"Actor" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... word, are not inferior to you in culture, though you won't believe it. They can contemplate such depths of belief and disbelief at the same moment that sometimes it really seems that they are within a hair's-breadth of being 'turned upside down,' as the actor ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... The fire, being the male influence, would assimilate with and act as an antidote upon the mephitic smoke, which was a female influence.[36] Besides this, as a further charm to exorcise the portent, the dance called Sambaso, which is still performed as a prelude to theatrical exhibitions by an actor dressed up as a venerable old man, emblematic of long life and felicity, was danced on a plot of turf in front of the Temple Kofukuji. By these means the smoke was dispelled, and the drama was originated. The story is ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... in two volumes. Being yet present with them He spoke and acted. Being exalted He 'speaketh from heaven,' and from the throne carries on the endless series of His works of power and healing. The whole history is shaped by the same conviction. Everywhere 'the Lord' is the true actor, the source of all the life which is in the Church, the arranger of all the providences which affect its progress. The Lord adds to the Church daily. His name works miracles. To the Lord believers are added. His angel, His Spirit, bring messages to His servants. He appears to Paul, and speaks ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... had always aspired to be an actor. One of the first things he did after settling in Sandusky was to organize an amateur theatrical company, composed entirely of people of German birth or descent. The performances were given in the Turner Hall, in the German tongue, on a makeshift ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... only great in the light of the actor's previous history and training; and perhaps the atonement Teddy now contemplated was for him as heroic as that of the martyred bishop who held the hand that had signed the recantation steadily in the flame ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... against which the Contessa wove her web of smiles and humorous schemes was both dark and serious. There were many shadows behind that frivolous central light. Herself the chief actor, the plotter, she to whom only it could be a matter of personal advantage, was perhaps the least serious of all the agents in it. The others thought of possibilities dark enough, of perhaps the destruction of family peace in this house which had been so hospitable to ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... were so real that they startled me; yet, knowing what a consummate actor he was, I restrained both my fear and my sympathy, and waited for him to enlighten me further. He sat with his head bowed, and his hands hanging down, in an attitude of profound despondency, so different from his usual jaunty air, that every ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... their teachers could not really have given them. The teachers did not understand that each vowel represented not two sounds only, a long and a short, but many more. This fact was no more understood by John Walker, the actor and lexicographer, who in 1798 published a Key to the Classical Pronunciation of Greek and Latin proper names. His general rule was wrong as a general rule, and so far as it agreed with facts it was useless. ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt
... good-nature) he had even gone the length of asking a publisher to dine at his club. And here he was seated in an actress's room, alone, while his sister was inspecting powder-puffs, washes, patches, and paste jewelry; and not only that, but they were about to take an actor home to supper with them. What he thought about it all he never said. He sat and stroked his small yellow moustache; his eyes was absent; and on his handsome, almost Greek, features there dwelt ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... festival drew near. The whole business of dramatic representation was in the hands of public bodies—the Mayor and Corporation, if the town could boast of such. Later years saw the appearance of the professional actor, by more humble designation termed a strolling player. Many small companies—four or five men and perhaps a couple of boys—came into existence, wandering over England to win the pence and applause guaranteed by the immense popularity of their entertainments. ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... India, and the mulatto strain of Alexander Hamilton. In music and art we recall Bridgewater, the friend of Beethoven, and the unexplained complexion of Beethoven's own father; Coleridge-Taylor in England, Tanner in America, Gomez in Spain; Ira Aldridge, the actor, and Johnson, Cook, and Burleigh, who are making the new American syncopated music. In the Church we know that Negro blood coursed in the veins of many of the Catholic African fathers, if not in certain of the popes; and there were in modern days ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... long been at such a height that hardly any exploit could increase it. And yet an exploit was at hand at which, even when Bayard was the actor of it, all France and Germany were to stand ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... search she meets with amazing adventures, which she describes in a series of letters to her governess. She changes her name to Cherubina de Willoughby, and journeys to London, where, mistaking Covent Garden Theatre for an ancient castle, she throws herself on the protection of a third-rate actor, Grundy. He readily falls in with her humour, assuming the name of Montmorenci, and a suit of tin armour and a plumed helmet for her delight. Later, Cherubina is entertained by Lady Gwyn, who, for the amusement of her guests, heartlessly ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... you. There was something more in it than wonder—something more than dismay, even—at the success of his unhallowed experiment. It was as though, having prepared himself light-heartedly to witness a play, he was seized and terrified to find himself the principal actor. I never saw ghastlier fear on ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... to peruse the seneschal's simple narrative without profound interest. In reading his account of this disastrous expedition, we are transported, in imagination, to the thirteenth century, and witness, with the mind's eye, the scenes in which he was an actor, and gradually come to feel as if we were not reading a chronicle penned centuries ago, but listening to a Crusader who, just returned from the East, and seated on the dais of the castle hall, tells his story over the wine-cup to his kinsmen and ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... artillery and musketry as threw them into disorder. Gen. Lee sent all his disposable troops to the rescue, but the Federal fire was so terrible as to disconsert the coolest veterans. Whole ranks of the Confederate troops were hurled to the ground. Says an actor in the conflict: 'The thunder of cannon, the cracking of musketry from thousands of combatants, mingled with the screams of the wounded and dying, were terrific to the ear ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... Bawd: Then made by Art a Swearer of Renown, Nurst and embrac'd by th'Heir of Judahs Crown: Encourag'd too by Pension for Reward, With his forg'd Scrowls for Guiltless Blood prepared. Poor Engine for a greatness so sublime: } But oh, a Cause by which their Baal must climb, } Ennobles both the Actor and ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.
... he spoke, he again proceeded: "Courage can do much in war, and is in all cases a noble trait, which I for one do ever respect; but there may be circumstances where manly courage can avail nothing, and where to practice it only becomes fool-hardy, and is sure to draw down certain destruction on the actor or actors. Such I hasten to assure you, gentlemen, is exactly your case in the present instance. No one admires the heroism which you have, one and all, even to your women and children, this day displayed, more than myself; but I feel it my duty ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... although not of notable compass, was an absolute tenor of a delicious quality and great power. His vocalization was unexceptionably pure, and his style was manly and noble. As a dramatic singer I never heard his equal except Ronconi; as an actor, I never saw his equal, except Ronconi, Rachel, and Salvini. He had in perfection that power which Hamlet speaks of in his soliloquy, after he dismisses the players, when the ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... be as good an actor as Mr. Hervey," said, Lady Delacour, "and if he suit 'the action to the ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... more solemn; for a new actor, whose role was to be short though terrible, now appeared upon it. It was a man, whom by his dress the three recognised with terror as a white man like themselves. The unlucky man suddenly discovered in one of the ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... of the Bible to accept its utterances indiscriminately as the words of God, to quote every saying of every speaker in its pages, or every deed of every actor in its histories as expressing to us the ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... there hung a wan sweetness like a fine mist, almost an ethereality in that light; yet in the pale face lurked something reckless, something of the actor, too; and though his smile was gentle and wistful, there was a twinkle behind it, not seen at first, something amused and impish; a small surprise underneath, like a ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... or to see them getting attention he craved for himself. He could no sing, but he was a great story teller. Had he just said, out and out, that he was making up tales, 'twould have been all richt enough. But, no—Jock must pretend he'd been everywhere he told about, and that he'd been an actor in every yarn he spun. He was a great boaster, too—he'd tell us, without a blush, of the most desperate things he'd done, and of how brave he'd been. He was the bravest man alive, to ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... the universal joy was changed into universal sorrow, for a shocking thing happened. Five days after Lee's surrender, Lincoln went with his wife and friends to see a play at Ford's Theatre, in Washington. In the midst of the play, a Southern actor, John Wilkes Booth, who was familiar with the theatre, entered the President's box, shot him in the back of the head, jumped to the stage, and rushed through the wings to the street. There he mounted a horse in waiting for him and escaped, soon, however, to be hunted down and killed ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... other the king in reality." Gaveston's vanity was touched by the sullen hostility of the earls. He returned their suspicion by an openly expressed contempt. He amused himself and the king by devising nicknames for them. Thomas of Lancaster was the old pig or the play-actor, Aymer of Pembroke was Joseph the Jew, Gilbert of Gloucester was the cuckoo, and Guy of Warwick was the black dog of Arden. Such jests were bitterly resented. "If he call me dog," said Warwick on hearing ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... in the commonwealth," Phillips is in error. Milton's name does not occur in the Act. Pope used to tell that Davenant had employed his interest to protect a brother-poet, thus returning a similar act of generosity done to himself by Milton in 1650. Pope had this story from Betterton the actor. How far Davenant exaggerated to Betterton his own influence or his exertions, we cannot tell. Another account assigns the credit of the intervention to Secretary Morris and Sir Thomas Clarges. After ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... much in Seymour himself as well as in his words to attract the attention of the convention.[995] Added years gave him a more stately, almost a picturesque bearing, while a strikingly intelligent face changed its expression with the ease and swiftness of an actor's. This was never more apparent than now, when he turned, abruptly, from the alleged sins of Republicans to the alleged virtues of Democrats. Relaxing its severity, his countenance wore a triumphant smile as he declared in a ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... was placed on the right of the Crucifix, St. John the Evangelist being invariably on the left. I am speaking here of the crucifix as a wholly ideal and mystical emblem of our faith in a crucified Saviour; not of the crucifixion as an event, in which the Virgin is an actor and spectator, and is usually fainting in the arms of her attendants. In the ideal subject she is merely an ideal figure, at once the mother of Christ, and the personified Church. This, I think, is evident from those very ancient carvings, and examples in stained glass, in which ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... hired a show-actor, looks like." Dirk confided behind his hand to Shorty McGuire. "That's real singin', if yuh ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... which had been for the most part deserted, and there we were cantoned, chiefly in empty houses. Whilst we were here, a very interesting piece of excitement took place, in which one of the officers of our company, a lieutenant, was the chief actor. He was an Irishman, and being likewise a Catholic, had been in the habit whilst staying at our late quarters of visiting a Catholic chapel; and there he had seen and fallen in love with a Portuguese general's daughter. Correspondence and ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... coarse and idealistic; and at once feebly the slave of his times, and so boldly, spontaneously innovating as to be quite unconscious of innovation: the mixed nature, or rather the nature in many heterogeneous bits, of the man of letters who is artistic almost to the point of being an actor, natural in every style because morally connected with no style at all. The man was Lorenzo di Piero dei Medici, for whom posterity has exclusively reserved the civic title of all his family and similar town despots, calling ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... map of Europe, to see where the place was, and then said with a sigh: "Roll up that map: it will not be wanted these ten years." One version assigns the incident to Shockerwick House, near Bath. Pitt is looking over the picture gallery, and is gazing at Gainsborough's portrait of the actor Quin. His retentive memory calls up the ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... wears a huge grotesque scarlet mask on his head, and at times makes this monster appear to stretch out and draw in its neck by an unseen change in position of the mask from the head to the gradually extended and draped hand of the actor. The beat of a drum and the whistle of a bamboo flute formed the accompaniment ...
— Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories • Mrs. M. Chaplin Ayrton
... Anne, and the door opened to admit the eminent actor, who looked bigger and handsomer than ever in his long coat ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... and leaned her head upon her hand, while the scenes in which she had been for the past few hours an actor, passed before her in review with almost the vividness of reality. Were her thoughts pleasant ones? We fear not; for every now and then a faint sigh troubled her breast, and parted her too firmly closed lips. The evening's entertainment had not satisfied her in something. There was a ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... notwithstanding the usual supineness and divisions of the Allied Powers, have led to their obtaining signal success in the next campaign, had not their attention been, early in spring, arrested, and their efforts paralyzed by a new and formidable actor on the theatre of affairs. This was no less a man than CHARLES XII. KING OF SWEDEN; who, after having defeated the coalition of the northern sovereigns formed for his destruction, dictated peace to Denmark at Copenhagen, dethroned ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... chief actor entered, a powerful black bull with sharp horns and fiercely glistening eyes. He had been in a room with holes in the ceiling through which he had been poked with pointed sticks. He was, therefore, tolerably ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... compliments there: on which occasion, we regret to say, Marechal de Maillebois was not so reverent to the Imperial Majesty as he should have been. Angry belike at the Adventure now forced on him, and harassed with many things; seeing in the Imperial Majesty little but an unfortunate Play-actor Majesty, who lives in furnished lodgings paid for by France, and gives France and Maillebois an infinite deal of trouble to little purpose. Certain it is, he addressed the Imperial Majesty in the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... reminded them of those they had always known. So they gave those the same names. A Khatkan lion is furred, it is a hunter and a great fighter, but it is not the cat of Terra. However, it is in great demand as a tri-dee actor. So we summon it out of lurking by providing free meals. One shoots a poli, a water rat, or a landeer and drags the carcass behind a low-flying flitter. The lion springs upon the moving meat, which it can also scent, and the rope is ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... of high office never can be. Dickens could only write of natural people, so he wrote of common men: 'You will find him adrift as an impecunious commercial traveller like Micawber; you will find him but one of a batch of silly clerks like Swiveller; you will find him as an unsuccessful actor like Crumples; you will find him as an unsuccessful doctor like Sawyer; you will always find the rich and reeking personality where Dickens found it among ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... his mother say? She, who all her life had spurned the play-actor as she would a reptile. And she was right, Will saw that clearly; there was a sorcery about such people against which ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... -satura- with the drama thence developed, is not at all tenable. The difference between the -histrio- and the Atellan player was just about as great as is at present the difference between a professional actor and a man who goes to a masked ball; between the dramatic piece, which down to Terence's time had no masks, and the Atellan, which was essentially based on the character-mask, there subsisted an original distinction in no way to be effaced. ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... mere professional man or merchant would have the heart to render his person thus conspicuous? And the hypothesis that might have disposed of him as a model was excluded by the freshness of his clothes. A poet, painter, sculptor, possibly an actor or musician—anyhow, something to which the generic name of artist, soiled with all ignoble use, could more or less flatteringly be applied—I made sure he was; an ornament of our own English-speaking race, moreover, proclaimed such by the light of intelligence that ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... run the gamut of the dramatic scale, we observe that as we descend from the higher forms, such as tragedy, psychological drama and "straight comedy," to the lower, such as musical comedy and burlesque, the license allowed playwright and actor increases so radically that we have a difference of kind rather than of degree. Certain conventions of course are common to all types. The "missing fourth side" of the room is a commonplace recognized by all. If we ourselves are never in the habit of communicating the ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... asked for his song, and, as usual, demanding a theme, one of the guests, either facetiously or maliciously, called out, "Take Yates's big nose." (Yates, the actor, was one of the party.) To any one else such a subject would have been appalling: not so to Hook. He rose, glanced once or twice round the table, and chanted (so to speak) a series of verses perfect in rhythm and rhyme: the incapable theme being dealt with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... me of one in which I was an actor, and which was impressed upon my mind by a process which few boys are fond of, but which is very apt to make the impression durable. I fished for trout once without line or hook. I got a fine string of them, and myself into a pretty kettle of fish in the bargain. On my father's farm, as ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... sleep, and making me conscious that I must toil, if it were but in catching butterflies. But my chief motives were, discontent with home and a bitter grudge against Parson Thumpcushion, who would rather have laid me in my father's tomb than seen me either a novelist or an actor, two characters which I thus hit upon a method of uniting. After all, it was not half so foolish as if I had written romances instead of ...
— Passages From a Relinquised Work (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... by Hannibal and accustomed to the soldiery might forward the attempt;" he communicated his design with Themistus, who had married the daughter of Gelon, and a few days afterwards incautiously disclosed it to a certain tragic actor, named Ariston, to whom he was in the habit of committing other secrets. He was a man of reputable birth and fortune, nor did his profession disgrace them, for among the Greeks no pursuit of that kind was considered dishonourable. He therefore discovered ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... addition, that the admirable manner of relating them and the wonderful variety of incidents with which they are beautified in the course of a private gentleman's story, add such delight in the reading, and give such a lustre, as well to the accounts themselves as to the person who was the actor, that no story, we believe, extant in the world ever came ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... a sailor in the United States navy, but having retired from the cruel sea, he became an actor in such plays as "Black-eyed Susan" in one of the variety theatres in Philadelphia. Mr. Charles D. Jones, of that city, who was connected with theatrical enterprises, and knew Mr. Cloud well, was one day surprised by the latter ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... energetic people retain their self-respect through shameful misconduct: they do not even lose the respect of others, because their talents benefit and interest everybody, whilst their vices affect only a few. An actor, a painter, a composer, an author, may be as selfish as he likes without reproach from the public if only his art is superb; and he cannot fulfil his condition without sufficient effort and sacrifice to make him feel noble and ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... cloud With whirlwind fraught, I drove impetuous on, Took fifty chariots, and at side of each Lay two slain warriors, with their teeth the soil Grinding, all vanquish'd by my single arm. 905 I had slain also the Molions, sons Of Actor, but the Sovereign of the deep Their own authentic Sire, in darkness dense Involving both, convey'd them safe away. Then Jove a victory of prime renown 910 Gave to the Pylians; for we chased and slew And gather'd ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... ended, t'other actor came, Whose prompt arrival much surprised the dame, For, as a husband, Clidamant had ne'er Such ardour shown, he seemed beyond his sphere. The lady to the girl imputed this, And thought, to hint it, ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... preserving republican liberty, must be gratified with the review of that arduous and doubtful struggle, which terminated in the triumph of human reason, and the establishment of that government. Even to him who was not an actor in the busy scene, who enjoys the fruits of the labour without participating in the toils or the fears of the patriots who have preceded him, the sentiments entertained by the most enlightened and virtuous of America at the eventful period between the restoration ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... should go just then: he had to appear on the boards that night. This was deemed to be a just impediment, and he was told to go next day. The next day was a "festa:" of course a sufficient reason for putting off everything. The day after, on presenting himself at the prison-door, the actor was told that the governor of the prison was out of Florence, and he must "call again" in a few days. When the governor returned, Stenterello was indisposed for a few days. When he got well the governor was indisposed, and when he got well there was another "festa;" and when at last ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... hilariously, upside down. One has the salutary amusement in reading him of visualizing the Universe in the posture of a Gargantuan baby, "prepared" for a sound smacking. Mr. Chesterton himself is the chief actor in this performance and wonderful pyrotechnic stars leap into ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... that Johnson said of an actor who played Sir Harry Wildair at Lichfield, "There is a courtly vivacity about the fellow;" when, in fact, according to Garrick's account, "he was the most vulgar ruffian that ever went upon boards."' Ante, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... of a mimic and an actor. During a political campaign, he took the platform against a certain Tom Corwin of Ohio, who was considered a great political orator. On one occasion Corwin was the first speaker, and to emphasize his speech, he danced about on the stage, gesticulated freely, and ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... many a fable about this grave, but if pressed will shake their heads sagely and refer you to "Master Trenoweth up yonder at Lantrig. Folks say she was a play-actor and he loved her. Anyway you may see him up in the churchyard most days, but dont'ee go nigh him then, unless you ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... wholly on wires; laying their ears down, skimming away, pausing as though shot, and presto! full spread on the other tack. I observe in the official class mostly an insane jealousy of the smallest kind, as compared to which the artist's is of a grave, modest character - the actor's, even; a desire to extend his little authority, and to relish it like a glass of wine, that is IMPAYABLE. Sometimes, when I see one of these little kings strutting over one of his victories - wholly illegal, perhaps, and certain to be reversed to his shame if his superiors ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... book gets translated into English (I have been reading it in Henri Albert's French translation) it will assuredly be laughed at. I would hazard that it is the most conceited book ever written. Take our four leading actor-managers; extract from them all their conceit; multiply that conceit by the self-satisfaction of Mr. F.E. Smith, M.P., when he has made a joke; and raise the result to the Kaiser-power, and you will have something less than the cube-root of Nietzsche's conceit in this the last book ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... After the holidays he had always seen the last feats of Saltori, and heard the most recent strains of Tiralirini. He always went to a round of entertainments, and would make you laugh by the hour while he sang the songs or imitated the style of the last comic actor ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... private, and withdrawn from the knowledge of the many; where when this one point was agreed on, that the accused must be rescued whether by just or unjust means, every proposition that was most desperate was most approved; nor was an actor wanted for any deed however daring. Accordingly on the day of trial, when the people stood in the forum in anxious expectation, they at first began to feel surprised that the tribune did not come down; then when the delay was now becoming more suspicious, they considered that he ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... the harlequin, and drove the wind violently out of his puffed cheeks, so that they collapsed. By this he showed how his austerity loathed the clatter of the stage; for his ears were stopped with anger and open to no influence of delight. This reward, befitting an actor, punished an unseemly performance with a shameful wage. For Starkad excellently judged the man's deserts, and bestowed a shankbone for the piper to pipe on, requiting his soft service with a hard fee. ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... Heaven put it in her heart to do wrong, and she gave no thought to that sin, which has been the source of all our sorrows. Now, however, that you have convinced me by showing that you know all about our bed (which no human being has ever seen but you and I and a single maidservant, the daughter of Actor, who was given me by my father on my marriage, and who keeps the doors of our room) hard of belief though I have been ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... showed that the consequences would follow, whether he individually could foresee them or not. But, when words are used exactly, a deed is not done with intent to produce a consequence unless that consequence is the aim of the deed. It may be obvious, and obvious to the actor, that the consequence will follow, and he may be liable for it even if he regrets it, but he does not do the act with intent to produce it unless to aim to produce it is the proximate motive of the specific act, although there may be some ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... future, careless of the black and white stones; and even when you turn to the voluptuous beauty of the mouth, the impression remains so strong, that Russia's snows, and mountains of the slain, seem the tragedy that must naturally follow the appearance of such an actor. You turn from him, feeling that he is a product not of the day, but of the ages, and that the ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... were axactly performed, by the influence of spirits of different spheres. Every actor in the great drama was influenced by spirits for whose inspiration he was best prepared. But all that took place under the vigilance of the highest order of spirits for the accomplishment of prophecies. In Revelation, xvii: 10 the seven ...
— Secret Enemies of True Republicanism • Andrew B. Smolnikar
... little do we know about anything!—a scene like that might impress itself somehow upon the hidden heart of nature. I do not pretend to know how, but the repetition had struck me at the time as, in its terrible strangeness and incomprehensibility, almost mechanical,—as if the unseen actor could not exceed or vary, but was bound to re-enact the whole. One thing that struck me, however, greatly, was the likeness between the old minister and my boy in the manner of regarding these strange phenomena. Dr. Moncrieff was not terrified, as ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... drinker, a deaf sexton, an invalid captain, and an old woman. What fun it was, to be sure, and how we roared over the performance! Here is the playbill which I held in my hand nineteen years ago, while the great writer was proving himself to be as pre-eminent an actor as he was an author. One can see by reading the bill that Dickens was manager of the company, and that it was under his direction that the plays were produced. Observe the clear evidence of his hand in the very ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... I guess! It's Peter K. Tracey; yes, the one that has his name on so many four-sheet posters. Noticed how he always has 'em read, ain't you? "Mr. Peter K. Tracey presents Booth Keene, the sterling young actor." Never forgets that "Mr."; but, say, I knew him when he signed it just "P. Tracey," and chewed his tongue some ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... the teachers turned their attention to her manners and "form," and here lay Adelle's worst mental torture. That young teacher, "Rosy" Stevens, who had fetched her from B——, had this task. "Rosy," who was only thirty, was supposed to be having "a desperate affair of the heart" with an actor, which she discussed with the older girls. She was the most popular chaperone in the school because she was "dead easy" and connived at much that might have resulted scandalously. "Rosy" shared the ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... Johnson called him a mountebank. Robert Hall preached about the glories of heaven as no uninspired man ever preached about them, and it was said when he preached about heaven his face shone like an angel's, and yet good Christian John Foster writes of Robert Hall, saying: "Robert Hall is a mere actor, and when he talks about heaven the smile on his face is the reflection of his own vanity." John Wesley stirred all England with reform, and yet he was caricatured by all the small wits of his day. He was pictorialised, history says, on the board fences of ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... that, at the present time, after the lapse of a century, the same state of things practically obtain in the improved machines of to-day; Hargreaves' machine being represented by the system of intermittent spinning upon the improved self-actor mule, while Arkwright's water frame is represented by the system of continuous spinning upon the modern Ring Spinning frame. While weft yarn is now almost entirely produced on the mule, warp yarns are in many cases ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson
... busy spreading out his fishing-nets and lines. "It is my belief," he said, "that the pretty fellow yonder is some starveling play-actor without a brass farthing to ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... actor, accustomed to afford great delight to those deities who inhabit the one shilling galleries of English and Irish theatres, and to receive, himself, vast gratification from worshipping at the shrine of Bacchus. The daughter having given early indications of ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... actor to play Richard tolerably well; we can conceive no one to play Macbeth properly, or to look like a man that had encountered the Weird Sisters. All the actors that we have ever seen, appear as if they had encountered them on the hoards of Covent-garden or Drury-lane, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... cuarenta calabazas....—Para ahorrarme de razones,[70-6] dire que, como el judio de Shakespeare, llego al mas sublime paroxismo tragico, repitiendo freneticamente aquellas terribles palabras 15 de Shylock, en que tan admirable dicen que estaba el actor Kemble:[70-7] ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... effecting a G. O. Smithian dribble, cannoned into him. To preserve his balance—this will probably seem a very thin line of defence, but 'I state but the facts'—he grabbed at the disciple of Smith amidst applause, and at that precise moment a new actor appeared on the scene—the Headmaster. Now, of all the things that lay in his province, the Headmaster most disliked to see a senior 'ragging' with a junior. He had a great idea of the dignity of the senior school, and did all that in him lay to see that ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... think I see him still. And indeed I had cause to remember the man for the sake of his communication. It was hard enough to make a theory fit the circumstances of the Flying Scud; but one in which the chief actor should stand the least excused, and might retain the esteem or at least the pity of a man like Dr. Urquart, failed me utterly. Here at least was the end of my discoveries; I learned no more, till I learned all; and my reader has the evidence complete. Is he more ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... their State in reverential terms. To hear Maud Younger—known everywhere as the "millionaire waitress" and the most devoted labor-fan in the country—pronounce the word California, should be a lesson to any actor in emotional sound values. The thing that struck me most on my first visit to California was that boosting instinct. In store windows everywhere, I saw signs begging the passer-by to root for this development project or ...
— The Californiacs • Inez Haynes Irwin
... officer who had been in the same regiment. The latter was happy to meet his old messmate, but was ashamed to be seen with a player. He therefore hurried Bensley to an unfrequented coffee-house, where he asked him very seriously, "Hoo could ye disgrace the corps by turning a play-actor?" Mr. Bensley answered, that he by no means considered it in that light; on the contrary, that a respectable performer of good conduct was much esteemed, and kept the best company. "And what, man," said the other, "do ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... to fall in love with a little miss of sixteen. He taught her Latin and Greek—which was all very well—and married her, which was distinctly unwise. She had one son—my grandfather—and then ran away with an actor from London. After that she made a certain sensation on the stage, but I suspect she was clever enough to see that her real successes were personal ones; at all events, she made a good marriage as soon as ever she got the chance. The Hammerton ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... attended the Reformation at Montbeliard, where the indefatigable Farel was the chief actor. One of those highly dramatic incidents, in which the checkered life of this remarkable man abounds, is said to have preceded his withdrawal from the city. Happening, on St. Anthony's day, to meet, upon a bridge spanning a narrow ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... Osiris, but of his son Horus; but as the death and resurrection of the god were celebrated in many cities of Egypt, it is also possible that in some places the part of the god come to life was played by a living actor instead of by an image. Another Christian writer describes how the Egyptians, with shorn heads, annually lamented over a buried idol of Osiris, smiting their breasts, slashing their shoulders, ripping ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... presence, and the most considerable people of the city would do the like. When all was ready for the ceremony, the corpse was put into a coffin, with all her jewels and magnificent apparel. The cavalcade began, and, as second actor in this doleful tragedy, I went next to the corpse, with my eyes full of tears, bewailing my deplorable fate. Before I came to the mountain, I addressed myself to the king, in the first place, and then to all those who were round me, and bowing ...
— Fairy Tales From The Arabian Nights • E. Dixon
... is the study of the products rather than of the processes of thought. But, at the same time, in studying the products we are studying the processes in the only way in which it is possible to do so. For the human mind cannot be both actor and spectator at once; we must wait until a thought is formed in our minds before we can examine it. Thought must be already dead in order to be dissected: there is no vivisection of consciousness. Thus we can never know more of the ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... outsiders—Jack and I—can. Naturally there would be heaps of heart interest, all over the place, wherever Patty was; and that would be all right if Larry weren't simply followed around by it too, the way actor-managers are by the spotlight. When we were doing our delicious motor run around Long Island, getting acquainted with the old whalers, and Indian chieftains, and golfers and millionairesses, it was sweet to see how Pat was unconsciously taming our Stormy Petrel to eat out of her hand. Even Jack saw ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... something from her. Because she knew me, and knew that I would not do such a thing lightly, she was terrified. She would lie there, gazing at me, with a dumb fear in her eyes—and I would go on asseverating blindly, like an unsuccessful actor ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... heard of an actor, who when playing the lovers' parts, only thought of one of the spectators; he played for her alone, and forgot all the rest of the house; the polytechnic candidate was my her, my only spectator, for whom I played. And when the ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... in the afternoon made merry at my expense for carrying the harp, by getting up a hiss for the former gentleman, who knew not one single word of his part, and by hitting the latter individual upon the nose with an apple, for which latter feat (as the actor was a great favorite,) I was hounded out of the theatre, and narrowly escaped being carried to the watch-house. I and my fair friend then took lodgings for the night ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... perhaps the least poetic of these dramatists, was Thomas Heywood, of whom little is known, except that he was one of the most prolific writers the world has ever seen. In 1598 he became an actor, or, as Henslowe, who employed him, phrases it, "came and hired himself to me as a covenanted servant for two years." The date of his first published drama is 1601; that of his last published work, a "General History of Women," is 1657. As ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... ago, Mr. Mathews took his leave in a characteristic speech, partly humorous and partly serious; but the enthusiastic audience laughed and cheered him all the way through; and it was rather comic to read the newspaper report of next morning, and to find that the actor's passages of the softest pathos had been ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... Looks in her face, until she take her up? Ev'n as that girl, Patroclus, such art thou, Shedding soft tears: hast thou some tidings brought Touching the gen'ral weal, or me alone? Or have some evil news from Phthia come, Known but to thee? Menoetius, Actor's son, Yet surely lives; and 'mid his Myrmidons Lives aged Peleus, son of AEacus: Their deaths indeed might well demand our tears: Or weep'st thou for the Greeks, who round their ships By death their ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... himself admirably, perhaps more correctly than he imagined. He was more calculated to advise and contest than to exercise power. He was rather a great spectator and critic than an eminent political actor. In the ordinary course of affairs he would have been too absolute, too haughty, and too slow. In a crisis, I question whether his mental reservations, his scruples of conscience, his horror of all public excitement, and his prevailing dread of responsibility, ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... action, he took a sword from a stand of weapons near him, drew it from its scabbard and kissing the hilt, held it out to De Launay who did the same—"That is understood! And for the rest, Roger my friend, take it all lightly and easily—as a farce!—as a bit of human comedy, with a great actor cast for the chief role. We are only supers, you and I, but we shall do well to stand near the wings in case ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... that had been erected against the coming of Bud Larkin and his animals, the cowmen and their punchers were making ready for their night's battle. The chief actor in these fevered preparations was Beef Bissell, whose hatred of Larkin was something to frighten babies with ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... Prince sung; there were my two nieces, and Lord Waldegrave, Lord Huntingdon, and Mr. Morrison the groom, and the evening was pleasant; but I had a much more agreeable supper last night at Mrs. Clive's, with Miss West, my niece Cholmondeley, and Murphy, the writing actor, who is very good company, and two or three more. Mrs. Cholmondeley is very lively; you know how entertaining the Clive is, and Miss West ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... talk much; indeed there was very little conversation. What there was Callan supplied. He—spoke—very—slowly—and—very —authoritatively, like a great actor whose aim is to hold the stage as long as possible. The raising of his heavy eyelids at the opening door conveyed the impression of a dark, mental weariness; and seemed somehow to give additional length to his white nose. His short, brown beard was getting very grey, ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... taken by boys. No women appeared on the stage until the reign of Charles II. The Play began with the Prologue, spoken by an actor dressed in a long black velvet coat bowing very humbly to the audience. After the Play was over the clowns began to tumble and to sing. In short, a farce succeeded a tragedy. The time of performance was one o'clock, and the ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... in a theatre the eyes of men, After a well-graced actor leaves the stage, Are idly bent on him that enters next, Thinking his ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... destined in the course of time to eclipse the fame won by his father, and to endear himself to the American people as a more finished, if less stormy, actor. This was EDWIN BOOTH. He was born on his father's farm near Baltimore, Maryland, In 1833, and after receiving a good common-school education, began his training for the stage. The elder Booth was quick to see that his boy ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... plead a case before my father," "Nor I before my son," said two distinguished lawyers. "If mamma is in the room, I shall never be able to get through my part," said a young amateur actor. ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... the casual Jims and Bills were taken too suddenly to laugh, and the laugh having been lost, as Bland Holt, the Australian actor would put it in a professional sense, the audience had time to think, with the result that the joker swung his hand down through an ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... no book which can instruct one to read the human countenance correctly; and some special circumstance must have roused the suspicions of these four persons so much as to cause them to make these observations, and they were not as usual deceived by the humbug of this skilled actor, a past master in ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... "dance" which I also saw, with the same bird as principal actor, seems to me another phase of the wooing, though I must say it resembled a war-dance as well; but love is so like war among the lower orders, even of men, that it is hard to distinguish between them. ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... Lyttelton, who, both as a Lady of the Bedchamber and Governess to the royal children, knew the Queen and Prince well—has recorded her impression of the chief actor in the scene. "The Queen's look and manner were very pleasing, her eyes much swollen with tears, but great happiness in her countenance, and her look of confidence and comfort at the Prince when they walked away as man and wife was very ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... scheme in mind I did not like, I used to encourage him to talk about it, knowing that he thus would be satisfied, without acting. He lives almost altogether in the head and in the imagination, and is really a teacher, in his own peculiar way, rather than an actor or practical man. That is why he takes offence at what seems to me such little things: they are not little to him, in his scheme of things, which is not the scheme of the world, and, alas! not even mine, I fear. He is so terribly ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... intellectual gains of former ages and other nations. Honour, too, to our King, and, that I may be just, to his illustrious wife; for wherever in the Grecian world a friend of the Muses appears, whether he is investigator, poet, architect, sculptor, artist, actor, or singer, he is drawn to Alexandria, and, that he may not be idle, work is provided. Palaces spring ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers |
