"Diction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Montaigne are meant when Hamlet says that 'to make true diction of him, his semblable' must be 'his mirror; and, who else would trace him, his umbrage—nothing more.' That is, one must be Montaigne, or become his absolute admirer, 'his umbrage,' 'his semblable,' in order to do justice to him. The ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... dove-tailed sentences and by giving the approximate meaning where the literal was impossible, to turn all this into fairly smooth English. But in such a process all the strength and individual character of the original would inevitably have been lost. What I have endeavoured to do is to indicate the diction which a man of Wagner's peculiar turn of mind would have used, if he had written in ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... smoothness of his diction. he spoke as if giving orders to a servant. But apparently neither of the two Standishes resented his dictation. For Brice could hear them follow Hade out of the house. And from the veranda presently came the booming murmur of Standish's voice in a recital ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... very pretty young Quakeress, of about David's age, came from North Carolina to visit Mr. Kennedy, who was her uncle. David fell desperately in love with her. We cannot better describe this adventure than in the unpolished diction of this illiterate boy. If one would understand this extraordinary character, it is necessary thus to catch such glimpses as we can of his inner life. Let this necessity atone for the unpleasant rudeness of speech. Be it remembered that this reminiscence was ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... mediocrity seems the effort of struggle and of toil. He has many vigorous, but few happy lines; he has everything by purchase, and nothing by gift; he had no NIGHTLY VISITATIONS of the Muse, no infusions of sentiment or felicities of fancy. His diction, however, is more his own than of any among the successors of Dryden; he borrows no lucky turns, or commodious modes of language, from his predecessors. His phrases are original, but they are sometimes harsh; as he ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... short of the splendour of its opening. Jeffrey said however quite truly, claiming to be heard with authority as his "Critic-laureate," that of all his writings it was perhaps the most finished in diction, and that it equalled the best in the delicacy and fineness of its touches, "while it rises to higher and deeper passions, not resting, like most of the former, in sweet thoughtfulness, and thrilling and attractive tenderness, but boldly wielding all the lofty and terrible elements ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... it is the type of divine Science. The "tree of knowledge" stands for the erroneous doctrine that the 526:21 knowledge of evil is as real, hence as God-bestowed, as the knowledge of good. Was evil instituted through God, Love? Did He create this fruit-bearer of sin in contra- 526:24 diction of the first creation? This second biblical account is a picture ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... over the book at hazard, I am struck with his frequent felicity of phrase. At every step there is something one would like to quote—something excellently well said. These things are often of the lighter sort, but Hawthorne's charming diction lingers in the memory—almost in the ear. I have always remembered a certain admirable characterisation of Doctor Johnson, in the account of the writer's visit to Lichfield—and I will preface it by a paragraph almost as good, commemorating ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... periods, nor in fabricating the turgid bombast of artificial feelings, which, coming from the head, never reach the heart. I shall be employed about things, not words! and, anxious to render my sex more respectable members of society, I shall try to avoid that flowery diction which has slided from essays into novels, and from novels ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... in-formation, than that of commencing Author on such a subject; and writing for the press has been but very little my employment, I trust that an ample excuse will be granted for any errors that may appear, or for the want of that happiness of diction with which more able and accomplished ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... people are always founded on nature, and therefore the feelings of a more polished generation immediately sympathize with them. We need no numerous notes, no antiquarian dissertations, to enable the most ignorant to recognize the sentiments and diction of the characters of Homer; we have but, as Lear says, to strip off our lendings—to set aside the factitious principles and adornments which we have received from our comparatively artificial system of society, and our natural feelings are in unison with those of the bard of Chios and the heroes ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... in his intention,' Fleetwood muttered on a stride. 'I'll tell you this, Gower Woodseer; when you lay on in earnest, your diction is not so choice. Do any of your remarks apply to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... different meaning in the English from their signification in the Russian, and of the remaining two, one contains an idea which the reader will look for in vain in the original. This carelessness is the less excusable, as the verses in question present nothing in style, subject, or diction, which could offer the smallest difficulty to a translator. Judging this to be no unfair test, (the piece in question was taken at random,) it will not be necessary to dilate upon minor defects, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... first. But it is not the greatest merit of your performance. There is a truth in the delineation of character, and a devotion to rectitude and virtue in your moral estimate, quite as remarkable as the felicity of diction by which the varieties of each portrait are denoted. You have also escaped the snare to which brevity (according to Horace's well-known line), is exposed—obscurity."—From a letter of the late Bishop ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.19 • Various
... mixed sensation of delight and despair." From this testimony we may judge, that a simple style appears to the best judges to be more difficult to attain, and more desirable, than that highly ornamented diction to which writers of inferior taste aspire. Gibbon tells us, with great candour, that his friend Hume advised him to beware of the rhetorical style of French eloquence. Hume observed, that the English language, and English taste, do not admit ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... formerly his most intimate school friend, to close the apothecary shop and to sell privately whatever it contained. But a small quantity of every drug was to be reserved for his own personal use. He also, in his carefully chosen diction begged the honourable notary to allow the Italian architect Olivetti, who would soon present himself, to rebuild the old house of "The Three Kings" throughout, according to the plan which they had agreed upon ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... time I had not fully voiced my discovery. Naturally, my first jottings were but efforts to express in feeble diction Truth's ultimate. In ...
— Retrospection and Introspection • Mary Baker Eddy
... Grapes, another magazine, under the auspices of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. The subjects of this poet's compositions were patriotic, sentimental and religious, and his poems are characterised by deep pathos, and great sweetness of diction.] ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... say just how much of the diction of these lines belongs to him, and how much to me. He said he would never claim them, after I read them to him in my version. I, on my part, do not wish to be held responsible for some of his more daring thoughts, if I should see fit to reproduce them hereafter. At this time I shall give only ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... England, December 24, 1822. He was educated at Rugby and Oxford. In 1857 he was elected professor of Poetry at Oxford. He is chiefly noted for his essays, though his poems are lofty in sentiment and polished in diction. "Sohrab and Rustum" is his most important poem. He died ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year • Various
... whole wants beauty of tone and felicity of diction. It is more like a map than a painting. One has only to recall the extraordinary charm of the Elizabethans to understand why so many pages in The Dynasts arouse only an intellectual interest. But no one can read the whole drama ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... to make the average person see as clearly, feel as keenly, and understand as well as he does himself the persons and things that he is portraying and explaining, is obviously the sine qua non of success. Ease, fluency, and originality of diction, either natural or acquired, the writer must possess if his work is ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... distinguishing symbol, is undoubtedly an affectation of great simplicity and familiarity of language. They disdain to make use of the common poetical phraseology, or to ennoble their diction by a selection of fine or dignified expressions. There would be too much art in this, for that great love of nature with which they are all of them inspired; and their sentiments, they are determined shall be indebted, for their effect, to nothing but their intrinsic tenderness or ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... compositions. Instances of bad grammar in his letters are frequent, when dealing with ordinary topics. In no sense a polished man, he could, however, when the occasion required it, assume in his grammar and diction the grace and elegance of the scholar, but it does not often come to the front. He was too rugged, too headstrong, to pay much attention to the ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... imagery, clothed in a diction free, forcible, and various. 'Childe Harold', although avowedly a fragment, contains many fragments which would do honour to any poet, of any period, in ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... no man of any description as a literary character, could have come up, in the one instance, to the pure sentiments of morality, or in the other, to the variety of knowledge, force of imagination, propriety and vivacity of allusion, beauty and elegance of diction, and strength of expression, to which they had that day listened. From poetry up to eloquence there was not a species of composition of which a complete and perfect specimen might not have been culled, from one part or the other of the speech to which he alluded, and which, he was persuaded, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... in language Herodotus is not archaic. His style is the "best canon of the Ionic speech," marked, however, not so much by primitive purity as by eclectic variety. At the same time it is characterised largely by the poetic diction of the Epic and Tragic writers; and while the translator is free to employ all the resources of modern English, so far as he has them at his command, he must carefully retain this poetical colouring and by all means ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... could alarm and repel has been gathered round this rightly-named King of Terrors. Milton, who has done so much with his stately rhythm to mould the popular conceptions of modern Christianity, has used all the sinewy strength of his magnificent diction to surround with horror the figure ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant
... her head high, and assumed the dignity of a whole line of duchesses as she stalked toward the counter. She chose her French with much care, and in exceedingly formal diction informed the young man that she desired to ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... vivid picture, here is economy and scrupulous selection of epithet, here is no "poetic" diction of the despised sort. But something is lacking, none the less. It does not haunt you, it does not ingratiate itself with your ear, you do not find yourself repeating it days and months later. Close the book—and the poem ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... stairs—a work entailing huge effort of limbs and chin—he would stump gravely into the room without any form of salutation. There are some great minds above such trifles. His examination of the patient was a matter of some minutes. Then he would say, "Bad case," with the peculiar mechanical diction that was his—the words that Meredith had taught him on the evening of his arrival. After making his diagnosis Nestorius usually proceeded to entertain the patient with a display of his treasures for the time being. These were not in themselves of great value: sundry ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... in magnificent terms: "Bude, the glory and pillar of human learning, thanks to whom, at this day, France can claim the palm of erudition." The portrait which he draws of Seneca is the production of a practised pen: "Seneca, whose pure and polished phrase savors, in some sort, of his age; his diction florid and elegant; his style, without labor or restraint, moves on, free and unembarrassed." It may be seen that the student had the honor to study under Mathurin Cordier and to attend the lectures of Alciati; but, after all, his book is but a defective ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... ancient, and the improvement of modern writers; that it may promote the reformation of those translators, who, for want of understanding the characteristical difference of tongues, have formed a chaotick dialect of heterogeneous phrases; and awaken to the care of purer diction some men of genius, whose attention to argument makes them negligent of style, or whose rapid imagination, like the Peruvian torrents, when it brings down gold, mingles ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... fools—that's for certain! It is always so!' And forthwith the exclaimer relates half a dozen similar instances. Thus accumulating the one sort of facts and never collecting the other, we do, as poets in their diction, and quacks of all denominations do in their reasoning, put a ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... Salamah his sire marvelled at the elegance of his son's diction; and the Notables of the clan, after hearing his poetry and his prose, stood astounded at their excellence; and presently the father clasped his child to his breast and forthright summoned his governor, to whom ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... that when Perry fought this battle he was but 27 years old; and the commanders of his other vessels were younger still." Another distinction which Perry won on this occasion is that he enriched our diction when in writing to Gen. Harrison to announce his victory, he said, "We have met the enemy, and they ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... adapted to a singular character, he frequently hits, as it were by inspiration; but a reasonable propriety of thought he cannot for any time uphold. Nervous and picturesque expressions, as well as descriptions, abound in him; but it is in vain we look either for purity or simplicity of diction. His total ignorance of all theatrical art and conduct, however material a defect, yet, as it affects the spectator rather than the reader, we can more easily excuse, than that want of taste which often prevails in his productions, and which gives way only by intervals to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... GREELEY in the bar-room of a certain city hotel, dashing down brandy or pouring down whisky, and have next morning perused a Tribune editorial on "The Evils of Intemperance," need not be reminded of the chief source of H.G.'s animated style and vigorous diction. An extended walk along the beautiful avenues of the city, or a drive through Central Park, invariably prepares Mr. GREELEY's mind for the birth of an article on the advantages to young men of leaving the metropolis and seeking homes in ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 1, Saturday, April 2, 1870 • Various
... who is making a name for himself as a master of plain business diction, was told off to draft me an answer to the War Office which should remove as many beams as possible out of their optics. He overdid it: the whole tone of it indeed was despondent, so much so that, as I told Braithwaite, a S. of S. for War getting so dark a presentment ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... particulars, and his general statement is simply incredible. Lionardo Bruni and Vellutello long ago pointed out the trifling and fictitious character of this "Life." Those familiar with Dante's allegorical diction will not lay much stress on the literal meaning of pargoletta in Purgatono, XXXI. 59. Gentucca, of course, was a real person, one of those who had shown hospitality to the exile. Dante remembers them all somewhere, for gratitude (which is quite as rare as genius) was one of the virtues ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... with the moral ones. All natural clearness and distinctness of intellect becomes gradually obscured; the memory becomes perplexed; the very style of writing acquires the taint of the perverted mind. Truth is impressed upon every line of Dr. Arnold's vigorous diction, while other writers of equal, perhaps, but less respectable eminence, betray, even in their mode of expression, the habitual want of honesty in their character and in ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... him, only we must not expect in his youthful poems the philosophy of the nineteenth century, or the beauties of Pindar, or, with some again, the truths of Christianity. Few understand children, still fewer understand antiquity. If we look in the Veda for high poetical diction, for striking comparisons, for bold combinations, we shall be disappointed. These early poets thought more for themselves than for others. They sought rather, in their language, to be true to their own thought than to please the imagination ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... both in his dramas, in the descriptive comments of his masques, and in the "Discoveries," is characterised by clarity and vigorous directness, nor is it wanting in a fine sense of form or in the subtler graces of diction. ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... they took in beautiful style—so light and sure. I liked the instrumental part much better than the singing. French voices, the women's particularly, are thin, as a rule. I think they sacrifice too much to the "diction,"—don't bring out the voices enough—but the style and training are ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... stage, where he found Mamise among a troupe of trained animals waiting to go on. She was teasing a chittering, cigar-smoking trained ape on a bicycle, and she proved to be an extraordinarily ordinary, painfully plebeian girl, common in voice and diction, awkward and rather contemptuous of the stage-door Johnnie. Davidge had never ceased to blush, and blushed again now, when he recalled his labored compliment, "I expect to see your name in the electric lights some of these days—or nights, ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... say that is so," put in Fred Fairfield, in sincere tones; "that's why I'm specially interested in knowing just what you do to tinker up a rusty soul. Pardon my rude diction, but I am not aesthetic myself. However, ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... to a regular examination of the tragedy before us, in which I shall treat separately of the Fable, the Moral, the Characters, the Sentiments, and the Diction. And first of the ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... the Cato Maior have generally assumed that Cicero attempted to give an antique coloring to the diction of the dialogue in order to remind readers of Cato's own style. It is only necessary to read a page or two of Cato's De Re Rustica to have this illusion dispelled. The only things actually alleged to be archaisms are (1) the use of ...
— Cato Maior de Senectute • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... style, diction, phraseology, wording; manner, strain; composition; mode of expression, choice of words; mode of speech, literary power, ready pen, pen of a ready writer; command of language &c. (eloquence) 582; authorship; la morgue litteraire[Fr].. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... began we must measure him narrowly by his first performances. These are not to be looked for in even the earliest of his plays, not one of which can be taken to represent his young and unaided faculty, whether as regards construction or diction. Collaboration, the natural resort of the modern dramatist, must have been to some extent forced on him in those years by the nature of his situation; and after all that has been said by adorers of the quality of his wit and his verse in such early ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... Runjeet Singh's harness-maker be considered as a lofty artist, for whose barbaric splendour Mr. Peat and his Melton customers are to forswear pigskin and severe simplicity—not to say utility and comfort. If poetic diction be different in species from plain English, then let us have it as poetical as possible, and as unlike English; as ungrammatical, abrupt, involved, transposed, as the clumsiness, carelessness, or caprice of man can make it. If it be correct to express human ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... had left the house and then made a few remarks on the colour question that for impurity of English and strength of diction have probably ...
— Night Watches • W.W. Jacobs
... artist (such he was already calling himself)—the artist whose personality, whose opinions and whose work are in exact accord. The reading public—a body rather captious and blase, possibly—overlooked his rugged diction in favour of his novel point of view; and when word was passed around that the new author was actually in town a number of the illuminati expressed their gracious desire ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... your clearness of diction, your perspicuity which leaves no cobweb of misty doubt wherewith to drape my shivering moral deformity! To 'see ourselves as others see us' is as disappointing as the result of plunging one's hand into the 'grab-bag', but at least it brings the stimulating tingle of a new sensation. ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... we may turn to Le Chiffre d'Amour, or the "Lady carving an initial," as the prosaic diction of the Wallace Collection has it (No. 382). In this the equal delicacy of the sentiment and of the painting combine to effect a little masterpiece of Louis Quinze art. It is simple and natural, and entirely free from ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... she had attracted around her many and devoted friends. Her conversational powers were of a high order, by common consent. Mr Hedge describes her speech as remarkably fluent and correct; but deriving its strength not from fluency, choice diction, wit, or sentiment, but from accuracy of statement, keen discrimination, and a certain weight of judgment; together with rhetorical finish, it had an air of spontaneity which made it seem the grace of the moment: so that he says, 'I do not remember that the vulgar charge ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various
... ecstatic union of natural beauty and poetic fancy, and in its playful sublimity resembles the azure canopy mirrored in the smiling waters, bright, liquid, serene, heavenly! A great outcry, we know, has prevailed for some time past against poetic diction and affected conceits, and, to a certain degree, we go along with it; but this must not prevent us from feeling the thrill of pleasure when we see beauty linked to beauty, like kindred flame to flame, or from applauding the voluptuous fancy that raises and adorns the fairy fabric of thought, that ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... his actions are distinguished by coolness, intrepidity, and good sense. He does not pretend to second sight, or a knowledge of futurity; but on the present and the past there are few who can reason with more cogency of remark, or with more classic elegance of diction: with such a concentration of qualities, it is not wonderful that his influence extends through every gradation of the juvenile band. His particular attachments are not numerous; but those who have experienced the ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... to what I once heard when nearly drowned in the Thames. If the man had had any intention to increase my alarm, he could not have taken a more effectual way of compassing his intention; for his language—the true and natural diction of spirits—responded to by the confused ringing echoes of the bell, and acting upon a mind already enervated by the weight of the genius of superstition, appeared to be all that was necessary to complete the alarm which I in vain ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... mysticism of many of his associates. In that memorable preface to his Poems he wrote what was a slogan, a manifesto and at the same time a classic credo for all that we call the "new" poetry. "I have often thought," it begins, "that at the side of poetic diction, which everyone condemns, modern verse contains a great deal of poetic material, using 'poetic' in the same special sense. The poetry of exaltation will be always the highest; but when men lose their poetic feeling ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... unequivocal applause. His theory on this subject has been disputed, and is obviously disputable; but it was chiefly written at the age of nineteen; it has never been wholly superseded, and, for elegance of diction, has never been equaled. It brought him into immediate intercourse with all that may be called the fashion of literature—Lyttleton, Warburton, Soame Jenyns, Hume, Reynolds, Lord Bath, Johnson, the greatest though the least influential of them all, and Mrs Montague, the least ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... in the metre, style, and construction of the later poem. Like Dryden, Keats now makes frequent use of the Alexandrine, or 6-foot line, and of the triplet. He has also restrained the exuberance of his language and gained force, whilst in imaginative power and felicity of diction he surpasses anything of which Dryden was capable. The flaws in his style are mainly due to carelessness in the rimes and some questionable coining of words. He also occasionally lapses into the vulgarity and triviality which marred ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... death I received the following letter from Tasistro, which is so beautiful in diction that I ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... in reviewing' Marmion, 'fixed on this narrative of the Abbess as a passage marked by 'flatness and tediousness,' and could see in it 'no sort of beauty nor elegance of diction.' The answer to such criticism is that the narrative is direct and practical, and ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... debating over words he knew were fit but which he feared he could not pronounce, rejecting other words he knew would not be understood or would be raw and harsh. But all the time he was oppressed by the consciousness that this carefulness of diction was making a booby of him, preventing him from expressing what he had in him. Also, his love of freedom chafed against the restriction in much the same way his neck chafed against the starched fetter of a collar. Besides, he was confident that ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... effect of one; only there is nothing heterogeneous in their beauty. There is one classic rule in the architecture, but each of the different architects may characterize an edifice from himself, just as different authors writing the same language characterize it by the diction natural to him. There are suggestions of the capitals in some of our cities, and if you remember Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, you can imagine something like the union of street and garden which every street of them is. The trolleys run under the overarching trees between the lawns, flanked by gravelled ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... the folks there," said Mrs. Beecham, flushed by the thought, and too much excited to think of the elegancies of diction. She had suffered more than her husband had, and retained a more forcible idea of the perils; and in the pause which ensued, all these perils crowded into her mind. As her own ambition rose, she had felt how dreadful it was to be shut in to one small circle of very ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... for and given grammar lessons to New York members of Congress, the composing a suitable reply on such an occasion as this alarmed him not a little. In truth, such little things belonged entirely to polite society, and required a grace and diction rarely attained by politicians. Indeed, he regretted much that he was not where he could obtain the services of one of those New York critics, who, being the sons and grandsons of poor bishops, write learned book notices by the yard, and get up addresses for distinguished actresses, who deliver ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... is one of the most accurate and effective students in a class of eighty-four members, most of them sophomores, although the class includes many seniors. The subject is the study of the style and diction of prominent prose authors, with some theme work. Last year Miss Kahn attained a very high rank in the study of the principles of good English style during the first semester, and in that of synonyms during the ...
— Notable Women Of Modern China • Margaret E. Burton
... fact's a fact—and 't is the part Of a true poet to escape from fiction Whene'er he can; for there is little art in leaving verse more free from the restriction Of Truth than prose, unless to suit the mart For what is sometimes called poetic diction, And that outrageous appetite for lies Which Satan angles with for ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... foxes that spoil the grapes of perfect diction, but they are very little foxes; it is the false elegance of stupid pretentiousness that is an annihilating blight ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... "In the Early Days," by Col. G. L. Cole, and I find it an interesting and instructive narrative, clothed in good diction and pleasing style. Few of the Argonauts took time or trouble to make note of the events of their journey and our California gold episode is remarkably barren of literature, a fact which makes Col. Cole's book doubly interesting ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole
... first designed only to illustrate and vindicate the sentiments contained in the aforementioned letter; and it is but justice to say, the applause it has found among the learned, as well for the elegance of its diction, as the perspicuity of its precepts, is no more than what is truely due to it.——To this discourse is subjoin'd a latin translation, from the arabic of Rhazes's treatise on the small pox and measles, a copy of the original having been obtained for this purpose ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead
... exercised an influence on his intellect and temper scarcely less powerful than hereditary instincts and contemporary history. It at once animated and chastened his imagination; it modified his fancy; it furnished him with his models. On it his taste was formed; on it his style was moulded. From it his diction and his method derived their peculiarities. It transformed what would in all probability have been the mere counterpart of Caedmon's Paraphrase or Langland's Vision into Paradise Lost; and what would have been the mere counterpart of Corydon's ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... selecting him for attorney-general, looked beyond the charming personality to the rapidly developing powers of the lawyer, who was even then captivating all hearers by the strength of his arguments and the splendour of his diction. Contemporaries of Talcott were fond of telling of this remarkable, almost phenomenal gift of speech. One of them mentions "those magical transitions from the subtlest argument to the deepest pathos;" another describes him as "overpowering in the weight of his intellect, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... Fictions of the Irish Celts, 1866, Fireside Stories of Ireland, 1870, and Bardic Stories of Ireland, 1871; all three are now unfortunately out of print. He tells his stories neatly and with spirit, and retains much that is volkstuemlich in his diction. He derived his materials from the English-speaking peasantry of county Wexford, who changed from Gaelic to English while story-telling was in full vigour, and therefore carried over the stories with ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... similarities between satire and its supposed etymological forebears—the satyrs, legendary half men, half goats of ancient Greece. Believing that the Roman satirists Persius and Juvenal had imitated the uncouth manners and vituperative diction of the satyrs, Elizabethan satirists likewise strove to be as rough, harsh, and licentious as possible.[6] Despite the objections to the satire-satyr etymology stated by Isaac Casaubon,[7] scurrilous satire, especially as a political weapon, was a recognizable subspecies in England at least to ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... attention to the acquirement of conversational ease, as he did to skill in writing, he would have been as successful in the one art as in the other. From early life it was his great ambition to be not merely a fine but a forcible writer. He did not seek splendor of diction, but that perspicuity, that transparency of expression which would convey the thought ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... minds, gentlemen, and consider the evidence only; and show this mistaken woman the true majesty of English Law by acquitting her—if you are not satisfied with the abundant, clear, and obviously unbiassed evidence, put before you with that terseness and simplicity of diction which distinguishes our noble civil force. The case is so free from intricacy, gentlemen, that I need not call your attention to any of the details of that evidence. You must either accept it as a whole and ...
— The Tables Turned - or, Nupkins Awakened. A Socialist Interlude • William Morris
... composition, and ventures not a sentence which he has not leisurely weighed and measured. An audience also, composed of reading people, or accustomed to the exactness of written composition in the pulpit, acquires something of the same taste, and is easily offended at the occasional homeliness of diction, and looseness of method, which occur in extemporaneous speaking. Whereas those preachers and hearers, whose education and habits of mind have been different, know nothing of this taste, and are insensible to these blemishes; and, if there be only a fluent outpouring of words, accompanied by a manner ...
— Hints on Extemporaneous Preaching • Henry Ware
... Burnham entered, and the vault above rocked with the same barbaric yells that Jason had heard given Gray Pendleton, for Burnham had been a mighty foot-ball player in his college days. The old president rose, and the tumult sank to reverential silence while a silver tongue sent its beautiful diction on high in a prayer for the bodies, the minds, and the souls of the whole buoyant throng in the race for which they were about to be let loose. And that was just what the tense uplifted faces suggested to John Burnham—he felt in them the ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... was a little kid, Charles, as you express it with that elegance of diction and refinement of thought that seem never to desert you. Accordingly—er— [impatiently] Now I have forgotten what I was going to say. That comes of your provoking me to be sarcastic, Charles. Adolphus: will you kindly tell me ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... this count, I must ask the reader's patience in a piece of very serious work, the ascertainment of the real and full meaning of the word Blasphemy. It signifies simply "Harmful speaking"—Male-diction—or shortly "Blame"; and may be committed as much against a child or a dog, if you desire to hurt them, as against the Deity. And it is, in its original use, accurately opposed to another Greek word, "Euphemy," which means a reverent and loving manner of benediction—fallen ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... better key than any translation can be to the secret of the greatness of the ancient poets. This is the truth: and not only for the reason on which Arnold laid just stress—the "sure and flawless perfection of rhythm and diction" in which, as he truly says, Milton is unique among English poets: but also for his classical habit of mind, for his central sanity, for the sureness with which he makes his call on the thoughts and emotions, not of eccentric {165} or exceptional individuals, but of the ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... public, there is no need for you to go a-begging for aphorisms from philosophers, precepts from Holy Scripture, fables from poets, speeches from orators, or miracles from saints; but merely to take care that your style and diction run musically, pleasantly, and plainly, with clear, proper, and well-placed words, setting forth your purpose to the best of your power, and putting your ideas intelligibly, without confusion or obscurity. Strive, too, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... no woman could have been further in person, voice, and temperament from Dumas' appealing heroine than the veteran actress who first acquainted me with her. Her conception of the character was as heavy and uncompromising as her diction; she bore hard on the idea and on the consonants. At all times she was highly tragic, devoured by remorse. Lightness of stress or behavior was far from her. Her voice was heavy and deep: "Ar-r-r-mond!" she would begin, as if she were summoning ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... published a kind of document regarding this very point, in which he used a word that was not Latin. After thinking it over by night he sent for all those who had accurate knowledge of such matters, for he was extremely anxious to have his diction irreproachable. Thereupon a certain Ateius Capito declared: "Even if no one has previously used this expression, yet because of you we shall all enumerate it among the primitive usages," but was interrupted by one Marcellus,[3] who ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... impossible, I think, to find a truer expression of passion, anguish, tenderness, and supernatural terror, than those poems contain. The dew of heaven on the mountain fern is not more limpid than the simplicity of their diction, nor the heart's blood of a lover more fervid than the throbbing intensity of their passion. Misery, love, longing, and despair have found no finer poetical utterance out of Shakespeare; and the deepest chords of woe and tenderness ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... were offered the chaff of divinity, and its wheat was left for less needy gleaners, who knew where to look. Even the fine old Bible stories, which may be made as lifelike as any history of our day, by a vivid fancy and pictorial diction, were robbed of all their charms by dry explanations and literal applications, instead of being useful and pleasant lessons to those men, whom weakness had rendered as docile as ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... divide him inventorially would dizzy the arithmetic of memory, and yet but yaw neither, in respect of his quick sail. But, in the verity of extolment, I take him to be a soul of great article, and his infusion of such dearth and rareness as, to make true diction of him, his semblable is his mirror, and who else would trace him, his ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... graceful, nor the diction, yet she knew that Ace had struck the mark fairly, for woman indeed needed no tutor to teach her to understand man—woman ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... broke forth. He put Toombs' visit to Grant, "crawling at the seat of power," against his eulogy of a dead enemy. I have never heard such a scoring from one man to another. It was magisterial in its dignity, deadly in its diction. Nothing short of a duel could have settled it in the olden time. But when Lamar, white with rage, had finished, Toombs without a ruffle said, "Lamar, you surprise me," and the host, with the rest of us, took it as a signal to rise from table ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... have rules of its own, from which it will not be allowed to swerve, and which distinguish it from all others. Style will be thought of almost as much importance as thought; and the form will be no less considered than the matter: the diction will be polished, measured, and uniform. The tone of the mind will be always dignified, seldom very animated; and writers will care more to perfect what they produce than to multiply their productions. It will sometimes happen that the members of the literary class, always living amongst themselves ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... towards her, and his ears caught much of what she said. He was astonished at the grace and perfection of her language; it seemed to him like a strain of music filled with every melody of earth and heaven, surpassing poets in beauty of diction, philosophers in truth,—and in purity of affection, all the saints and sweetest women of ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... his queer diction somehow was not unbecoming or grotesque. I suppose George Fox and Savonarola did not use quite the ordinary language of ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... must be accepted, never, however, in defiance of our reason but with the approval of our reason. That Shakespeare's plays create delusion with the assistance of reason is proved by the success they have so long enjoyed. Sublimity of sentiments, exalted diction, and "in short all the Charms of his Poetry, far outweigh any little absurdities in his Plots." He knew how to work up "great and moving Circumstances in such a Way as to affect our Passions strongly." The word used here throughout is delusion, but the ...
— Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) • Anonymous
... for the necessity of ransacking my memory and invention for all sorts and combinations of periphrastic expressions as equivalents for modern ideas, images, relations of things, &c., gave me a compass of diction which would never have been called out by a dull translation of moral essays, &c. "That boy," said one of my masters, pointing the attention of a stranger to me, "that boy could harangue an Athenian mob better than you and I could address an English one." He who honoured me ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... off in dudgeon, ignoring a question by Mr. Green as to whose foot kep' the door open, and felt dimly the force of the diction that no man can serve two masters; and, with a view to saving himself worry, dismissed the matter from his mind until some weeks afterwards it was forcibly revived by the perusal of a newspaper which ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... is fully as interesting to me as the performance, good as that is—with a handsome, delicate-looking young professor of music playing the violin, an actor from the Palais Royale showing a diction altogether remarkable, two well-known gymnasts doing wonderful stunts on horizontal bars, a prize pupil from the Conservatory at Nantes acting, as only the French can, in a well- known little comedy, two clever, comic monologists of the La Scala ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... speech, mark you, the professor said, of a finished orator, full of courteous haughtiness and pouring in chastened diction I will not say the vials of his wrath but pouring the proud man's contumely upon the new movement. It was then a new movement. We ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... speechless. Before Botticelli he is mute. But if there is any good in Botticelli (there is much good, and much evil too) it is emphatically the critic's business to explain it: to translate it from terms of painting into terms of diction. Of course, the rendering will be inadequate—but so is Botticelli. It is a fact he would be the first to admit. But anything which has been intelligently received can at least be intelligently suggested. ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... on, impressed me favourably. He was an old duffer and pedant, but behind these things he was a country-bred man and gentleman, and had showed courage and a sporting instinct in the hour of desperation. He had told his story with many quaint formalities of diction, but also with ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... had developed his theory of poetical realism in the preface to a volume published in 1800, Coleridge rejected and criticised it as wholly untenable. All three, however, may be considered as comrades in a revolt against the conventional diction of eighteenth century poetry, from which Coleridge's "dreamy tenderness" and mystical flights of fancy were as remote as Wordsworth's rusticity and almost prosaic studies ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... Pliny the Younger was the adopted son of Pliny the Elder. He was a voluminous correspondent. We have nine books of his letters, relating to a large number of subjects, and presenting vivid pictures of the times in which he lived. Their diction is ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... rate influenced by, though they can hardly be said to have been moulded upon, the style of the preceding age of old English prose writers ending with Milton. The influence of the latter is, indeed, plainly noticeable both in the diction and in the general sentiment of these two great masters of the pure, ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... not attempt to imitate the lofty diction of the Seasons or Windsor Forest, the noble poem from which, I imagine, Thomson derived his sonorous style. He had a humble mind and knew his limitations, and though he adopted the artificial form of verse which ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... Knot, and when that pathetic little drama was over, and the actor had stirred our souls with pity, an undergraduate in the stalls before us turned to his companion, as the curtain fell, and said, tremulously, with an emotion which did him honour, although his diction was queer, "Awefully jolly! ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... wielded a far more vigorous pen than he did. Her copiousness of language, her facility of expression, and the play of her fancy, gave her the command of a very fascinating style; and M. Roland obtained the credit for many passages rich in diction and beautiful in imagery for which he was indebted to the glowing imagination of his wife. Frequent sickness of her husband alarmed her for his life. The tenderness with which she watched over him strengthened the tie which united them. He could ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... 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 of slavishly following ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... sharp lookout that one's thoughts are conveyed, not just as they come, but in a certain order, essential for the correct composition of the picture I wish to sketch. Further, I endeavour to make my diction literary, my definitions brief and precise, my wording, as far as possible, simple and eloquent. Every minute I have to pull myself up and remember that I have only an hour and forty minutes at my disposal. In short, one has one's work cut out. At one and the same ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... word-weigher. His taste was the plague of my life and his own. His prepared speeches (or rather perorations) were the most finished pieces of cold diction that could be conceived under the marble portico of the Stoics,—so filed and turned, trimmed and tamed, that they never admitted a sentence that could warm the heart, or one that could offend the ear. He had so great a horror of a vulgarism that, like Canning, he would have made a periphrasis ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... marked by clarity of presentation, polished diction and forceful phrasing. A firm grasp of the elemental truths of Christian belief together with an unusual ability to interpret mundane experiences in terms ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... inelegant and relaxed posture he somehow managed to maintain the air of picturesque dignity which always made his tall, ungainly figure noticeable in any courtroom. Indubitably Mr. Ephraim Tutt suggested a past generation, the suggestion being accentuated by a slight pedantry of diction a trifle out of character with the rushing age in which he saw fit to practise his time-honored profession. "Cheer up, Tutt," said he, pushing a box of stogies toward his partner with the toe of his congress ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train |
