"Gesticulation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... new postilions are in their saddles, and the old are left behind. We are through the village, up the hill, and down the hill, and on the low watery grounds. Suddenly, the postilions exchange speech with animated gesticulation, and the horses are pulled up, almost on their haunches. We ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... class of villagers; he laughed at first good humouredly, but immediately afterwards seized the rake which was in my hand, and gave it a rude push towards me with a disdainful fling of the arm, accompanying this gesticulation by words, which seemed to imply a desire to give any thing upon condition of our going away. One man expressed the general wish for our departure, by holding up a piece of paper like a sail, and then blowing ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall
... eloquence. His presence was commanding; his voice was singularly strong and clear, and had peculiar tones and shades in it which gave indescribable meaning to passages of anger, of pity, or of contempt. His manner was quiet, composed, serene. He indulged in little or no gesticulation, he had a rich gift of genuine Saxon humor. These two men, one belonging to the middle class of the North, one sprung from the yeomanry of Southern England, had as a colleague Charles Villiers, a man of high aristocratic family, of marked ability, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... extraction. But I evidently miscalculated my own invisibility; for he moved rapidly forward as I came to the window, and in a series of the most extraordinary pantomimic gestures saluted me. Beyond my experience of a few Greek plays in earlier days, I confess I am not an adept in the understanding of gesticulation; but it struck me that the various phases of gratitude, fervor, reverence, and exaltation were successively portrayed. He placed his hands upon his head, his heart, and even clasped them together in this manner." To my consternation ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... man from among the new arrivals, with nothing heroic about him, either in face, or mien, or stature, jumped on his legs, and with great volubility and much gesticulation, ...
— The French Prisoners of Norman Cross - A Tale • Arthur Brown
... bragas, "Wine wears no breeches;" for men in wine expose their most secret thoughts. Vino di un oreja, "Wine of one ear!" is good wine; for at bad, shaking our heads, both our ears are visible; but at good the Spaniard, by a natural gesticulation lowering on one side, shows a ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... art of writing: "First, there is mere gesticulation, then rosaries, or wampum, then picture language, then hieroglyphics, and finally alphabetic letters,"—the last an evolution from all that went before. But there is no more suggestion of an alphabet in the sign language of the North ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... called elderly. But there was still abundant life in his quick, dark eye; and that mercurial youthfulness of character which in some happy constitutions seems to defy years and sorrow, evinced itself in a rapid play of countenance and as much gesticulation as the narrow confines of the vehicle and the position of a traveller will permit. The younger man, far more grave in aspect and quiet in manner, leaned back in the corner with folded arms, and listened with respectful attention to ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... end touching the ground with a contorted gesticulation. Garrick was generally jealous of Johnson's light opinion of him, and used to take off his old master, saying, "Davy has some convivial pleasantry about him, but ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... sunbonnet surmounted the cap with the explanatory ruffle. She carried a fan of turkey feathers, and with appropriate gesticulation, it aided in expounding to Mrs. Dicey the astonishing news that Nate had found a gold mine on vacant land, and had entered the tract. They intended to send specimens to the State Assayer, and they were all getting ready ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... thin, fatigued and wispy lady in a very long vermilion gown, and an extremely small gentleman—apparently of the Hebrew persuasion—who was smartly dressed, wore white gloves and a buttonhole, and indulged in a great deal of florid gesticulation while talking with abnormal vivacity. Miss Minerva, who was playing quietly with a lemon ice, looked even more sensible than usual, the Prophet thought, in her simple white frock. She seemed to be quite ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... proprietor were again engaged in earnest colloquy. Neuman had disappeared. Kurt saw the huge shadow of a man pass across a drawn blind in a room up-stairs. Then he saw smaller shadows, and arms raised in vehement gesticulation. The very shadows were sinister. Men passed in and out of the hotel. Once old Dorn came to the door and peered all around. Kurt observed that there was a dark side entrance to this hotel. Presently Neuman returned to the desk and said something to ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... juvenile breaches of decorum, Katty would raise her arm in a threatening attitude, shake her head at them, and look up at the clergy, intimating more by her earnestness of gesticulation than met the ear. Several songs again went round, of which, truth to tell, Father Philomy's were by far the best; for he possessed a rich, comic expression of eye, which, added to suitable ludicrousness of gesture, and a good voice, rendered him highly amusing to the company. ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... with the mouth half open, and the hands in the pockets. Now, when you address a foreigner in his own tongue, speak with much noise and vociferation, opening your mouth wide and using much action. The ideas you cannot convey in words, you must communicate by gesticulation, the more emphatic ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... there is a general movement, as well as general clamour of voices and much gesticulation. All, old and young, with the exception of the girl, gather round the woman in the red cloak, and seem to be urging her to do something that she does not like to do. They point to the girl, and the appeal is not ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... stumbling question, much gesticulation, many words in strange gutturals—and a name. Then the ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... the shorter of the two masked men was prone to gesticulation and that he had a fashion of holding his arms close to his body, as if tied at the elbows, and with hands fully open, fingers apart, thumbs extended, and palms ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... longer even wished to do so. His fancy cast a poetry about these Venetian friends, whose conversation displayed the occasional sparkle of Ollendorff-English on a dark ground of lagoon-Italian, and whose vivid smiling and gesticulation she wearied herself in hospitable efforts to outdo. To his eyes their historic past clothed them with its interest, and the long patience of their hope and hatred under foreign rule ennobled them, while to hers they were too often only ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... for shade, stood a group of horsemen, one of whom read a slip of paper, or rather shouted its contents to the soldiery as they passed, while he flourished the paper above his head. Instantly the column was in an uproar. Caps were thrown into the air, voices grew hoarse with shouting; frantic gesticulation, tearful eyes and laughter, yells, inane antics, queer combinations of sacrilegious oaths and absurd embraces were everywhere ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... now began some of their mystical rites. One of them suddenly fell upon the ground, and throwing himself into a variety of attitudes, accompanied with every gesticulation that could be extorted by pain, appeared to be at length delivered of a bone, which was to be used in the ensuing ceremony. He was during this apparently painful process encircled by a crowd of natives, who danced around him, singing vociferously, while one or more ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... and upon the work in her hands. In the corner was the light continuous murmur of talk; the half-seen figure of the Contessa, generally leaning back, looking up to Sir Tom, who stood with his arm on the mantelpiece with much animation, gesticulation of her hands and subdued laughter, the most lively current of sound, soft, intensified by little eloquent breaks, by emphatic gestures, by sentences left incomplete, but understood all the better for being half ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... the best representative of the older school in either branch of Congress, gave a page of his diary to one of Douglas's early speeches. "His face was convulsed,"—so the merciless diary runs,—"his gesticulation frantic, and he lashed himself into such a heat that if his body had been made of combustible matter it would have burnt out. In the midst of his roaring, to save himself from choking, he stripped and cast away his cravat, unbuttoned his waistcoat, and had the air and aspect ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... carefully constructed whole. It was further inasmuch as the actor disappeared, only the dancer remaining upon the stage. The words of the play were relegated to a chorus, while the character, actions, and emotions of the person represented by the words of the chorus were set forth by the dress, gesticulation, and dancing of the pantomimus. How the various scenes were connected is uncertain; but it is almost a necessary inference that the connexion was provided by the chorus or, as in modern oratorio, by recitative. To us the mimetic posturing of the pantomimus appears an almost ridiculous ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... and in either case he misses the mark of the artist, which is, after all, to show such things as he deals with as they truly are, and to seize upon their inwardness. We do not ask for a slavering flux of sentiment, or an acrobat's display in gesticulation. But, from a gentleman whose corns when trodden on are probably as painful as his neighbours', we are content with something less than a godlike indifference to the emotions of humanity. Let us suppose, charitably, that this is no more ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... hardly thought of her existence, up to the moment when they were all nearly caught by the first wave that came rolling in over the croquet-ground, when all the girls took flight, flushed, animated, and with lively gesticulation, while the gentlemen followed with the box into which had been hastily ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... last chorus, it was repeated three or four times, and with hallooing, screaming, and dancing in mad gesticulation. ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... and a piece of string—revised them, wrote all the titles and honours by which he was personally distinguished at the head of the first page, and then read the manuscript to me with loud theatrical emphasis and profuse theatrical gesticulation. The reader will have an opportunity, ere long, of forming his own opinion of the document. It will be sufficient to mention here that ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... another disguise (seizing the opportunity of showing his well-known versatility). I am the Doctor who is attending Madame LAROQUE! She is very ill! Believe me, Usher——(Makes a pathetic speech in a new voice with appropriate gesticulation, finishing with these words), and if he dies, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various
... it, a tall young gentleman, with a quantity of light curly hair on his hatless head, leapt up on one of the benches at the opposite side of the gangway running down the middle of the room, and apostrophized the company around him with vehement fistic gesticulation. Alas for the tranquillity of parents with pleasure-loving sons!—alas for Mr. Valentine Blyth's idea of teaching his pupil to be steady, by teaching him to draw!—this furious young gentleman was no other than Mr. Zachary ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... Bertrand are preserved, of course, with great fidelity throughout; but the admirable way in which each fresh character is conceived, the grotesque appropriateness of Robert's every successive attitude and gesticulation, and the variety of Bertrand's postures of invariable repose, the exquisite fitness of all the other characters, who act their little part and disappear from the scene, cannot be described on paper, or too highly lauded. The figures are very carelessly drawn; but, if the ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of a similar scene on the Combahee River, by a very aged man, who had been brought down on the previous raid, already mentioned. I wrote it down in tent, long after, while the old man recited the tale, with much gesticulation, at the door; and it is by far the best glimpse I have ever had, through a negro's eyes, at these wonderful birthdays ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... no, Mass' George," cried Pomp, excitedly, and beginning to imitate poor Sarah's sharp acid way so accurately that I roared with laughter. For every tone of her voice—every gesticulation—was exactly true ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... ran a little way in advance of his companion, and then stood to watch her as she approached along the shadowy and sun-fleckered path. With every step she took, he expressed his joy at her nearer and nearer presence by what might be thought an extravagance of gesticulation, but which doubtless was the language of the natural man, though laid aside and forgotten by other men, now that words have been feebly substituted in the place of signs and symbols. He gave Miriam the idea of a being not precisely man, nor yet a child, but, in a ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... had painstakingly trained his reading-classes in the Art of Gesticulation in Public Speaking, and Miss Margaret found the results of his labors so entertaining that she had never been able to bring herself to suppress ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... won!" cried O'Gree, with much gesticulation, as soon as Waymark returned. "The campaign's at an end!—I'm sorry if I've driven your friend away, but I was ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... very graciously upon me, and then recommenced the gesticulation and babble of the two. At length she appeared satisfied with the understanding at which they arrived. I was growing uneasy at their prolonged volubility, when Monsieur Pilot pirouetted up to ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... giving way; but I did not show any nervousness. I read the lecture, but most of the quotations I recited from memory. Not having had any lessons in elocution, I trusted to my natural voice, and felt that in this new role the less gesticulation I used the better. Whether the advice of Demosthenes is rightly translated or not—first requisite, action; second, action; third, action—I am sure that English word does not express the requisite for women. I should rather ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... one good effect,' interrupted Caper; 'the forcible gesticulation of the Italians, which we all admire so much, arises from the necessity they have to do so—in order to keep warm. I have, however, an idea to better the condition of the wood sawyers in the Papal States, by introducing ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... and lively gesticulation as they stood near the wall of the Bet-ha-Midrash, would have concluded that they were discussing bargains. What else did people like them live or care for? Yet they think and suffer, but nobody guesses it or wishes to penetrate the mystery of their thoughts. It is like the depth of an unfathomable ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... writing;—primary, if we regard the purpose abstracted from the different modes of realizing it, those steps of progression of which the instances are still visible in the lower degrees of civilization. First, there is mere gesticulation; then rosaries or 'wampun'; then picture-language; then hieroglyphics, and finally alphabetic letters. These all consist of a translation of man into nature, of a substitution of the ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... of Virginia's photograph, and that she did not quite understand how we could cause it to be taken for her son. She was deeply compassionated by the Superior, who rendered her pity with a great deal of gesticulation, casting up her eyes, shrugging her shoulders, and sighing grievously. But the assistant's cheerfulness could not be abated even by the spectacle of extreme age; and she made the most of the whole occasion, recounting with great minuteness all the incidents ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... thousand distinct muscular movements, and by necessity a like number of antecedent acts of the will, to say nothing of those other acts, not less numerous in the case of a speaker, connected with the general movement of the body in earnest gesticulation. Yet after the hour's performance, what does the speaker or the reader remember of all these countless volitions? Nothing but the one general purpose to please, instruct, or ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... first necessity of life here. Unhappily, there is a patois in use among the creoles and other natives which is very confusing. It is made up of a strange jumble of Eastern languages, grafted on a debased kind of French, and gabbled with the rapidity of lightning and a great deal of gesticulation. At a ball you hear far more French than English spoken, and at a concert I attended lately not a single song was in English. Even in the Protestant churches there is a special service held in French every Sunday, as well as another ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... himself aggrieved might plead for himself, and there was some risk in giving the verdict against him because sooner or later he was pretty certain to become presidente or sotto-presidente and to take his revenge. This gave opportunities for declamation and gesticulation ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... was a man so violently exalted and then, himself assisting, so relentlessly called down. But in the middle nineties this spectacled and moustached little figure with its heavy chin and its general effect of vehement gesticulation, its wild shouts of boyish enthusiasm for effective force, its lyric delight in the sounds and colours, in the very odours of empire, its wonderful discovery of machinery and cotton waste and the under ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... standing just where I had left him, leaning with folded arms against the pillar, with the moonlight shining gloriously on his brow. Miss Melville stood near him, talking with great animation, emphasizing her words with quick, decided gesticulation, while he seemed a passive listener. I had seen handsomer gentlemen, perhaps,—but never one so perfectly elegant and refined in appearance. The pale transparency of his complexion had the purity and delicacy of alabaster without its whiteness, ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... stretching their togas over them for shelter. As they drank they prayed for as many years of life as they could swallow cups of wine. The usual characteristics of the Italian festa were to be found there: they sang anything they had picked up in the theatre, with much gesticulation ("et iactant faciles ad sua verba manus"), and they danced, the women letting down their long hair. The result of these performances was naturally that they returned home in a state of intoxication, which roused the mirth of the bystanders. Ovid adds that he had himself met them ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... night so wrathfully that even the shadow that followed her seemed vital with hate. On they walked together—the girl and this weird shadow—blackening the snow with momentary darkness as they passed; the one tossing out her arms with unconscious gesticulation, the other mocking her, grotesquely, from ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... you shall be an aristocratic Sicilian, they are often quite well dressed. And as for the dialect and the gesticulation, it is now the fashion among the upper classes to speak Tuscan and not to gesticulate. It is considered more—I cannot remember the word, I saw it in the Giornale di Sicilia, ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... When I looked up, I saw thin, long, waving strings of fire coming up among the people through the joints of the floor. I called attention to this, but no one else could see it. Then I became frantic in my gesticulation, and at last was able to tell some of the congregation of the great fire which was under them; but they looked at one another, smiling, and told me to go about my business—that I was mad! I woke out of my ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... the Stock Exchange and looked down into the mob of writhing, dishevelled, shouting brokers. In and out, the throng swirled upon itself, while above its muddy depths surged a froth of hands in frenzied gesticulation. The frantic movement and din of shrieks disturbed ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... can understand ordinary language well enough, if the subject is within their comprehension, and treated in a manner adapted to their powers. If you doubt whether children can understand language, tell such a story as this, with ardor of tone and proper gesticulation, to a child only two ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... and this by a quite intelligible transition. Gesture, of which the dance is merely a pervasive use, is an incipient action. It is conduct in the groping stage, before it has lit on its purpose, as can be seen unmistakably in all the gesticulation of love and defiance. In this way the dance is attached to life initially by its physiological origin. Being an incipient act, it naturally leads to its own completion and may arouse in others the beginnings of an appropriate response. Gesture is only less ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... down into the waist of the ship—blushing for my delay—and already I was tossing blankets with the rest. Looking up in an enforced pause, I saw Santos whispering in the skipper's ear, with the expression of a sphinx but no lack of foreign gesticulation—behind them a fringe of terror-stricken faces, parted at that instant by two more figures, as wild and strange as any in that wild, strange scene. One was our luckless lucky digger, the other a gigantic Zambesi nigger, who ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... before the prisoner's discharge she burst in again, huffy head, furs and gesticulation as before. "I come from Paris this morning, I bring you money." I was not present, but I had previously warned my assistant not to receive any money. The gay Parisian was informed that no money could be received, but she promptly put two sovereigns ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... into roars of laughter. A monkey had got the boots, and sat pulling them on and off, making the most ridiculous gestures. The monkey busied himself, and the light-minded drunkard laughed; and at every fresh gesticulation of the new boot-wearer, the laugh grew louder and more tremendous, till at length it was found impossible to be restrained. The glutton had a laughing-fit. In vain he tried to stop himself; in vain his fingers ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... polished. And at that two people who stood outside the window were looking, one of them a tall, thin clergyman, the other a black-bearded young man of dusky complexion and unobtrusive costume. The dusky young man spoke with eager gesticulation, and seemed anxious for his ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... Our speakers certainly fall into the other extreme. The British orator's style of gesticulation may still be recognised, mutatis mutandis, in Addison's humorous sketch of a century ago: "You may see many a smart rhetorician turning his hat in his hands, moulding it into several different cocks, examining sometimes the lining and sometimes the button, during the ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... poop again with more alacrity than I had seen him exhibit since I had joined the Mercury. Meanwhile the watch below, awakened by the racket, had come on deck, and were having the situation explained to them with much gesticulation and lurid language by their comrades, the watch on deck, all of whom had knocked off the work upon which they happened to have been engaged, and were now talking excitedly, casting occasional glances from us on the poop to the junk away down on the lee bow. ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... which they scramble like so many monkeys. Appeals are constantly made to the pockets of visitors, by open hands stretched out in all directions. To these "Nada"—"Nothing"—is the safe reply; for, if you give to one, the others close about you with frantic gesticulation, and you have to break your way through them with some violence, which hurts your own feelings more than it does theirs. On strict plantations this is not allowed; but Don Jacinto, like Lord Ashburton at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... from their waist-cloths rubies, sapphires, and emeralds for which they asked from one to four thousand rupees, and gratefully took fourpence, after a long run with the carriage, and much vociferation and gesticulation. After table-d'hote dinner at the hotel we went off to the yacht in a pilot boat; the buoys were all illuminated, and boats with four or five men in them, provided with torches, were in readiness to show us the right way out. By ten o'clock we were outside the harbour and ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... considering the natives were well aware that our guns were directed against them, the self-possession and coolness shared by every one of them were worthy of admiration. They never showed the slightest emotion, their speeches were free from gesticulation, and even their threats were conveyed in a quiet subdued tone; and every thing was carried on with all the calmness and deliberation that might be expected at a ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... found Gouin peculiarly on his guard; broad-faced, heavy-jawed, slow of speech, almost devoid of gesticulation, he was as unamiably dispassionate as a bank manager. There was no militant passion of the minority in this man; no heroic tilting against windmills; no expression of ideals; no suggestion of a delightful outlaw. He was amazingly practical, with no inclination to discuss freely the native peculiarities ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... step was heard, and he saw standing by him a vigorous, practical-looking Englishman, and a black-eyed, white-hooded little Soeur de Charite. Captain Lonsdale, on hearing the calls for surgical aid, had without a word, hurried out and secured the brisk little Sister, who, with much gesticulation, took possession of the arm, and pronounced it a mere trifle, which would have been nothing but for the loss of blood, the ball having simply passed through the fleshy part of the arm, avoiding the bone. Louis, pleased ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... point out the coincidence that the warning of the Engine-Driver included, not only the words which the unfortunate Signal-man had repeated to me as haunting him, but also the words which I myself—not he—had attached, and that only in my own mind, to the gesticulation he had imitated. ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... an uncomfortable garment he gave himself relief at every opportunity, going out to smoke, or moving about and talking, or throwing himself back in his chair and remaining silent, but incessantly carrying on a dumb language of facial movement or gesticulation: and if Mirah were in the room, he would fall into his old habit of talk with her, gossiping about their former doings and companions, or repeating quirks and stories, and plots of the plays he used to adapt, in the belief that he could at ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... she forsook the English tongue, and lapsed into a conglomeration of Polish and Yiddish made intelligible only through the plentiful interpretation of dramatic gesticulation. ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... speech. Jarman briefly explained to her the movements of the semaphore arms and their different significance. She listened with her capped head a little on one side like an attentive bird, and her arms unconsciously imitating the signs. Certainly, for all that she SPOKE like an American, her gesticulation was Italian. ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... his grandfather spent his life collecting dues, was still standing, though it was soon to vanish; and the house of the Red and White Lion on the Bruehl, where Richard was born, was now in the very heart of the Jew quarter. The costumes, speech and gesticulation of these strange animals left an indelible impression on him, and were, perhaps, incidentally responsible for the notorious Judaism in Music of 1850, and all the fallacies contained in that deplorable essay. Richard got his ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... of uproarious triumph; the Government people exceedingly mortified, and the tail in a frenzy. The scene which ensued appears to have been something like that which a meeting of Bedlam or Billingsgate might produce. All was uproar, gesticulation, and confusion. The Irishmen started up one after another and proclaimed their participation in O'Connell's sentiments, and claimed to be joined in his condemnation. They were all the more furious when they found that the conquerors only ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... orphans, and ever since they could remember their home had been with their grandmother, a frail, dreamy old woman, so deaf that the most active and varied gesticulation was the only means of conveying to her the remotest idea of what one wished to say. Geordie, indeed, was the only person sufficiently careless of his lungs to attempt the medium of speech, and ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae
... modulated, yet resonant as the twang of a harp, now seemed of itself to draw and hold each listener; while a certain extravagance of gesticulation—a fantastic movement of both form and feature—seemed very near akin to fascination. And so flowed on the ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... held over her head. She then sang, quietly, sublimely, with expression at the same time restrained and inspiring, the Marseillaise. The countless variations of her voice were in admirable keeping with her animated and yet sculptural gesticulation, and the effect was thrilling, although certain passages in the song were hardly suitable to the circumstances of the moment, for instance, the invocation of Freedom, the prayer to her to fight for her defenders. ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... gravity, half real, half simulated, came over Dona Felipa's face, although her vivacity of gesticulation and emphasis did not relax. She cast a hurried glance around her, and leaned a little forward ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... but given to gesticulation, and Mrs. Jere Burbank, the president of the Dorcas Society, who sat in a front pew, said she couldn't bear to see a preacher scramble round ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the strongest satires on the reigning dramatic style, Diderot found in the need that the actor had of the mirror. The fewer gestures, he said, the better; frequent gesticulation impairs energy and destroys nobleness. It is the countenance, the eyes, it is the whole body that ought to move, and not the arms.[280] There is no maxim more forgotten by poets than that which says that great passions are mute. ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... work to which he went with any zest. But Lord Randolph roused the Old Lion within him, and with flashing eye, with a voice the resonance of which echoed through the House as though he were twenty years younger—with abundance of gesticulation, and sometimes with swinging blows that were almost cruel—he slew the young intruder and wound up the debate on the Church in a frenzy of excitement and ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... was preparing a young actress to appear in one of his tragedies, he tied her hands to her sides with pack thread in order to check her tendency toward exuberant gesticulation. Under this condition of compulsory immobility she commenced to rehearse, and for some time she bore herself calmly enough; but at last, completely carried away by her feelings, she burst her bonds and flung up her arms. Alarmed at her supposed ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... their beat of brass and strings, their whisper of feet, their clink of dimes.—Let a man not work away his strength and his youth. Let him breathe a new melody, let him draw out of imagination a novel step, a more fantastic tilt of the pelvis, a wilder gesticulation of the deltoid. Let him put out his hand ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... inheritance, for he has never heard them) the self-excusing fictions of our race. Accused of certain acts of violence, and unable to rebut the charge with any effect, he flies to the old convention: "I didn't know what I was doing," he avers, using a great deal of gesticulation to express the temporary distraction of his mind. "Darling, after nurse slapped me as hard as she could, I didn't know what I was doing, so I suppose I pushed her with my foot." His mother knows as well as does Tolstoi ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... they were useful, and, according to him, men could do whatever they dared attempt. Danton, who has been termed the Mirabeau of the populace bore a physical resemblance to that tribune of the higher classes; he had irregular features, a powerful voice, impetuous gesticulation, a daring eloquence, a lordly brow. Their vices, too, were the same; only Mirabeau's were those of a patrician, Danton's those of a democrat; that which there was of daring in the conceptions of ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... had been for the last three weeks treasurer of the convent. The other was a young man about seventeen or eighteen, with piercing black eyes, a bold look, and whose turned-up sleeves displayed two strong arms quick in gesticulation. ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... her gray hair loosely gathered, and her strong, symmetrical and refined face and perfect self-possession, is a noble-looking woman. Her address, or oration, was before her, but she was not hampered by it. Her voice is clear, her gesticulation simple, and her general manner not surpassed by Wendell Phillips. Rough notes of an oration so finished can only indicate the main drift of her thoughts. * * * The eloquent peroration was heard in profound silence, followed by enthusiastic applause. * * * The ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... began to examine the faces round him. The majority of the diners were Frenchmen, chattering loudly with much gesticulation and laughter; and there was a fair sprinkling of clerks like himself who came because the prices were low and the food good, but there was no single face that he recognised until his glance fell upon the occupant ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... gossip now and then of an evening, if people will listen to my details and fancies. But those are just the things people will not listen to. Everybody wants sensation nowadays. What is a sensation compared with a thought? What is the convulsive gesticulation of a dead frog's leg compared with the intellect of the man who invented the galvanic battery, and thus gave fictitious sensation to all the countless generations of dead frogs' legs that have since been the objects of experiment? Or if you come ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... the time was exquisite, the music barbarous, but full of conscious art. I noted some devices constantly employed. A sudden change would be introduced (I think of key) with no break of the measure, but emphasised by a sudden heightening of the voice and a swinging, general gesticulation. The voices of the soloists would begin far apart in a rude discord, and gradually draw together to a unison; which, when they had reached, they were joined and drowned by the full chorus. The ordinary, hurried, barking, unmelodious movement ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... after the accident, completely recovered; but the forearm had had to be amputated. The question now was whether a famous mechanician, who had promised to make him a perfect substitute for the lost limb even in the matter of free gesticulation, would be able to carry out his task. He succeeded fairly well, as I saw with my own eyes some time later, when I witnessed Roger act in a benefit performance which the Grand Opera had given him, and use his arm so ingeniously that he received ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... Ancient Soot who accorded hospitality that night to Mamba was much surprised, but very glad, to see him. "Have you arrived?" he asked, with a good deal of ceremonial gesticulation. ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... given up the attempt to paint the countenance, attitude, and gesticulation of Rodin during the reading of this note, which seemed to ruin all his most cherished hopes. Everything was failing at once, at the moment when only superhuman trust in the success of his plans could give him sufficient energy to strive against mortal sickness. A single, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... which even in England would have been accounted exceedingly red, fell over his athletic shoulders. This native of Iceland was active and supple in appearance, though he scarcely moved his arms, being in fact one of those men who despise the habit of gesticulation common to ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... peculiar attitudes, and the order and regularity with which these were kept, as they moved in a large semicircle, in the softening light of the fire, produced a striking effect; and in connection with the wild and inspiriting song, which gave an impulse to their gesticulation, led me almost to believe that ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... nerves of the hearer becomes almost painful. There is abundant ornament in style—if you were cooler you might probably think some of it carried to the verge of good taste; there is a great amount and variety of the most expressive, apt, and seemingly unstudied gesticulation; it is rather as though you were listening to the impulsive Italian speaking from head to foot, than to the cool and unexcitable Scot. After two or three such climaxes, with pauses between, after the manner of Dr. Chalmers, the preacher gathers himself up for his ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... get to the east of Sancho's ranch, after having once gone west, without Sancho's knowing it? Suspiciously he watched the two soldiers, the grizzled colonel, the slim lieutenant. They were talking together in low tones, at least the colonel was talking, eagerly, energetically, and with much gesticulation. The junior listened wordless to every word. What had he meant by "the bird had flown?" Why should Nevins "skip?" An unpleasant fear seized upon Sancho. He knew Nevins, at least a Nevins, a captain whom everybody knew, in fact, and few men trusted. What had Nevins been doing? or rather, ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... was a lively and quick-step dance. Cinesias was not a dancer, but a dithyrambic poet, who declaimed with much gesticulation and movement that one might almost think ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... and little more than lifting their feet from the ground. Thus they turned backward and forward, passed in and out of the inner rooms, and frequently repeating the yell, and making the salutation to me. The dish, in the mean time, was changed from one to the other: there was little variety, no gesticulation, no violence; and, though not deficient in native grace, yet the movements were by no means interesting. The dance over, the feast commenced; and everything was carried on with great gravity and propriety. I left them shortly ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... expert performer might produce seven distinct tones; but the tones were not consecutive, and the instrument was altogether a very poor and inefficient affair. It furnished me with an idea, however, and on the following day, by dint of much suggestive gesticulation, I contrived to intimate to my guard my desire to obtain a reed similar to those from which the native instruments were made. They offered no objection, but conducted me some distance beyond the town, through the bush, to a spot on the bank of the river where ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... have an account of this singular repast from one of the guests. Robespierre condemned the senseless brutality with which Hebert had conducted the proceedings against the Austrian woman, and, in talking on that subject, became so much excited that he broke his plate in the violence of his gesticulation. Barere exclaimed that the guillotine had cut a diplomatic knot which it might have been difficult to untie. In the intervals between the beaune and the champagne, between the ragout of thrushes and the partridge with truffles, he fervently ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and Katharine, turning when she reached the window, saw William with his hand raised in gesticulation and his mouth open, as if ready to speak the moment ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... or excited in voice or gesticulation, but his words, flung at them like so many scornful little bullets, the indifferent resignation of his attitude, had their effect upon the crew of giggling, simpering girls and awkward, self-conscious ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... to the crowd, waving his arms in furious gesticulation. "By the beard of the Prophet, this bladder of wind and grease makes sport of us. He has no intent to buy. What man ever heard of the half of such a ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... "Now if you feel you must collapse or cry, mama," she adjured her parent with a touch of the scorn the younger generation felt for elders accustomed, in that day, to meet all crises with tears and faints, or at the least wild gesticulation—"if you must, do it now, and here; so that when they come you ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... officers, controlling their elders, only needed a change of uniform to pass in an Athenian crowd. Spare and dapper officials, presiding in seats of authority over Kurds and Arabs, reminded one of Greek journalists. Osmanli journalists themselves treated one to rhodomontades punctuated with restless gesticulation, which revived memories of Athenian cafes in war-time. It was the Byzantine triumphing over the Asiatic; and the most Asiatic elements in the empire were the least likely to meet with the appreciation ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... was peculiar, abrupt, and conversational; and often when he indulged in episodes and anecdotes he convulsed his class with laughter, especially when he used to enforce his descriptions by earnest gesticulation. Frequently, while lecturing, he would descend from his high stool, on which he sat with his legs dangling, to exhibit to his class some peculiar attitudes and movements illustrative of the results of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 530, January 21, 1832 • Various
... back with his brow wrinkled up, gazing at his companion and trying to think hard; but all in vain, and with a weary gesticulation— ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... 1849: "Near eleven o'clock [at night] announces himself 'Father O'Shea'! (who I thought had been dead); to my astonishment enter a little gray-haired, intelligent-and-bred-looking man, with much gesticulation, boundless loyal welcome, red with dinner and some wine, engages that we are to meet tomorrow,—and again with explosions of welcomes goes his way. This Father O'Shea, some fifteen years ago, had been, with Emerson of America, ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... him was the general and his staff, who had established themselves at the Converserie, a farm on the edge of the plateau. There seemed to be a heated discussion going on; officers were going and coming and the conversation was carried on with much gesticulation. What could they be waiting for? nothing was coming that way. The plateau formed a sort of amphitheater, broad expanses of stubble that were commanded to the north and east by wooded heights; to the south were thick woods, while to the west an opening afforded a glimpse of the valley of the Aisne ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola |
