"Monologue" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... depth and a radiance impossible to describe. He spoke for a while upon the pleasant smell of hay passing through a city, and, remarking upon the enviable thirst of hay-makers, he swept gradually to the following weighty monologue— ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... steadily until Arkwright's gaze dropped. Then he laughed friendly. "Come along, Grant," said he. "You're a good fellow, and I'll get you the girl." And he linked his arm in Arkwright's and took up another phase of himself as the topic of his monologue. ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... unuttered on Rose's tongue. The few remarks which she did venture, nowadays, had the effect of a disconcerting splash before they sank into the gloomy depths of the thick silence. Occasionally, in sheer self defense, she carried on a light monologue, but Martin's lack of interest gave her such an odd, lonely, stage-struck sensation that she, too, became untalkative, keeping to herself the ideas which chased through her ever-active mind. Innately just, she attributed this peculiarity of his to the fact that he ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... skull near the place where he had dropped the teeth, and thought he could trace them by this landmark. Mrs. Yellett held the ribbons and suggested that Mary get down "and help to prospect for them teeth." As Mary clambered down she heard a fragment of the matriarch's monologue, which, being duly expurgated for polite ears, was to the effect that she would rather take ten babies anywhere than one grown man, and that as for getting in the way, hindering, obstructing, and being a nuisance, generally speaking, man had not his counterpart ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... Blarcom, I reflected, was surely coming out of his shell; this was quite a monologue with which he was favoring me. It was dark now; our lights were flaring. Being in a friendly port's shelter, we burned ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... translations and a few original poems, and he always seemed very pleased with my efforts in recitation. What he thought of me may best be judged perhaps from the fact that he made me, as a boy of about twelve, recite not only 'Hector's Farewell' from the Iliad, but even Hamlet's celebrated monologue. On one occasion, when I was in the fourth form of the school, one of my schoolfellows, a boy named Starke, suddenly fell dead, and the tragic event aroused so much sympathy, that not only did the whole school attend the funeral, but the headmaster also ordered that a poem should be written ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... great rapidity. The street which they had now entered, from the far end of the piazza, was narrow. It was encumbered by a string of laden mules, by a stream of foot passengers. Interruption of his monologue, short of raising her voice to screaming pitch, was impossible to Madame de Vallorbes. But when he ceased she addressed him, and her lips were drawn away from ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... has stood the test of time and established itself in the esteem of men is frankly Utopian. Plato, when his mind turned to schemes of social reconstruction thrust his habitual form of dialogue into a corner; both the "Republic" and the "Laws" are practically Utopias in monologue; and Aristotle found the criticism of the Utopian suggestions of his predecessors richly profitable. Directly the mind of the world emerged again at the Renascence from intellectual barbarism in the brief breathing time before Sturm and the schoolmasters caught it and birched it into scholarship ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... her look of annoyance for the glow of responsive passion, he resolved on more masterly action. He kept a careful watch, and one afternoon followed her and Tinker and Elsie on one of their walks. They went briskly, and at the end of a mile he was maintaining a continuous, passionate monologue in tones charged with heartfelt emotion on the subject of his tight ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... party at the Blaneys' was in full swing. A man at the piano was performing a monologue that was partly spoken, partly sung. It was cleverly done, and the audience showed ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... The fall of the Roman Empire was the bounce of a rubber nursery ball, compared with this New York avalanche of luxurious satiation! Now, my child, old Da-da, is going to become too intoxicated to talk three words to any of these gallants and their lassies. Grimsby did not write a monologue for me, so I must pantomime: you will have to carry the speaking part of our playlet. Flatter them—but don't leave my ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... to seems to be located at some distance from the station," said Mrs. Bilton presently, in the middle of several pages of rapid unpunctuated monologue. "Isolated, surely—" and off she went again to other matters, just as Mr. Twist had got his mouth ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... trifle be omitted which might add to the comfort and sense of harmony which seemed so much a part of his young mistress's life. As he straightened a fruit knife here, or set right a fold of the snowy breakfast cloth, he kept up a low-murmured monologue after the manner of his race. Very little escaped old Jerome's sharp eyes and keen ears, and within the past forty-eight hours they had found plenty to see or hear, for a guest had come to Severndale. Yes, a most unusual type of guest, too. As a rule Severndale's ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... astonished some of them on the wire with all the stuff we had over!" went on with his monologue the knight of the collapsed romance, who, not being troubled with fine sensibilities, had no idea of the feelings under which ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... professor, plumb-full of book dope on the Yukon. He's Mister Wise Mike. He knows it all. Hear his monologue on 'How It Should Be Done.' He's going to live on deck to inure himself to the rigours of the Arctic climate. Works with a pair of spring dumb-bells to get up his muscle so's he can shovel ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... tables might have noticed the young man continually addressing the empty chair and carrying on a monologue with it ...
— Fifty-One Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... back as the Cow unreeled a fifteen minute monologue which repeated both sides of the conversation including the order to make ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... a dreary affair. Uncle David was out, Aunt Nellie had a headache so was unusually quiet, and Merle, with red eyes, sat silent and brooding. Mavis tried desperately to make a little conversation, but it was impossible to maintain a monologue, and she soon dropped the futile attempt. Merle, after eating half a piece of bread and butter and declining a chocolate biscuit, begged suddenly to be excused, and with two big unruly tears splashing down her cheeks fled from ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... the address of some important centre, that rose, as if by accident, upon his lips; and each word was like another turn of the thumbscrew to his unhappy guest. Finally, the course of Zero's bland monologue led him to the young lady of two days ago; that young lady, who had flashed on Somerset for so brief a while but with so conquering a charm; and whose engaging grace, communicative eyes, and admirable conduct of the sweeping skirt, remained imprinted ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... imagination and feeling displayed itself in early youth. In his eleventh year he would be a poet! A Saxon poet, Apel, imitated the Greek tragedies, why should he not do the same? He had already translated the first twelve books of Homer's "Odyssey," and had made a metrical version of Romeo's monologue, after having, simply to understand Shakspeare, thoroughly acquired a knowledge of English. Thus at an early age he mastered the language which "thinks and meditates for us," and Shakspeare became his favorite model. A grand tragedy based on the themes of ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... went on, "as a monologue artist, you'd certainly have them all backed off the boards. I know a place in New York where you could draw down your two fifty per without ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... His monologue seemed to interest his wife apart from the satirical point it had for themselves. "You ought to get Mr. Fulkerson to let you work some of these New York sights up for Every Other Week, Basil; you could do ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... team of Hart & Cherry was an inspiration. Bob Hart had been roaming through the Eastern and Western circuits for four years with a mixed-up act comprising a monologue, three lightning changes with songs, a couple of imitations of celebrated imitators, and a buck-and-wing dance that had drawn a glance of approval from the bass-viol player in more than one house—than which no performer ever received ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... passed. They sent Mrs. Newton away when she came to help them at dinner. They locked their doors, and shut themselves in from the world, as mourners do with death. Adeline's monologue went on, with the brief responses which she extorted from Suzette, and at last it ceased, as if her heart had worn itself out in the futile ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... record. His finger prints are the ones we found on the file. And he is the bird who always eats a lot whenever he does a job, specially eggs. How this bird can put away eggs is a wonder; he's a little feller, too." The monologue was cut short by the entrance of the prisoner who was chained to a burly headquarters man, accompanied by another officer ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... you, before it is too late. I know of what I speak. I have been a gentleman for years, and I am acquainted with all the ins and outs of the calling. It is a poor one; avoid it. But you will pardon this somewhat lengthy monologue. I have kept you from your supper. Good-night. ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... if an exception, shows what attentive listening may accomplish toward social success. Let it be mentioned here, however, that no one individual should be so carried away by a pet hobby as to force conversation into a monologue. A very well bred man, no matter how great his interest in or eloquence upon any topic may be, always catches at the slightest hint ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... be better in the third person. "St. Simeon Stylites" is a dramatic monologue more upon Browning's model, i.e., a piece of apologetics and self-analysis. But in this province ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... broke into an eloquent monologue. Wilkins had poured out a glass of port for both of them to drink with their cheese-straws. Lord Loudwater finished his cheese-straws, took a long sip from his glass, rolled it lovingly over his tongue, gulped it down with a hideous grimace, ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... companion, William Ellery Channing (1818-1901), a poet who has significance only in the transcendentalist group. With them should be named Emerson's coeval, Amos Bronson Alcott (1799-1888), the patriarch of the so-called Concord philosophers, better esteemed for his powers of monologue than as a writer in either prose or verse. Emerson's associate-editor in The Dial was Sarah Margaret Fuller, afterwards Marchioness d'Ossoli (1810-1850), a woman of extraordinary qualities and much usefulness, who is best ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... experiments, like Queen Mary, are not, on the whole, successful, though it would be unjust to deny dramatic power to the poet who has written, upon one hand, Guinevere and the Passing of Arthur, and upon the other the homely, dialectic monologue of the ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... thought and action, and our danger and isolation only accentuated the incompatibility. At Halliford I had already come to hate the curate's trick of helpless exclamation, his stupid rigidity of mind. His endless muttering monologue vitiated every effort I made to think out a line of action, and drove me at times, thus pent up and intensified, almost to the verge of craziness. He was as lacking in restraint as a silly woman. He would weep for hours together, and ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... pleasantly homeward, and we left them holding for their lives and the horse rearing with terror. I was holding on for my own dear life, for that matter. My brother lay back in his seat and carried on a loud monologue directed at me. He said he had to go to Southampton that night on urgent business, but must dine first. Was going to motor. This was a Stromboli, hundred horse-power racing machine. He was agent for Stromboli's. Had sold a lot of cars at twelve hundred ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... printed 'Bothwell,' a poetic monologue on Mary Stuart's lover. Of Aytoun's humorous sketches, the most humorous are 'My First Spec in the Biggleswades,' and 'How We Got Up the Glen Mutchkin Railway'; tales written during the railway mania ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... of the Dead'—established his claim to scholarship. Some critics called them vulgar, and they certainly were frivolous. But they proved two things—that Mr Steevens had a lively sense of humour, and that he had read the classics to some purpose. The monologue of Xanthippe—in which she gave her candid opinion of Socrates—was, in its way, and within its limits, ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... declared to herself was the most interesting conversation to which she had ever listened. From silence, the Premier passed to a remark here and there, thence to a conversation, thence, as the evening went on and they strolled further and further away from the house, into a monologue on his life and aims and hopes. Young man after young man sought her in vain, or, finding the pair, feared to intrude and retired in discontent, while Medland strove to draw the picture of that far-off society whose bringing-near was his goal in public life. She wondered if he ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... monologue, Dick Penryn lit his pipe, took up the book he had been reading, and was soon deep in the pages of ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... night had distressed him dreadfully, and ever and again before his retreat he had been breaking into passionate monologue. The ruin of a life-work, it was, no less. Surely she had known that Chaffery was a cheat. Had she not known? Silence. "After so ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... was lofty, mysterious, and grand. When he spoke all were silent, all attentive, all obsequious: but there was no conversation, in our sense of the word, and no dialogue, for there were no interlocutors. It was a monologue, in fact, and an interesting one—for his memory was deeply impressed with the recollections of the past, and he delighted to call them up, and to astonish his auditors by the freshness and vigor of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... of his catching a fever. If Plantagenet remained at the abbey, she was generally sullen; and, as he himself was naturally silent under any circumstances, his mother would indulge in that charming monologue, so conducive to domestic serenity, termed 'talking at a person,' and was continually insinuating that she supposed he found it very dull to pass his day with her, and that she dared say that somebody could be lively enough if ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... Mame punctuates this monologue with a regular and excusable "My land!" and the young voices fade away into the mid-summer afternoon quiet. I am free to resume my interrupted flight of fancy, but I refrain. The atmosphere is soporiferous, hardly conducive to editorial inspiration, and I ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... 2, so that, although you will not get it for a few days, I may add to it occasionally and despatch it to you when it reaches a decent length, and before it reaches the colossal and iniquitous verbosity of my former screed—a monologue on the Great ...
— Letters from France • Isaac Alexander Mack
... models, the German clown comedies, and possesses interest only as an index to the taste of the public, which surely received it with delight. Strangely enough the principal scene between Joseph and Selicha, Potiphar's wife, is highly discreet. In a monologue, she gives passionate utterance to her love. Then Joseph appears, and she addresses ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... produced an effect of weird world-forgetfulness. I listened puzzled, and at that time not understanding many things that afterwards became plain to me. It is only in recent years that I have discovered the pathos of that monologue; how friendless my father was and uncompanioned in his thoughts and feelings, and what a hunger he may have felt for the sympathy of the undeveloped youngster ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... animation into your house. His talk was fresh; his zeal for whatever was uppermost in his mind was contagious, and he inspired you with enthusiasm. He was not good at conversation, in the French sense of the term, for he was given to monologue; but he was never dull. His artlessness was charming. He gave you confidences that you would have shrunk from hearing out of the mouth of any other man, in the fear that you intruded on a privacy where you had no right; but this openness ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... the play. This is like that of a typical Greek tragedy with one exception. It opens, as is customary with Euripides, with a monologue, which explains the plot and the position of affairs, spoken by one of the characters, Apollo. Otherwise, it is like a regular tragedy, presenting two sorts of action, that of a chorus consisting of men or women whose functions were to comment on the ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... method, it should be noted that his real trust is upon monologue rather than upon dialogue. To one who works from within outward—in contradistinction to the Shaksperian method of striving to win from outward forms "the passion and the life whose fountains are within"—the propriety of this dramatic means can scarce be gainsaid. The swift complicated ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... moment Mother Uberta's monologue was interrupted by a loud rapping on the door; she bent down to attach the unfinished thread properly, but before she had completed this delicate operation, the door was opened, and two men entered. Seeing that they were strangers she sent them a startled glance, which presently ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... could have been tapped. Had she left him too soon, or had her departure developed some richer artistic vein? She tortured her brain and heart. After a big tonal climax followed by the lugubrious monologue of a bassoon the ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... rank of English poets, and enough philosophic, critical, and theological matter to constitute him one of the principal intellectually formative forces of his time. His knowledge of philosophy, science, theology, and literature was alike wide and deep, and his powers of conversation, or rather monologue, were almost unique. A description of him in later life tells of "the clerical-looking dress, the thick, waving, silver hair, the youthful coloured cheek, the indefinable mouth and lips, the quick, yet steady and penetrating greenish-grey eye, the slow ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... himself or others from the explosion of combustibles." This taste for science Shelley long retained. If we may trust Mr. Hogg's memory, the first conversation which that friend had with him at Oxford consisted almost wholly of an impassioned monologue from Shelley on the revolution to be wrought by science in all realms of thought. His imagination was fascinated by the boundless vistas opened to the student of chemistry. When he first discovered that the four elements were not final, it gave ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... announcing his displeasure, had missed the first shot. When he dragged himself out from under his deceased horse the scenery was undisturbed save for a small cloud of dust hovering over a distant rise to the north of him. After delivering a short and bitter monologue he struck out for the ranch and arrived in a very hot and wrathful condition. It was contagious, that condition, and before long the entire outfit was in the saddle and pounding north, Pete overjoyed because his wound was so slight as not ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... you haven't got any with you, I must go," said Joan, bursting suddenly into Stella's monologue. But she had caught a name spoken just before Stella stopped in ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... in his chair, took his tea-cup as though it were a fresh addition to his responsibilities, and began to talk. He talked apparently without even breathing. He began on the weather, drifted on to art and music, and was just beginning a monologue on The Novel, when William rose and crept from the room like a guilty spirit. He found Mr. Blank under the library table, having heard a noise in the kitchen and fearing a visitor. A cigar and a silver snuffer had fallen ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... turned, as if his interlocutor were his equal both in position and intelligence; yet without a suspicion of pedantry, and with such complete adaptation of style and topic that his talk charmed the humblest as it did the highest that listened to it. His conversation was not a monologue; if he had the larger share, it was simply because his hearers were only too glad that it should be so; he would listen with something like deference to very ordinary talk, as if the mere fact of the speaker being one of the same ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... spared myself the jest; he gave it no attention, but seated himself in the chair that he had left and resumed the interrupted monologue as if ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... the Poem, and invocation to Freedom. Condition of Columbus in a Spanish prison. His monologue on the great actions of his life, and the manner in which they had been rewarded. Appearance and speech of Hesper, the guardian Genius of the western continent. They quit the dungeon, and ascend the mount of vision, ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... difficult. In front of him sat a stout lady who when she shook with laughter shed patchouli and a man who smoked American cigarettes. At these and the steam heat, the nostrils of Herrick, trained to the odor of balsam and the smoke of open wood fires, took offense. He refused to be amused. The monologue artist, in whom Jackson found delight, caused Herrick only to groan; the knockabout comedians he hoped would break their collar-bones; the lady who danced Salome, and who fascinated Kelly, Herrick prayed would catch pneumonia and die of ...
— The Nature Faker • Richard Harding Davis
... point Jessica sat up, arranged a pillow comfortably behind her back, and gave her undivided attention to the monologue. At last she put a question. Was the lady travelling alone? The lady hastened to ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... the others remaining back in the semi-darkness, they all heard Jack Jepson break into a sort of monologue. He was talking to himself, ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... that to do this would, perhaps, cause more annoyance than anything else. She was now anxious to get rid of Miss Westbury, who evidently had nothing more to impart. But that lady was not so easy to dispose of. She broke into a long monologue on the subject of regime, servants, and little dressmakers, occasionally returning to the subject of the British Museum, ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... thinks it enough if he himself knows what he means and wants to say, and takes no thought for the reader, who is left to get at the bottom of it as best he can. This is as though the author were holding a monologue; whereas, it ought to be a dialogue; and a dialogue, too, in which he must express himself all the more clearly inasmuch as he cannot hear the questions of ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... opened by that favourite device of Selma Lagerloef, the monologue, through which she pries into the very soul of her characters, in this case Ingmar, son of Ingmar, of Ingmar Farm. Ingmar's monologue at the plow is a subtle portrayal of an heroic battle between the ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... Carnival at Oberleutensdorf, and left at Dux a manuscript headed 'Passe temps de Jacques Casanova de Seingalt pour le carnaval de l'an 1792 dans le bourg d'Oberleutensdorf'. While in that city, meditating on the Faulkircher incident, he wrote also 'Les quinze pardons, monologue nocturne du bibliothecaire', also preserved in manuscript at Dux, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... monologue came to an end; every one had arrived, and Gringoire breathed freely once more; the actors continued bravely. But Master Coppenole, the hosier, must needs rise of a sudden, and Gringoire was forced to listen to him deliver, amid universal ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... talk, conversation, parlance, words; tongue, dialect; patois; discourse, oration, address, plea, declamation, dissertation, epilogue, allocution, exhortation, disquisition, effusion, descant; harangue, diatribe, tirade, screed, rhapsody, philippic, invective, rant; soliloquy, monologue; dialogue; colloquy; trialogue; interlocution; improvisation; toast; equivocation, prevarication, quibbling; ambages, pseudology, amphibology, amphiboly, dilogy. Associated Words: extempore, extemporaneous, extemporize, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... the banjo player, a young fellow with deep-set black eyes and the unmistakable look of an artist in embryo, swung into a monologue accompanied by the banjo, part talk, part song, describing a fox hunt which was most ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... Roy's monologue ceased abruptly. "Your innings, old chap, I think!" he said. "You're mum as a fish this afternoon. I noticed it in there—I thought you'd have lots to ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... proceeded to take off his cloak and lay it, with his hat and sword, on a chair in one corner, after which he deliberately rearranged his luxuriant ringlets in front of a Venetian mirror, and then, assuming his most graceful and telling pose, began pouring forth in dulcet tones the following monologue: "But where, oh! where, is the divinity of this Paradise? Here is the temple indeed, but I see not the goddess. When, oh! when, will she deign to emerge from the cloud that veils her perfect form, and reveal herself to the adoring eyes, that wait so impatiently to behold her?" ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... Collins than to Pope, unless the pages in which he assails "Grub Street" as a malicious invention of Pope's are to be counted to the credit of the latter. But Mr. Saintsbury's book is not so much a thorough and balanced survey of eighteenth-century literature as a confession, an almost garrulous monologue on the delights of that literature. How pleasant and unexpected it is to see a critic in his seventies as incautious, as pugnacious, as boisterous as an undergraduate! It is seldom that we find the apostolic spirit of youth living in the same breast with the riches of experience and ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... During this monologue the machine-agent was silent, a dark frown of indecision on his face. As for his wife, she looked as if she had bartered her child's birthright for something that had disagreed with her mental digestion. Jason Wrinkle, however, reflections ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... to Heywood's soliloquy with patience, but he felt his irritation growing. Much as he had enjoyed the play between Heywood and young Senesin, he had expected to get some information out of the boy before he left. And besides, Heywood's cliched monologue was beginning to pall. ...
— The Unnecessary Man • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the story of character, in the form of dramatic monologue. There is only one speaker, but we know by his words that another is present and can infer his part in the conversation. This story has the additional values of humor ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... that heaps sand in a desert, there stirr'd Through his voice an emotion that swept every word Into one angry wail; as, with feverish change, He continued his monologue, fitful and strange. "Woe to him in whose nature, once kindled, the torch Of Passion burns downward to blacken and scorch! But shame, shame and sorrow, O woman, to thee Whose hand sow'd the seed ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... of the program, it seemed, was to be a vaudeville. A famous tenor sang folk songs of sunny Italy; two French pantomimists did a graceful and amusing Pierrot and Pierrette; a comedian did a black-face monologue; and the first part of the program concluded with the performances of a young violinist, the son of a Russian tobacconist down town, whom Mrs. Berkeley Hammond had "discovered" and was now sending to Europe to complete his musical education. A budding genius, was the verdict, almost ready to ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... second canto, it opens with a monologue of the minstrel, and Harold is forgotten until the sixteenth stanza. Then only does the melancholy hero appear, to disappear and reappear again for a few moments. But he rather seems to annoy the minstrel, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... Dickens, instead of publishing Nicholas Nickleby, to have published a book of sketches, one of which was called "A Yorkshire School," another called "A Provincial Theatre," and another called "Sir Mulberry Hawk or High Life Revealed," another called "Mrs. Nickleby or a Lady's Monologue." It would have been very easy to have thrown over the rather chaotic plan of the Old Curiosity Shop. He might have merely written short stories called "The Glorious Apollos," "Mrs. Quilp's Tea-Party," "Mrs. Jarley's Waxwork," "The Little Servant," and "The Death ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... observant person he would have noted that her very brief replies did not exactly encourage further questions. But his idea of conversation was either a monologue or a means of obtaining information, so he instantly demanded, ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... came from him at last, with bashful manifestations, like those of a young girl, almost—words that gasped themselves forth, seeming to leave a great deal more behind them than they told, and died out discontented with themselves, like the monologue of thunder in the sky, which always goes off mumbling and grumbling as if it had not said half it wanted to, and ought ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... Ulysses; and he brought to those he associated with all the fruits that faring forth in strange lands could give to a mind singularly alert for education and experience under any and all conditions. His fondness for monologue frequently exposed him to raillery, like the above, in the column where Field daily held a monopoly of ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... that juncture of Hicks' monologue, had effectively terminated it by leaning from the window, grasping his unsuspecting comrade by the scruff of the neck, and dragging him over the window-ledge, into the grub-shack, and the presence of Coach Corridan and ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... aspects of the political situation. Each of us contributed his remarks, his comment, or his jest, a pleasantry or a proverb. This was no longer exclusively a discussion of life on the colossal scale just described by Marcas, the soldier of political warfare. Nor was it the distressful monologue of the wrecked navigator, stranded in a garret in the Hotel Corneille; it was a dialogue in which two well-informed young men, having gauged the times they lived in, were endeavoring, under the guidance of a man of talent, to gain ...
— Z. Marcas • Honore de Balzac
... of her great crosses was the belief that her husband was in love with the brilliant Lady Ashburton. Her jealousy was absurd, as this great lady invited Carlyle to her dinners because he was the most brilliant talker in all England, and he accepted because the opportunity to indulge in monologue to appreciative hearers was a keener pleasure to him than to write eloquent warnings to his day and generation. Froude's unhappy book, with a small library of commentary that it called forth, is practically forgotten, but Carlyle's fame and his books ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... the end, the monologue was an incoherent discursive medley, now plaintive, now passionate, at times prayerful, then exultant. As he proceeded, he seemed to lose sight of his present aim at doing good in the hope of release from termless life, and become the Jew he ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... During this involuntary monologue we had strolled along the road which Nourrigat had originally indicated as the direction of our friend Pistre. Presently he led us into the church, a humble little village sanctuary. A shell had carried away half the apse, and sadly damaged ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... Introduction) of the charitable theory that enlargement of understanding brings about extension of pardon. And putting this aside, the letters sometimes give us an idea of what his admittedly marvellous conversation (or rather monologue) must have been like. They are not very easy to select from, for their author's singular tendency to divagation affects them. But they sometimes display that humour which he undoubtedly possessed, though his best-known published writings seldom admit of ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... the table, do not furnish the needed conditions. To shine as a talker, one must override others by sheer vociferation and monopoly, treading his way amidst insincere applause and general dislike, over the injured self- love of every one present, to the throne of monologue. Such a condition is equally incompatible with what is best in character, in manners, and ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... and then darted back again to her. Poor Miss Lyall stood behind her chair, and from time to time as ordered, gave her a cape, or put up her parasol, or adjusted her footstool for her, or took up Pug or put him down as her patroness required. Most of the time Lady Ambermere kept up a majestic monologue. ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... referring several times to the defense of the Alamo, so I knew he was pretty low in his mind. Father withdrew at the sight of bacon. Mother laughed scornfully as he departed. My friend ate a hearty breakfast and kept a sort of a happy-go-lucky monologue throughout its entire course. I took him out walking afterward and forgot to ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... by dinner-time; was resumed after Miss Raeburn—the small, shrewd, bright-eyed person who governed Lord Maxwell's household—had withdrawn; and was continued in the library some time beyond his lordship's usual retiring hour. It was for the most part a monologue on the part of the grandfather, broken by occasional words from his companion; and for some time Marcella Boyce herself—the woman whom Aldous desired to marry—was hardly mentioned in it. Oppressed and tormented by a surprise ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... round, I perceive Can Grande, who has come up to explain to me the philosophy of the sailor's dances, and to unfold his theory of amusements, as far as the narrow area of one little brain (mine, not his) will permit. His monologue, and its interruptions, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... the table. He took a good pinch so as to develop the finesse and sagacity of his mind. He picked up the document and became absorbed in meditation, which soon became materialized in the shape of a monologue. The worthy justice was one of those unreserved men who think more easily aloud than to himself. "Let us proceed with method," he said. "No method, no ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... asks Cypriano, who, as well as Ludwig, has been listening with some surprise to the singular monologue. "What harm can the sun do ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... elastic root that half supported, half encompassed them. The girl's capricious, fitful manner succumbed as before to the near contact of her companion. Looking into her eyes, Low fell into a sweet, selfish lover's monologue, descriptive of his past and present feelings towards her, which she accepted with a heightened color, a slight exchange of sentiment, and a strange curiosity. The sun had painted their half-embraced silhouettes ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... the condemnation of the Man of Sorrows by Pilate, told by the bass Narrator, the words of Jesus himself, however, being used invariably in the first person, and sung by the baritone voice, as when he says, "If my Deeds have been evil," immediately following the bass recitative. After another monologue by the Narrator, ensues the march to the cross,—an instrumental number which is brilliant in its color effects and somewhat barbaric in tone. Without any break, the sopranos enter with the words, "Forth the Royal Banners go," set to a melody from the Roman Catholic liturgy; ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... opened toward him the liege. Upon the magnet of his voice hung the eager atoms. There was a filmy, distant look in the eyes of the listeners, as of men rapt with the mystic utterances of a seer. My entrance unheralded broke up the monologue, whatever it was. But seeing the true sacrificial look on my brow, all at once, from chief to sutler, confessed a brother. To me then turning, Duespeptos, king of men, spoke ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... from his audience didn't bother him a bit; for passin' out the monologue is his strong suit. Not to seem partial, he trails down Charlie and Helen and converses with them too. Course, all this occurrin' outside, I couldn't watch everything that took place; but I sits in the lib'ry with Sadie a lot more contented than I'd ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... rung the Angelas, and all within the cloistered courts was hushed, save the low monologue of the fountain whose minor murmuring made solemn accord with the sacred harmonious repose of its surroundings. The sun shone hot and blinding upon the towering mass of brick and slate, which, originally designed in the form of a ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... back to the shop and down the hill after the cattle, Ump drumming on the pommel with his fingers and firing a cackle of fantastic monologue. "Quiller," he said, "do you think Miss Cynthia will be glad to see the drove comin' ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... which led to the woodshed the Wildcat spoke aloud in the darkness. "Konk'rin' Hero! Him ridin' de mule an' us boys ridin' ouah feet. Huh! I's de Supreem Gran' Walkin' Arrangeh, is I? Well, tomorrow I starts arrangin'." His monologue was suddenly interrupted by an explosive braying which burst from the woodshed adjoining the one in which rested Lily. The Wildcat surrendered to his racing legs and galloped a panic jazz to the exit ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... shrill voice of great "carrying" quality. When Mrs. Marvin Petrie was talking there was little other conversation at the sewing circle. Her comments upon people she had met and things she had seen, were in the line of a monologue. ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... from the most disinterested motives, was desirous of the general welfare, and was doing my duty as a friend of the house.... But I venture to think that even had Kirilla Matveitch not cut short my outpourings, I should in any case not have had courage to finish my monologue. At times I set to work with all the solemnity of some sage of antiquity, weighing the qualities of the prince; at times I comforted myself with the hope that it was all of no consequence, that Liza would recover her senses, that her love was not real love ... oh, no! In short, I know no ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... right in his last philosophical remark, took the sort of coldness which now overspread the surrounding faces of a symptom of provincial ignorance; but seeing that Modeste understood him, he was content, being wholly unaware that monologue is particularly disagreeable to country-folk, whose principal desire it is to exhibit the manner of life and the wit and wisdom ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... surprised look in Barnes's eye and pausing to explain, sotto voce, "but I hadn't the heart to refuse. They're eating it up, my dear fellow. Up to this instant they've been sitting with their mouths wide open while I hurled it, word after word, into their very vitals. "Whereupon he resumed the sonorous monologue, glowering balefully ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... can I do? It isn't my fault, for I would act anything—I'd stand on my head. But I can't find any one else, so that, unless I give a monologue—Denoisel has refused, and as for you, a sober man like you—well, I suppose it's no ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... goes cross-lots, by a flash of short-cut, to a conclusion so suddenly revealed that it has the effect of wit. It needs the highest culture and the finest breeding to prevent the conversation from running into mere persiflage on the one hand—its common fate—or monologue on the other. Our conversation is largely chaff. I am not sure but the former generation preached a good deal, but it had great practice in fireside talk, and must have talked well. There were narrators in those days who could charm a circle all the evening long with ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... became, as often, a monologue by Madame. While they were finishing their coffee, they ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed |
