"Forensic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... good and sufficient bond for my appearance the next morning before his honor, Justice Fatty, to answer to the charge of having maliciously, etc., defied, disobeyed and broken the ordinance, etc. I went at once to seek the counsel of Lawyer Miles, for whose legal acumen and forensic eloquence I had harbored the profoundest veneration ever since I had heard his prosecution of a man named Tackleton for causing the death of neighbor Baylor's pet dog. I recall that on that occasion there was not a dry eye in the court and that even the defendant himself wept ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... as I recall it, was of just enough dignity and dearth of the same to be an ordinary county seat in Indiana—"The Grand Old Hoosier State," as it was used to being howlingly referred to by the forensic stump orator from the old stand in the courthouse yard—a political campaign being the wildest delight that Zekesbury might ever hope to call ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... Captain Morton; the whole universe was flowering in his mind in schemes and plans and devices which he hoped to harness for his power and glory. And the forensic group at Mr. Brotherton's had much first hand information from the Captain as to the nature of his proposed activities and his prospective conquests. And while the Captain in his prime was surveying ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... a master of forensic oratory, began his address by contending that duelling was not prohibited by the law of France. In support he quoted Guizot's dictum: "Where the barbarian murders, the Frenchman seeks honourable combat; legislation on the subject is profitless; and this must be the case, since ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... Bartholomew massacre. He had eight sons, every one of whom more or less achieved distinction in the service of their country; but his second son and namesake peculiarly inherited his father’s legal talents, and became his successor in the office of Procureur-général. He more than rivalled his father’s forensic success; and many traditions survive of his great eloquence, and of the pre-eminent ability with which he pleaded on behalf of the University of Paris for the expulsion of the Jesuits from France, ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... formative principle of reliance on God, which will gradually refine character and mould conduct into whatsoever things are lovely and of good report. That righteousness which faith receives is no mere forensic treating of the unjust as just, but whilst it does bring with it pardon and oblivion from past transgressions, it makes a man in the depths of his being righteous, however slowly it may afterwards transform his conduct. The faith which is a departure from all reliance on ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... candidate for, say, a judgeship, the question of his private religious faith is of no practical importance—that it makes no difference whether he is a Catholic or a Methodist. The truth is, of course, that his faith is often of the very first importance—that it will colour his conduct of the forensic combats before him even more than his politics, his capacity to digest proteids or the social aspirations of his wife. One constantly notes, in American jurisprudence, the effects of theological prejudices on the bench; there are at least a dozen controlling ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... passed unnoticed, by whistling the first bar of the song. Mr. Bispham faced the tittering like a man, and endeavored to rehabilitate himself. But his hands had slipped on the handle of the audience, and the forensic rosin of Demosthenes would not have enabled him to regain his grip. He was cruelly assured of the fact by the hostile and ready-witted whistler. Again Mr. Bispham absurded. This time the tune broke out in all parts of the hall and was itself punctuated ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... capital situations of life is the clearest of proofs of her general superiority. She did not obtain her present high immunities as a gift from the gods, but only after a long and often bitter fight, and in that fight she exhibited forensic and tactical talents of a truly admirable order. There was no weakness of man that she did not penetrate and take advantage of. There was no trick that she did not put to effective use. There was no device so bold and ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... Peace escaped a conviction for murder by letting another suffer in his place; Butler escaped a similar experience by the sheer ingenuity of his defence. Peace had the modesty and reticence of the sincere artist; Butler the loquacious vanity of the literary or forensic coxcomb. Lastly, and it is the supreme difference, Butler was a murderer by instinct and conviction, as Lacenaire or Ruloff; "a man's life," he said, "was of no more importance than a dog's; nature respects the one no ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... thus limited, oratory is still too wide for a pointed illustration: and, so, I propose farther to confine my references to the department of Political Oratory; coupling with that, however, the Forensic branch—which has much in common with the other, and has given birth to some of our most splendid examples of the art ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... rigid moral philosophy. It was impossible that they should not select from the questions indicated by the Christian records those which had some affinity with the order of speculations to which they were accustomed, and that their manner of dealing with them should not borrow something from their forensic habits. Almost every one who has knowledge enough of Roman law to appreciate the Roman penal system, the Roman theory of the obligations established by contract or delict, the Roman view of debts, etc., the Roman notion of the continuance of individual existence by universal ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... leaped up bright and eager in Longstreet's eyes. But Howard saw it, and before the professor's unshaken positiveness could pour itself forth in a forensic flood the rancher cut the whole matter short by ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... his wife and children. He kept all such matters quite to himself, and was not given to much social intercourse with those among whom his work lay. Out at Streatham, where he lived, Mrs. Dove probably had her circle of acquaintance;—but Mr. Dove's domestic life and his forensic life were ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... was a contest, in which he himself was, to a certain extent, individually engaged. All the tactics of the opposed armies, down to the minutest legal details, were eagerly and passionately canvassed in every circle. Ladies, who had before probably never heard of "panels" in forensic phraseology, now spoke enthusiastically on the subject; and those on one side expressed themselves indignant at the fraudulent omission of certain names from the lists of jurors; while those on the other were capable of proving the legality of choosing the jury from the names which ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... tribunal, judicatory, judicature, judiciary, forum, mall; courtyard, quadrangle, cortile; jurisdiction; royal household, princely retinue; assize. Associated Words: curialistic, aulic, judicial, judiciary, forensic, docket, tipstaff, beadle, apparitor, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... his Chapelizod boss, Harmsworth of the farthing press, and his American cousin of the Bowery guttersheet not to mention Paddy Kelly's Budget, Pue's Occurrences and our watchful friend The Skibbereen Eagle. Why bring in a master of forensic eloquence like Whiteside? Sufficient for the day is the newspaper thereof. LINKS ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Claverhouse. The legal attainments of Mackenzie were not of the highest order: but, as a scholar, a wit, and an orator, he stood high in the opinion of his countrymen; and his renown had spread even to the coffeehouses of London and the cloisters of Oxford. The remains of his forensic speeches prove him to have been a man of parts, but are somewhat disfigured by what he doubtless considered as Ciceronian graces, interjections which show more art than passion, and elaborate amplifications, in which epithet rises above epithet in wearisome ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... dangled from a broad black riband round his neck, to warn a stranger that he was very near-sighted. His hair was thin and weak, which was partly attributable to his having never devoted much time to its arrangement, and partly to his having worn for five-and-twenty years the forensic wig which hung on a block beside him. The marks of hairpowder on his coat-collar, and the ill-washed and worse tied white neckerchief round his throat, showed that he had not found leisure since ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... be far more convincing than the argument which was built upon them. Again it may be said that the power to state in this manner is as high in the order of intellectual achievement as anything within forensic possibilities. ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... There is no justification of this war from any standpoint. There is only an explanation of the war from an economic standpoint. All these specious arguments on the precipitating causes of the war can be but for the display of brilliant forensic oratory and matchless diction. Let us thrust aside in these dark moments of peril and ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... its derision is somewhat pitiable. But poor Kenealy! he stood there lost, astounded, vacant, a quite tragic figure, and when the crowded House had ceased to laugh out of pure exhaustion, he spoke again in a tone completely changed; all the forensic manner gone out of him. That he could find a voice at all after such a scathing was an evidence of his courage, but with that unfortunate sentence he had shot his bolt. He never attempted to address the House again. I do not remember ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... unless speaking pure truth be eloquence. You will hear me speak with adornments and without premeditation in my everyday language, which many of you have heard. I am seventy years old, yet this is my first appearance in the courts, and I have no experience of forensic arts. All I ask is that you will take heed whether what I say ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... with the lively heart arrested even in advocacy the floods pressing for pathos. Her aim was at practical measures of help; she doubted the uses of sentimentality in moving tyrants or multitudes to do the thing needed. Moreover, she distrusted eloquence, Parliamentary, forensic, literary; thinking that the plain facts are the persuasive speakers in a good cause, and that rhetoric is to be suspected as the flourish over a weak one. Does it soften the obdurate, kindle the tardily inflammable? Only for a day, and only in cases ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... writer's good fortune to listen to one of Franklin Pierce's public speeches, whether at the bar or elsewhere; nor, by diligent inquiry, has he been able to gain a very definite idea of the mode in which he produces his effects. To me, therefore, his forensic displays are in the same category with those of Patrick Henry, or any other orator whose tongue, beyond the memory of man, has moulded into dust. His power results, no doubt, in great measure, from the earnestness with which he imbues himself ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... are suggestive. The most notable is probably that of old Adam Lymburner, the cleverest of the three Lymburners, all merchants at Quebec in 1775. [43] Adam, according to the historian Garneau, was more distinguished for his forensic abilities and knowledge of constitutional law, than for his robust allegiance to the Hanoverian succession at Quebec, when Colonel Benedict Arnold and his New Englanders so rudely knocked at our ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... devoir to virtue as to own the excellence and rectitude of her precepts, and lament my want of conformity to them." At this very period, in the Legislature of Maryland, on a bill for the relief of oppressed slaves, a young man, afterwards by consummate learning and forensic powers acknowledged head of the American bar, William Pinkney, in a speech of earnest, truthful eloquence,—better for his memory than even his professional fame,—branded Slavery as "iniquitous and most dishonorable," "founded in a disgraceful traffic," "its continuance ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... least notice of this inquiry, albeit delivered in an imposing and forensic manner, Lavinia reminded her sister, 'After all, you know, Bella, you haven't told us how your ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... trail of McGregor, alias Montague Nevitt. Therefore, they would consent to an indefinite remand till evidence to that effect was duly forthcoming. Meanwhile—" and here Gilbert Gildersleeve's eyes fell upon Elma once more with a quiet forensic smile—he would call one witness, on the spur of the moment, whom he hadn't thought till that very morning of calling, but whom the magistrates would allow to be a very important one—a lady from Chetwood—Miss ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... Therippides—abused their trust, and handed over to Demosthenes, when he came of age, rather less than one-seventh of his patrimony, perhaps between 50 and 60 a year. Demosthenes, after studying with Isaeus (q.v.)—then the great master of forensic eloquence and of Attic law, especially in will cases[1]—brought an action against Aphobus, and gained a verdict for about 2400. But it does not appear that he got the money; and, after some more fruitless proceedings against Onetor, the brother-in-law of Aphobus, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... of the Army of the Potomac in Philadelphia, Mr. DANIEL DOUGHERTY made one of the most extraordinary speeches on record, if we except certain forensic efforts of Mr. PUNCHINELLO delivered during the earlier stages of his career from his box. Mr. DOUGHERTY is a Soarer, and a Spreader, and a Screamer. Speaking metaphorically, be goes higher, measures more from the tip of one ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... another topic more immediately connected with the duties of active professional life, that the cultivation of a taste for polite literature has other importance besides its value as a preparation and qualification for practice and forensic contests. Nothing is so well adapted to fill up the interstices of business with rational enjoyment, to make even a solitary life agreeable, and to smooth pleasantly and honorably the downward path of age. The mental vigor of one ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... 1820 he displayed in their perfection those amazing powers of knowledge, reason, invective, sarcasm, and elocution, on the trial of Queen Caroline, which more than anything else have made that trial so memorable among legal and forensic conflicts. In 1822 he made his unparalleled speech in the case of the Dean and Chapter of Durham against Williams, and in the following year was elected Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow. On the downfall of ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... unhappy celebrity for his violence in religious disputation, but there was always a waggery in his most virulent sectarian harangues which relieved them, and left the impression that his bigotry was professional or forensic rather than heartfelt, but the Nation newspaper allowed no humour to shed a ray of relief upon the dark sentences of its intolerance. If indomitable fortitude, endurance, and perseverance could win a cause, Charles Gavin Duffy would have secured all ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... sober forensic eloquence is to be found in the following speech. There was a bill before the house for the creation of a new county, and there was a dispute about the boundary-line. The author of the bill wished to run the line in a direction which would manifestly promote his ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... hears unmoved, no amount of repetition makes easy to the tongue or welcome to the ear! ... the name which I had heard launched in full forensic eloquence so many times in accusation against the wretches I had hardly regarded as being in the same human class as myself, rang in my ear as though intoned from the very mouth of hell. I could not escape it. I should never be able to ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... not. The cry of insanity, like that of "wolf," had been so repeatedly raised when there was no insanity, that it was not heeded when there was. Notwithstanding an argument which for legal learning and forensic eloquence attracted the attention of the press and bar, and established the counsel's reputation, the poor, insane idiot was convicted of murder in the first degree. Hayes at once obtained a writ of error, which the district court reserved ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... by common consent one of the greatest public speakers in America. He has a voice of unusual power and compass, and his delivery is natural and deliberate. His style is generally forensic, altho he frequently rises to the dramatic. He has been a diligent student ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser |
