"Fluency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as labour in vain, and shed tears of helpless despondency on the blank unfinished paper. I can write fast enough now. Am I better than I was then? Oh no! One truth discovered, one pang of regret at not being able to express it, is better than all the fluency and flippancy in the world. Would that I could go back to what I then was! Why can we not revive past times as we can revisit old places? If I had the quaint Muse of Sir Philip Sidney to assist me, I would write a Sonnet to the Road between Wem and Shrewsbury, and immortalize ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... good-natured enough, and met him more than half-way, their talk lapsed, and lapsed, and lapsed. The breaks became more numerous and lasted longer. Condy began to wonder if he was boring her. No sooner had the suspicion entered his head than it hardened into a certainty, and at once what little fluency and freshness he yet retained forsook him on the spot. What made matters worse was his recollection of other evenings that of late he had failed in precisely the same manner. Even while he struggled to save the situation Condy was wondering if they two were talked out—if they had lost ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... year of her speech at Kennett Square, on an evening in late February, she spoke in Concert Hall, Philadelphia, before an audience of about eight hundred persons. For two hours she spoke, without notes and with easy fluency. There were many well-known men and women there, who were delighted with what they were pleased to call a young girl's notable performance. But Anna herself was far from pleased with her speech. Afterward, on reaching ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... protesting against its extremes: above all, he was a literary Artist. Various opinions will continue to be held as to the value of his sermons; the excellence of his best workmanship is universally acknowledged. He was endowed with few of the qualities which secure a quick success—fluency, finish of style, the art of giving graceful utterance to current thought; he had in full measure the stronger if slower powers—sound knowledge, infinite industry, and the sympathetic insight of penetrative imagination—that ultimately hold the fastnesses of ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... would not see a physician at the worst, but have quacked as boldly as quacks treat others. I laughed at your idea of quality receipts, it came so apropos. There is not a man or woman here that is not a perfect old nurse, and who does not talk gruel and anatomy with equal fluency and ignorance. One instance shall serve: Madame de Bouzols, Marshal Berwick's daughter, assured me there was nothing so good for the gout, as to preserve the parings of my nails in a bottle close stopped. When I try any illustrious nostrum, I shall ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
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