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Peroration

noun
1.
A flowery and highly rhetorical oration.
2.
(rhetoric) the concluding section of an oration.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Peroration" Quotes from Famous Books



... the further extremity of the room, to inform him of the liberties Storey Hunter was taking with his name. Whereupon the slandered one, with all his wrath reawakened, traversed the apartment in time to hear the emphatic peroration that, "bad as Sumner was, Benson was a thousand ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... Brigham Young, Benjamin Halliday, Postmaster General Blair, Abraham Lincoln and William H. Seward were the characters. The story is a dramatic and significant bit of Mormon history, related for the first time. It led up to an earnest and eloquent peroration of which the final words were: "'I'll believe polygamy is wrong when Congress breaks it up; not before!' exclaims a plural wife. Men and women of New England! You who forge public opinion; you who sounded the death knell ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various

... tricky stool more than once without noticing it in his excitement as he rehearsed these splendid scenes, declaiming with great unction the formulas long since learned by all his heart, especially Ego, auctoritate mihi concessa, and the rest, until he came to his peroration: "And all this pomp and ceremony, mind yous, to the honour and glory of science and fine scholarship. It's a grand occasion, lads; it's an object any man might be proud to give——" Here he pulled himself up, warned ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane

... the prisoner was acquitted, but found few takers. Mr. Dulberry said that he would have taken it if the jury had not been packed. Three to four that the trial was over before twelve o'clock;—this was taken cautiously. Ten to seven that Mr. Justice —— did not yawn six times before the peroration of Mr. —— (who led for the crown); this was taken pretty freely. A thousand to one that the prisoner did not show the white feather; in spite of the immense odds, this was not listened to; so generally was the prisoner's character established ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey

... got to a very dangerous place—a place where the usual moral peroration lies in wait for us—that German peroration which announces universal redemption, and immediately, on that lofty note, closes the discussion. Fatherland, Morality, Humanity, Labour, Courage, Confidence—we all know how it ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau

... reached Boscawen in 1835, and Carleton's father became an ardent friend of the slaves. In the Webster meeting-house the boy attended a gathering at which a theological student gave an address, using an illustration in the peroration which made a lasting impression upon the youthful mind. At a country barn-raising, the frame was partly up, but the strength of the raisers was gone. "It won't go, it won't go," was the cry. An old man who was making pins threw down his ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis

... had gone. Alexander's hand was forced, and the war began, which but for England's intervention would have cleared Europe of the Turk. We have the text, but not the sermon; the Preface ends abruptly with an almost clumsy peroration. ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell

... music grew louder and the orchestra approached the peroration of the preface of the coming solo, the violinist raised his head slowly. Suddenly his eyes met the gaze of the solitary occupant of the second proscenium box. His face flushed. He looked inquiringly, almost appealingly, at her. She sat immovable and serene, ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa

... upon the steps of a Government building one afternoon, discussing his favourite subject with some of his coloured friends. He had been unusually eloquent, and had worked himself up to a peroration, when he suddenly ceased speaking and stared straight across the street to the opposite side of the pavement, in such absorption that he forgot ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... corollary that all oaths of allegiance must be incontinently broken. If it was sin thus to have sworn even in ignorance, it were obstinate sin to continue to respect them after fuller knowledge. Then comes the peroration, in which he cries aloud against the cruelties of that cursed Jezebel of England - that horrible monster Jezebel of England; and after having predicted sudden destruction to her rule and to the rule of all crowned women, and warned all men that if they presume to defend ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson

... when the government demanded. But now, when it comes to obeying your own revolutionary government, you can no longer endure further sacrifice! Does this mean that free Russia is a nation of rebellious slaves?" He closed with an eloquent peroration: "I came here because I believe in my right to tell the truth as I understand it. People who even under the old regime went about their work openly and without fear of death, those people, I say, will not be terrorized. The fate of our country is in our hands and the country is in great danger. ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo

... solemn peroration, 'the truth is, my dear Moore, &c. &c.' meaning neither more nor less than that I give into the cant of the world, it only proves, alas! the melancholy fact, that you and I are hundreds of miles asunder. Could you hear me speak my opinions instead of coldly ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron

... lineages and men, metaphors and monsters, with so savage a virility that Jacob Kent was paralyzed. He shrank back, his arms lifted as though to ward off physical violence. So utterly unnerved was he that the other paused in the mid-swing of a gorgeous peroration and burst into ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London

... gestures so vigorous as to cause admiration for his pluck in making use of them on such a night; the perspiration streamed down his face, his neck grew purple, and he dared the very face of apoplexy, binding his auditors with a double spell. It is true that long before the peroration the windows were empty and the boys were eating stolen, unripe fruit in the orchards of the listeners. The thieves were sure ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington

... stripped Sepulveda's propositions of their brilliant rhetoric, exposing the hollowness and sham beneath the specious reasoning, with which the latter sought to cloak his poverty of facts. Las Casas closed his case with the following brilliant and prophetic peroration: ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt

... now be classed as rhetorical—even, perhaps, bombastic; but as the words fell from "Shiny's" lips their effect was magical. How so young an orator could stir so great enthusiasm was to be wondered at. When, in the famous peroration, his voice, trembling with suppressed emotion, rose higher and higher and then rested on the name "Toussaint L'Ouverture," it was like touching an electric button which loosed the pent-up feelings of his listeners. They ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson

... a lecture he was as punctilious as Portia about the pound of flesh. His utterance was deliberate and spaced with not infrequent slight delays. Exactly at the end of the hour the lecture stopped. Suddenly, abruptly, but quietly, without peroration of any sort, always with "a gentle shock of mild surprise" to the unprepared listener. He had weighed out the full measure to his audience with ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... in a sarcastic mood when he met Mike. That is to say, he began in a sarcastic strain. But this sort of thing is difficult to keep up. By the time he had reached his peroration, the rapier had given place to the bludgeon. For sarcasm to be effective, the user of it must be met half-way. His hearer must appear to be conscious of the sarcasm and moved by it. Mike, when masters waxed sarcastic towards him, always assumed an air of stolid stupidity, ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse

... He sat down without peroration, and almost immediately afterwards left the House. The first reading of the bishop's Bill was lost by ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... I do assure you that both in courts and Parliament, and even to mobs, I have never made so much play (to use a very modern phrase) as when I was almost translating from the Greek. I composed the peroration of my speech for the Queen, in the Lords, after reading and repeating Demosthenes for ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... his speech. He recited all the good things that the administration had done, hoped to do, tried to do, or wanted to do, and showed what a very respectable array it was. He counseled moderation and conservatism, and his peroration was a flowery panegyric of the "noble man whose hand is on the helm, guiding the grand old ship of ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... Constitution. Holding in profound contempt what he termed spread-eagle oratory, his only gesticulations were up-and- down motions of his arm, as if he were beating out with sledge- hammers his forcible ideas. His peroration was sublime, and every loyal American heart has since echoed the last words, "Liberty and ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... dead body of Senator Broderick in California, his thrilling and inspiriting appeal in Union Square, New York, at the great meeting of April, 1861, and his reply to Breckinridge in the Senate delivered upon the impulse of the moment, conceived as he listened to the Kentuckian's peroration, leaning against the doorway of the Chamber in full uniform, booted and spurred, as he had ridden into Washington from the camp, are among the most remarkable specimens of absolutely unstudied and thrilling ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... meditation and prayer. This will prepare the young editor for the surprise and consequent temptation to profanity which in a few years he may experience when he finds that the name of the Deity in his double-leaded editorial is spelled with a little "g," and the peroration of the article is locked up between a death notice and the advertisement of a patent moustache coaxer, which is to follow pure reading matter every day in the week and occupy the top ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... had just arrived at the peroration of an eloquent eulogium of the scene, when the overseer appeared at the end of the avenue of orange trees, and presently drew rein beside us, his ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... with reference to the twenty-five paintings exhibited by Vernet, in 1765, that Diderot penned the foregoing lines, which formed the peroration to an eloquent and lengthy eulogium, such as it rarely falls to a painter to be the subject of. Among other things, the great critic there says: "There is hardly a single one of his compositions which any painter would have taken not less than ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner

... seaman pointed to what remained of his nose, the end of which had been nipped off by cold, and consequent mortification, in the anti-arctic regions. As Riprapton flourished his wooden index, in the midst of his brilliant peroration, he told the honest seaman that he had not a leg to stand upon; and all the ladies, and some of the gentlemen, too, cried out with one accord, "O fie, Captain Headman, now don't be so obstinate—surely you are quite mistaken." And the arch-master of impudence ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... foe it was indeed a case of "Roses, roses, all the way. Thus I enter, and thus I go." Twenty-four hours after that peroration he awaited his doom, an object of ruthless execration. And visitors are still occasionally shown in the Hotel des Archives the table on which was endured his ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... in the proceedings, if the Learned Judge slumbered only fitfully during Mr. Dreadful's final peroration, it might have been owing to the spasmodic explosions of that Counsel's voice; but there could be no doubt that the Learned Judge slept peacefully during the earlier portions of Mr. Gentle Gammon's final effort upon behalf ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton

... six parts were (1) the exordium or introduction, (2) the division of the subject, (3) the statement of what is to be established, (4) the argumentation, (5) the appeal to the feelings, and (6) the peroration or conclusion. ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter

... of course,) donate large sums of money to certain poor, but honest men, who adorn the lobby of the House, while they are waiting for generous patrons like unto you, then go home and calmly await the result. Your representative makes a speech, the exordium of which is Patriotism, the peroration of which is Star-Spangled Banner, and the central plum of which is your coal mine or iron mill. Your poor and honest friends wear out several pairs of shoes, the tariff bill is passed, your mine or mill is abundantly protected, and the country is saved. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 9, May 28, 1870 • Various

... and they opened the door to him; a workman who was speaking delayed his peroration, and they waited until Caesar had reached the table and got seated. The atmosphere was suffocating. Everything was closed so that the Civil Guards would not see the light through the windows and suspect that there was a meeting being held there. The workmen were, for the most ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja

... His peroration is a fervent appeal to the delegates to reaffirm the equality of man; it calls upon them to adopt resolutions advocating the government control of all avenues of transportation and communication, and for the strict regulation of all industries ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams

... of delighted approval greeted this peroration; and if perchance there happened to be here and there a noble or two who regarded with disapprobation the bestowal of this unique honour upon aliens, they were too prudent to permit that disapprobation to be suspected, in view of the apparently ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood

... retort upon Spencer. I do not know that my conjecture is right; but it has always seemed to me that his reason for introducing his repartee to Spencer in the odd place where he did, just after a most eloquent and pathetic peroration, was something as follows—'I have now constructed and arranged my argument, and the thread of it must not be broken by the intervention of any such extraneous matter. Neither will it do to separate my peroration from the main body of my ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various

... Army Boys got back to the room the orator was winding up his speech. He finished with an eloquent peroration, and his hearers broke into applause as the last word ...
— Army Boys on German Soil • Homer Randall

... folds and rolls up the cloth, emphasizing his phrases by the steps of the process.) One man is like another (fold): one country is like another (fold): one battle is like another. (At the last fold, he slaps the cloth on the table and deftly rolls it up, adding, by way of peroration) Conquer one: conquer all. (He takes the cloth to the sideboard, and puts ...
— The Man of Destiny • George Bernard Shaw

... affectionate mother, who perceived in him her husband again a youth; the devoted wife, who could never survive his loss; and the sixteen children, chiefly girls, whom his death would infallibly send upon the parish. This, with an eulogistic peroration on the moral qualities of the Vraibleusians and the political importance of Vraibleusia, would, he had no doubt, not only save his neck, but even gain him a ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli

... not await the end of Diggle's peroration. It was then too late to repine. The vessel was already rounding the Foreland, and though he was more than half convinced that he had been decoyed on board on false pretenses, he could not divine any motive on Diggle's part, and hoped that his voyage would be ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang

... dropped, just as the voice of the orator standing on the left of the Speaker rose to his peroration. ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... most in demand by the public along the entire Coast, "Daniel Webster," Starr King quotes Webster's noble peroration in the "Reply to Hayne," "Liberty and Union, Now and Forever, One and Inseparable," and in lofty strain of ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds

... bureau received us in his private room. He listened attentively to Blake's report, but seemed rather puzzled than gratified by its triumphant peroration. Now the young man felt that he had done a big thing, and this non-committal attitude of his superior chagrined him. He unrolled the covering in which the ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen

... Westminster, or anywhere else. Compton took snuff, and Sampson appealed to the press again. He wrote a long letter exposing with fearless irony the postponement swindle as it had been worked in Hardie v. Hardie: and wound up with this fiery peroration: ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... laundress, his clothes were evidently ready-made, and there was a patch on the side of his boot near the toe. And as he talked or listened to the others, he glanced now and again towards the lecture theatre door. They were discussing the depressing peroration of the lecture they had just heard, the last lecture it was in the introductory course in zoology. "From ovum to ovum is the goal of the higher vertebrata," the lecturer had said in his melancholy tones, and so had neatly rounded off the sketch of comparative anatomy he had been developing. ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... upon himself the recital, in which, as we may suppose, the populace played a great part and Monsieur's people none, and in his peroration he said: ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... germinate in their dark little minds later on, as in due time Hester discovered. She herself, seated at the harmonium, felt a lift of the heart and mist gathering over her sight at the close of his quiet peroration, and a tear fell as she stretched out her hands over the opening chords of the 'Old Hundredth.' All sang it with a will, and Parson Endicott with an unction he usually reserved for 'The ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... Medio! Amigos! Valientes!..." Manuel was beginning his peroration. He would lead them, now, against the English ship. The terrified heretics would surrender. There was always gold in English ships. He stopped his speech, and then called loudly, "Let the boats keep touch with each other, and ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... the audience applauded loudly, altho the speaker had not intended to have them applaud just there. It occurred to him that he might just as well stop at this point, and he sat down, not altogether satisfied, however, with his peroration and vexed to think that he had forgotten Sam altogether. The party broke up without delay, and Sam walked off with Cleary, who had been present, to ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby

... put himself in competition with him. This bringing him into notice, he collected an audience of his own, and it was his custom to open the question proposed for debate, sitting; but as he warmed with the subject, he stood up, and made his peroration in that posture. His declamations were of different kinds; sometimes brilliant and polished, at others, that they might not be thought to savour too much of the schools, he curtailed them of all ornament, and used only familiar phrases. He also pleaded causes, but rarely, ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... said, "their zeal for the interests of the College has for some time past chiefly manifested itself in their efforts and schemes for dislodging me from Burnside and in their proceedings they seem to have adopted the favourite peroration of Cicero which may be freely translated thus, 'and Bethune must be ousted.'" He added: "I can afford to forgive the Board for any hard constructions they put upon my proceedings; they may be necessary for their own justification." To this ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan

... other candidate, Andrew J. Williams. Mr. Williams set out in detail his qualifications for the position: his degree from Riddle University; his familiarity with the dead and living languages and the higher mathematics; his views of discipline; and a peroration in which he expressed the desire to devote himself to the elevation of his race and assist the march of progress through the medium of the Patesville grammar school. The letter was well written in a ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... this lengthy interrogation The Spirit had been pretending to doze, But he waked himself up at the peroration, And most ungallantly turned up his nose, And turned on his heel, and turned him away,— Sulkily saying, ...
— Nothing to Say - A Slight Slap at Mobocratic Snobbery, Which Has 'Nothing - to Do' with 'Nothing to Wear' • QK Philander Doesticks

... Capuanus has distinguished himself as a advocate both before the Senate and other tribunals. There has been a certain diffidence and hesitation in his manner, especially when he was dealing with common subjects; but he always warmed with his peroration, and the same man who even stammered in discussing some trifling detail became fluent, nay eloquent, when the graver interests of his client were at stake. When he saw that the Judge was against him he did not lose heart, but, by praising his justice and impartiality, gradually coaxed him into a ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)

... "The peroration of his speech on the question whether Queen Anne's Ministers, in the last four years of her reign, deserved well of their country, is so characteristic, both in substance and in form," that we reproduce it here from Dr, Russell's ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook

... audaciously to his prince:" he "commended" Henry's intended marriage, "thereby to establish his seed in his seat for ever;" and having won, as he supposed, his facile victory, he proceeded with his peroration, addressing his absent antagonist. "I speak to thee, Peto," he exclaimed, "to thee, Peto, which makest thyself Micaiah, that thou mayest speak evil of kings; but now art not to be found, being fled for fear and shame, as unable to answer my argument." In ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... that he himself shuddered and felt the hair bristling on his head—when in a long crescendo fugued fragments of the march theme keep reappearing, interrupted by drum-beats like distant cannonading, Gunsbourg's battalions halt, and there is a solemn benediction of the standards. Then, to the peroration, the soldiers run, not as if eager to get into battle, but as if ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... his peroration, Potemkin knelt down and passionately kissed the hem of Catharine's robe. Then, springing up, he clasped his hands, and turned away. But the empress darted after him like an enraged lioness, and, ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... to the Civil War, schoolboys had been declaiming the peroration of his greatest speech, his Reply to ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck

... to this," said I, by way of peroration, "that you're afraid of Edith letting you down, and you ought to be ashamed ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke

... virgin train: "instead of thy fathers, shall be thy children, whom thou mayst make princes in all the earth." A poetic parallel might be drawn between all this and the early hopes of Richmond; but the third Psalm came in like a beautiful peroration. ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... visit is a perfect example of that masterly power over an audience, that deep humanity, with which Mark Twain was endowed. At the banquet presided over by the Lord Mayor of Liverpool, which was the signal of Mark Twain's farewell to the English people, his peroration was ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson

... messenger entered the royal smoking-room in a greater hurry than ever, and was about to commence his usual elaborate peroration respecting the incomparable sons, when his Majesty held up his hand to stop him, ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty

... With this remarkable peroration, spoken in a high monotonous key, after the fashion of the political orator, Milton sat down mopping his face, ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland

... the Catholic question last night in a speech of four hours, and said to be far the best he ever made. It is full of his never-failing fault, egotism, but certainly very able, plain, clear, and statesmanlike, and the peroration very eloquent. The University of Oxford should have been there in a body to hear the member they have rejected and him whom they have chosen in his place. The House was crammed to suffocation, and the lobby likewise. The cheering was loud and frequent, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... Mr. DEVLIN is not like the Sinn Feiners, who, according to "T. P.," are so contemptuous of the Bill that they have never read a line of it. Parts of his speech, and particularly his peroration, seemed far more suitable to a Coercion Bill than to a measure which is designed, however imperfectly, to grant Home Rule to Ireland. The Nationalist leader may be forgiven a great deal, however, for his inimitable description of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various

... proceeded the attorney fidgeted, puffed out his cheeks, blew out his breath, twirled his thumbs as I twirled his figures, and grated his teeth as he looked at me sideways, while I concluded a little peroration I had got up for him, which was merely to this effect, that if railway companies yielded to such extortionate demands as were made by this attorney on behalf of the poulterers' company, they would not leave their shareholders a feather to ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton

... extremity, limit, bound; close, finale, conclusion, finis, cessation; issue, result, consequence, sequel, conclusion, peroration; purpose, intention, design, aim, goal, object, intent; remnant, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... generally, decided improvements; but in one instance he failed lamentably. The noble peroration of Lochiel is familiar to ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous

... had ended his harangue with this pleasant peroration, the soldiers, exulting in the glory of their chief, and elated with the hopes of success, lifted up their shields on high, and cried out that they should think nothing dangerous nor difficult under an emperor who imposed more toil on himself ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... and occasional artifices to divert and refresh the mind, since his Orations are generally laid out according to the plan proposed in rhetorical works; the introduction, containing the ethical proof; the body of the speech, the argument, and the peroration addressing itself to the passions of the judges. In opening his case, he commonly makes a profession of timidity and diffidence, with a view to conciliate the favour of his audience; the eloquence, for instance, of Hortensius, is so powerful,[231] ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman

... enemy; until that moment when he drew the bars of hell for the unrepentant, and flung Rome into the abyss. This effective performance, inartistic and almost grotesque, never fell to the level of the ridiculous, for native power was strong in the man. The peroration raised Livingstone to the skies, chained Sullivan in the lowest depths of the Inferno, and introduced as a terrible example a brand just rescued ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith

... incalculable distance between them, as related to each other and as it regarded this earth. The sun, the moon, and the rotation of the globe, all were learnedly expatiated upon, and yet in language so eloquent and simple as to inform the least intelligent of his listeners. Finally, in his peroration, in touchingly beautiful language, he ascribed the power, the glory, and the harmony of all to that Almighty Being who is the Parent of ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou

... flowered in the Boy Orator's eloquence, the genial antics of my neighbor increased until he broke into delighted mutterings, such as "He's a stud-horse," and "Put the kybosh on 'em," and many more that have escaped my memory. But the Boy Orator's peroration I am glad to remember, for his fervid convictions lifted him into the domain of metaphor and cadence; and though to be sure I made due allowance for enthusiasm, his picture of Arizona remained vivid with ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister

... Ideals of Mazzini,' and with strange and terrific effect. During the exordium we raised our eyebrows. Presently we were staring open-mouthed. Where were we? In what wild dream were we drifting? To this day I can recite the peroration. Mazzini is dead. But his spirit lives, and can never be crushed. And his motto—the motto that he planted on the gallant banner of the Italian Republic, and sealed with his life's blood, remains, and shall remain, till, through the eternal ages, the universal ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... excited, speaking of his love of art. In the midst of some peroration he would become suddenly silent, and bending over the instrument its melodies would fill the room, and floating down the staircase would reach the ears of the walkers in the cloister like a distant echo. Suddenly he would cease playing and resume his chattering, as though afraid that with his ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... cannot tune those discords of narration,[hk] Which may be names at Moscow, into rhyme; Yet there were several worth commemoration, As e'er was virgin of a nuptial chime; Soft words, too, fitted for the peroration Of Londonderry drawling against time, Ending in "ischskin," "ousckin," "iffskchy," "ouski," Of whom we ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... insinuating?" He performed another characteristic peroration. She did not listen, but stood with warning hand up, a small but plucky-looking traffic policeman, till he ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis

... to hear the official defence to its end. Then he hurried upstairs in search of Letty, who, with Miss Tulloch, was in the Speaker's private gallery. As he went he thought of Fontenoy's speech, its halting opening, the savage force of its peroration. His pulses tingled: "Magnificent!" he said to himself; "magnificent! We have found ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... weavers. Why? Simply because the mills cannot turn out the reasonable business profit; and since that is the only promise that can galvanize them into activity, they stand idle, no matter how much humanity finds of misery and death in this decision. This statement is not a peroration to a declaration for Socialism. It seems a fair rendering of the matter-of-fact ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker

... moment, distinctly pleased with his peroration, satisfied that his voice had been without a tremor and his face impassive, and wondering what effect this somewhat lengthy preamble had upon Sir Percy, who through it all had remained singularly quiet. Chauvelin was preparing himself for the next effect which he hoped to produce, ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... great degree the faults of the oratorical style. He deals much too largely in epithets—a habit exceedingly dangerous to historical truth. He habitually constructs a piece of what should be calm, dispassionate narrative, upon the model of the most passionate peroration—adhering in numberless instances to precisely the same specific formula of artifice. His diction is often inflated into fustian, and he indulges in exaggeration till it sometimes, unconsciously no doubt, amounts to falsehood. It is a common fault of those ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... finished! Anastasia, all is finished! No more hope! There is no longer any justice in France! I am atrociously sacrificed!" and by way of peroration, Pipelet threw, with all his strength, the portrait and sign to the end of the alley. Rudolph and Rigolette had, in the obscurity, slightly smiled at Pipelet's despair. After having addressed some words of consolation to Alfred, whom Anastasia was calming in ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue

... faithfully executed in all of the States," and he was determined "to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imposts." And he closed with the beautiful peroration founded upon one of Seward's suggestions: "I am loathe to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break the bonds of our affection. The mystic chords of memory, ...
— Life of Abraham Lincoln - Little Blue Book Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 324 • John Hugh Bowers

... had gone by during the peroration of the law, and no more seemed to offer themselves. After some minutes, however, one appeared and was duly hailed. Nervously (he was shy in the big city) the older asked if the driver knew where the Gare was. "Quelle?" demanded the cocher ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings

... never you mind what the stars do in their divorces! Get down to earth of the present day. Rufus Choate and Daniel Webster are dead. You must be modern. You must let peroration and poetry alone! Come along now. Why shouldn't I give the ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The New York Idea • Langdon Mitchell

... tickled me most was the boy's peroration. It gave me a pretty clear insight into his "innard workings." He led up to it in his favourite way: stepping backward a pace or two and sinking his voice to a kind of Edwin Booth quiet; gradually growing a little louder; then suddenly ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington

... address. He described pathetically the timid and shrinking class of women for whom he pleaded, insisted that the legislature never had refused women anything they asked, declared the suffrage advocates represented only an "insignificant minority,"[98] and closed with the eloquent peroration: "I vote, not because I am intelligent, not because I am moral, but solely and simply because I am a man." Rev. Clarence A. Walworth, Hon. Matthew Hale and J. Newton Fiero were the other speakers. ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... were passed. The peroration was upon the speaker's tongue, closing with an exhortation to old men and old women, young men and maidens, each in his kind and degree, to come as the waves come when navies are stranded—to come as the winds ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis

... Scotsman was perhaps the most whole-souled salmon fisher of his own or any other period. His piscatorial aspirations extended beyond the grave. Who that heard it can ever forget the peroration, slightly profane perhaps, but entirely enthusiastic, of his speech on salmon fishing at a Tweedside dinner? "When I die," he exclaimed in a fine rapture, "should I go to heaven, I will fish in the water of life with a fly dressed with a feather from ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes

... 'makes a great deal of that remark. His peroration is a very fine piece of composition. "Whether (concludes he) the captain of a school cricket team who could own spontaneously to having been guilty of so horrible, so terrible an act of favouritismical jobbery, ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse

... were too long, and that, no matter how clever the development may be, it spoils even the most pleasing and interesting subject if there is too much of it. Handel knew when to stop and, when he meant stopping, he stopped much as a horse stops, with little, if any, peroration. Who can doubt that he kept his movements short because he knew that the worst music within a reasonable compass is better than the best which is made tiresome by being spun out unduly? I only know one concerted piece of Handel's which I think too long, I mean the overture to Saul, but ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler

... Jeff should hear a word of that stirring peroration. His eye fell by chance upon a young woman seated in a box beside an elderly man whom he recognized as Peter C. Frome. From that instant he was lost to all sense perception that did not focus upon her. For he was looking at ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine

... it," Lady Sandgate sighed—"that is to miss the peroration. I've just left them, but he had even then been going on for twenty minutes, and I dare say that if you care to take a look you'll find him, poor dear victim of duty, ...
— The Outcry • Henry James

... been taken out of bed and wrapped up carefully, I was carried up the hill to hear them. All the speeches were fine; but, just at the close, Curtis burst into a peroration which, in my weak physical condition, utterly unmanned me. He compared the new university to a newly launched ship—"all its sails set, its rigging full and complete from stem to stern, its crew embarked, its passengers on board; and,'' he added, "even while I speak to you, even ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... the first declaration of an International Workingmen's Party. Its fine peroration is a call to the workers to transcend the petty divisions of nationalism and sectarianism: "The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workingmen of all countries, unite!" These ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo

... to what might have been expected, maintained absolute silence. She showed now neither anger nor the superficial sentimentality of her ordinary life; but only a profound and humble grief. Shortly after the good canon had ended his peroration two tears rolled down his niece's rosy cheeks; before long were heard a few half-suppressed sighs, and gradually, as the swell and tumult of a sea that is beginning to be stormy rise higher and higher and become louder and ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos

... he came to the grown-up children, when he imagined his dear son a partner in his business, and spoke of grandchildren and so on, his words acquired a ring of eloquence which astonished all his hearers, and his peroration was greeted with ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland

... eloquent, and after his peroration on woman's rights he said: "When they take our girls, as they threaten, away from the coeducational colleges, what will follow? ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers

... any quarter, whether the Nullifiers of South Carolina or the Abolitionists of the North. It is this thought which gives grandeur and elevation to all his utterances, and especially to the wonderful peroration of his reply to Hayne, on Mr. Foot's resolution touching the sale of the public lands, delivered in the Senate on January 26, 1830, whose closing words, "liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable," became the rallying cry of a great cause. Similar in sentiment was his famous speech ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... to read my address in its entirety will find it in "The Three Trials for Blasphemy." For those, however, who are not so curious or so painstaking, I give here the peroration only, to show what sentiments I appealed to in the breasts of the jury, and how far my defence was from boastfulness ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote

... I failed. I soon learned that it was better to gain the confidence of a jury by plain talk than by rhetoric. Subsequently in public life I preserved a like course, and once, though I was advised by Governor Chase to add a peroration to my argument, I did not follow his advice. While I defended many persons for alleged crimes I never but once prosecuted a criminal. My old friend, Mr. Kirkwood, was the prosecuting attorney of the county, and I renewed with him my "moot court" experience in frequent contests ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... defence of the country," the Judge concluded his peroration. Then he went on with the pith of his remark, to the effect that the girl who could be mad enough and disobedient enough to refuse the hand of such a man as that, might go to—mumble—mumble—mumble—for she could never more ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford

... you are calling on a girl or talking with friends after dinner to run a conversation like a Sunday-school excursion, with stops to pick flowers; but in the office your sentences should be the shortest distance possible between periods. Cut out the introduction and the peroration, and stop before you get to secondly. You've got to preach short sermons to catch sinners; and deacons won't believe they need long ones themselves. Give fools the first and women the last word. The meat's ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer

... with the older view that use and disuse were the main purveyors of variations, or conflict more fatally with his own subsequent distinctive feature. Moreover, as I showed in my last work on evolution, {22} in the peroration to his "Origin of Species," he discarded his accidental variations altogether, and fell back on the older theory, so that the body of the "Origin of Species" supports one theory, and the peroration another ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler

... President, ending with an appeal to the revolutionary fathers who followed Washington with bleeding feet. The Hon. Joseph possessed that most valuable of political gifts, presence; and when with quivering voice he finished his peroration, citizens wept with him. What it all had to do with the tariff was not quite clear. Yet nobody seemed ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... noise in the dressing-room, occasioned by the Venetian blind tapping against the window, here causes Mrs. B. to bury her head with extreme swiftness, ostrichlike, beneath the pillow, so that the peroration of my argument is lost upon her. I enter the suspected chamber—this time with a lighted candle—and find my trousers, with the boots in them, hanging over the bedside something after the manner of a drunken marauder, but nothing more. Neither is there anybody reposing under the shadow of my boot-tree ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... In a peroration Josephus returns to a general eulogy of the Jewish Law, on account of the faithful allegiance which it commands, and denounces the pagan idolatry in the manner of the Greek rationalists, who had made play with the Olympian ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich

... or suspected, should be severely handled by them his masters, and should be kept in a state of abject moral bondage and slavery until the time when they should see fit to permit him to purchase his freedom at the price of half his possessions. If, said Mr Wegg by way of peroration, he had erred in saying only 'Halves!' he trusted to his comrade, brother, and partner not to hesitate to set him right, and to reprove his weakness. It might be more according to the rights of things, to say Two-thirds; it might be more ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... beauty of diction never has been, never can be surpassed. No such thoughts ever before had been put into words. She spoke on that day for all the women of the world, for the wives of the present and future generations. The audience sat breathless and, at the close of the following peroration, burst into ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... exaggerated, and monotonous as it often is, his style does affect one like wine. That is certainly how it affected, and still affects, me. Even at an age when I did not really know much more about the Duke of Grafton than did Leaker, and probably cared less, I had got the peroration of the first letter to the Duke of Grafton by heart. I used to walk up and down the terrace, or across the meadows that led to the waterfall, shouting to myself, or my bored companions, that torrent of lucid, thrilling ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... the work be of God, it will stand. Then he reminded the Council that outside of the Church no one can be saved, and as though he had not talked enough, he came back once more to ceremonies. At last he concluded with a neat peroration and rose up to retire along ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger



Words linked to "Peroration" :   perorate, ending, conclusion, oration, end, rhetoric, close, closing



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