"Elocution" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... figurative elocution of the Indian, so far from affording evidence of oratorical power, if it proves anything, proves the opposite. It is the barrenness of his language, and not the luxuriance of his imagination, which enforces that mode of speech.[16] Imagination is the first element of oratory, simplicity ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... college men—original orations on woman suffrage—resulted in a $20 prize to Edwin Hahn of Pomona College, five young men participating. Clare, daughter of Judge C. C. McComas, gave highly-appreciated recitations on the woman question, and Miss Nina Cuthbert, the young teacher of elocution, delighted many audiences with her readings ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... general seems to have been formed and ripened by familiarity with the harmonies of the Italian language. In his Tractate on Education addressed to Mr. Hartlib, he recommends that boys should be instructed in the Italian pronunciation of vowel sounds, in order to give sonorousness and dignity to elocution. This slight indication supplies us with a key to the method of melodious structure employed by Milton in his blank verse. Those who have carefully studied the harmonies of the 'Paradise Lost,' know how all-important are the assonances of the vowel ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... recent revivals of A Midsummer Night's Dream and the Taming of the Shrew at the Globe Theatre show how pleasing Shakspearian representations may be made, even when their success depends less upon elocution than scenic effect. The first of these plays was simply delightful, with its fairy glades and "built-up" temples. The last, too, is well off for "cloths," pleasingly representing Padua and Verona. The performers (with the exception of Mr. STEPHEN PHILLIPS, who speaks his lines ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 1, 1890 • Various
... it manifested. But he died within two months after, and in him we lost a powerful fellow-laborer. His character was of a high order. A spotless integrity, sound judgment, handsome imagination, enriched by education and reading, quick and clear in his conceptions, of correct and ready elocution, impressing every hearer with the sincerity of the heart from which it flowed. His firmness was inflexible in whatever he thought was right: but when no moral principle stood in the way, never had man more of the milk of human kindness, of indulgence, of softness, of pleasantry ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... thought of this waste of magnificent abilities. Months, perhaps years, pass by and you again find yourself listening to this celebrated preacher, but what a change! The same faultless diction, the same beautiful style, the same unimpeachable logic, the same skillful elocution, the same sound orthodoxy, but now there is something more, there is reality, life, grip, power in the preaching. Men and women sit breathless as he speaks, sinners bowed with tears of contrition, ...
— The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit • R. A. Torrey
... called upon a solicitor to read the conditions of sale. The solicitor complied and made a distressing exhibition of self-consciousness. The conditions of sale were very lengthy, and apparently composed in a foreign tongue; and the audience listened to this elocution with a stoical pretence ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... in the speech of the Learned Blacksmith, in the ordinary sense of that word, no grace of elocution, but mighty thoughts radiating off from his heated mind, like sparks from the glowing steel of his ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... one day, "I wish I had a place of my own. What is the reason I can't? A girl can go in for Art, and set up a studio; or she can go to Rome, and sculp, and study; she can learn elocution, and read, whether people want to be read to or not; and all that is Progress and Woman's Rights; why can't she ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... for James Otis and sermons for Whitefield should have made her a sharper detective of the ingenuity of others. Those successful imitations, published originally in her novel of "The Rebels," have hardly yet ceased to pass current in the school elocution-books. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... by conversation. He that buries himself among his manuscripts, "besprent," as Pope expresses it, "with learned dust," and wears out his days and nights in perpetual research and solitary meditation, is too apt to lose in his elocution what he adds to his wisdom; and when he comes into the world, to appear overloaded with his own notions, like a man armed with weapons which he cannot wield. He has no facility of inculcating his speculations, of adapting ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... the back of the chest, with a speakin' tube runnin' up to the mouth. John Henry bein' a regular minister, he can get the Homiletic Review at a dollar and a half a year; we can subscribe for that, get the up-to-datest sermons by the most distinguished divines, get some gent that's afflicted with elocution to say 'em into a record, and on Sunday our friend and pastor here will reel 'em off fine. You press the button—he does the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... married to my grandfather, Glen Cuyler, who was the principal lawyer of the village, and their eldest son was my father, Benjamin Ledyard Cuyler. He became a student of Hamilton College, excelled in elocution, and was a room-mate of the Hon. Gerrit Smith, afterward eminent as the champion of anti-slavery. On a certain Sabbath, the student just home from college was called upon to read a sermon in the village church of Aurora, in the ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... and credit of the pulpit. It is possible, therefore, that the pulpit betrays its weak point, and needs the comparison which it deprecates. A man of brains will gratefully receive suggestions from any quarter. That impulses to a more familiar and direct style of sermonizing, a brighter and better elocution, and a bolder utterance of personal convictions, have come to the pulpit from the platform, there is no question. This feeling on the part of preachers is by no means universal, however; for some of them have long regarded the lecture with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... a charity," said the former, "if some philanthropist would give this blighter elocution lessons. Can you ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... say that I saw Dr. Macdonald once and heard him speak. His venerable aspect and chaste elocution made a powerful impression on all who heard him. His discourse could not be reported in cold print, for the flash of the mystic's eye, the human kindness that emanated from his whole being, and the felt emotion of his every tone could not be reproduced ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... same with her reading. She had had drill enough to make her elocution passable; her voice was clear and sweet; she had a natural knack, as we have seen, for speaking to the galleries. When there was a sensational, dramatic point to make, she could make it after her external fashion, strongly. The deep magnetism—the electric thrill of soul-reality—these ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... gaieties too of all sorts. They had dined at Ullathorne, and the Thornes had dined at the rectory. Eleanor had been duly put to stand on her box, and in that position had found herself quite unable to express her opinion on the merits of flounces, such having been the subject given to try her elocution. Mr Arabin had of course been much in his own parish, looking to the doings at his vicarage, calling on his parishioners, and taking on himself the duties of his new calling. But still he had been every evening at Plumstead, and Mrs Grantly was partly willing to agree with her ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... only in what is termed the "reading" of a part, but also in the technique of his execution. If to become a mere walking, talking machine, be the object of a beginner, by all means let him be instructed in calisthenics and elocution, and the art of first-night speech-making; but to call such a combination of classes a School of Dramatic Art is degrading; it robs the calling of its highest attribute—imagination. Innate ability must undoubtedly be developed, "which nobody can deny," but such an institution as is suggested ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... stood also between her and the friends and distractions that she would like to have. Why shouldn't that queer man, Mr. Strozzi, who lived down below, and whose name she could not pronounce, come and sit sometimes of an evening, and amuse her and the children? He was a "Professor of Elocution," and said and sung comic pieces. He was very civil and obliging too; she liked him. Yet Miss Boyce was evidently astonished that she could make friends with him, and Minta perfectly understood the lift of her dark eyebrows whenever she came in and found ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... is that one short unaccented vowel is very likely to be mistaken, for another, especially by the uneducated and by careless speakers. The hearer cannot detect the difference, and in fact there is none, practically. The extremely accurate and discriminating elocution of which we hear was in all probability confined ...
— Latin Pronunciation - A Short Exposition of the Roman Method • Harry Thurston Peck
... enthusiastic clapping when Miss Celia sat down, but even while hands applauded, consciences pricked, and undone tasks, complaining words and sour faces seemed to rise up reproachfully before many of the children, as well as their own faults of elocution. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... was, unfortunately for his brave followers, not seconded by the powerful voice of Lord George Murray. Lochiel, who was not a man given to much elocution, recommended delay, and urged that the army would be at least fifteen hundred stronger on the following day. The return of the army to Culloden, fatigued and famished, between five and six o'clock on the following morning, was the result of that ill-advised attempt. At eight o'clock ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... In the just delivery of poetical numbers, particularly where the sentiments are pathetic, it is scarce credible upon how minute an article of sound depends their greatest beauty or inaffection. The voice of a singer is not more strictly tied to time and tune than that of an actor in theatrical elocution. The least syllable too long, or too slightly dwelt upon in a period, depreciates it to nothing; which very syllable, if rightly touched, shall, like the heightening stroke of light from a master's pencil, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... with its Saracen arches and priceless mosaics, and the ancient oriental-looking Norman church of S. Giovanni degli Eremite. Dulcie, who had been learning Longfellow's Robert of Sicily for her last recitation in the elocution class at school, was much thrilled, and wanted to know in which of the churches he had made his famous defiance of Heaven, and had been turned from his throne by the angel, who temporarily took his place as king till he repented of his vain glory. ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... velvet costume which seems to be the only alternative to white muslin for ladies who aspire to be considered historic. Not Marie Stuart herself could have become it better than Lola Montez. Her face, air, attitude, and elocution are thoroughly and bewilderingly feminine. Perhaps her smartest and happiest remark was the one in which, with a pretty affectation, she says, "If I were a gentleman, I should like an American young lady to flirt with, ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... Tennyson's of the poem as a rhythmical whole; his delivery had more affinity to that of an actor, laying stress on all the light and shade of the composition—its touches of character, the conversational points, its dramatic give-and-take. In those qualities of elocution in which Tennyson was strong, and aimed to be strong, Browning was contentedly weak; and vice versa."[146] Sometimes, like another great poet, Pope, he was deeply affected by the passion of beauty or heroism or pathos in what he read, and could not control his feelings. ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... hardship would appear in the first recitation of the day before breakfast following chapel exercises. Three classes were held daily except on Saturday, when there was only one recitation and an exercise in elocution. ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... bottomless are even his finished sentences. We have known "old stagers," in the newspaporial line, veteran reporters, so dumbfounded and confounded by the first fire of Ralph, and his grand and lofty acrobating in elocution, that they up, seized their hat and paper, and sloped, horrified at the prospect of an attempt to "take ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... easier henceforward for any woman who felt she had something to say to stand up and say it. I felt very nervous, and as if my knees were giving way; but I did not show any nervousness. I read the lecture, but most of the quotations I recited from memory. Not having had any lessons in elocution, I trusted to my natural voice, and felt that in this new role the less gesticulation I used the better. Whether the advice of Demosthenes is rightly translated or not—first requisite, action; second, ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... Hill school, then in the Young Men's Guild connected with the church, and some of us members of the choir. At the Guild meetings on Sunday nights, the chaplain, Father Nugent, an Irishman, but, like most of ourselves, born out of his own country, used to delight in teaching us elocution, and encouraging us to write essays, besides putting other means ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... seemed to be, he understood, or rather felt, with whom it was necessary to be reserved, and with whom he might safely venture to be communicative. The consequence was that he did what Mordaunt, with all his vivacity and invention, or Burnet, with all his multifarious knowledge and fluent elocution never ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Billina's chickens gobbled it up. A few minutes afterward this chick got upon a roost and recited 'The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck' without making a single mistake. Then it recited 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' and afterwards 'Excelsior.' You see, the chicken had eaten an Elocution Pill." ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... Alexandre de Calonne (1734-1802); statesman, financier, and pamphleteer. On the 3rd of November, 1783, he was made Controller-General, but lost the post in 1787. "A man of incredible facility, facile action, facile elocution, facile thought. . . . in her Majesty's soirees, with the weight of a world lying on him, he is the delight of men and women." (Carlyle, "French Revolution," book ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... possessed a good share of that frank and manly eloquence which touches the heart of the soldier more than the parade of rhetoric or the finest flow of elocution. He was a soldier himself, and partook in all the feelings of the soldier, his joys, his hopes, and his disappointments. He was not raised by rank and education above sympathy with the humblest of his followers. Every chord in their bosoms vibrated with the same pulsations as ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... honesty, indeed, and English industry, and kindness of heart, and general idea of justice; but faith, of any national kind, shut up from one Sunday to the next, not artistically beautiful even in those Sabbatical exhibitions; its paraphernalia being chiefly of high pews, heavy elocution, and cold ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... whole passage in a sing-song tone, accompanied by a few crude gestures recalled from long-ago school-boy elocution. Josephine knew what was coming. Every time David proposed to her he had begun by reciting poetry. She twirled her towel around the last plate resignedly. If it had to come, the sooner it was over ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... often recurring where it is not expected, and not being found where it is, creates no small confusion to the Reader,—who, as we have not seldom observed, beginning in all the solemnity of poetic elocution, is by frequent disappointments of the rhyme, at last obliged to drawl out the uncomplying ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... conventional restraint, and an utterance, whatever may be the power of voice, at least expressive of a strong individuality; and you find instead a Christ Church man of ten years' standing, who has not yet taken orders; his dress and manner derived from his college tutor, and his elocution from the chapel-reader." ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... nineteen. He was telling her what a high profession the actor's was, how great he was as an actor, how commonplace her life there, how beautiful he could make it if only he had money. It was an experience to hear Mr. Feuerstein say the word "money." Elocution could go no further in surcharging five letters with contempt. His was one of those lofty natures that scorn all such matters of intimate concern to the humble, hard-pressed little human animal as food, clothing and shelter. ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips
... been a-working in this theatre, and we've never seen the colour of your honour's money: we will be very much obliged if you'll pay it directly, for until you do we won't drive in another nail." Sir Richard said that his friend's elocution was perfect, but that he didn't like ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... repeat so fluently when they are enduring oppression, and forget so easily when they are able to retaliate it. Indeed he rehearsed his lesson so well, that those who chanced to hear him on this subject gave him credit for much more sense and much readier elocution than he really possessed. His professions imposed on some charitable persons, and perhaps imposed on himself. But his zeal for the rights of conscience ended with the predominance of the Whig party. When fortune changed, when he was no longer afraid that others would ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... gown on a high-arch form, who in flute-like notes renders one of those French ballads that's full of la-las and is supposed to be devilish and naughty because nobody can understand it. For the finish, some person addicted to elocution usually recites a poem to piano accompaniment. The poem Robert of Sicily is much used for these purposes, and whenever I hear it Robert invariably has my deepest sympathy and so has Sicily. Toward midnight a cold collation ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... perfection comes from experience, and how unity is the last effort of judgment. When Fox meditated on a history which should last with the language, he met his evil genius in this new province. The rapidity and the fire of his elocution were extinguished by a pen unconsecrated by long and previous study; he saw that he could not class with the great historians of every great people; he complained, while he mourned over the fragment of ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... their voices and deportment was such as no great festal occasion evokes. The royal speech referred to the cause of this excitement, and when her majesty assured the assembled senators that she was determined to preserve "the rights of her crown, and the independence of the nation," her elocution was at once so precise, emphatic, and animated, as to cause an unusual sensation among her hearers; and when the passage was read by the general public, accompanied by the fervent panegyrics of the press, the public zeal against the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... conscience would have smitten him for a laugh almost as soon as for an oath. His hair was roached up, and stood as erect and upright as his body; and his voice was slow, deep, in "linked sweetness long drawn out," and modulated according to the camp-meeting standard of elocution. Three such men at a country frolic would have turned an old Virginia reel into a dead march. He was one of Carlyle's earnest men. Cromwell would have made him ensign of the Ironsides, and ex-officio chaplain at first sight. He took out his pocket-handkerchief, slowly unfolded it from the shape ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... rightly you must imitate the masters of oral speech. Listen to the best conversationalists and how they express themselves. Go to hear the leading lectures, speeches and sermons. No need to imitate the gestures of elocution, it is nature, not art, that makes the elocutionist and the orator. It is not how a speaker expresses himself but the language which he uses and the manner of its use which should interest you. Have you heard the present day masters of speech? There have ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... have almost invariably possessed qualities that would have made them successful mimics on the stage. For his mastery of oratorical artifices Alexander Wedderburn was greatly indebted to Sheridan, the lecturer on elocution, and to Macklin, the actor, from both of whom he took lessons; and when he had dismissed his teachers and become a leader of the English bar he adhered to their rules, and daily practised before a looking-glass the facial ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... proposed to open a "Permanent Commercial School," at 148 Fulton Street, and advertised to teach the usual branches "in the inductive method." His advertisement set forth that his pupils would be taught "reading, elocution, penmanship, and arithmetic; algebra; astronomy, history, and geography; moral philosophy, commercial law, and political economy; English grammar and composition, and, also, if required, the French and Spanish languages by natives of ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... or important. Or the student may describe his personal observation of any event, invention, manufacture, or what not; or report upon the condition, history, or prospects of any art, trade, or business undertaking. This not to teach elocution, but to train the student to think while standing, and to express himself ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various
... men! Shy people are always distrustful of their powers and look upon their lack of confidence as a weakness or lack of ability, when it may indicate quite the reverse. By teaching children early the arts of social life, such as boxing, horseback riding, dancing, elocution, and similar accomplishments, we may do much to overcome ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... voice soft and musical, and with the natural and easy elocution he inherited from his father; "Sire, it is not from to-day that ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... terror; the sentences seemed terribly severe, and out of all proportion to the offences. Suddenly his own name was called. His name had been called in public places before: at the school exhibitions, where he had taken prizes in elocution and composition; in church, once, when the minister had mentioned him for peculiar efficiency and zeal among other Sabbath-school teachers. It was sacred to him for his father's sake, who fell in the war, and who ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... school," said she. "School can't keep without me. And I'm going over to Sudleigh, every Saturday, to take elocution lessons. I'm having my own way, and I'm happy as a clam. Now, why can't you come and live with me? You said you would, the very day ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... cost much to print and publish. But I have heard my father, who was his bailiff, say that he was a pleasant man, and was fond of reciting old scraps of poetry, which he did with great energy; indeed, Mr. Darrell declares that it was the noticing, in his father's animated and felicitous elocution, the effects that voice, look, and delivery can give to words, which made Mr. Darrell himself the fine speaker he is. But I can only recollect the antiquary as a very majestic gentleman, with a long pigtail—awful, rather, not so much so as his son, but still awful—and so sad-looking; you ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Elocution has, for some years past, been an object of attention in the most respectable schools in this country. A laudable ambition of instructing youth in the pronunciation and delivery of their native language, has made English speeches a very conspicuous part of those exhibitions of oratory which ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... lecturer was a fine figure of a man: his knee-breeches and silk stockings set all the women talking, and he spoke with suave authority. Even the dullest had to admit that his elocution was excellent, and the manner of speech is keenly appreciated in America. In some of the Eastern towns, in New York especially, he had a certain success, the success of sensation and of novelty, such success as every large capital gives to the ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... most renowned preacher of our age as soon as I should have grown fat—a quality which I certainly could not boast of, for at that time I was extremely thin. I had not the shadow of a fear as to my voice or to my elocution, and for the matter of composing my sermon I felt myself equal to ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... of form and grace of carriage and movement. He had a charm about him of a sort quite unusual to my Western ignorance and inexperience—a charm of manner, intonation, apparently native and unstudied elocution, and all that—the groundwork of it native, the ease of it, the polish of it, the winning naturalness of it, acquired in Europe where he had been Charge d'Affaires some time at the Court of Vienna. He was joyous and cordial, a most pleasant comrade. ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... with an energy of utterance, and a fitness of speech, which would have put to shame the general elocution of both the pulpit and the bar. At length, however, a certain semi (second-classman, or more popularly sheep) stood up to give his opinion on some subject in dispute, and attempting to speak too soon after his dinner, for he was one of the more fashionable order, hemmed and stammered till ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... education and to encourage literature. He restored the colleges founded by the Tangs, he built a school or academy in every town, he directed the public examinations to be held impartially and frequently, and he gave special prizes as a reward for elocution. Some of the greatest historians China has produced lived in his reign, and wrote their works under his patronage; of these Szemakwang was the most famous. His history of the Tangs is a masterpiece, and his "Garden ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... soon appeared that he was more disposed to communicate information than to seek it; and I became a patient listener. If the boldness and strangeness of his opinions occasionally startled me, I could not but admire the clearness with which he stated his propositions, the fervour of his elocution, and the plausibility of ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... omitted in the Treatise. The nod is given to elocution. Invention is discussed, but only as a tool to assist the communicator in amplifying his ideas, as a means to spin out his thoughts to extreme lengths. Arrangement, memory, and delivery are overlooked. Accordingly, the Treatise neatly fits into ...
— A Treatise of Schemes and Tropes • Richard Sherry
... given to the scientific style whenever the chief consideration is not only the result, but also the proofs. But when the result merely is of the most essential importance the advantage must be given to popular elocution and fine language. But it may be asked in what cases ought popular elocution to rise to a fine, a noble style? This depends on the degree of interest in the reader, or which you wish to ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... himself, apparently oppressed by the weightiness of the occasion and the responsibility of offering an unfamiliar brand of goods to his public, had dropped his customary debonair method of delivering lines and was mouthing his speeches. It was good gargling, but bad elocution. And, for some reason best known to himself, he had entrusted the role of the heroine to a doll-like damsel with a lisp, of whom the audience disapproved sternly from ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... Polyhymnia most delicious Mayd, In Rhetoricks Flowers that art arayd, In Tropes and Figures, richly drest, The Fyled Phrase that louest best, 460 That art all Elocution, and The first that gau'st to vnderstand The force of wordes in order plac'd And with a ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... the errors of phrenology, demonstrating the science by his own experiments, and applying its principles in the treatment of disease, in experimental investigation, in education, self-culture, and elocution. This may satisfy the urgent present demand, until time shall permit a satisfactory work, containing the illustrations and proofs, the important modern discoveries in cerebral anatomy and vivisecting experiments, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... conversation with a conscious leer, and begged there might be no rupture between the spirit and the flesh. By this remonstrance he relieved Obadiah from the satire of this female orator, and brought the whole vengeance of her elocution upon his own head. "Flesh!" cried she, with all the ferocity of an enraged Thalestris; "none of your names, Mr. Yellowchaps. What! I warrant you have an antipathy to flesh, because you yourself are nothing but skin and bone. I suppose you are some poor starved journeyman tailor come from France, ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... with a passionate ardor such parts as Hamlet, Romeo, and Richard III. With the wonderful intuition of an art-nature, she seems to have felt that the cultivation of the voice was a first essential to success. She ransacked her father's library for works on elocution, and discovering on one occasion "Rush on the Voice," proceeded, for many weeks before it became known to her parents, to commence under its guidance the task of building up a somewhat weak and ineffective organ into a voice capable ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... desire, Inclinable now grown to touch or taste, Sollicited her longing eye; yet first Pausing a while, thus to her self she mus'd. Great are thy Vertues, doubtless, best of Fruits, Though kept from Man, & worthy to be admir'd, Whose taste, too long forborn, at first assay Gave elocution to the mute, and taught The Tongue not made for Speech to speak thy praise: Thy praise hee also who forbids thy use, 750 Conceales not from us, naming thee the Tree Of Knowledge, knowledge both of good and evil; Forbids us then to ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... lectures, base-ball, French, pigeon-shooting, elocution, kites, composition, nutting, and the academy debating society; and the list of the future demands upon their time grew as they talked, until ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard
... rightly, that the personality overshadowed the art. No such criticism would be fair now. The somewhat harsh angularity of movement and faulty pronunciation have been replaced by exquisite grace of gesture and clear precision of word, where such precision is necessary. For delightful as good elocution is, few things are so depressing as to hear a passionate passage recited instead of being acted. The quality of a fine performance is its life more than its learning, and every word in a play has ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... whose Politics for the People or Hogswash (1794) took its title from the fact that Burke called the people the "swinish multitude." The book resulted in sending the author to the Tower for sedition. In 1798 he gave up politics and started a school of elocution which became very famous. Thomas Hardy (1752-1832), who kept a bootmaker's shop in Piccadilly, was a fellow prisoner with Thelwall, being arrested for high treason. He was founder (1792) of The London Corresponding Society, a kind of clearing house for radical associations throughout the country. ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... of dollars on that girl's education," Madam continued, "and what do you suppose she elected to specialize in? 'Expression'! In my day they called it elocution. When a girl was too dumb to learn anything else, the teacher got money out of her parents by teaching her to swing her arms around her hear and say, 'Curfew Shall Not Ring To-night.' Now they all want to write poetry, or play the flute, or go on the stage, ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... advantage. The water of the Orne is rather nauseous, but is not considered unwholesome. The Palais de Justice is a fine modern structure. In its courts of law, I had again an opportunity of hearing the forensic elocution of Normandy. The gestures, and vehemence of the orators here, as at Rouen, appeared to me to be tinctured with the extravagance of frenzy. But perhaps my ears, and eyes have been rendered somewhat too fastidious by having been frequently banqueted with the grace, animation, and ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... rest of the company followed the Ablewhites, till we had the whole tale of them complete. Including the family, they were twenty-four in all. It was a noble sight to see, when they were settled in their places round the dinner-table, and the Rector of Frizinghall (with beautiful elocution) rose and said grace. ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... target naval fashion, but he had done so well that he was kept at it. His latest sonnet was to an abstract girl somewhere in France which the Socialist, who was a man of critical judgment in everything and of a rollicking disposition, praised very highly and read aloud with the elocution ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... imperfection of sympathy (the question of Waterloo apart) rested, it was impossible not to feel, on his so resenting the dishonour suffered at our hands by his beautiful tongue, to which, as the great field of elocution, he was patriotically devoted. I think he fairly loathed our closed English vowels and confused consonants, our destitution of sounds that he recognised as sounds; though why in this connection he put up best with our own compatriots, embroiled at that time often in even ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... pursuits of literature; [21a] he was ignorant of the Greek language, and the arts of rhetoric; but as the mind of the orator was never disconcerted by timid perplexity, he was able, as often as the occasion prompted him, to deliver his decided sentiments with bold and ready elocution. The laws of martial discipline were the only laws that he had studied; and he was soon distinguished by the laborious diligence, and inflexible severity, with which he discharged and enforced the duties of the camp. In the time of Julian ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... was a man of mark, he could not help feeling that Crusoe was complimented by his attention. He picked out his place, as his hearer had advised him, and plunged into the details of the cannibal feast with pride and determination. Though his elocution may have been of a style peculiar to beginners and his pronunciation occasionally startling in its originality, still Sammy gathered the gist of the story. He puffed at his pipe so furiously that the foreign gentleman's turbaned head ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... "I drink propitiation to you as a profissional gintle-man! No man uses more indepindent language than you do. You are under no earthly obligation to Messrs. Syntax and Prosody. Grammar, my worthy friend, is banished as an intruder from your elocution, just as you would exclude a ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... having their eleven o'clock meal, and as they ate their bread and cheese, Fat Jack, the stone-cutter, read to them one of Mr. John Bright's speeches. The Squire did not exactly know, or care to know, who Mr. John Bright might be, but he gathered enough from Fat Jack's guttural elocution to cause uneasiness. He declared that if ever the postman brought such a thing into the village again he would never allow a letter to be delivered on his estate. But with all this bluster, the common people knew ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... no repose in her Hamlet, though there were moments of leaden lapse which suggested physical exhaustion; and there was no range in her elocution expressive of the large vibration of that tormented spirit. Her voice dropped out, or jerked itself out, and in the crises of strong emotion it was the voice of a scolding or a hysterical woman. At times her movements, which she must have studied ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... most blase people in England? I had never heard either of the preachers speak in public, but—I looked out over that assemblage, and I was horribly afraid for my friends. A Church of England clergyman and a Nonconformist minister from Canada, and I told myself they had never had so much as an elocution lesson ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... Speaker & Model Elocutionist is beyond all question the best from an Elocutionary point of view. Of the 500 or more selections there is not one that is not available for reading on any desired occasion. The treatise on Acting, Delsarte, Elocution, Oratory and Physical Culture is by the professor of these departments in the Missouri State University, while its mechanical make-up is that of a work of art, for the text and half-tone illustrations are the best made. No home, school, church, club, literary society, lodge or library is complete ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... platform almost motionless; his voice was clear and sweet, never noisy, but subtly penetrating and, when the sense demanded it, full of that mysterious quality which makes the blood run more swiftly and the nerves tingle. "Merely a talker, not an orator," declared the professor of elocution, and few of those who saw him every day appreciated his genius then. It was on the subject-matter of his oration, not on his "delivery," that the judges decided for ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... many cases. Lord Althorp has the temper of Lord North with the principles of Romilly. If he had the oratorical powers of either of those men, he might do anything. But his understanding, though just, is slow, and his elocution painfully defective. It is, however, only justice to him to say that he has done more service to the Reform Bill even as a debater than all the other Ministers ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... we can never Straighten out life's tangled skein, Why should we, in vain endeavor, Guess and guess and guess again? Life's a pudding full of plums; Care's a canker that benumbs. Wherefore waste our elocution On impossible solution? Life's a pleasant institution, Let us take it as ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... has no way of showing any one good quality, or of making a single friend. In the House, he votes for ever in a dispirited minority. If he speaks, the doors are locked. A body of loquacious placemen go out to tell the world, that all he aims at, is to get into office. If he has not the talent of elocution, which is the case of many as wise and knowing men as any in the House, he is liable to all these inconveniences, without the eclat which attends upon any tolerably successful exertion of eloquence. Can we conceive a more discouraging post of duty than this? Strip it of the poor reward ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... interests what we have already done in Panama. If, instead of acting as this nation did in the Fall of 1903, we had confined ourselves to debates in Congress and diplomatic notes; if, in other words, we had treated elocution as a substitute for action, we would have done nobody any good, and for ourselves we would have earned the hearty derision of all other nations—the canal would not even have been begun at the present day, and there would have been a general consensus of international ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... have been something quite out of the ordinary; after years of reverential study, he could not read the Greek Testament without a lexicon and grammar at his elbow. He gave a great deal of time to the practice of elocution and oratory. At certain hours their frail domicile—it had been thinly built for the academic poor and sat upon concrete blocks in lieu of a foundation—re-echoed with his hoarse, overstrained voice, declaiming his own orations or ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... la grande poesie?" asked Christine of G.J., who did not reply. Christine, though she condemned Alice as now disgusting, had been taken aback and, in spite of herself, much impressed by the surprising display of elocution. ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... Mr. IRVING'S earlier performance remarked a gain in depth and fire and a happier restraint of mannerism. It was a very notable and gracious piece of work. He has the player's first gift, an arresting personality. His elocution has distinction. He conveys the beauty of the words and the richness of the packed thought thoughtfully. The complex play of action and motive—the purpose blunted by overmuch thinking, the spurs to dull revenge, the self-contempt, the assumed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 2, 1917 • Various
... humour, moderation of character, judgment, and a most sensitive tact. His qualities and his limitations alike appear in the Spectator. For example, he tells us that he wishes that country clergymen would borrow the sermons of great divines, and devote all their own efforts to acquiring a good elocution: [Footnote: Spectator 106.] here we detect the practical moralist and the man who likes a thing good of its kind, but not the enthusiast. He upholds the observance of Sunday on account of its social influences rather than for its religious meaning; [Footnote: Spectator 112.] Swift's ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... If Mr. Edwin Forrest, the Tragedian, thinks that more effect can be produced by reading Tragedy than can be by reading from Scripture, Mr. Nazro, Instructor of Elocution, from Roundhill School, would deny it fully, and offers to meet him, Mr. Forrest, in any town in the United States, and read from Scripture, and Mr. Forrest shall ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 4: Quaint and Curious Advertisements • Henry M. Brooks
... the first mayor of Boston, and was a year younger than Theodore Parker. He went the way of all well-to-do Boston youth through Harvard, graduating there in 1831, without distinguishing himself particularly, except by his skill in debate and his finished elocution. During one of the revivals of religion which followed the settlement of Dr. Lyman Beecher at Boston, he became a convert, and this marked the beginning of his interest in the great moral question of the day, slavery. It soon ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... critical assembly like the Athenians, is one of the most memorable circumstances in the general history of self-education. Repeated humiliation and repulse only spurred him on to fresh solitary efforts for improvement. He corrected his defective elocution by speaking with pebbles in his mouth; he prepared himself to overcome the noise of the assembly by declaiming in stormy weather on the sea-shore of Phalerum; he opened his lungs by running, and extended his powers of holding ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... that of Gilbert need surprise us no less; even William writes a remarkable letter for a young man of such slender opportunities. One anecdote marks the taste of the family. Murdoch brought TITUS ANDRONICUS, and, with such dominie elocution as we may suppose, began to read it aloud before this rustic audience; but when he had reached the passage where Tamora insults Lavinia, with one voice and "in an agony of distress" they refused to ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the suppliant voice; How nations sink, by darling schemes oppress'd, When Vengeance listens to the fool's request; Fate wings with every wish the afflictive dart, Each gift of Nature, and each grace of Art, With fatal heat impetuous courage glows, With fatal sweetness elocution flows, Impeachment stops the speaker's powerful breath, And restless ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... celebrated actor SATYRUS, in order to show him how much grace, dignity, and action add to the celebrity of a public man, repeated to him several passages from Sophocles and Euripides, which so delighted and astonished Demosthenes that he always afterwards formed his elocution and action on the models ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... had never before beheld this seamstress from King Street, Westminster, but she must have been familiar with the handsome figure of one who had drunk many a brimming glass at the Mitre Tavern. Thus, when he made bold to praise her elocution, she was not offended, and, although she ignored his request to continue the "Scornful Lady," Anne proved sufficiently mistress of the interruption to astonish the intruder by her "discourse and sprightly wit." That innate breeding, of which no amount of poverty could deprive ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... writer has opinions. The old lady from Colchester was right to sun her simple soul in the energetic radiance of Bradlaugh's genuine beliefs and disbeliefs rather than in the chill of such mere painting of light and heat as elocution and convention can achieve. My contempt for belles lettres, and for amateurs who become the heroes of the fanciers of literary virtuosity, is not founded on any illusion of mind as to the permanence of those forms of thought (call them opinions) by which I strive to communicate ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... (Nay, his mere knuckles, for more ease) To rap a few short sentences; Or if, for want of proper keys, His Greek might make confusion, Then just to get a rap from Burke, To recommend a little work On Public Elocution. 610 Meanwhile, the spirits made replies To all the reverent whats and whys, Resolving doubts of every size, And giving seekers grave and wise, Who came to know their destinies, A rap-turous reception; When unbelievers void of grace Came to investigate the place, (Creatures of Sadducistic ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... will suffer little diminution by the publication of these specimens of his rare powers of statement, argument, and illustration. To the general reader, they are, to be sure, deprived of the fascination of his voice and manner; but as the peculiarities of his elocution have their source in the peculiarities of his mental and moral organization, it will be found that the style and structure of these printed sermons suggest the mule of their delivery, which is simply ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... said; "they are too monotonous, too singsong, to dead-and-alive; they have no expression, no elocution. It isn't natural; it could never happen in real life. A person who had just acquired a dog is either blame' glad or blame' sorry. He is not on the fence. I never saw a case. What the nation do you suppose is the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Baghdad man. Furthermore Allah had blessed him with a son of perfect beauty and brilliancy; rosy-cheeked, fair of face and well-figured, whom he named Ali of Cairo, and had taught the Koran and science and elocution and the other branches of polite education, till he became proficient in all manner of knowledge. He was under his father's hand in trade but, after a while, Hasan fell sick and his sickness grew upon him, till he made sure of death; so he called his son ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... laughingly: "Hedrick HAS written some rhymes for the county papers, and Sweeney once introduced him, at an Old Settlers' Meeting, as 'The Best Poet in Center Township,' and never cracked a smile! Always after each other that way, but the best friends in the world. SWEENEY'S strong suit is elocution. He has a native ability that way by no means ordinary, but even that gift he abuses and distorts simply to produce grotesque, and oftentimes, ridiculous effects. For instance, nothing more delights him than to 'loathfully' consent to answer ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... by Hercules (I speak as I think)! though I am fond enough of myself, I dare not say that I excel in beauty that bull which carried Europa. For the question here is not concerning our genius and elocution, but our species and figure. If we could make and assume to ourselves any form, would you be unwilling to resemble the sea-triton as he is painted supported swimming on sea-monsters whose bodies are partly human? Here I touch on a difficult point; for so great ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... acceptation of the term "great," and yet be only a declaimer and a rhetorician. That is to say, he may be able to captivate audiences by his superior action, as Demosthenes defines oratory to be, and at the same time his elocution and rhetoric may be unexceptionable, yet he maybe in fact totally lacking in every element which goes to make up ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... Thomas Sheridan, Discourse ... Being Introductory to His Course of Lectures on Elocution and the English ...
— The Methodist - A Poem • Evan Lloyd
... 1827, as I sat with a volume of the Tor Hill in my hand, in the back drawing-room of my lodging in Conduit-street. It was about ten o'clock in the afternoon. My dinner was just removed. It had left me with that gay complacency of disposition, and irrepressible propensity of elocution, which result from a satisfied appetite, and an undisturbed digestion. My sense of contentment became more vigorous and confirmed, as I cast my eye around my apartment, and contemplated my well-filled book-case, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... the state where they must be more artificially urged by stimulants; and when the actor is off the stage he has no self-control at all. This all means misused and over-used force. In no schools is the general influence so absolutely morbid and unwholesome, as in most of the schools of elocution and acting. ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... long—for independently of the impatience he could not but entertain at that moment of all subjects but that nearest his heart, he was by no means ambitious of making a display of his powers of elocution. Yet, notwithstanding this, he treated his theme in so masterly a manner, and in such perfectly good taste, omitting all expressions of that rancor towards Great Britain, which forms so leading a feature in American orations on this occasion, ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... there's any call for it and she don't mumble her remarks when she has something to say. Not Miss Joyce. Her words come out clear and crisp, with a slight roll to the r's and all the final letters sounded, like she'd been taking elocution or something. ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... to be, that should we come to a fight they will completely alter the costume of the country, and "whop us into fits." Their style of elocution is masterly in the extreme, redolent with the sagest deductions, and overflowing with a magnificent and truly Eastern redundancy of the most poetical tropes. I will now proceed to give you an extract from the celebrated speaker on the war side—"the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 23, 1841 • Various
... Speculative Society, where it had, long before, been the custom of those about to be called to the Bar, {p.159} and those who after assuming the gown were left in possession of leisure by the solicitors, to train or exercise themselves in the arts of elocution and debate. From time to time each member produces an essay, and his treatment of his subject is then discussed by the conclave. Scott's essays were, for November, 1791, On the Origin of the Feudal System; for the 14th February, 1792, On the Authenticity of Ossian's Poems; and on the 11th December ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... semblance and an everlasting voice. The power was harmonious with the individuality and did not mar its grace. There was a perfect preservation of sustained identity, and this was expressed with such a sweet elocution and such an airy freedom of movement and naturalness of gesture that the observer almost forgot to notice the method of the mechanism and quite forgot that he was looking upon a fiction and a shadow. That her personation ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... above portrait of Daniel Webster is taken from a book just issued by the Fowler & Wells Co., New York, entitled, "A Natural System of Elocution and Oratory," founded upon analysis of the Human Constitution. By Thomas A. Hyde and William Hyde. Among other valuable subjects which this book contains is a description and analysis ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various |
