among his men, All day he drew and pegged the rickyard straw, And piled the barn from floor to the swallows' beam, Brown throated and brown armed, the golden rose Of summer wind glowing upon his face, And all the phrasing of his body good. And twilight fell on the full harvest home, And the barn doors were closed, and painted wagons Stood empty by the ricks, with sunken wheels Smeared with the fallen husks, and voice was none, And silence with ...
— Preludes 1921-1922 • John Drinkwater
... the condescension stuff!" I repeated, taking a wayward satisfaction out of shocking him with the paraded vulgarity of my phrasing. ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... continuation of his elaborate courtesy and his purposely stilted phrasing, the Sepoy said: "If the sapphire was argument, this was certainly conviction. The moral barrier which could withstand the assault of the first, must, unquestionably, have yielded to the insidious ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... laughing except the captain, who was swearing quietly; but the line of negroes marched on down to the wharf- boat with the unshakable dignity of black folk in an important position. They came singing an old negro spiritual. The women's sopranos thrilled up in high, weird phrasing against an organ-like ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... niftier in fresh air, but the great outdoors, according to Peter, is an arena of endless murder and rapine and warfare, and the cleanest acre of forest or prairie under the sun somewhere has its stains of blood and its record of cruelty. We talked about Susie and the negative phrasing of the ten moral laws and the Horned Dinosaur from Sand Hill Creek (whose bones Peter reckoned to be at least three million years old) and the marriage customs of the Innuits. And we talked about Matzenauer and Kreisler and the best cure for chilblains ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... bed-time, and he soon found his hands too full with his dormitory to enable him to think out the phrasing of that letter. The dormitory, which was recruited entirely from the junior day-room, had heard of Drummond's departure with rejoicings. They liked Drummond, but he was a good deal too fond of the iron hand for their tastes. A night with Sheen ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... through this maze of shifted constructions and heavy, awkward phrasing for the sake of the divorce story following. In the following form, however, it readily ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... that respects technical points, certainly the most finished work we have yet had from the author's hand, and here and there the phrasing is exquisite. For ambitious aims, and for art which so far has justified those aims, for elevation and refinement, these poems are in advance of any of the author's former works."—British ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... Y: /n./ [ITS] Ritual phrasing of part of the information which ITS made publicly available about each user. This information (the INQUIR record) was a sort of form in which the user could fill out various fields. On display, two of these fields were always combined into a project ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... who made the remark about the 'died of wounds' was a particular friend of mine, who had a great gift of happy phrasing, illustrated in the words I have quoted. Once we had a long talk about the old battles, and, speaking of a common friend who had been killed, he observed, 'I do think it dreadful, his being killed like that—killed ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... father-in-law comparatively easy. There was not much feeling in it perhaps—even Vera, who read it with partial eyes, could not help noting the fact—but, after all, it was in a sense a matter of business; and so she was able to find consolation in its clear, incisive phrasing. She was glad when it was finished, more glad still when they had strolled down to the pillar box outside the gates, and dropped the envelope in it. Their relations were on a definite footing now, and she had little doubt that her father ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... leitmotif of the whole fascinating drama of infection and immunity. We can study only one phrasing here. We shall, of course, catch cold occasionally, but will throw it off quickly, and probably form anti-bodies enough to last us a year or more. How can this be done? First and foremost, by living and sleeping as much as possible in the open air. This ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... not felt. The note began soft and timid and scarce audible, as the prayer of Norma might have done; but how it gradually swelled with the influx of divine strength into the soul! The grand difficulty in the opening andante movement of Casta Diva lies in its broad, sustained phrasing, in the long, generous undulation of its rhythm, which with most singers drags or gets broken out of symmetry. Jenny Lind conceived and did it truly. The impassioned energy of the loud-pleading syncopated cries in which the passage attains its climax; ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... simple but deeply touching, and told with the beauty of phrasing and the deep and subtle sympathy of ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... or -ence. These and other mispellings (even those of proper names) are reproduced without change or comment. The use of sic and of square brackets is reserved to indicate evident slips of the pen, obviously incorrect, unclear, or incomplete phrasing and punctuation, and my conjectures in ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... his soul. The music, that distant, mellow phrasing of the call of love, the music had unstrung him. While he paced the bridge before her coming that music had been melting the ice of his natural reserve. But he did not pardon himself because he ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... the grand manner is a thing of the past. Mr. Lloyd-George is not, in style and method, more remote from Gladstone, nor Mr. George Alexander from Macready, than is Mr. Rufus Isaacs, the type of modern advocate, from Russell. Strength, passion, sonorousness, magnificence of phrasing, are things which the present generation vaguely approves in retrospect; but it would titter at a contemporary demonstration of them. While I was reading Pigott's cross-examination, an idea struck me; why do not the managers of our ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... which is yours." Although Bakahenzie was not sure to what these words had referred, yet he was sagacious enough to know that if Marufa had engineered that scene, then there must be some plan at the back of it, and in any case knew, as any white medicine man, that words in mystic phrasing are always soul-satisfying to the credulous who interpret them in terms of their subconscious desires. Then with political prudence he avoided any reference to uncomfortable topics, by dismissing the assembly before any pertinent ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... to pick words, phrasing with the carefulness of the man of method, talking as those persons talk who have read many books and use their tongue but seldom. Farr found much quaintness ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... perfect bearing—all these qualities combined, and many others which we forget, left the auditor free to enjoy the pleasure of listening without having his attention diverted by fatiguing gymnastics. Kalkbrenner's manner of phrasing was somewhat lacking in expression and communicative warmth, but the style was always noble, true, and of the ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... of course, partly produced by the diction; but the diction, fine as it is, would be useless without the phrasing—that art by which the two forces of the metre and the sense are made at once to combat, to combine with, and to heighten each other. It is, however, impossible to do more than touch upon this side—the technical side—of Beddoes' genius. ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... was that he had been phrasing his ideas very well, and he went to bed wondering why he could not talk in similar fashion when he was with Ruth. He was only a schoolboy, with a schoolboy's tongue, when he was ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... pleasant talk I have had with him about the singers of our early years; never forgetting to speak of Mrs. Frere of Downing, as the most perfect private singer we had ever heard. And so indeed she was. Who that had ever heard her sing Handel's songs can ever forget the purity of her phrasing and the pathos of her voice? She had no particle of vanity in her, and yet she would say, "Of course, I can sing Handel. I was a pupil of John Sale, and he was a pupil of Handel." To her old age she still retained ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... Racine, of Corneille, of Victor Hugo, or the well-worn comedies of Moliere or of Beaumarchais are played with small lure of stage upholstery, and listened to with close attention by a popular audience responsive to the exquisite rhythm and grace of phrasing, the delicate and restrained tragic pathos, and the subtle comedy of their great dramatists. To witness a premiere at the Francais is an intellectual feast. The brilliant house; the pit and stalls filled with black-coated critics; the ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... bud—that's Rosemary," said Winnie who scorned to read poetry and often employed poetical fancies in her rather quaint phrasing. "A rose in the bud and a flower of a girl. A temper that blazes, a quick pride that bleeds at a word and a passion for loving that sometimes frightens me. The sick and the helpless and the young—Rosemary ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... does it ever say anything? Every theme is butchered to death. There is endless repetition in different keys, with different instrumental nuances, yet of true, intellectual and emotional mood-development there is no trace; short-breathed, chippy, choppy phrasing, and never ten bars of a big, straightforward melody. All this proves that Wagner had not the power of sustained thoughts like Mozart or Beethoven. And his orchestration, with its daubing, its overladen, hysterical color! What ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... made of it, and a rough draught of the whole work put down, not yet distributed into its parts; the detailed arrangement should then be introduced, after which adornment may be added, the diction receive its colour, the phrasing and rhythm be perfected. ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... his meaning?—made plain enough at last, though with the most graceful phrasing. Childish vanity and ignorance had forbidden her to dream of such an issue. She had not for a moment grasped the significance to a man of the world of the ruin and disgrace fallen upon her family. In theory she might call herself an exile from the polite world; none the less did she imagine ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... profile with small, compressed lips and large, prominent, melancholy eyes that wickedly reminded Gregory of the eyes of a beetle. Beneath the black feather boa that was thrown round her neck, her thin shoulder-blades, while she talked to Mrs. Forrester and sketched with pouncing fingers the phrasing of certain passages, jerked and vibrated oddly. Mrs. Forrester nodded, smiled, acquiesced. She was rather fond of Eleanor. Their talk was for each other. Miss Woodruff, unheeded, but with nothing of the air of one consciously ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... red,"—or, for more pertinent instances, imagine a Carlyle, an Emerson, a Lamb forced to exclude from his vocabulary every word not readily understood by the multitude, to iron out all whimseys, all melodies from his phrasing, and to plunk down his words one after the other in ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... style, certainly is characteristic of Huxley; but clearness alone does not make subject-matter literature. In addition to this quality, Huxley's writing wins the reader by the racy diction, the homely illustration, the plain, honest phrasing. All these and other qualities bring one into an intimate relationship with his subject. A man of vast technical learning, he is still so interested in the relation of his facts to the problems of men that he is always ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... caused by diseases that are widely distributed because sexual instincts are uncontrolled. In short, the alarming problem of the social diseases results from masculine promiscuity or the failure of men to adhere to the monogamic standards of morality. In other and familiar phrasing, there is widespread acceptance and practice of the so-called "double standard of sexual morality," a monogamic one for respectable women and promiscuity for many of their male relatives and friends. (See writings of Morrow, especially ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... that these vagrant verses make One heart more glad; if they but bring A single smile, for that One's sake I should be satisfied to sing. As Locker said, in phrasing fitter, Pleased if but One should ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... and pleasing; he imagined a consolation in it for the women, who, if they were forced by public opinion to put off their charming hats, would know how charmingly they did it. Each turned a little, either her body or her head, and looked in any case out of the corner of her eyes; and he was phrasing it all for a scene in his story, when he looked round at his neighbor to see how she had managed, or was managing, with her veil. At the same moment she looked at him, and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... I missed at home on our Thursday nights, I made up for at Henley's, and at friends' houses on many other occasions, and few can answer better than I for the quality of Henley's talk if I have forgotten the actual words. Its strength was its simple directness,—no posing, no phrasing, no attitudinizing for effect. This, I know, was always what most struck people when they first met him on our Thursday nights, especially Americans, for with us in America the man who has won the reputation of greatness too often seems afraid he will lose it if he does not forever advertise ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... the discussion has become academic in the half-century that has passed since Southern cheers over the first conquests of the Merrimac faltered before the acclaim which greeted the Monitor's achievement of her task. One may disagree with the phrasing of various historians on both sides, one may find it difficult to accept the inscription upon the shaft of the Merrimac outside the "Confederate White House" in Richmond, but no American can cease to wonder at the fortitude and daring ...
— The Monitor and the Merrimac - Both sides of the story • J. L. Worden et al. |
