"Extemporize" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... source of all light in the region of harmony, whose acquaintance Beethoven had made on his first visit to Vienna in 1786, who when he heard Beethoven extemporize upon a theme that was given him, exclaimed to those present, "This youth will some day make a noise in the world"—Mozart, though he had been a year in his grave, yet lived freshly in the memory of all who had a heart ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... with his talent at extempore verse. He was then a youth, tall, dark, and of a good person, with small eyes, and features more round than weak; a face that had character and humor, but no refinement. His extempore verses were really surprising. It is easy enough to extemporize in Italian—one only wonders how, in a language in which every thing conspires to render verse-making easy, and it is difficult to avoid rhyming, this talent should be so much cried up—but in English ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... facts which are by no means so flattering. There was a period in my latter boyhood when comic song-books, mostly of the Negro minstrely sort, satisfied my craving for poetic literature. I used to learn the songs by heart and invent and extemporize tunes for them. To this day I can repeat some of ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... replied, "only she'll expect such things as 'dearest' and 'darling' at times. And occasionally 'pet' and 'sweetheart'—and 'dearie.' I can't give them all; you must extemporize ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... and light-heartedness which, during the great lady's too brief reign, had seemed a vital adjunct of the house to make the place resound with music and laughter, were now departed. No more did Mrs. Tanberry extemporize Dan Tuckers, mazourkas, or quadrilles in the ball-room, nor Blind-Man's Buff in the library; no more did serenaders nightly seek the garden with instrumental plunkings and vocal gifts of harmony. Even the green bronze ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... together; no one can part us." The mob were pressed back and comparative quiet restored, and when I finished the reading of my address I began to extemporize. What I said seemed to be the right words at the right time. A hushed attention fell upon the audience, inside and out. Then there was applause inside, which called forth howls from the outside, and ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... taking huge breaths of the life that lay on the heathery hill-top. And as he sang the words came—nearly like the following. He had never wondered at the powers of the improvvisatore. It was easy to him to extemporize. ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... caresses that he tried to get clear of them, lest his wife might be jealous; but it was of no use trying to free himself, for they made him sit on a stone bench, and, handing him a guitar, requested him to extemporize some verses:— ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others
... examined by the glass, remind one, from their pectinated character, of shells covering the walls of a grotto,—a peculiarity to which, when showing my specimen to Agassiz, while it had yet no duplicate, I directed his attention, and which led him to extemporize for it, on the spot, the generic name Ostralepis, or shell-scale. On studying it more leisurely, however, in the process of assigning to it a place in his great work, where the reader may now find it figured (Table XIV., fig. 8), the naturalist found reason to rank it among the Diplacanthi. ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller |
