"Soliloquy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... press and then in Parliament. Against these a permanent clerk would have to contend by argument alone. The Minister, the head of the Parliamentary government, will not care for him. The Minister will say in some undress soliloquy, "These permanent 'fellows' must look after themselves. I cannot be bothered. I have only a majority of nine, and a very shaky majority, too. I cannot afford to make enemies for those whom I did not appoint. They did nothing for me, and I can do nothing for them." And if the permanent ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... conscious of all these ideas. They simplified themselves to her simple nature in a brief soliloquy, as she sat looking at the splendid haze of October, glorifying the scarlet maples and yellow elms of Deerfield Street, now steeped in a sunset of purpled crimson that struck its level rays across the sapphire hill-tops and transfigured ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... sign of folly to know no fear. Grant that a man has no imagination, and he cannot fear; but when a man does fear, and yet is brave—" Then for awhile he stopped himself. "Would that I had gone at his throat like a dog!" he continued, still in his soliloquy. "Would that I had! Could I have torn out his tongue, and laid it as a trophy at her feet, then she would have loved me." After that he wandered slowly ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... he continued to perform his functions with a singular speed and dexterity, he never for a moment ceased 'a running fire of small talk, now addressed to the patient in particular, now to the crowd at large, sometimes a soliloquy to himself, and not unfrequently, abstractedly, upon things in general. These little specimens of oratory, delivered in such a place at such a time, and, not least of all, in the richest imaginable Cork accent, were sufficient to arrest my ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... his soliloquy, I will endeavor to put the reader in possession of such facts as may be necessary for the better understanding of the narrative, and the present situation of ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... incoherent, and Barnum had great misgivings as he proceeded; but as no token of disapprobation came from the audience, he began to hope he would go through with his parts without exciting suspicion of his condition. But before he had half finished his representation of Booth, in the soliloquy in the opening act of Richard III, the house discovered that he was very drunk, and began to hiss. This only seemed to stimulate him to make an effort to appear sober, which, as is usual in such cases, only made matters worse, and the hissing increased. Barnum lost all patience, and, going on ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... frightened maid, and seats himself on the lowest step of the stairs. Here he delivers a sort of half-musical soliloquy, like the following: "Gentlemen! this kind a' thing only happens at times, and isn't just the square thing when yer straight; but—seein' how southern life will be so—when a body get's crooked what's got a wife what don't look to matters and things, and never comes to take care on a body when ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... is his consideration! Christian from head to foot.' With which soliloquy, the secretary tilted the jug, and looked very hard into the mulled wine, to see ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... romanticism, he was partly of the classic temper. The poem of Sordello is not without an image of this temper, set vigorously in contrast with Sordello himself. This is Salinguerra, who takes the world as it is, and is only anxious to do what lies before him day by day. His long soliloquy, in which for the moment he indulges in dreams, ends in the simple resolution to fight on, hour by hour, as circumstances ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... soliloquy may be imagined. "You might have knocked me down with a feather, sir," she assured the butler (unlikely as it seemed!) in describing the scene afterwards. She found strength, however, to reply to my ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... of Adele, looking sweet as "Pierrette," and Jonah in the traditional garb of "Harlequin," cut short the soliloquy... ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... conversation as is talking one's self, good listening demands the same discretion and discrimination that good talking requires. It is the business of any supposedly good conversationalist to discern when and why one must give one's companion over to soliloquy, and when and why ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... architecture, her genius gave the whole value to every character and scene of the play. Did Whitfield pronounce the word Mesopotamia like a wind harp sighing exquisite music? So Mrs. Kemble's recitation of the soliloquy of Jaques left one line in the recollection of one hearer, which, like an enchanted fruit, is constantly renewing its freshness and flavor. It is one of the most familiar ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... things are not so stupid as the Man on St. Paul's, nor so unsuccessful as the Grocer. They are brisker and seize the opportunity to enjoy themselves. The Pump, for instance, that stands at the head of Fountain Court, generally indulges himself in a soliloquy. He talks through his nose, to be sure, which sounds disagreeably, but the nearest listeners do not mind it. For the Man on St. Paul's is too stupid or it may be asleep. The Grocer is running round with his scales, looking for the Corporation. Sir Walter Raleigh has taken ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder
... house. Across the scheme he had before revolved, there glanced another yet more glittering, for its gain might be more sure and immediate. If the exile's daughter were heiress to such wealth, might he himself hope—He stopped short even in his own soliloquy, and his breath came quick. Now in his last visit to Hazeldean, he had come in contact with Riccabocca, and been struck by the beauty of Violante. A vague suspicion had crossed him that these might be the persons ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... felt quite clear of Federaldom till I set my foot firm on the deck of the good ship Edinburgh. I did not indulge in a soliloquy even then; so I certainly shall not inflict on you any rhapsodies about freedom; but, in good truth, the sensation was too ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... subjects for your sayers of nothing. Of the first I dare say by this time you are nearly surfeited: and for the last, whatever they may talk of it, who make it a kind of company concern, I never could endure it beyond a soliloquy. I might write you on farming, on building, or marketing, but my poor distracted mind is so torn, so jaded, so racked and bediveled with the task of the superlative damned to make one guinea do the business of three, that I detest, abhor, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... our childhood is traceable in a great extent to the "thrillers," toy plays, and penny theatres of our grandfathers. Here our Pirate was, as often as not, a noble, dignified, if gloomy gentleman, with a leaning to Byronic soliloquy. Though stern in exterior, his heart could (and would) melt at the distresses of the heroine. Elvira's eyes were certain to awaken in his mind the recollection of "other eyes as innocent as thine, child." In short, he was that most touching ...
— Pirates • Anonymous
... skilfully drawn lines on the forehead, and a plain gown, with cap, little shawl, and check apron, changed her into a comfortable, motherly creature who found favour the moment the curtain went up and discovered her rocking, darning, and crooning an old song. In a short soliloquy about Sam, her boy, who wanted to enlist; Dolly, her discontented little daughter, who longed for city ease and pleasures; and poor 'Elizy', who had married badly, and came home to die, bequeathing her baby ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... on matters so sublime. Still, so far as the limitations of thought and speech permit, we have shown how religion is the communion of man's spirit with the "Over-soul," the baring of his heart before the immensities and eternities which encompass him, the deep and beautiful soliloquy of the soul in the silence ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... voices are pleasant—in praise; But—well, though it seems a small matter, I don't like that dashed "Marseillaise." And "Israel in Egypt" sounds pointed I'd Pharaoh the miscreants—but stay, My soliloquy's getting disjointed, I've promised! COLUMBIA looks gay, La Belle France displays a grande passion; My arms they unitedly press. One thing though; the Phrygian fashion Is not my ideal of dress. They swear that they both love me dearly, Their "best of old Autocrat ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 8, 1891 • Various
... nights that will precede your last hour, when they cut off your head. From this moment forward you are alone with your conscience, face to face with what you perhaps call your soul, without anything to disturb your silent soliloquy. It's nice and thoughtful ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... her hand on the handle of the door, but the CONJURER, who is sitting on the table and staring at his boots, does not notice the action, and goes on as in a sincere soliloquy. ...
— Magic - A Fantastic Comedy • G.K. Chesterton
... acting. For this reason, his Iago was the only endurable one which I remember to have seen. No spectator from his action could divine more of his artifice than Othello was supposed to do. His confessions in soliloquy alone put you in possession of the mystery. There were no by-intimations to make the audience fancy their own discernment so much greater than that of the Moor—who commonly stands like a great helpless mark set up for mine Ancient, and ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... as if he would fall on the pony's neck. But his eyes never left the golden horse, and when he spoke it was not to the girl, who had ridden close up to his side, but to himself, in a kind of hoarse and guttural soliloquy. ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... reference to the daughters who purloined and sold the blind father's books. When the soliloquy draws to an end the Chorus, men of his tribe, come to visit Samson. Not even Milton ever made the arrangement and sound of words do more to enforce their meaning than he does in ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... in front of the steward's lodge to await the orders of the Colonel, the exultant American completed the soliloquy that began with the mad impulse to ride into port ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... portion of Caliban's soliloquy and the portion in lines 284-295 give the setting for his speculations. The hot, still summer day creates a mood in which Caliban's ideas flow out easily into speech. The thunderstorm at the end abruptly calls him back ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... soliloquy returned without delay to Sam Yen's, who welcomed him with a wan smile, and after explaining some minor details of the work, crept off to his cot. Ah Moy immediately began his self-imposed task, and worked with a will, crooning the while a quaint Celestial air. It ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... sort of soliloquy, for Strand was not exactly privileged to address a quarter-deck officer on such an occasion, though several stood within hearing, and was far too great a man to enlighten his subordinates with his cogitations. ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... feeling underlying this no doubt aggravated the dilemma in which he found himself, and which we cannot sooner comprehend than by attending to his soliloquy as he reviewed his trials in the following somewhat ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... on circuit, his days spent in law-cases, diversified with sociability and funny stories, he would sometimes be seen in the early morning brooding by the fire-place with hands outspread, and murmuring his favorite verses,—a soliloquy on the mournfulness and mystery of life: "Oh, why should the spirit of ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... remained—then he threw himself violently on the berth, face towards the wall, and grumbled the greater part of the night on the stupid mistake of the Franco-Russian Alliance. On his return to France he would write a letter to the Ministre des Affaires Etrangeres. After a long and tedious soliloquy he fortunately fell asleep. ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... his soliloquy, and prudently hid himself under a neighboring gateway. The gorgeous Florent was ringing at the door of one of the most magnificent mansions in the Rue de la Ville l'Eveque. The door was opened, and he went in. "Ah! ah!" thought Chupin, "he ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... moods sometimes come upon me yet. I have been so long in the habit of pursuing any train of thought, however wild, that presents itself to my mind, that I cannot easily break it, even in your presence. All studious men—the twilight Eremites of books and closets, contract this ungraceful custom of soliloquy. You know our abstraction is a common jest and proverb: you must laugh me out of it. But stay, dearest!—there is a rare herb at your feet, let me gather it. So, do you note its leaves—this bending and silver flower? Let us rest on this bank, and I will tell you of its qualities. ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... could be devised with satisfaction to the majority, and they stood in absolute danger of perishing with cold. The debate on the subject was still in progress, when heavy flakes of snow began to fall briskly, with promising appearances of a long continuance. 'Good!' said Nick, half in soliloquy, as he viewed the feathery element, and a new idea seemed to strike him, 'I have hit it at last. Boys, no grumblin' or skulkin' now, for I won't have it. You must do as I am goin' to order, or we ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... began from the very first," continued Lord Chetwynde, in a musing tone, which seemed more like a soliloquy than any thing else. "There was the estate, saddled with debt handed down from my grandfather to my father. It would have required years of economy and good management to free it from encumbrance. But my father's ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... peculiarly suitable for light female humour. In "The Beau's Duel, or a Soldier for the Ladies," we have the following soliloquy by Sir William Mode, a fop, as he stands in his ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... Hautboy is only named once, in H. 4. B III, ii, 332, near the end of Falstaff's soliloquy, on old men and lying, where he says that Shallow was such a withered little wretch that the case of a treble hautboy was a ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... in soliloquy or meditation, though he was looking towards Callista. The contrast between them was singular: he thus abstracted; she too, utterly forgetful of self, but absorbed in him, and showing it by her eager eyes, her hushed breath, her anxious ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... fascinated, Dan indulged in a soliloquy—a habit with him when ordinary conversation seemed out of place. "'Awful dry Wet we're having,' sez he," he murmured, "'the place is alive with dead cattle.' 'Fact,' sez he, 'cattle's dying this year that never died before.'" ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... amongst swords," answered the minstrel, "and knowest how little terror they have for such as I am." Yet as he spoke he drew off from the esquire. He had, in fact, only addressed him in that sort of fulness of heart, which would have vented itself in soliloquy if alone, and now poured itself out on the nearest auditor, without the speaker being entirely conscious of the sentiments which his ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... to the nurses, and the letter I will give to-morrow," said the old porter, winding up his portion of this double soliloquy, and tottering away with the basket and your humble ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... answer to his soliloquy, there rose above the crackling of the fire, the muffled distant thud of galloping hoofs. A few moments later a well-built, sturdy lad astride a mettlesome pony dashed into ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... it. He carried the manuscript about with him, as Goethe did his "Faust," for years, and added to it, or erased, all according to the moods that came to him. And we have reason to believe that the sublime soliloquy in "Cato" was written by Addison when the blankness of his prospects and the blackness of the future had forced the question of self-destruction ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... of Eunice's soliloquy, as she cleaned the potatoes for the morrow's breakfast, and laid the kindlings by the stove, ready for the morning fire. Still Eunice was not a bad-hearted girl, and when Andy, who heard her mutterings, put in a plea for Ethelyn, who he said "had never been ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... it will disclose how he has failed. It will burrow through the latest of his works and exhume his half-buried experiments in rhyme, assonance and polyphony. This part of the paper will examine Jurgen and call attention to the distorted sonnet printed as a prose soliloquy on page 97 of that exquisite and ironic volume. It will pass to the subsequent Figures of Earth and, after showing how the greater gravity of this volume is accompanied by a greater profusion of poetry per se it will unravel the scheme of Cabell's fifteen ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... And the somewhat dismal soliloquy ended in a some what dismal laugh, as the heir of Maxfield assumed the perpendicular and pulled up ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... the whole, an improvement. The play will then open with that grand soliloquy of Prometheus, when he is chained ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... is a historical melodrama, with a gloomy castle, spectral pictures and secret passages, with shifting conspiracies, constant mystery-mongering and contorted characters. The inexpert playwright uses soliloquy not merely to unveil the soul of the speaker (its eternally legitimate use), but also to convey information to the audience as to the facts of the intrigue (an outworn expedient Ibsen never condescended to use in the later social dramas). The plot of 'Mistress Inger' is not veracious or ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... secures Carme's aid. The lock is cut, the city falls, the girl is captured by Minos—in true Alexandrian technique the catastrophe comes with terrible speed—and she is led, not to marriage, but to chains on the captor's galley. Her grief is expressed in a long soliloquy somewhat too reminiscent of Ariadne's lament in Catullus. Finally, Amphitrite in pity transforms the captive girl into a bird, the Ciris, and Zeus as a reward for his devout life releases Nisus, also transforming him into a bird of prey, and ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... Hospital!!" Nothing can exceed the terrific effect this seems to produce upon her persecutors! They release her instantly—they slink back abashed and trembling—they hide their diminished heads, and leave their victim a clear stage for a soliloquy ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 21, 1841 • Various
... and the involuntary cry of the two boys clinging on behind him, silenced even this mental soliloquy for a bit. But the waggonette, after two or three desperate plunges, righted itself and continued its mad career at the ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... soliloquy. How little did he dream of what was in store for him. Going to his front gate he received the mail. To his great surprise, the handwriting on one envelope seemed to be that of Gus Martin. He quickly tore this letter open and read its contents. ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... Father told me that which I have repeated, I answered Him: How wilt thou be glorified in me, seeing that I have laboured in vain?" recognised this reference, but erroneously viewed the words as being addressed to the Lord. It is a soliloquy which we have here before us. Instead of "I said," we are not at liberty to put: "I imagined;" the Servant of God had in reality expended His strength for nothing and vanity. As the scene of the vain labour of the Servant of God, ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... soliloquy of the martyred poet, which forms the principal portion of Pushkin's elegiac ode, is little else than an amplification, or pathetic and dignified paraphrase, of the exquisite composition actually written by Chenier on the eve of his execution; a composition become ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... since grown, in new quarters, to be one of the most comprehensive newspaper libraries in the country, I cannot forbear printing one of Field's choice bits at the expense of the occupants of this floor of the Daily News office. It has no title, but is supposed to be a soliloquy of Mr. Stone's: ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... and so would poor Emmy Annaly, if she was alive, which it's fortunate for her she is not (broken-hearted angel, if ever there was one, by wedlock! and the only one of the Annalys I ever liked)," said Cornelius to himself, in a low leisurely voice of soliloquy. Then resuming his conversation tone, and continuing his speech to Sir Ulick, "I say you pretended thirty years ago, I remember, to be a reformed rake, and looked mighty smooth and plausible—and promised fair that the improvement was solid, and was to last for ever and a day. But six ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... continued his companion, in apparent soliloquy; "there are no mosquitoes at present. It must be the other thing, of course. But so early in the morning, and ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... of 'The Way of the World,' you knew—you knew!" Grace moved. He thought she had heard some part of his soliloquy. He was sorry—though he had not taken any precaution to ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... by nature, and according to time, place and custom, is sometimes an ornament. People think I am ridiculous, nay, even absurd; but what signifies this to me? I ought to know how to bear censure and ridicule, provided I do not deserve them." After this little soliloquy I became so firm that, had it been necessary, I could have been intrepid. But whether it was the effect of the presence of his majesty, or the natural disposition of those about me, I perceived nothing but what was ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... without speaking, and went on gazing in a dreary, abstracted way into the air, as though oblivious of everything around him. "'Though I make my bed in hell, behold, Thou art there,'" he said in slow measured soliloquy. His lip began to quiver and the tears to stream down his furrowed face. Dr. Lively heard, and wiped his eyes on the back of his hand: he had nothing else to receive the quick tears. Just then a hearse ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... The quaint carvings relate to the life of Christ and saints, and they are described in Latin from the Vulgate; but it was the runic inscriptions which John Mitchell Kemble puzzled out—a kind of rhymed soliloquy the cross itself was supposed to speak; and afterward he found the whole thing in an Anglo-Saxon MS. of the seventh or eighth century, far away from Scotland, in a library at Vercelli, near Milan. But it was written by the Northumbrian ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... mysterious links were forged between Christophe and his unseen friends, a revolution took place in his artistic faculty: it became larger and more human. He lost all interest in music which was a monologue, a soliloquy, and even more so in music which was a scientific structure built entirely for the interest of the profession. He wished his music to be an act of communion with other men. There is no vital art save that which is linked with the rest of humanity. Johann Sebastian ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... exceedingly grave, "if, I say, we take the first soliloquy of Hamlet—almost the first words he utters—we shall find a striking allusion to his habit of body; and not only shall we be struck by the allusion, but, I contend, the whole force and meaning of the passage are lost, unless the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... of others who took their method from him, was essentially, as has been before said (pp. 11 and 92), a work of defence. In the two centuries before his time we already find the spirit of reverent inquiry working. Anselm's two celebrated works, the Monologium and Proslogium, a kind of soliloquy on the Trinity, and the Cur Deus Homo, or theory of the Atonement, are the work of a mind that was reconsidering its own beliefs, and restating the grounds of the immemorial doctrines of the church. (See J. A. Hasse, Anselm, 1843, 52.) In the following century (viz. the twelfth), ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... nation, to call themselves, by way of distinction, Innŭee, or mankind. One day, for instance, in securing some of the gear of a sledge, Okotook broke a part of it composed of a piece of our white line, and I shall never forget the contemptuous sneer with which he muttered in soliloquy the word “Kabloona!” in token of the inferiority of our materials to his own. It is happy, perhaps, when people possessing so few of the good things of this life can be thus contented ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... the principal street together, and had it not been the prevailing opinion that sailors of that time did not meditate either coherently or incoherently, they might by their manner have been thought to be in deep soliloquy, whereas their silence was merely momentary. Any one hard by could have heard a spontaneous "Well, by George, we are in luck! What an experience!" And then in a sharp, jerky utterance: "Why, there's Jack Rush ahead of us. ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... Russian in another way. But there was no tragedy there. This was a comedy of errors. It was as if the devil himself were playing a game with all of them in turn. First with him, then with Ziemianitch, then with those revolutionists. The devil's own game this.... He interrupted his earnest mental soliloquy with a jocular thought at his own expense. "Hallo! I am falling into ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... not answer, but went on, in a tone which was a soliloquy rather than an exclamation, and a dirge rather than a soliloquy. Mrs Brooks could ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... poet, communicating his designs in a stage soliloquy, disguised himself in a tow wig and beard, and a railway rug turned up with yellow calico; and the scene shifting to the palace, he introduced himself to the Elderly Princess as the ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... My desire, however, was to play the Correggio. I obtained permission to learn this piece in my own way, although Lindgron asked, with comic gravity, whether I expected to resemble the great painter? I, however, repeated to him the soliloquy in the picture gallery with so much feeling, that the old man clapped me on the shoulder and said, "Feeling you have; but you must not be an actor, though God knows what else. Speak to Guldberg ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... Digby Miracle-Plays, on the Conversion of St. Paul. One of the persons is Belial, whose appearance and behaviour are indicated by the stage-direction, "Enter a Devil with thunder and fire." He makes a soliloquy in self-glorification, and then complains of the dearth of news: after which we have the stage-direction, "Enter another Devil called Mercury, coming in haste, crying and roaring." He tells Belial of St. Paul's conversion, and declares his belief that the Devil's reign is about ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... heed to him other than by a deepening colour; the clock, however, grew tired of the long soliloquy, and broke in with an asthmatic warning as to the time ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... their verdict in writing to the Lord Chancellor, to be deposited amongst the papers of the Privy Council. If found accurate, the Mint Master receives his certificate, or, as it is called, quietus" (a legal word used by Shakespeare in Hamlet's great soliloquy). "The assaying of the precious metals, anciently called the 'touch,' with the marking or stamping, and the proving of the coin, at what is called the 'trial of the pix,' were privileges conferred on the Goldsmiths' Company by the statute 28 Edward I. They had for the former purpose ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... for a moment silent, evidently engaged in busy reflection. After a pause, he broke out in a half-soliloquy:— ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... nature. Johnson heartily despised the affectation. He was told of an American woman who had to be bound in order to keep her from savage life. "She must have been an animal, a beast," said Boswell. "Sir," said Johnson, "she was a speaking cat." Somebody quoted to him with admiration the soliloquy of an officer who had lived in the wilds of America: "Here am I, free and unrestrained, amidst the rude magnificence of nature, with the Indian woman by my side, and this gun, with which I can procure food when I want it! What more can be desired for human happiness?" ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... the common reading; but the phrase has no apparent applicability; and perhaps the better reading is "our bother friend" — that is, the lady who has proved herself a friend both to me and to you. In the same way, Reason, in Troilus' soliloquy on the impending loss of his mistress, is made, addressing Troilus and Cressida, to speaks of "your bother," ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... This little soliloquy brought him to the inn door. Some of the tribe of loungers who were always hanging about the door, and whom in her hatred of idleness the widow would one day rout from the place, and, in her charity, feed the next, had seen Martin coming down the street, and had ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... execution with delight, as if it were a martyrdom, and had the greatness of soul to perceive that nothing could possibly commend his career and character to posterity so much as to leave this mortal stage with a telling soliloquy. His powers were drawn together to their height; his intellect, which had lately seemed to be growing dim, had never flashed more brilliantly, and the biographer can recall but one occasion in Raleigh's life, and that the morning of St. Barnaby at Cadiz, when his bearing was ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... soliloquy Heywood closely follows Plautus: see Rudens, i. 3, "Hanccine ego partem capio ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... his soliloquy the door opened, so softly that he did not hear it turn upon its hinges, nor hear the light footstep on the carpet as Katy came in. But when she coughed he started up in wonder at the apparition standing so ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... higher than the words they would use in real life as their thoughts are higher than those words. It says the unuttered part of our speech. Ibsen would suppress all this heightening as he has suppressed the soliloquy and the aside. But here what he suppresses is not a convention but a means of interpretation. It is suppressing the essence for the sake ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... of the fickleness of human affairs, and of the instability of human grandeur! When we think of thy baubles and trappings—of thy goblets of gold, and companies of retainers—and turn our thoughts to Shakspeare's shepherd, as described in the soliloquy of one of our monarchs, we are fully disposed to admit the force of such truths as have been familiar to us from boyhood, and which tell us that those shoulders feel the most burdened upon which the greatest load of responsibility rests. Peace to the once proud, and latterly ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... the apostrophe and s are used to give the sound of a verb's termination, to words which the writer supposed were not properly verbs: "When a man in a soliloquy reasons with himself, and pro's and con's, and weighs all his designs."—Congreve. But here, "proes and cons," would have been more accurate. "We put the ordered number of m's into our composing-stick."—Printer's ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... my sincere opinion that matters are in much worse condition with you than what is generally known. Your master's speech at the opening of Parliament, is like a soliloquy on ill luck. It shows him to be coming a little to his reason, for sense of pain is the first symptom of recovery, in profound stupefaction. His condition is deplorable. He is obliged to submit to all the insults ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... better than they made him out,' said Miss Betty to herself, in a tone of calm soliloquy; 'and he'll not be worse for some of the home truths I told him.' And with this she drew on her silk mittens, and arranged her cap composedly, while she waited for ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... The soliloquy was interrupted by the sudden explosion of some substance under his feet, upon which he accidentally trod as he was pacing up and down the room. He swore an oath that emanated from his fear, and thought that the lower regions had actually opened to receive the gold he was meditating upon, since ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... passion. It is a remarkable instance of the genius of Shakspeare, that he here found the means of giving a human interest to a being whom he had almost exalted to the "bad eminence" of a magnificent fiend. In this famous soliloquy, the thoughts which once filled and fired her have totally vanished. Ambition has died; remorse lives in its place. The diadem has disappeared; she thinks only of the blood that stains her for ever. She is the queen no more, but an exhausted and unhappy woman, worn down ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... earlier savor. That afternoon as he sat on the veranda overlooking the lawn shaded by the elm trees of his greatest pride, Dr. Nesbit was discoursing to Mrs. Nesbit, who was sewing and paid little heed to his animadversions; it was a soliloquy rather than a conversation—a soliloquy accompanied by an obligate of general mental disagreement from the wife of his bosom, who expressed herself in sniffs and snorts and scornful staccato interjections as the soliloquy ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... waited, guessed, and grew impatient. 'You don't mean that fellow, Sam? Do you think he has it? I should like to throttle him, as sure as my name's Dick May!' (this in soliloquy between his teeth). 'Speak up, Leonard, if you have ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... cut his soliloquy short at this point by leading him off to another room for his shower-bath; but before he went he expressed a desire to talk further with Sheen on the subject of dogs, and, learning that Sheen would ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... and then, which threw rather a graver tone into the soliloquy of the lonely traveller, it was still a time of excessive enjoyment. The noble rocks towered up high on the left, and the endless water opened out wide on the right with only some dot of a sail, hull down, far far off on the horizon, a little lonely speck fixed in hard exile; but very ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... climbers backward by the collar, and with a hearty push sent him staggering over into the ditch upon his nose. One of the remaining two, who was too far gone to notice anything, continued to clamber ineffectually over the high back of the car, kicking and pouring forth a rivulet of soliloquy. But the other dropped at the interruption, turned upon Turnbull and began a battering bout of fisticuffs. At the same moment the man crawled out of the ditch in a masquerade of mud and rushed at his old enemy from behind. The ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... wife's loveliness. "Ye look so ripe with kisses, and there they are a-languishin'!—... You never look so but in your bed, ye beauty!—just as it ought to be." Lucy had to pretend to rise to put out the light before Berry would give up her amorous chaste soliloquy. Then they lay in bed, and Mrs. Berry fondled her, and arranged for their departure to-morrow, and reviewed Richard's emotions when he came to hear he was going to be made a father by her, and hinted at Lucy's delicious shivers when ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... his official act of registration, and his soliloquy, he made a signal to his assistants to remove Julian, who was led along the same stern passages which he had traversed upon his entrance, to the gate of the prison, whence a coach, escorted by two officers of justice, conveyed him ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... have repeatedly observed, this dull and pedantic narrative of fact is no vehicle for sentimental soliloquy. It is, then, merely sufficient to say that I took the earliest steamer for kinder shores, spurred on to haste by a venomous cable-gram from the Smithsonian, repudiating me, and by another from Bronx Park, ordering me to spend the winter ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... probable that at this point the Countess would have resumed her soliloquy, but we shall never know, for the next moment the Princess and her Court were seen approaching from the other end of the glade. Belvane ...
— Once on a Time • A. A. Milne
... Judas; and, like the traitor Apostle, he was untouched by contact with goodness and unworldliness. Perhaps the parallel might be carried farther, and both were moved with coarse contempt for their master's silly indifference to earthly good. That feeling speaks in Gehazi's soliloquy. He evidently thought the prophet a fool for having let 'this Syrian' off so easily. He was fair game, and he had brought the wealth on purpose to leave it. Profanity speaks in uttering a solemn oath ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... audacious note of defiance at his back, with a preliminary sniff of scorn: "Hm! wonder if he thinks he was born grown up, with money in his pockets; wonder if he thinks he owns this whole town?" The doctor never turned to resent this sarcastic soliloquy whereby the boy's suppressed democracy asserted itself, but the next time he saw Jerome's father he told him he had better look to his son's manners, and Jerome ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... murmured to herself in a sort of satisfied soliloquy. "Diamonds, like those you have on your finger, Froeken,—diamonds all scattered among your curls like dew-drops! And white satin, all shining, shining!—people would take you ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... soliloquy, which, according to the former arrangement; constituted the whole of Scene IX., and concluded the Fourth Act, is omitted in all the printed German editions. It seems probable that it existed in the original manuscript ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... read on. For after all Plato continues imperturbably. And Hamlet utters his soliloquy. And there the Elgin Marbles lie, all night long, old Jones's lantern sometimes recalling Ulysses, or a horse's head; or sometimes a flash of gold, or a mummy's sunk yellow cheek. Plato and Shakespeare ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... sultry. The king reclined on an easy couch within a bower, in the palace garden. His mind was occupied with reflections on the past and thoughts of the future, and thus ran the soliloquy ...
— The Young Captives - A Story of Judah and Babylon • Erasmus W. Jones
... European turmoil, with regard to the position of what are called neutral Powers. People have been looking at England with much curiosity to see what she really does intend. With the facilities which our special wire affords, I am enabled to report a highly interesting soliloquy delivered by the Rt. Hon. W. E. GLADSTONE, to his bed-post, at his home in Spring Gardens, London, after a hot night's debate at St. STEPHEN'S. Our reporter concealed himself in the key-hole and took verbatim notes. As in the case of the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 22, August 27, 1870 • Various
... Jonathan's lit-up looks, or Grace's down-cast blushes; for it really slipped my observation to record that there were blushes, and probably some cause for them when the keep-sake was given and accepted; only conceive if the step-mother had heard Jonathan's afterward soliloquy, when he was watching pretty Grace as she tripped away—and how much he seemed to think of her eyes and eye-lashes! I am reasonably fearful, had she heard and seen all this—Poll Acton's nails might have possibly drawn blood from the cheeks of Jonathan Floyd. As it was, the ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... the pleasure he experienced in thus handling and reckoning his treasure; and, in unusual contradiction to his taciturn habits, he indulged, as he gloated over his gold, in a muttered and disjointed soliloquy. ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... the Duke, perfectly unconscious, and beating time with his brush. His valet stared, but more when his lord, with eyes fixed on the ground, fell into a soliloquy, not a word of which, most provokingly, was audible, except to ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... is not the only one that should be known and practised. A dramatic work is commonly composed of five or fewer acts; and an act is composed of scenes in dialogue or soliloquy. Now every act, every scene, should have, subordinately, its exposition, its plot, and its unravelment, just as the total of the piece has, of which they are ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... that he had played—he taxed her with levity and unkindness in so soon preferring the captain to himself. That Emily should so soon have linked herself with a comparative stranger! It was not what he should have expected. "At all events," he would thus conclude his soliloquy, "I am henceforward free—free from her bondage and from all internal struggle. Yes! I am free!" he exclaimed, as he paced his room triumphantly. The light voice of Emily was heard calling on him to accompany her in a walk. He started, he flew. His freedom, we suppose, gave him wings, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... interrupted in his reflections and his soliloquy by the entrance of a servant, with the information that there was a man at the door who ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... woman, who was fishing for the cabbages, immediately understood the predicament, drew up her cord, disappeared from the loggia, and the curtain fell upon the little farce. The gardener, however, evidently had a little soliloquy after she had gone. He ceased working, and gazed at the unconscious Franciscan for some time, with a curious grimace, as if he were not quite satisfied at thus losing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... life and honor of Sir Guy. To send my servant were over-dangerous, for there may be watchers on my going and coming. Will you go, sir, without delay, if that I speak for you the missing lines completing young Hamlet's soliloquy?" ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... This half-spoken soliloquy will afford the reader some clue to the character of Mrs. Tompkins. Her husband, to whom she had been married about ten years, had gradually risen from the position of a clerk to that of a merchant, in a small way, when the death of a distant relative put him in ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur
... a soliloquy of the old woman's before that Vanslyperken had entered the room, where he found his mother sitting over a few cinders half ignited in a very small grate. Parsimony would not allow her to use more fuel, although her limbs trembled as much ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... soliloquy, he had cantered out of Rotten Row into the Park, and there was on the point of riding down a large old roomy family carriage, of which he took no heed, when a cheery voice cried out, "Harry, Harry!" and looking ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... must mention that John Sterling, in an essay on Montaigne (Westminster Review, 1838), makes the following introductory remarks:—'On the whole, the celebrated soliloquy in Hamlet presents a more characteristic and expressive resemblance to much of Montaigne's writings than any other portion of the plays of the great dramatist which we at present remember, though it would doubtless be easy to ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... after 1603 when James I became king of both Scotland and England. So does the allusion to the habit of touching for the king's evil (IV, iii, 140-159),—a custom which James revived. The reference to an equivocator in the porter's soliloquy (II, iii) may allude to Henry Garnet, who was tried in 1606 for complicity in the {190} famous Gunpowder Plot, and who is said to have upheld the doctrine of equivocation. The date of ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... superseded by a moral taste or sentiment, which has no sanction beyond the constitution of our nature, it follows that our great rule is to contemplate ourselves, if we would gain a standard of life and morals. Thus he has entitled one of his Treatises a "Soliloquy," with the motto, "Nec te quaesiveris extra;" and he observes, "The chief interest of ambition, avarice, corruption, and every sly insinuating vice, is to prevent this interview and familiarity of discourse, which is consequent ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... his soliloquy, he retreated into his hut for shelter from the storm which was fast approaching, and now began to burst in large and heavy drops of rain. The last rays of the sun now disappeared entirely, and two or three claps of distant thunder ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... With a sigh of satisfaction he turned round, as though to go back to the house. But his eye was caught by a light in the window next to his own; and the window was open. The Captain stood and looked up, and Monsieur Guillaume, who had overheard his little soliloquy and discovered from it a fact of great interest to himself, seized the opportunity of rising from behind his bush and stealing off down the hill after ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope
... instead of the 'Announcement of the Feast' by Mercury, a prologue consisting of two octave stanzas is appended. A Latin Sapphic ode in praise of the Cardinal Gonzaga, which was interpolated in the first version, is omitted, and certain changes are made in the last soliloquy of Orpheus. There is little doubt, I think, that the second version, first given to the press by the Padre Affo, was Poliziano's own recension of his earlier composition. I have therefore followed it in the main, except that I have not thought ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... men who have been much in great solitudes, and have gone days and weeks sometimes without meeting a fellow-creature, he had acquired the habit of thinking aloud, and if anyone had been listening they would have heard much such a soliloquy as the following, ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... caused Inez to turn in the midst of her soliloquy. Dr. Bryant was hastening by, but paused at ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... preached in the Royal Chapel at Warsaw, by W. Hellsatanatius, Chaplain to his Excellency Count Bruhl.—"The Art of Trimming," a Political Treatise, by the learned Van-Self, of Amsterdam.—"Self-Preservation," a Soliloquy, wrote extempore on an Aspen Leaf on the Plains of Minden; found in the pocket of an Officer who fell on the First of August.—"The Art of Flying," by Monsieur Contades; with a curious Frontispiece, representing Dismay with Eagle's Wings, and Glory with a pair of Crutches, following the French ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... While this soliloquy was being pronounced, the hunter advanced into the area, where to his surprise he saw Hetty alone, evidently awaiting his return. The girl carried the Bible under her arm, and her face, over which a shadow of gentle melancholy was usually thrown, now seemed sad and downcast. Moving ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... and given to the poor?' This he said, not because he cared for the poor"—not he—"but because he was a thief and, having the bag, took away what was put therein." He it was who from the first showed displeasure at Mary's act. His words were both an exclamation and a question, a sort of soliloquy, and yet addressed to anybody who might hear and answer: but they needed no answer. It was too late to gather up the ointment already used, and sell it for the poor or for any other purpose. But Judas' purpose I well understand. I see through his hypocrisy ...
— A Life of St. John for the Young • George Ludington Weed
... said Mrs. Gibson, with soft affection. It was a soliloquy, uttered after a minute's pause, at the end ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... the Saturday Evening Post of Philadelphia. It is not wonderful as poetry. Yet we read it with interest, because it shows so plainly the earnest and ambitious, yet cheerful, nature of the boy. He did not merely sit and hope; he was determined to win his way. It is entitled, "Soliloquy of a Young Poet." ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... that while he pleased himself with this fanciful soliloquy it did not occur to him that he had already caught the "fairy in the woods," and ever since the capture had been engaged in cutting off its "sunbeam wings" with all a vivisector's scientific satisfaction. And in his ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... remember a particular case of a hero of Frederic Soulie's, who, in the course of an 'emotion,' takes up a chair unconsciously, and breaks it into very small pieces, and then proceeds with his soliloquy. Well!—the clearest idea this excites in me, is of the low condition in Paris, of moral government and of upholstery. Because—just consider for yourself—how you would succeed in breaking to pieces even ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... that upon the second floor, over the gateway. The enthusiasts of learning will ever contemplate it with veneration. One day, while he was sitting in it quite alone, Dr. Panting[218], then master of the College, whom he called 'a fine Jacobite fellow,' overheard[219] him uttering this soliloquy in his strong, emphatick voice: 'Well, I have a mind to see what is done in other places of learning. I'll go and visit the Universities abroad. I'll go to France and Italy. I'll go to Padua[220].—And ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... soliloquy as the children came up, Babette eagerly demanding to know where the Cardinal was. Madame Patoux set her arms akimbo and surveyed the little group of three half- ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... cons of which I carefully considered. For patterns I turned to books. Byron was then still popular, and many of us made up our minds to be gloomy, saturnine young men, weary with the world, and prone to soliloquy. I determined to ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... before walked on bare rock. The cave was by no means extremely cold, that is to say, it was rather above than below the freezing point, and the splashing of drops of water was audible on all sides; so that, if Christian spoke the truth,—it was sad to be so often reminded of Legree's plaintive soliloquy in the opening pages of 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,'—the explanation, I suppose, might be that the drops of water, falling on the top of the column or stalagmite, run down the sides, and carry with them some ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... to interrupt this soliloquy made up of vague, conflicting, and fragmentary thoughts which cannot be reproduced in words. The whole charm of such musing lies in its vagueness—what is it but a sort ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... thought I, "for it must be now near midnight. She is a fascinating little woman," I continued in voiceless soliloquy; "her image forms a pleasant picture in memory; I know she is not what the world calls pretty—no matter, there is harmony in her aspect, and I like it; her brown hair, her blue eye, the freshness of her cheek, the whiteness of her neck, all suit my taste. Then I respect her talent; the idea ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... scene, and not without some undefined misgivings, when he heard a noise near the cuddy, and turning, saw the negro, his hand to his cheek. Advancing, Captain Delano perceived that the cheek was bleeding. He was about to ask the cause, when the negro's wailing soliloquy enlightened him. ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... confused, and of confusion the present reading makes no end. Sir T. Hammer reads, I am the dog, no, the dog is himself and I am me, the dog is the dog, and I am myself. This certainly is more reasonable, but I know not how much reason the author intended to bestow on Launce's soliloquy. ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson |
