"Elocution" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... scholars and princes, who assembled to listen to the marvelous adventures of knights and ladies, giants and magicians, from the lips of the story-teller. Ariosto excelled in the practice of reading aloud with distinct utterance and animated elocution, an accomplishment of peculiar value at a time when books were scarce, and the emoluments of authors depended more on the gratuities of their patrons than the sale of their works. In each of the four editions which he published, he improved, corrected, and ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... itself," she remarked gloomily to Miriam, as together the two left the library one afternoon and set out for a short walk before dinner. "Anne told me last night that the girls in her elocution class are very distant since she came back from New York. It's Elfreda's fault, too. How could she deliberately try to make it hard for a girl ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... not an emphasis, however slight, however strong, that does not here meet with something fitted well for its amplest illustration. No tenderness of pathos, no earnestness of thought, no play of wit, no burst of passion, is there, perhaps, of which the accomplished teacher of Elocution may not find the proper style of expression in these pages, and, consequently, the best examples for the illustration ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... spirit of the Sacred Word. They both stimulate thought and invigorate faith. Fresh and fragrant and breezy, one delights himself in them as in a garden in a June morning. From their exquisite diction one might almost infer the graceful elocution of their author. They are sermons to which the reader will often ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... evidently means, here, when met] was serious, venerable, and majestic; in his latter time a little paralytic." Accepting at once as reasonable and as accurate what has thus been asserted by those who have made the art of elocution their especial and chosen study for analysis, it is surely impossible not to recognise at a glance how enormously a reader must, by necessity, be advantaged, who, in addition to the intellectual and emotional gifts already enumerated, possesses those personal attributes and physical endowments ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... humour, moderation of character, judgment, and a most sensitive tact. His qualities and his limitations alike appear in the Spectator. For example, he tells us that he wishes that country clergymen would borrow the sermons of great divines, and devote all their own efforts to acquiring a good elocution: [Footnote: Spectator 106.] here we detect the practical moralist and the man who likes a thing good of its kind, but not the enthusiast. He upholds the observance of Sunday on account of its social influences rather than ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... individuals, and even with his wife Livia, upon subjects of importance he wrote on his tablets all he wished to express, lest, if he spoke extempore, he should say more or less than was proper. He delivered himself in a sweet and peculiar tone, in which he was diligently instructed by a master of elocution. But when he had a cold, he sometimes employed a herald to deliver his speeches ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... influence our ripening youth, as it did the youth of our nation in the sixteenth century, and delight in dramatic poetry follows as a natural consequence—and last, but not least, as the fruit of all these changes, a vigorous and matured prose. For indeed, as elocution is the highest melody, so is true prose the highest poetry. Consider how in an air, the melody is limited to a few arbitrary notes, and recurs at arbitrary periods, while the more scientific the melody becomes, the more ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... Sheridan, Discourse ... Being Introductory to His Course of Lectures on Elocution and the English Language (1759). ...
— Hypochondriasis - A Practical Treatise (1766) • John Hill
... appearance of the preacher's wife Winifred. "Wife, wife," muttered the disconcerted priest, "if the fool has a wife he will never do for us." In the course of his wanderings this nineteenth-century S. Augustine often gave himself out to be a teacher of elocution. ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... cumlines of figures and formes, fitte for euerie matter, and proper for euerie tong, but that which is greater also, in marking dayly, and folowing diligentlie thus, the steppes of the best Autors, like inuention of Argumentes, like order in disposition, like vtterance in Elocution, is easelie gathered vp: whereby your scholer shall be brought not onelie to like eloquence, but also, to all trewe vnderstanding and right iudgement, both for writing and speaking. And where Dionys. Halicarnassus ...
— The Schoolmaster • Roger Ascham
... is off the stage he has no self-control at all. This all means misused and over-used force. In no schools is the general influence so absolutely morbid and unwholesome, as in most of the schools of elocution and acting. ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... word, and bettering the elocution, but missing the writer's thought (of the unknown path,—instead of going to many "worlds"). The Unitarians have their version, with substitutes ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... to make people happy. Words of good cheer were native to his lips, and he was always doing what he could to lighten the lot of all who came into his beautiful presence. His talk was simple, natural, and direct, never dropping into circumlocution nor elocution. Now that he is gone, whoever has known him intimately for any considerable period of time will linger over his tender regard for, and his engaging manner with, children; his cheery "Good Day" to poor people he happened to be passing in the road; his trustful and earnest "Please ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... of Craven Chapel, London, was a student at Hoxton Academy, there was a good lecturer on elocution there of the name of True. In the Memoir, published in 1863, are some pleasing reminiscences by Dr Leifchild of this excellent teacher, who seems to have taken great pains with the students, and to have awakened in their breasts a desire to become ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... Daniel Webster is taken from a book just issued by the Fowler & Wells Co., New York, entitled, "A Natural System of Elocution and Oratory," founded upon analysis of the Human Constitution. By Thomas A. Hyde and William Hyde. Among other valuable subjects which this book contains is a description and ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... relieved him from domestic cares, regulated and watched over the expenses of his house, etc.' 'She had,' as Boswell says (post, Aug. 1783), 'valuable qualities.' 'Had she had,' wrote Johnson, 'good humour and prompt elocution, her universal curiosity and comprehensive knowledge would have made her the delight of all that knew her' (Piozzi Letters, ii. 311). To Langton he wrote:—'I have lost a companion to whom I have had recourse for domestic amusement for thirty years, and whose variety of knowledge ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... charity," said the former, "if some philanthropist would give this blighter elocution lessons. ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... what is termed the "reading" of a part, but also in the technique of his execution. If to become a mere walking, talking machine, be the object of a beginner, by all means let him be instructed in calisthenics and elocution, and the art of first-night speech-making; but to call such a combination of classes a School of Dramatic Art is degrading; it robs the calling of its highest attribute—imagination. Innate ability must undoubtedly be developed, "which nobody can deny," but ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... person, she suddenly saw the wisdom of Uncle Laurie's advice, and resolved to follow it. So instead of the rant Miss Cameron expected, Josie gave poor Ophelia's mad scene, and gave it very well, having been trained by the college professor of elocution and done it many times. She was too young, of course, but the white gown, the loose hair, the real flowers she scattered over the imaginary grave, added to the illusion; and she sung the songs sweetly, dropped her pathetic curtsies, and vanished behind the ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... his swaying robe or unclasping the hands folded quietly on his bosom. Well has a modern master of art and style said of these old artists, "Many pictures are ostentatious exhibitions of the artist's power of speech, the clear and vigorous elocution of useless and senseless words; while the earlier efforts of Giotto and Ciniabue are the burning messages of prophecy delivered by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... ain't got nothink 't all. Flowers, lady? Buttonhole, gentleman? Pencils, sir, three for five, to help a poor widow?' Do I do it nicely, auntie, or, as a bread-winner accomplishment, were my lessons in elocution entirely wasted?" ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... he said. "I had it fixed up, as soon as I got wise to what was going to happen. The voice is one of the girls in my office, over at the brewery. Pronunciation, grammar, elocution and everything correct." ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... good elocution seldom fails of rising to preferment, and acquiring an estate even while he is a young man. I do not know any profession in London where a person makes his fortune so soon as in the law, if he be an eminent pleader. Several of them have of late years been advanced ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... been under. You will find him sensible and candid in the information you may want from him; and if you are kind enough to bestow pains upon him, the obligation on my part will be lasting. The branches to be learnt are these: Latin, French, Arithmetic, Mercantile Accounts, Elocution, History, Geography, Geometry, Astronomy, the Globes, Mathematics, ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... a corner. Presently the French actor began to give one of his famous monologues. She heard his wonderfully varied elocution, his voice—intelligence made audible and dashed with flying lights of humour rising and falling subtly, yet always with a curious sound of inevitable simplicity. She heard gentle titterings from the concealed audience, then a definite ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... with an ear-piercing elocution, and a voice that sometimes crashed like cannon. Such as it was, it was the gift of all hill-preachers, to a singular degree of likeness or identity. Their images scarce ranged beyond the red horizon of the moor and the rainy ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... one day, "I wish I had a place of my own. What is the reason I can't? A girl can go in for Art, and set up a studio; or she can go to Rome, and sculp, and study; she can learn elocution, and read, whether people want to be read to or not; and all that is Progress and Woman's Rights; why can't ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... Garrick, Powel, Holland, or Barry, performed the character; and as nine-tenths of your readers cannot remember those performers, you may easily persuade them that the object of your censure is a blockhead. If he has the art of rapid elocution, tell him he speaks too fast; and if he speaks slowly, and with discrimination, say that he only waits to catch applause. If his action is graceful, tell him he makes too much use of his arms and hands; and if his action is moderate, persuade the public that his arms are tied behind him. By ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 486 - Vol. 17, No. 486., Saturday, April 23, 1831 • Various
... only taught to children who have reached a thinking age, and we do not think of initiating them into the art of elocution until they have got something to say, until their powers of comprehension, analysis and feeling begin to show themselves. All modern educationalists are agreed that the first step in a child's education should be to teach him to ...
— The Eurhythmics of Jaques-Dalcroze • Emile Jaques-Dalcroze
... exclusively in charge of Oliver Optic, gives every other week a selection for Declamation, marked for delivery according to the most approved rules of elocution; 26 MARKED DECLAMATIONS ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... not the things that make a college.... And, Oh! the experiments! It is enough to try the patience of a Job. I came here to take a college course, and not to dabble in a little of every insignificant thing that comes up. More than half of my time is taken up in writing essays, practicing elocution, trotting to chapel, and reading poetry with the teacher of English literature, and it seems to make no difference to Miss Howard and Mr. Durant whether the Latin, Greek and Mathematics are well learned or not. The result is that I do not ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... personated her father, the Curate; and who was, on this occasion (I presume through unavoidable circumstances), neither more nor less than—drunk. There was no mistaking the cause of the fixed leer in the reverend gentleman's eye; of the slow swaying in his gait; of the gruff huskiness in his elocution. It appeared, from the opening dialogue, that a pending law-suit, and the absence of his daughter Fanny in London, combined to make him uneasy in his mind just at present. But he was by no means so clear on this subject as could be desired—in ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... a professional, having studied elocution in Milwaukee, disapproved of Carol's enthusiasm for recent plays. Miss Stowbody expressed the fundamental principle of the American drama: the only way to be artistic is to present Shakespeare. As no one listened to her she sat back ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... this family has jogged along at a fairly comfortable pace, only one daughter, the youngest, Mollie, having so far escaped from the traditional female employments of the region as to spend a season in New York, supplementing the grammar school education by a course in elocution, with Delsarte accompaniments. When she returned she gave her old friends to understand that she was thoroughly misunderstood by her family; also, that she was now to be called Marie and preferably Miss, hinted that she was soon going on a professional tour, and condescendingly agreed to ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... were altogether masculine. She had the sharp voice, the freedom of speech, the unruly tongue of the old woman of the eighteenth century, heightened by an accent suggestive of the common people, a mannish, highly colored style of elocution peculiar to herself, rising above modesty in the choice of words and fearless in calling things baldly ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... interfere, and required him to "move on;" "he was obstructing the pavement"—not, perhaps, he, but "Pickwick." He did move on to Hyde Park, but there were others there, performers young and up-to-date, and with full use of their eyes, who did the same thing with action and elocution. So he fairly gave the thing up, and returned to his Scriptures. This tale would have amused ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... advised me to call together a few persons known to be in favor of suffrage, some day during anniversary week, in some parlor in Boston. I corresponded with Adin Ballou, E. D. Draper, and others, on the subject, and talked the matter over with Prof. T. T. Leonard, teacher of elocution, who offered his hall for a place of meeting. I wrote a notice inviting all persons interested in woman suffrage to come to Mr. Leonard's hall, on a certain day and hour. At the time appointed the hall was full of people. I opened the meeting, and stated why I had called ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... distinguished subject of this memoir had the honor once of being chosen semi-monthly secretary, after a sharp and close canvass. In the transactions of this society the principal forte of Daniel was debating; albeit the character of his elocution was not the most brilliant, and it was not often until after the ayes and noes were called, that it could be determined from the drift of his argument, which side he had espoused, or in fact whether he himself understood ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... welcome to her, for she got few. Her life was rather a dreary one, as the life of an elocution teacher may well be. At one time she had dreamed of the stage, but her voice was not quite big enough for that, some managers had said, and indeed her mettle was perhaps a little too fine for the stage. The positive and enduring joys of her life were that she lived in London—for which she ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... Venus.' Another offered handsome fees If Knott would get Demosthenes (Nay, his mere knuckles, for more ease) To rap a few short sentences; Or if, for want of proper keys, His Greek might make confusion, Then just to get a rap from Burke, To recommend a little work On Public Elocution. 610 Meanwhile, the spirits made replies To all the reverent whats and whys, Resolving doubts of every size, And giving seekers grave and wise, Who came to know their destinies, A rap-turous ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... They ordered the man drive towards the city in the immediate vicinity, of which Vaura alighted at a neat cottage to visit a blind protegee, one Marie Perrault, daughter of a one-time actor of no mean repute, who had taught elocution at the Seminaire where Miss Vernon had finished her education. Monsieur Perrault had assisted Vaura in the getting up of theatricals, she having developed such excellent histrionic powers. Perrault secretly ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... "Your elocution is admirable, and your expression full of spirit," I observed; "but what a pity it is that you do not ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... pursuits of literature; [21a] he was ignorant of the Greek language, and the arts of rhetoric; but as the mind of the orator was never disconcerted by timid perplexity, he was able, as often as the occasion prompted him, to deliver his decided sentiments with bold and ready elocution. The laws of martial discipline were the only laws that he had studied; and he was soon distinguished by the laborious diligence, and inflexible severity, with which he discharged and enforced the duties of the camp. In the time of Julian he provoked the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... conscience would have smitten him for a laugh almost as soon as for an oath. His hair was roached up, and stood as erect and upright as his body; and his voice was slow, deep, in "linked sweetness long drawn out," and modulated according to the camp-meeting standard of elocution. Three such men at a country frolic would have turned an old Virginia reel into a dead march. He was one of Carlyle's earnest men. Cromwell would have made him ensign of the Ironsides, and ex-officio chaplain at first sight. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... invigorating exercise, close and long-continued application of mind, and, perhaps, an impaired state of health, or a feeble constitution, prevent, in many instances, the free and forcible use of those muscles on which voice is dependent. Hence arises the necessity of students of elocution practising physical exercises adapted to promote general muscular vigor, as a means of attaining energy in speaking; the power of any class of muscles being dependent on the ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... according to the usual acceptation of the term "great," and yet be only a declaimer and a rhetorician. That is to say, he may be able to captivate audiences by his superior action, as Demosthenes defines oratory to be, and at the same time his elocution and rhetoric may be unexceptionable, yet he maybe in fact totally lacking in every element which goes to make up ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... the undaunted and independent manner, hardy sentiment, and manly rude elocution of the old man, that had its effect upon the party, and particularly on the seconds, whose pride was uninterested in bringing the dispute to a bloody arbitrament, and who, on the contrary, eagerly watched for an opportunity ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... Town's Analysis, Weld's Old Grammar, Weld's New Grammar, Weld's Parsing Books, Weld's Latin Lessons, Smyth's Elementary Algebra, Smyth's Elements of Algebra, Key to each of Smyth's Algebras, Smyth's Trigonometry & Survey'g, Smyth's Calculus, Maine Justice of the Peace, Maine Townsman, Caldwell's Elocution, School Testaments, 18mo. School Testaments, 32mo. ...
— The Fox and the Geese; and The Wonderful History of Henny-Penny • Anonymous
... you can see Sharon and what it has come to as I saw it when, as a visitor without local prejudices, they asked me to serve with the telegraph-operator and the ticket-agent and the hotel-manager on the literary committee of judges at the school festival. There would be a stage, and flags, and elocution, and parents assembled, and afterwards ice-cream ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... I observed, more mercy; and this imperfection of sympathy (the question of Waterloo apart) rested, it was impossible not to feel, on his so resenting the dishonour suffered at our hands by his beautiful tongue, to which, as the great field of elocution, he was patriotically devoted. I think he fairly loathed our closed English vowels and confused consonants, our destitution of sounds that he recognised as sounds; though why in this connection he put up best with our own compatriots, embroiled at that time often in even stranger ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... SIXTH READER, the introductory matter has been retained with but little change, and it will he found very valuable for elocutionary drill. In the preparation of this portion of the work, free use was made of the writings of standard authors upon Elocution, such as Walker, McCulloch, Sheridan Knowles, Ewing, Pinnock, Scott, Bell, Graham, Mylins, ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... his Prince and Country with a religious application and perfect integrity, he feared no one, courted no one, neglected his own fortune. Besides this, he was a person of universal worth, and in great estimation among the Literati, for his unbounded reading, his sound judgment, his great elocution, his mastery in method, his singular curiosity, and his uncommon munificence towards the advancement of learning, arts, and industry, in all degrees: to which were joined the severest morality of a philosopher, and all the polite accomplishments of a gentleman, particularly those of music, ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... help thinking that I am wrong in feeling so about it, you know. Sincerity is more important than elocution, ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... adroitness, maintains a prominent part in the conversation with the most perfect plausibility; and although, from his want of accurate information, he will rarely instruct, he seldom fails to amuse by the exuberance of his fancy, and the rapidity of his elocution. But take any one of his sentences to pieces, analyze it, strip it of its gaudy clothing and fanciful decorations, and you will be astonished what skeletons of bare, shallow, and spiritless ideas will ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... speak, in my observations upon Horace his Art of Poetry, which, with the text translated, I intend shortly to publish. In the mean time, if in truth of argument, dignity of persons, gravity and height of elocution, fulness and frequency of sentence, I have discharged the other offices of a tragic writer, let not the absence of these forms be imputed to me, wherein I shall give you occasion hereafter, and without my boast, ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... the chapter on Elocution (elocutio), or style, far outweighs all the others in scope and bulk. Of the 108 seven-line stanzas which Hawes devotes to rhetoric, 20 praise the poets; 7 define rhetoric; 13 explain inventio; 12, dispositio; 40, elocutio; 8, pronuntiatio; ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... of the scared-mouse kind. She looks you square in the eye when there's any call for it and she don't mumble her remarks when she has something to say. Not Miss Joyce. Her words come out clear and crisp, with a slight roll to the r's and all the final letters sounded, like she'd been taking elocution ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... in preference to him, the celebrated actor SATYRUS, in order to show him how much grace, dignity, and action add to the celebrity of a public man, repeated to him several passages from Sophocles and Euripides, which so delighted and astonished Demosthenes that he always afterwards formed his elocution and action on the models of the ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... is omitted in the Treatise. The nod is given to elocution. Invention is discussed, but only as a tool to assist the communicator in amplifying his ideas, as a means to spin out his thoughts to extreme lengths. Arrangement, memory, and delivery are overlooked. Accordingly, the Treatise neatly fits into the category of a Renaissance rhetoric on style. It ...
— A Treatise of Schemes and Tropes • Richard Sherry
... Otis and sermons for Whitefield should have made her a sharper detective of the ingenuity of others. Those successful imitations, published originally in her novel of "The Rebels," have hardly yet ceased to pass current in the school elocution-books. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... IRVING'S earlier performance remarked a gain in depth and fire and a happier restraint of mannerism. It was a very notable and gracious piece of work. He has the player's first gift, an arresting personality. His elocution has distinction. He conveys the beauty of the words and the richness of the packed thought thoughtfully. The complex play of action and motive—the purpose blunted by overmuch thinking, the spurs to dull revenge, the self-contempt, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 2, 1917 • Various
... discipline consists in exercise, how perfection comes from experience, and how unity is the last effort of judgment. When Fox meditated on a history which should last with the language, he met his evil genius in this new province. The rapidity and the fire of his elocution were extinguished by a pen unconsecrated by long and previous study; he saw that he could not class with the great historians of every great people; he complained, while he mourned over the fragment of genius which, after such zealous preparation, he dared not ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... foibles. It was probably earlier in the year, and about this same Irish business, that Raleigh spoke to Elizabeth, on the occasion which Naunton describes. 'Raleigh,' he says, 'had gotten the Queen's ear at a trice; and she began to be taken with his elocution, and loved to hear his reasons to her demands; and the truth is, she took him for a kind of oracle, which nettled them all.' Lord Grey, who was no diplomatist, had the want of caution to show that he was annoyed at advice ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... very beginning Christophe was baffled to make out in what sort of world the action was taking place. The voices of the actors were out of all reason, full, solemn, slow, formal: they rounded every syllable as though they were giving a lesson in elocution, and they seemed always to be scanning Alexandrines with tragic pauses. Their gestures were solemn and almost hieratic. The heroine, who wore her gown as though it were a Greek peplus, with arm uplifted, and head lowered, was nothing else but Antigone, and she smiled with a smile of eternal ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... then came the first rehearsal. This, of course, could be little more than a reading of the parts before Mr. Mann, with the latter to advise them as to elocution and stage business. But Bobby declared she had been practicing walking like a boy and had succeeded in copying Short and Long ...
— The Girls of Central High Aiding the Red Cross - Or Amateur Theatricals for a Worthy Cause • Gertrude W. Morrison
... hopes, sorrows, joys of living men; but dwelt in a remote conventional world in /Castles of Otranto/, in /Epigoniads/ and /Leonidases/, among clear, metallic heroes, and white, high, stainless beauties, in whom the drapery and elocution were nowise the least important qualities. Men thought it right that the heart should swell into magnanimity with Caractacus and Cato, and melt into sorrow with many an Eliza and Adelaide; but the ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... to touch or taste, Solicited her longing eye; yet first Pausing a while, thus to herself she mused. Great are thy virtues, doubtless, best of fruits, Though kept from man, and worthy to be admired; Whose taste, too long forborn, at first assay Gave elocution to the mute, and taught The tongue not made for speech to speak thy praise: Thy praise he also, who forbids thy use, Conceals not from us, naming thee the tree Of knowledge, knowledge both of good ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... have gone to higher up the hill where one learned needlework even in the "first class" as they called it instead of the sixth form as at her school, and "Calisthenics" instead of drilling—and something called elocution—where the girls were "finished." It was an expensive school. Had the teachers there taught the girls... as if they had no minds? Perhaps that school was more like the one she found herself in now? She wondered and wondered. What was she going to do with her life after all ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... boys had another hour's recreation in the grounds, and then they returned to the schoolroom for afternoon exercises. These were very properly of a lighter nature than those of the morning—being only penmanship, elocution, and drawing. ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... the speech of the Learned Blacksmith, in the ordinary sense of that word, no grace of elocution, but mighty thoughts radiating off from his heated mind, like sparks from the glowing steel ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... which offend his sense of literary equity; an emotive intensity which exaggerates his conscious sensibility; an impetuosity of delivery which overworks his thought; gestures and looks put on for scenic effect; an eccentric elocution, which no human nature ever fashioned; even a shrug of the shoulder, thought of and planned for beforehand—these are causes of enervation in sermons which may be otherwise well framed and sound in stock. They sap a preacher's personality and neutralise ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... happiness was Ernestine the means of bestowing through her good elocution, united to the happy circumstance that brought it to the knowledge of the king! First there were her poor neighbors, to whom she could give instruction and entertainment. Then there was the poor widow who sent the petition, and who not only regained her son, but received through Ernestine ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... Knowles was born at Cork in 1784, and died at Torquay in December, 1862, at the age of 78. His father was a teacher of elocution, who compiled a dictionary, and who was related to the Sheridans. He moved to London when his son was eight years old, and there became acquainted with William Hazlitt and Charles Lamb. The son, after his school education, obtained a commission in the army, but gave up everything for ...
— The Hunchback • James Sheridan Knowles
... "But the grandiloquence of the epistle, worthy of Captain Don Alonzo Melendez himself, calls not for reading, but recitation. Do you sit here as critic, while I take my stand in the middle of the room, and give it utterance with all the elocution and pathos I can muster. You must know that this epistle I hold in my hand, is addressed to me by no less a personage than the river-god of the Guadiana, who, contrary to all my notions of mythology, proves to be a gentleman, ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... for the title when I am dead and gone—God help me!—So I would have you keep an equilibrium. If once you get the name of being a fine speaker, you may have any thing: and, to be sure, you have naturally a great deal of elocution; a tongue that would delude an angel, as the women say—to their sorrow, some of them, poor creatures!—A leading man in the house of commons is a very important character; because that house has ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... should be presented orally. The appeal is first to the ear just as in music. The teacher should read or, better, recite the poem in order to get the best results. There should be no effort at "elocution" in its worst sense, but a simple, sincere rendering of the language of the poem. The more informal the process is, the better. There should be much repetition of favorite poems, so that the rich details and pictures ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... kindness of heart, and general idea of justice; but faith, of any national kind, shut up from one Sunday to the next, not artistically beautiful even in those Sabbatical exhibitions; its paraphernalia being chiefly of high pews, heavy elocution, ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... were a soldier. We tolerate from a man who has almost necessarily been deprived of a careful education much clumsiness and awkwardness of elocution. Soult did not speak much better than the Duke of Wellington, but he was listened to. He had, like the Duke, an air of ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... suppliant voice. How nations sink, by darling schemes oppress'd, When vengeance listens to the fool's request. Fate wings with ev'ry wish th' afflictive dart, Each gift of nature, and each grace of art; With fatal heat impetuous courage glows, With fatal sweetness elocution flows, Impeachment stops the speaker's pow'rful breath, And restless fire precipitates on death. [b]But, scarce observ'd, the knowing and the bold Fall in the gen'ral massacre of gold; Wide wasting pest! that rages unconfin'd, And crowds with ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... laughing potatoes, and gave me a hearty "Much good may it do you, miss"; and didn't I tip her a word of Irish, which delighted her.... Our dinner-party were mamma and the two young ladies, two itinerant preceptors, a writing and elocution master, and a dancing-master, and Father Murphy, the P.P.—such fun!—and the Rev. Mr. Beaufort, the curate ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... should from time to time reach the ears of Louis XV. She had her picture painted by French artists. She made a proficiency in the French language the principal object of her education; bringing over some French actors to Vienna to instruct her in the graces of elocution, and subsequently establishing as her chief tutor a French ecclesiastic, the Abbe de Vermond, a man of extensive learning, of excellent judgment, and of most conscientious integrity. The appointment would have been in every respect a most fortunate ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... Elocution has, for some years past, been an object of attention in the most respectable schools in this country. A laudable ambition of instructing youth in the pronunciation and delivery of their native language, has made English speeches a very conspicuous ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... psychology is a basis for every employment or activity which has to deal with enlightenment or persuasion of the public. The person who would like to become a speaker or writer needs to begin with it rather than with the study of elocution or rhetoric. The first thing essential for him to know is himself; the second, his hearers or readers—what is the order of progress in their enlightenment. Even logical development of a subject is subsidiary to the practical psychological order. Formal logic, the analysis of the ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... enthusiastic clapping when Miss Celia sat down, but even while hands applauded, consciences pricked, and undone tasks, complaining words and sour faces seemed to rise up reproachfully before many of the children, as well as their own faults of elocution. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... respecting understanding and reason, and the other respecting will, appetite, and affection, the imagination being active in both provinces. The intellectual arts are four—inquiry or invention, examination or judgment, custody or memory, and elocution or tradition; and these are severally divided into various sciences and arts. The knowledge of the appetite and will, or moral philosophy, leading to the culture and regiment of the mind, is ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... writer of his age, was long neglected; and after the death of Sir Philip Sidney, his patron, was allowed to die almost for want. This poet contains great beauties, a sweet and harmonious versification, easy elocution, a fine imagination; yet does the perusal of his work become so tedious, that one never finishes it from the mere pleasure which it affords; it soon becomes a kind of task-reading, and it requires some effort and resolution to carry us on to the end of his long performance. This effect, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... no repose in her Hamlet, though there were moments of leaden lapse which suggested physical exhaustion; and there was no range in her elocution expressive of the large vibration of that tormented spirit. Her voice dropped out, or jerked itself out, and in the crises of strong emotion it was the voice of a scolding or a hysterical woman. At times her movements, which she must have studied so hard to master, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... for his brave followers, not seconded by the powerful voice of Lord George Murray. Lochiel, who was not a man given to much elocution, recommended delay, and urged that the army would be at least fifteen hundred stronger on the following day. The return of the army to Culloden, fatigued and famished, between five and six o'clock on the following morning, was the result of ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... are too monotonous, too singsong, to dead-and-alive; they have no expression, no elocution. It isn't natural; it could never happen in real life. A person who had just acquired a dog is either blame' glad or blame' sorry. He is not on the fence. I never saw a case. What the nation do you suppose is the matter with ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... that public manners breed,' whence his name received a brand (cxi. 4-5). If such self-pity is to be literally interpreted, it only reflected an evanescent mood. His interest in all that touched the efficiency of his profession was permanently active. He was a keen critic of actors' elocution, and in 'Hamlet' shrewdly denounced their common failings, but clearly and hopefully pointed out the road to improvement. His highest ambitions lay, it is true, elsewhere than in acting, and at an early ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... pudding full of plums, Care's a canker that benumbs. Wherefore waste our elocution On impossible solution? Life's a pleasant institution, Let us ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... the Chicago Theological Seminary, passed an excellent examination last week, and received praise not only from his Professors but from his student friends as well. Out of a class of forty, he was one of seven chosen by the Professor of Elocution to represent the class in oratory at the ...
— American Missionary, Volume 44, No. 6, June, 1890 • Various
... the insurgents was colonel Nathaniel Bacon, a gentleman who had received his education, in England, at the inns of court; and had been appointed a member of the council soon after his arrival in Virginia. Young, bold, and ambitious; possessing an engaging person, and commanding elocution; he was well calculated to rouse and direct the passions of the people. Treading the path by which ambition marches to power, he harangued the people on their grievances, increased their irritation against the causes of their disgust, and ascribed ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... year after Miss Lucinda had come to the seminary to teach elocution that Miss Joe Hill discovered in her an affinity. As principal, Miss Joe Hill's word was never questioned, and Miss Lucinda, with pleased obedience, accepted the honor that was thrust upon her, and meekly moved her few belongings ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... meant to be giving Mr. Rushworth's opinion in better words than he could find himself. He was aware that he must not expect a genius in Mr. Rushworth; but as a well-judging, steady young man, with better notions than his elocution would do justice to, he intended to value him very highly. It was impossible for many of the others not to smile. Mr. Rushworth hardly knew what to do with so much meaning; but by looking, as he really felt, most exceedingly ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... pertinaciously temperamental: that is to say, spoiled; beautiful women are so, for the most part—invariably so, if on the stage. That kind of temperament is part of an actress' equipment, an asset, as much an item of her stock in trade as any trick of elocution or pantomime. ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... slender and flower-like, with the June sun on her hair. Stuart's heart was conscious of a sudden glow. A boy new to love, like a man new to drink, can recognize from a sip an elation that the jaded taste has forever forfeited. Then in a rich voice with a slightly exaggerated elocution, ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... in the back of the chest, with a speakin' tube runnin' up to the mouth. John Henry bein' a regular minister, he can get the Homiletic Review at a dollar and a half a year; we can subscribe for that, get the up-to-datest sermons by the most distinguished divines, get some gent that's afflicted with elocution to say 'em into a record, and on Sunday our friend and pastor here will reel 'em off fine. You press the button—he does the rest, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... lecturing on the various objects of interest we passed; yet all the time interesting, and excellent company. At times he began to talk of poetry, and would pour forth the stores of his wonderful memory, reciting passages with excellent elocution, and delighting his hearers. I recall the fine style in which he rolled forth "Hohenlinden," and "The Royal George," and the "Battle of the Baltic." At the close he would sink his voice to a low muttering, just murmuring impressively, "be-neath the wave!" Then would pause, and say, ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... consequences be upon his own head. Accordingly, taking his station at one of the crevices, and calling upon his brother three several times by name, as use is, he uttered the most moving pieces of elocution he could think of, imploring him, as he valued his poor parents' life and blessing, to come forth and go home with him, Donald Macgillivray, his thrice affectionate and unhappy brother. But whether it was the dancer could ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... therefore most imperfect. The best-known specimen of Pitt's eloquence, his reply to the sneers of Horatio Walpole at his youth and declamatory manner, which has found a place in so many handbooks of elocution, is evidently, in form at least, the work, not of Pitt, but of Dr Johnson, who furnished the report to the Gentleman's Magazine. Probably Pitt did say something of the kind attributed to him, though even this is by no means certain in view of Johnson's repentant admission that he had often invented ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... was to be "Professor of Elocution," as Mr. Roberts gaily called her when the workers were alone together. It had been discovered that she could read both prose and poetry with effect. So a reading-class was organized, and they chose for the first evening, not one of ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... anyone that our claim that The American Star Speaker & Model Elocutionist is beyond all question the best from an Elocutionary point of view. Of the 500 or more selections there is not one that is not available for reading on any desired occasion. The treatise on Acting, Delsarte, Elocution, Oratory and Physical Culture is by the professor of these departments in the Missouri State University, while its mechanical make-up is that of a work of art, for the text and half-tone illustrations are the best made. No home, school, ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey |
