"Grandiloquent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the room at this moment. His mock applause was accompanied by a clamorous clapping of his hands. I felt my cheeks burn, and my blood boil. The truth is, I was not free from the consciousness that I had suffered some of the grandiloquent to appear in my manner while speaking the sentence which had provoked the ridicule of my uncle. The sarcasm acquired increase of sting in consequence of its being partially well-merited. I replied with some little show of temper, which the imploring glances of Julia did not altogether persuade ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... hard to come to any decision. For, as you know by this, it was the colonel's besetting infirmity to shrink from making changes; instinctively he balked—under shelter of whatever grandiloquent excuse—against commission of any action which would alter his relations with accustomed circumstances or persons. To guide events was never his forte, as he forlornly knew; and here he was condemned perforce to play that uncongenial role, ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... this medley while the fit lasts, and afterward a staid course of better accustomed messes; a few further variations on this lawless theme of authorship, and then to try simpler tunes; briefly, and yet to be grandiloquent, as a last round of this giddy climax, after noisy clashing Chaos there shall roll out, "perfect, smooth, and round," green young worldlets, moving in quiet harmony, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... in reply, referred to Mr. Conkling's "grandiloquent swell" and his "turkey gobbler strut," ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... deserters, escaped prisoners, or spies; to give information to the enemy of the movements of our troops, of exposed or weakened positions, of inviting opportunities of attack, and to guide and assist the enemy either in advance or retreat." This society bore the grandiloquent name "Heroes of America" and had extended its operations into Tennessee and ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... fate. He then became confused in mind—dazed, as it were. In odd vagary, as his ice-raft floated on down the river, he peopled the darkness about him with imaginary foes, and "squared off" at them pugnaciously. His blood warming with this exercise, he began delivering in grandiloquent tones the address which he had declaimed at school, when a voice from the darkness near at hand brought him back ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... an imaginative form. And these books, from Vivian Grey (1825) to Endymion (1880), extend over fifty-five years; some being published before his political career seemed able to begin, some in the midst of it, and the later books after it was ended. In the grandiloquent style of the autobiographical prefaces, we may say that they recall to us the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, the Political Testament of Richelieu, and the Conversations of Napoleon at ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... of sense is, as he thinks, what we have no concern at all with. And as to pain too, he has certain rules to follow then: if it be great, the comfort is, that it must be short; if it be of long continuance, then it must be supportable. What then? Do those grandiloquent gentlemen state anything better than Epicurus, in opposition to these two things which distress us the most? And as to other things, do not Epicurus and the rest of the philosophers seem sufficiently prepared? Who is there who does not dread poverty? And yet no true ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... just boys," said grandiloquent twenty-five, "but they are quite amusing, and they will be proud of it all their lives if they can say they once had Lorraine Vivian at the flat ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... replied Frank, who was falling into a trick of addressing the stately Krooman in the same grandiloquent fashion as the latter was in the habit of using, "I place my ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... extraordinary the grandiloquent language which even the most humble peasant will use, and he speaks with the polished ease ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... annoyed her. There was much of breath in his words, much of physical sensation always clinging to his thoughts. At present, however, she was not inclined to judge him too hardly; although visibly unstrung, unwise in his sweeping condemnation, coarse in his anger, and somewhat grandiloquent in his pose, there was still much of real heroism in his mental attitude. Braced by the fiercest party spirit, he stood staunch in his loyalty to Smith and the cause, with no thought of yielding an inch of ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... old courts—how charming they seem on paper, how fascinating as depicted by Watteau! Yet one wonders how in such an atmosphere any new plants of art managed to shoot at all. The punctilious etiquette, the wigs, the powder, the patches, the grandiloquent speechifyings, the stately bows and graceful curtsies, the prevalence—nay, the domination—of taste, what a business it all was! The small electors, seigneurs, dukes and what not imitated the archducal courts; the archdukes mimicked the imperial courts: all ...
— Haydn • John F. Runciman
... friend of the rich, and the weak requires the aid of the strong, and the sick man of the physician; and every one who is ignorant, has to love and court him who knows.' And indeed he went on to say in grandiloquent language, that the idea of friendship existing between similars is not the truth, but the very reverse of the truth, and that the most opposed are the most friendly; for that everything desires not like but that which is most unlike: for example, the ...
— Lysis • Plato
... school" of manners has fallen into disrepute. Sir Charles Grandison is a comical rather than a courtly figure to this generation; and the man whose manners may be described as Grandisonian is usually called a pompous and grandiloquent old prig. Certainly the elaborately dressed gentleman speaking to a lady only with polished courtesy of phrase, and avoiding in her presence all coarse words and acts, handing her in the minuet with ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... a slight and unimpressive figure in somewhat worn field-grey, the German khaki. The "debate" having begun, I noticed how he listened eagerly to every word spoken, jotting down notes incessantly for the evident purpose of replying to the grandiloquent utterances about our "glorious army of Kultur-bearers" which were falling from the lips of "patriotic" party orators. Liebknecht had earned the displeasure of the House a few days before by asking ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... poetry. The splendour and elegance at the new imperial court of the Han dynasty attracted many poets who sang the praises of the emperor and his court and were given official posts and dignities. These praises were in the form of grandiloquent, overloaded poetry, full of strange similes and allusions, but with little real feeling. In contrast, the many women singers and dancers at the court, mostly slaves from southern China, introduced at the court southern Chinese forms of song and poem, which were soon adopted and elaborated ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... company, followed her when I was down at the old place, like her shadow (her shadow, indeed!). I had elected her my confidante and adviser, and poured all my precious opinions and plans—my very scrapes—into her curious, patient ears. Mad, have you forgotten how once, like an old-fashioned, grandiloquent muff, I showed you the picture of a perfect woman in a book of poetry—'Paradise Lost' it might have been, and 'Eve' for any special appropriateness in the picture—and broadly hinted my private idea that the perfect woman was ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... church to which the Rev. Bruno Leathwaite Chilvers ministered. Everybody knows Mr. Chilvers; at least everybody who loves George Gissing knows that very excellent gentleman. Mr. Chilvers loved to adorn his dainty discourses with certain words of strangely grandiloquent sound. '"Nullifidian," "morbific," "renascent"—these were among his favourites. Once or twice he spoke of "psychogenesis" with an emphatic enunciation which seemed to invite respectful wonder. In using Latin words which have become fixed in the English language, he generally corrected the common ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... during these seventy years various edicts claiming the country we issued by Louis XIV.; but as the French during all that time did not attempt to occupy a single foot of territory in Madagascar, these grandiloquent proclamations can hardly be considered as of much value. As has been remarked, French pretensions were greatest when their actual authority ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... a distance from the days of Luther and Calvin, may be supposed to have been the feeling among the Polish Unitarians; whereas Dr. Pusey's jacet (lies low, in the present tense) does as certainly partake somewhat of the grandiloquent. That no "boast," however, was intended, becomes probable, when we consider that the distich was designed to convey a feeling of reverence towards Socinus rather than an ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 59, December 14, 1850 • Various
... he wanted to be cheered? He could very easily have stated Ireland's case truthfully, and have proclaimed a benevolent neutrality (if he cared to use the grandiloquent words) on the part of this country. He would have gotten his cheers, he would in a few months have gotten Home Rule in return for Irish soldiers. He would have received politically whatever England could have safely given ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens
... and yards of Hannah More? Give us Hannah's company, but not—not her writings!' It is only fair to say that Mrs. Walford has thoroughly carried out the views she expresses in this passage, for she gives us nothing of Hannah More's grandiloquent literary productions, and yet succeeds in making us know her thoroughly. The whole book is well written, but the biography of Hannah More is a wonderfully brilliant sketch, and deserves ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... us. Finding his people slow to come to church, he is said to have stood at the end of a bridge singing songs in the vernacular, thus collecting a crowd to listen to exhortations on sacred subjects. Aldhelm wrote in elaborate and grandiloquent Latin, which soon came to be regarded as barbarous. Much admired as he was by his contemporaries, his fame as a scholar therefore soon declined, but his reputation as a pioneer in Latin scholarship in England and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... so brilliant as on this afternoon, for they dined while it was still daylight and hardly evening. He told her of the customs of the country, of the people; and slyly and effectively he satirized some of his grandiloquent guests. Not unduly, for one of them, the most renowned in the island, came to him after dinner as he sat talking to Sheila, and said: "I'm very sorry, your honour, but good Almighty God, I must go home ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the perfect flower of Douglas's vaunted experiment of "popular sovereignty"—a result they professed fully to appreciate. "Hitherto," said the Judiciary Committee of the House in a long and grandiloquent report, "Congress have retained to themselves the power to mold and shape all the territorial governments according to their own peculiar notions, and to restrict within very limited and contracted bounds both the natural as well as the political rights of the bold and daring pioneer and ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... coolly, as though he thought it a necessary, but extremely disagreeable, duty. St. Jerome, on the contrary, always liked to emphasise his part as JUDGE when correcting us, and clearly did it as much for his own satisfaction as for our good. He loved authority. Nevertheless, I always found his grandiloquent French phrases (which he pronounced with a strong emphasis on all the final syllables) inexpressibly disgusting, whereas Karl, when angry, had never said anything beyond, "What a foolish puppet-comedy it is!" or "You boys are as irritating as Spanish fly!" (which ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... went to bed pondering on the strange attitude of the newspaper mind toward so matter-of-fact a quality as honesty; and he dreamed of a roomful of advertisers listening in sodden silence to his own grandiloquent announcement, "Gentlemen: honesty is the best policy," while, in a corner, McGuire Ellis and Max Veltman clasped each other in an apoplectic agony ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... tower. He was a polite, shrewd little hunchback, who was very happy to show me over the church. Among the monuments was one that interested me; it was erected to commemorate the very Squire Bowes from whom my two old maids had inherited the house and estate of Barwyke. It spoke of him in terms of grandiloquent eulogy, and informed the Christian reader that he had died, in the bosom of the Church of England, ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... be noticed that Riemann even changes the arrangement of the bars. This prelude is dramatic almost to an operatic degree. Sonorous, rather grandiloquent, it is a study in declamation, the declamation of the slow movement in the F minor concerto. Schumann may have had the first phrase in his mind when he wrote his Aufschwung. This page of Chopin's, the torso of a ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... he, in a grandiloquent tone, when I had completed my examination of the beetle, "I sent for you that I might have your counsel and assistance in furthering the views of ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... gave delightful descriptions in a series of letters to his friend Mrs. Thrale, which he afterwards wrote out in more pompous style for publication. The letters are current, witty, and simple; the published work is stilted and grandiloquent. ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... time I married, myself; she feels that very strongly and I think her decision to accept Ingle is partly due to her wish to make all clear for a new mistress of my household,—though that's putting it in a rather grandiloquent way." He laughed. "And as you probably guess, I have an idea that some such arrangement might be somewhere on the wings of the wind on its way to ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... to New York, and on January 1st, 1905, I began to write. Within two days I had written about fifteen thousand words—for the most part on the subject of reforms and how to effect them. One of the documents prepared at that time contained grandiloquent passages that were a portent of coming events—though I was ignorant of the fact. In writing about my project I said, "Whether I am a tool of God or a toy of the devil, time alone will tell; but there will be no misunderstanding Time's answer if ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... at the ludicrous spectacle of four lads rubbing their eyes, scratching their heads, shaking themselves straight in their clothes, and looking as if there never had been half an idea in one of their minds. But Yaspard shouted in grandiloquent style— ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... Mrs. Triplet, "this family is on the eve of a great triumph!" Then, inverting that order of the grandiloquent and the homely which he invented in our first chapter, he proceeded to say: "I have reared in a single day a new avenue by which histrionic greatness, hitherto obstructed, may become accessible. Wife, I think ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... included among this class of grandiloquent gentlemen, for he entered life as a Professor of Pig-driving; and it is but justice towards him to assert, that no corn-cutter of them all ever elevated his profession so high as Phil did that in which he practised. ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... Mondes," when it contains some important new study of actual life, nor the discussion about the last play of Dumas, can give us now an adequate idea of the amount of interest concentrated in Paris at that time upon those heroical, grandiloquent, periwigged figures. ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... private desires. And when people blame Bernard Shaw for his pitiless and prosaic coldness, his cutting refusal to reverence or admire, I think they should remember this riff-raff of lawless sentimentalism against which his commonsense had to strive, all the grandiloquent "comrades" and all the gushing "affinities," all the sweetstuff sensuality and senseless sulking against law. If Bernard Shaw became a little too fond of throwing cold water upon prophecies or ideals, remember that he must have passed much of his youth among cosmopolitan idealists ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... sensibilities and affections than his intellect,—that child is the only student that ever gets the sort of intimacy which I am now thinking of, with a literary personage. I do not remember, indeed, ever caring much about any of the stalwart Doctor's grandiloquent productions, except his two stern and masculine poems, "London," and "The Vanity of Human Wishes"; it was as a man, a talker, and a humorist, that I knew and loved him, appreciating many of his qualities perhaps more thoroughly than I do now, ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... your mind, I feel you will suppress it quickly in justice to me, knowing, as you must know, that a badge gives courage to the wearer, putting a conviction into the heart that one is not alone, but a soldier in a great army walking in step towards a definite end. This sounds somewhat grandiloquent, but it seems to me somewhat like the truth. Trying to get into step is interesting and instructive, and the novitiate, though hardly bearable at times, is better than sitting in the lonely guest-room. Mother Hilda's instruction in the novitiate seems childish, ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... closes. To present the "dry bones" of a romantic story is often misleading, but the method is perhaps justifiable in the case of The Castle of Otranto, because Walpole himself scorned embellishments and declared in his grandiloquent fashion: ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... comparison with Tommy Ashe—who had become a doer, a creator in the common need, while he remained a gleaner in the field of self-interest. Thompson rather resented that imputation. Privately he considered Tommy's speech a trifle grandiloquent. He began to think he had underestimated Tommy, ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... replied without hesitation in the grandiloquent tone he loved to assume upon occasions. "But do you think," he added presently, "that a man can acquire virtue unless it has been born ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... concerning the welfare of Australia. But he did not forget New Zealand, and it was to the young Church Missionary Society that he betook himself. So great, in fact, and so various were the plans which Marsden entertained for the welfare of the many races in which he was interested, that the grandiloquent words of his biographer seem not too strong: "As the obscure chaplain from Botany Bay paced the Strand, from the Colonial Office at Whitehall to the chambers in the city where a few pious men were laying plans for Christian missions in the southern hemisphere, he was ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... tribulations, and the final happy marriage of a too sweet young maiden, published in four volumes extending over the years 1740 and 1741. Its chief fame lies in the fact that it is our first novel in the modern sense. Aside from this important fact, and viewed solely as a novel, it is sentimental, grandiloquent, and wearisome. Its success at the time was enormous, and Richardson began another series of letters (he could tell a story in no other way) which occupied his leisure hours for the next six years. The result was ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... had resigned; McDowell had been superseded; but the President had found a general who had caught the confidence of the nation. In the same month that had witnessed McDowell's defeat, a young officer had gained a cheap victory over a small Confederate force in West Virginia, and his grandiloquent dispatches had magnified the achievement in the eyes of the Northern people. He was at once nicknamed the "Young Napoleon," and his accession to the chief command of the Federal armies was enthusiastically approved. General McClellan ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... to know that in this country, during the early years of our leading universities, Hebrew not only formed, a subject of instruction, but also appeared upon the Commencement programs. Upon such grandiloquent occasions you will find that side by side with a poem in Greek there figured a speech in Hebrew. What the Hebrew was like that was poured out there I have difficulty in imagining. But that the instruction was of much use to ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... consideration. Something might have been inserted with the view of producing ready money, something which might have had a flavour of yielding, but which could not have been shown to Emily as an offer on his part to abandon her; and then he had a general feeling that his letter had been too grandiloquent,—all arising, no doubt, from a fall in courage incidental ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... It is clean—AND clever. It is the big stick held in a velvet glove. It is supremely able. He seeks a great advantage with a modest air, in contrast to the Greek who seeks a modest advantage with a grandiloquent air. ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... the last years of his life from Lord Rolle. During this period he dictated his memoirs for publication in Sidmouth, to an editor who unconsciously gave the book a delicious touch of humour by putting into the mouth of this son of a Devon shoemaker the grandiloquent phrases of ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... A sufficiently inane story, and by no means certainly true; but there is enough character in this little feat, ponderous, deliberate, pompous, ostentatious, and at bottom a trick and deceitful quibble, to make it accord with the grandiloquent public manner of Columbus, and to make it easily believable of one who chose to show himself in his speech and writings so much more meanly and pretentiously than he showed himself in the true acts and ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... usual curiosity to know all about the strangers, whence they came whither they were going, the object of their journey, and the adventures they had experienced. All these, of course, were ample and eloquently set forth by the communicative old chief. To all his grandiloquent account of the bald-headed chief and his countrymen, the Big Hearts of the East, his cousin listened with great attention, and replied in the customary style of Indian welcome. He then desired the party ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... as the Prince of Upstarts, grandiloquent and at the same time unctuous, a General in a Salvation Army of Art, or a monk who is a devotee of an esthetic Doctrine which has been drawn up by a Congress ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... the weapon, a curved simitar inlaid with gold, and reposing in a scabbard of gilt metal and purple velvet. In its wrapping of brown paper and twine it suspiciously resembled a child's toy, and Prince Michael's grandiloquent manner added a touch of buffoonery to a farewell scene made poignant by ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... of fear for him. He seemed to me a lost little creature, too silly to be silent, in a vast implacable condemnation. I was full of pity and a sort of tenderness for my aunt Susan, who was doomed to follow his erratic fortunes mocked by his grandiloquent promises. ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... veritable sermons. He obtained hearing, but certainly did not win popularity. The adulatory phrases used as mere conventionalities seemed to have actually turned his head. And those stock phrases were very grandiloquent. There is no doubt that such comparisons were used as Chastellain puts into the mouths of the first deputation from Ghent to ask pardon for the sins committed at the dolorous unjoyous entry into ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... true, dad," he remarked with a grandiloquent air. "I was just going into the Cri—let me see, on Tuesday night it was—when whom should I run up against but little Tommy Soampton with a pal, and we all had drinks together. He was a quiet-looking chap, not dressed half so ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Mr. Hammerstein published for his second season was magnificently grandiloquent in its promises, but the season itself marvelous in its achievements. Eight operas "never produced in this city or country," "masterpieces of the most celebrated composers," which were his "sole property," were to be brought forward, in addition to many familiar works. He announced ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... she never went into society without a sinking at the heart, dreading the welcome that would be accorded her on the morrow of a disclosure. To her hints, her entreaties, Jenkins had replied at first with vague phrases, with grandiloquent gestures: "Do you doubt me? Isn't ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... studying," answered the young man, somewhat surprised at the grandiloquent style of the speaker and also at being so directly addressed. In spite of the momentary desire he had just been feeling for company of any sort, on being actually spoken to he felt immediately his habitual irritable and uneasy aversion for any stranger who approached ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... keep before your mind the thought that you're the only servant, who has followed me as an attendant out of town, and you give way to fear that you will, on your return, have to bear the consequences. You hence have recourse to these grandiloquent arguments to shove words of counsel down my throat! I've come here now with the sole object of satisfying certain rites, and then going to partake of the banquet and be a spectator of the plays; and I never mentioned one single word about any intention on my part not to go back to town ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... Quiverful would wait upon his lordship the next morning at 11 A.M.; that from the lady was as simply a request that Mrs. Quiverful would do the same by her, though it was couched in somewhat longer and more grandiloquent phraseology. ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... recalled drearily the clock-like revolutions of the year which brought bull-fights, races, rodeos, church celebrations; her mother's anecdotes of the Indians; her father's manifold interests, ever the theme of his tongue; Reinaldo's grandiloquent accounts of his exploits and intentions; Prudencia's infinite nothings. She hated the balls of which she was La Favorita, the everlasting serenades, the whole life of pleasure which made that period ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... he, in a grandiloquent tone when I had completed my examination of the beetle, "I sent for you, that I might have your counsel and assistance in furthering the views of Fate ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... is apt to take a very prosaic and dispassionate view of such matters, and when he has reached his conclusion based upon everyday, commonplace morality, he is not apt to be shaken even by an imposing array of names, fortified by an enthusiastic excess of grandiloquent adjectives. The aristocracy of brains has no monopoly of truth, which is often best grasped by the democracy ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... ranks him very low. That his credit as an historian was sacrificed to a childish credulity and a foolish love of fable and adventure is sufficiently testified by the pretty numerous fragments which still remain (Pauly). Demetrius Phalereus, quoted by Pearce, quotes a grandiloquent description of the wasp taken from Kleitarchus, "feeding on the mountainside, her home the ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... his head. Not in the least likely. Mr. Sapsea, in a grandiloquent state of absence of mind, seems to refill his visitor's glass, which is full already; and does really refill his own, ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... Eadgar's reign. He took much of his material from a Saxon Chronicle, like that of Winchester, but he has also matter peculiar to himself; and this raises a question whether he took such matter from a Saxon Chronicle now lost. He is grandiloquent and turgid to an extent which often obscures his meaning. In him we perceive all the word-eloquence of Saxon poetry, striving to utter itself through the medium of a Latinity at ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... the English character, but Cardinal Wiseman, at least, could not plead ignorance of the real issues at stake; and therefore his grandiloquent and, under all the circumstances, ridiculous pastoral letter, which he dated 'From out of the Flaminian Gate at Rome,' was justly regarded as an insult to the religious convictions of the vast majority of the English people. Anglicans and Nonconformists ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... annotations. The sermons of the present ministry partake of Reinhard's earnestness and faith. Gallicisms and technical terminology are no longer proclaimed to the peasants, while the artisan is no more entertained with grandiloquent descriptions of the last night of Socrates, or with Ciceronian laudations of the Schoolmen.[83] The popular attendance at the public services is greatly on the increase, and the congregations are expressing in no doubtful terms their desire for the restoration of the thrilling ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... newspapers gave foreign news three months old, the proceedings of Congress in from ten to twelve days after their occurrence, and news from the Connecticut elections three weeks late. Subjects relating to religion and politics were heard pro and con in articles, or rather letters, signed with grandiloquent pseudonyms and frequently marked "Papers, please copy" in order to secure for them a larger public. Fantastic bits of natural science, or what purported to be such, and stilted admonitions to virtue, ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... between the type of the men and their deeds, between their abominable crimes and their high qualities, be merely made a subject for grandiloquent disquisition. The man of the Renaissance, as we have said, had no need to be a monster to do monstrous things; a crime did not necessitate such a moral rebellion as requires complete unity of nature, unmixed wickedness; it ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... intolerably dull residence to a foreigner of distinction unequipped with intellectual resources. The hour one spends with Byron's memory then is almost compassionate. After all, one says to one's self as one turns away from the grandiloquent little slab in front of his house and looks down the deadly provincial vista of the empty, sunny street, the author of so many superb stanzas asked less from the world than he gave it. One of his diversions was to ride in the Pineta, which, beginning a couple of miles from the ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... true explanation of the paradox—that a poet who is often inopportunely witty has the opposite vice of bombastic absurdity. The source of all grandiloquence is the want of taking for a criterion the true qualities of the object described or the emotion expressed. The grandiloquent man is never bent on saying what he feels or what he sees, but on producing a certain effect on his audience; hence he may float away into utter inanity without meeting any criterion to arrest him. Here lies the ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... not apply to public. All men consent that swindling for a horse is swindling,—they punish the culprit and condemn the fault. But in a State there is no such unanimity. Swindling, Lord help you! is called by some fine name; and cheating grows grandiloquent, and styles itself "Policy." In consequence of this there is always a battle between those who call things by their right names and those who pertinaciously give them the wrong ones. Hence all sorts of confusion. This confusion extends very soon to the laws made for individual ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... appellations. Among Anglo-American hunters, it is called the panther—in their patois, "painter." In most parts of South America, as well as in Mexico, it receives the grandiloquent title of "lion" (leon), and in the Peruvian countries is called the "puma," or "poma." The absence of stripes, such as those of the tiger—or spots, as upon the leopard—or rosettes, as upon the jaguar, have suggested the name of the naturalists, concolor. ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... asked, without batting an eye at Monsieur's grandiloquent outburst—which seemed to me the absolute frustration of our plan, "we don't know this man. He's a tramp we picked up at Key West. Do you recognize his credentials, or would you say ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... present habitatory and anatomical peculiarities, it now remains to magnify him in an archaeological, fossiliferous, and antediluvian point of view. Applied to any other creature than the Leviathan —to an ant or a flea —such portly terms might justly be deemed unwarrantably grandiloquent. But when Leviathan is the text, the case is altered. Fain am I to stagger to this emprise under the weightiest words of the dictionary. And here be it said, that whenever it has been convenient to consult one in the course of these dissertations, I have invariably used a huge quarto edition ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... use that very vague, grandiloquent word 'Ambrosial' know that it has reference to the 'ambrosia' ([Greek: ambrotos], immortal), the food of the gods! It has, however, a secondary signification, namely, that of an unguent, or perfume, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... I adore it!" said Rebecca, who was in a grandiloquent mood. "Why don't you like it? It's ...
— The Flag-raising • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Spain that the archdukes should now prepare to send envoys to the revolted provinces as to a free and independent people. Universal monarchy, brought to such a pass as this, was hardly what had been expected after the tremendous designs and the grandiloquent language on which the world had so long been feeding as its daily bread. The spectacle of anointed monarchs thus far humbling themselves to the people of rebellion dictating terms, instead of writhing in dust at the foot of the throne—was something new in history. The heavens ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Virginia, where the Confederate General, Robert Garnett, was killed. It is but fair to admit that the South had not emulated the wisdom of Solomon nor the modesty of Godolphin. The capture of Fort Sumter, with its garrison of less than a hundred men, was hardly Gibraltar; yet it would put the grandiloquent hidalgoes of Spain on their mettle to make more clatter over the downfall of the cross of St. George from that historic rock. McClellan was the young Napoleon, the very god of war in his latest avatar. While this was absurd, and in the end injurious ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... says Kit. By this time she has recovered her surprise and her composure. "Thank you, Bridget," she says, with quite a grandiloquent air: "put it there, on that table. It is of no consequence, I dare say: ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... Socialist Party of that country, has given us by far the fullest and most significant discussion of that party's policy. He says that an enlightened bourgeoisie will be just as likely to be Socialist as the working classes, and that therefore the class struggle is merely "a grandiloquent and aggressive figure of speech."[114] Struggle of some kind, he concedes, is necessary. But the more important form of struggle in present-day society, he says, is the trade rivalry between nations and not the rivalry between social classes.[115] Here at the outset is a complete reversal ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... Chaffee Thayer Sluss, whose attitude in this instance was to prove crucial, was a tall, shapely, somewhat grandiloquent person who took himself and his social and commercial opportunities and doings in the most serious and, as it were, elevated light. You know, perhaps, the type of man or woman who, raised in an atmosphere of comparative comfort and some small social pretension, and being short ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... banished, the spirit of Jean Paul Marat and John Brown of Ossawatomie rises to the fore in the shape of one Andres Bonifacio, warehouse porter, who sits up o' nights copying all the letters and documents that he can lay hands on; composing grandiloquent manifestoes in Tagalog; drawing up magnificent appointments in the names of prominent persons who would later suffer even to the shedding of their life's blood through his mania for writing history in advance; ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... have been accustomed. That is why I abominate our modern poets. They talk about the glory of the poetic vocation, as if they intended to be kings and world-makers, and all the while they indulge themselves in the most loose and desultory habits of thought. Sir, if they really believed their own grandiloquent assumptions, they would feel that the responsibility of their mental training was greater, not less, than any one's else. Like the Quakers, they fancy that they honour inspiration by supposing it to be only extraordinary and paroxysmic: the true poet, like the rational Christian, believing that ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... III.'; a poem, also in blank verse, and still more 'tremendous,' to quote his favourite word, on the Battle of Blenheim, in which he frequently invokes his soul to say and sing a thousand things far beyond his soul's reach—and a poem equally laboured and grandiloquent, on the Battle of Ramillies, in which there are passages that read like a burlesque of Milton. Dennis observes in his Grounds of Criticism in Poetry (1704) that 'poetry unless it pleases, nay, and pleases to a height, is the most contemptible thing in the world.' This is just criticism, ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... a nation is a grandiloquent fallacy in the interests of commerce and ambition, political and military. All the great and good, clever and charming people belong to one secret nation, for which there is no name unless it be the Chosen People. These are the lost tribes of love, art, and religion, lost and swamped ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... lines his pocket with unrighteous money, preparing to flee to foreign countries or at least to the Foreign Settlements for safety. The cautious work quietly and do not desire to earn merit but merely try to avoid giving offence. The scholars and politicians are grandiloquent and discourse upon their subjects in a sublime vein, but they are no better than the corrupt officials. As for our President, he can remain at the head of the State for a few years. At most he may hold office for several terms,—or ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... the meaning of many words which are too "bookish" for daily use by them. Edward Everett Hale might use expressions which would not be suitable for a freshman's composition. Taste and good judgment will help you to avoid the unsuitable or grandiloquent. ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... that women fail as novel-writers; that it is not because they are women, but because they are false to nature and to the simplest conditions of literary art. These women write poor novels because they aim at fine writing, and believe they must be learned and grandiloquent. They ignore what they see about them every day, and which, if they were to describe it in simple language, would give them real power. It is this falsity in thought, method and purpose which is so severely condemned. And it is the very justness ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... where he remained occupied with gloomy preparations for the ensuing meeting. His adversary in the other room also thought fit to make his testamentary dispositions, too, dictated by his own obedient brother and secretary, a grandiloquent letter to his mother, of whom, and by that writing, he took a solemn farewell. She would hardly, he supposed, pursue the scheme which she had in view, after the event of that morning, should he fall, as probably would ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... of Music will be ready for inauguration by a company of distinguished actors—all stars, more or less—from the principal theatres of the metropolis—next Saturday night," replied Big Ed in a grandiloquent outburst. ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... stand-point of the President, and with his views of the efficiency of legislative restrictions upon banks, we do not see how he could consistently avoid recommending the instant action of Congress. On the heel of his grandiloquent description of the evils of redundant paper money,—evils which are felt all over the country,— it is a lamentably impotent conclusion to say, "After all, we can't do much to help it! Yes, let us confide piously in 'the wisdom and patriotism of the State legislatures,'"—which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... encountered a sentence, like Prof. Owens "axiom of the continuous operation of the ordained becoming of living things," which haunted us like an apparition. For, dim as our conception must needs be as to what such oracular and grandiloquent phrases might really mean, we felt confident that they presaged no good to old beliefs. Foreseeing, yet deprecating, the coming time of trouble, we still hoped that, with some repairs and makeshifts, the old views might last out our days. Apres nous le deluge. Still, ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... shouted Sir Peter. Adelaide could, despite the whip and rein with which he held her, exasperate and irritate him—by no means more thoroughly than by pretending that she did not understand his grandiloquent allusions, and the vague grandness of the commands which he sometimes gave. "I mean you to go, and your little sister here, and Arkwright too. I don't know about myself. Now, I am going to ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... and surgeon in Kentucky, and now a prosperous gold miner) had a learned discussion as to the formation of the membranes of the human stomach, in which they used words that were over a foot long by actual measurement. I have never heard such splendid words in my life; but such were their grandiloquent profundity, and their far-reaching lucidity, that I understood rather less about it when they had finished than I ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... the groundlings, this must have been delivered in grandiloquent mimicry with all the paraphernalia of the tragic style. Horace notes a kindred manifestation of this tendency (to which he himself is pleasingly addicted), in Ep. II. ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... John's, Cambridge. He had come to London about this time, and instituted a series of lectures on universal knowledge and primitive Christianity. He styled himself a Rationalist, a title then more honourable than it is now; and in grandiloquent language, 'spouted' on religious subjects to an audience admitted at a shilling a-head. On one occasion he announced a disputation among any two of his hearers, offering to give an impartial hearing and judgment to both. Selwyn and the young Lord Carteret ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... all-conquering Anglo-Saxon race" must continue forever to exercise exclusive control and direction of the government of this so-called Republic, it becomes important to every citizen who values his birthright to know who are included in this grandiloquent term. It is of course perfectly obvious that the writer or speaker who used this expression—perhaps Mr. Grady of Georgia—did not say what he meant. It is not probable that he meant to exclude ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... therefore, if they do seriously resist their besiegers, that the assurances of the Government that there are ample supplies of food and of ammunition, are not part of the system of official lying which was pursued by their predecessors; and I hope that the grandiloquent boasts and brave words that one hears from morning to night will be followed ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... inscriptions showing that they had been given by the Spanish Sovereign as rewards for faithful service, etc. One of these canes had been given by Maria Cristina. Others produced, from bamboo tubes, parchments of equally royal origin, setting forth in grandiloquent Spanish the confidence reposed by the Sovereign in ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... though Byzantines came hither under Nicephorus Phocas—Benjamin of Tudela says the inhabitants are "Greeks"—they have long ago become merged into the Italian element. Only the barbers seem to have preserved something of the old traditions: grandiloquent and terrible talkers, like the cooks ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... fit place beside the most atrocious fictions, which have been conjured up by mistaken heads and zealous hearts, anxious to ride the aforesaid "Indian question," in relation to the Cherokees and Florida Indians. When all this grandiloquent display of parental sympathy, and a sense of outraged justice, is stripped of its false garbs and put into the crucible of truth, the result is, that political capital can be made just now of the handling of the topic. A delay of a few ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft |
