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More "Grandiloquent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to admit our ignorance rather than adopt a hypothesis at variance with all the teachings of Nature? Or, suppose for a moment we admit the explanation, and then seriously ask ourselves how much the wiser are we; what does the explanation explain? Is it any more than a grandiloquent way of announcing the fact, that we really know nothing about the matter? A phenomenon is explained when it is shown to be a case of some general law of Nature; but the supernatural interposition of the Creator can, by the nature of the case, exemplify no law, and if species have ...
— The Origin of Species - From 'The Westminster Review', April 1860 • Thomas H. Huxley
... Exegesis has ceased to be a word-play, and the companion of classical annotations. The sermons of the present ministry partake of Reinhard's earnestness and faith. Gallicisms and technical terminology are no longer proclaimed to the peasants, while the artisan is no more entertained with grandiloquent descriptions of the last night of Socrates, or with Ciceronian laudations of the Schoolmen.[83] The popular attendance at the public services is greatly on the increase, and the congregations are expressing in no doubtful terms their desire ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... might pursue his studies in Paris. Langlois in his petition asks that he be permitted to "raise without fear the veil of the future, and to assure the municipal council a place in the memory of the world for having been the first to endow their country with one more great name." Grandiloquent promise has often been made without result; but one must admire the hard-headed Norman councillors who, representing a little provincial city which in 1884 had but thirty-six thousand inhabitants, gave even this modest sum to assure a future to one who might ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... may interest you to know that in this country, during the early years of our leading universities, Hebrew not only formed, a subject of instruction, but also appeared upon the Commencement programs. Upon such grandiloquent occasions you will find that side by side with a poem in Greek there figured a speech in Hebrew. What the Hebrew was like that was poured out there I have difficulty in imagining. But that the instruction was of much use to the student, I have grave reasons to doubt. Will you allow me to read ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... accompany him, bearing a despatch* in which, to China's simple "greeting," Japan returned a "respectful address;" to China's expression of ineffable superiority Japan replied that the coming of the embassy had "dissolved her long-harboured cares;" and to China's grandiloquent prolixity Japan made answer with half a dozen brief lines. Imoko was now accompanied by eight students four of literature and four of religion. Thus was established, and for long afterwards maintained, a bridge over which the literature, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... benefit of clergy; so he, with effrontery only the more deeply burnt in, and conscience the more callous from each conviction, will still lie on, so long as lungs are left, and vulgar listeners can be found in the scum of town populations. How grandiloquent was Mr Cobden with his "new facts," brand new, as he solemnly assured the House of Commons, which was not convulsed with irrepressible derision on the announcement! How swelled he, "big with the fate" of corn and colony, as the mighty secret burst from his labouring breast, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... been an intolerably dull residence to a foreigner of distinction unequipped with intellectual resources. The hour one spends with Byron's memory then is almost compassionate. After all, one says to one's self as one turns away from the grandiloquent little slab in front of his house and looks down the deadly provincial vista of the empty, sunny street, the author of so many superb stanzas asked less from the world than he gave it. One of his diversions was to ride in the Pineta, which, beginning a couple of miles ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... He knew the weapon, a curved simitar inlaid with gold, and reposing in a scabbard of gilt metal and purple velvet. In its wrapping of brown paper and twine it suspiciously resembled a child's toy, and Prince Michael's grandiloquent manner added a touch of buffoonery to a farewell scene made ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... and banished, the spirit of Jean Paul Marat and John Brown of Ossawatomie rises to the fore in the shape of one Andres Bonifacio, warehouse porter, who sits up o' nights copying all the letters and documents that he can lay hands on; composing grandiloquent manifestoes in Tagalog; drawing up magnificent appointments in the names of prominent persons who would later suffer even to the shedding of their life's blood through his mania for writing history in advance; ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... not let us use the word "commence;" we must always "begin." This is an excellent example of unreflecting or half-reflecting purism. "Commence" is a very old word; it is used by the best writers; it is easily pronounceable and not in the least grandiloquent; indeed it has precisely the length and cadence of its competitor. But somebody or other one day observed that it was Latin, whereas "begin" was Saxon; and since then there has been a systematic attempt, in several quarters, to hound the innocent and useful ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... replied Frank, who was falling into a trick of addressing the stately Krooman in the same grandiloquent fashion as the latter was in the habit of using, "I place my ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... was woefully hard to come to any decision. For, as you know by this, it was the colonel's besetting infirmity to shrink from making changes; instinctively he balked—under shelter of whatever grandiloquent excuse—against commission of any action which would alter his relations with accustomed circumstances or persons. To guide events was never his forte, as he forlornly knew; and here he was condemned perforce to play that uncongenial ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... and ended in a whisper. The retainers looked in each other's faces. Who was the maddest—their lord or the shabby bo[u]zu? A long silence followed. Jubei no longer stood in grandiloquent pose. He squatted down before the ideographs. At last he said—"The poem contains much matter. Deign to allow time for the solution." His voice was gentle and courteous to this future victim of his intelligence. The priest nodded ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... then, of a nation is a grandiloquent fallacy in the interests of commerce and ambition, political and military. All the great and good, clever and charming people belong to one secret nation, for which there is no name unless it be the Chosen People. These are the lost tribes of love, art, and religion, lost and swamped amid alien ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... love, and that uncomparable reward which only God bestows, devote themselves to teaching, instructing, training and educating the poor, the needy, the orphan, the houseless, the homeless, the forlorn, the despised, as well as the more favored of the earth. These make no grandiloquent printed reports in costly binding; they have no official stenographers or reporters to noise their proceedings in "morning papers"; they have no "Polytechnic Halls," fitted up with pretentious libraries, and all the surroundings of upholstery, and heating and cooling ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... uneasily he foresaw a shortening of his stature in her eyes by comparison with Tommy Ashe—who had become a doer, a creator in the common need, while he remained a gleaner in the field of self-interest. Thompson rather resented that imputation. Privately he considered Tommy's speech a trifle grandiloquent. He began to think he had underestimated Tommy, in ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Chaffee Thayer Sluss, whose attitude in this instance was to prove crucial, was a tall, shapely, somewhat grandiloquent person who took himself and his social and commercial opportunities and doings in the most serious and, as it were, elevated light. You know, perhaps, the type of man or woman who, raised in an atmosphere of comparative comfort and some small social pretension, and being short of those gray convolutions ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... "You keep before your mind the thought that you're the only servant, who has followed me as an attendant out of town, and you give way to fear that you will, on your return, have to bear the consequences. You hence have recourse to these grandiloquent arguments to shove words of counsel down my throat! I've come here now with the sole object of satisfying certain rites, and then going to partake of the banquet and be a spectator of the plays; and I never mentioned one single word about any ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... but manifests itself in widely separated groups in the same country; in every city it embraces the "smart set" and the hard-driven working women; sometimes it is sectarian and dogmatic, at others philosophic and grandiloquent, but it is always vital and constantly becoming ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... to New York, and on January 1st, 1905, I began to write. Within two days I had written about fifteen thousand words—for the most part on the subject of reforms and how to effect them. One of the documents prepared at that time contained grandiloquent passages that were a portent of coming events—though I was ignorant of the fact. In writing about my project I said, "Whether I am a tool of God or a toy of the devil, time alone will tell; but there will be no misunderstanding Time's answer if ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... correct, precise, 'elegant' language. I guess she wears mits, and believes in cremation. Let's have her believe in cremation. And Captain Jack; oh! he's got a terrible voice, like this, ROW-ROW-ROW see? and whiskers, very fierce; and he says, 'Belay there!' and 'Avast!' and is very grandiloquent and orotund and gallant when it comes to women. Oh, he's the devil of a man when it comes to ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... silent hill, the prize of so many struggles, our own hearts swell with the hopes and sink with the fears that its green old bluffs have roused. Up from yon water-side came stealing the Green-Mountain Boys, with their grand and grandiloquent leader, and, at the very gateway where we stand, as tradition says, (et potius Dii numine firment,) he thundered out, with brave, barbaric voice, the imperious summons, "In the name of the great Jehovah and the ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... Congress in from ten to twelve days after their occurrence, and news from the Connecticut elections three weeks late. Subjects relating to religion and politics were heard pro and con in articles, or rather letters, signed with grandiloquent pseudonyms and frequently marked "Papers, please copy" in order to secure for them a larger public. Fantastic bits of natural science, or what purported to be such, and stilted admonitions to virtue, as well as poems, eulogies, and obituaries, ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... prophet and descendant, Pereo, the mayordomo, moved in an atmosphere of superstitious adulation and respect among the domestics and common people. This recognition of his power he received at times with a certain exaltation of grandiloquent pride beyond the conception of any but a Spanish servant, and at times with a certain dull, pained vacancy of perception and an expression of frightened bewilderment which also went far to establish his reputation ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... President, Gov. Banks in performing his part of the ceremony of presenting the charter and the keys to the new officer alluded in his somewhat grandiloquent way to four of Felton's predecessors, Everett, Sparks, Walker and Quincy, who were upon the stage. Speaking of Quincy he said: "He would be reckoned among honorable men, though their number were reduced to that of the mouths of the Nile ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... home for money—for, mind you, my father or my uncle would have helped me out had I written to them, but I could not do that. So long as I was able to keep a roof over my head, I remained silent. I was in the world and I intended to keep going without asking a cent from anyone. Besides, the grandiloquent plans for travel and success which I had so confidently outlined to Burton must be ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... among these young men are to raise before I dare express my real opinions concerning questions about which we older men had to fight in the teeth of fierce public opposition and obloquy—of something which might almost justify even the grandiloquent epithet of a Reign of Terror—before our ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... in justice to me, knowing, as you must know, that a badge gives courage to the wearer, putting a conviction into the heart that one is not alone, but a soldier in a great army walking in step towards a definite end. This sounds somewhat grandiloquent, but it seems to me somewhat like the truth. Trying to get into step is interesting and instructive, and the novitiate, though hardly bearable at times, is better than sitting in the lonely guest-room. Mother Hilda's instruction in the ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... fall, Sir, out of heaven! Now, would you credit it, that as I fell I saw that Sirius wears a nightcap? True! (Confidentially): The other Bear is still too small to bite. (Laughing): I went through the Lyre, but I snapped a cord; (Grandiloquent): I mean to write the whole thing in a book; The small gold stars, that, wrapped up in my cloak, I carried safe away at no small risks, Will serve for ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... lawyers. Not infrequently, however, did it happen that some charters and grants were obtained by politicians and lawyers who, at best, were impecunious sharpers. Their greatest asset was a devious knowledge of how to get something for nothing. With a grandiloquent front and a superb bluff they would organize a company to build a railroad from this to that point; an undertaking costing millions, while perhaps they could not pay their board bill. An arrangement with a printer to turn out stock issues on credit was easy; with the promise of batches of this ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... time of Alfred, have come down to us. Finding his people slow to come to church, he is said to have stood at the end of a bridge singing songs in the vernacular, thus collecting a crowd to listen to exhortations on sacred subjects. Aldhelm wrote in elaborate and grandiloquent Latin, which soon came to be regarded as barbarous. Much admired as he was by his contemporaries, his fame as a scholar therefore soon declined, but his reputation as a pioneer in Latin scholarship in England and as ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... and moral science, even to-day, are inadequate for the task. But the mythical form into which men cast their wisdom was not chosen by them because they preferred to be imaginative; it was not embraced, as its survivals are now defended, out of sentimental attachment to grandiloquent but inaccurate thoughts. Mythical forms were adopted because none other were available, nor could the primitive mind discriminate at all between the mythical and the scientific. Whether it is the myth or the wisdom it expresses that ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... rewarded his victorious general with the honorable designation of Italienski, or the Italian, and, in his grandiloquent fashion, issued a ukase commanding all people to regard Suwarrow as the greatest commander the world ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... extraordinary the grandiloquent language which even the most humble peasant will use, and he speaks with the polished ease ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... almost shouted Sir Peter. Adelaide could, despite the whip and rein with which he held her, exasperate and irritate him—by no means more thoroughly than by pretending that she did not understand his grandiloquent allusions, and the vague grandness of the commands which he sometimes gave. "I mean you to go, and your little sister here, and Arkwright too. I don't know about myself. Now, I am going to ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... consider a new code; and her "Instruction" to the delegates, saturated as it is with Montesquieu and the rest, shows her abreast of her time. Politicians of the old school, indeed, shuddered at its array of grandiloquent maxims—"there are bombs enough in it," cried Panin, "to bring the walls about our ears." She is here, in spite of all that has been said, exactly where we invariably find her, neither a day in front of her age nor ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... first things to attract the attention of the reader, in the dingy files of some newspaper of 1812-15, is the grotesque names under which many of the privateers sailed. The grandiloquent style of the regular navy vanishes, and in its place we find homely names; such as "Jack's Favorite," "Lovely Lass," "Row-boat," "Saucy Jack," or "True-blooded Yankee." Some names are clearly political allusions,—as ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... the stand-point of the President, and with his views of the efficiency of legislative restrictions upon banks, we do not see how he could consistently avoid recommending the instant action of Congress. On the heel of his grandiloquent description of the evils of redundant paper money,—evils which are felt all over the country,— it is a lamentably impotent conclusion to say, "After all, we can't do much to help it! Yes, let us confide piously in 'the wisdom and patriotism ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... was an insulting laugh, and he knew it. But the contrast between the grandiloquent words and the ridiculous figure which uttered them was too much for him. Besides, though the most courteous of men, he deliberately wished to be insulting. He couldn't help it. There rose up in him, suddenly, a wild and unreasoning anger that mere paternity could ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... year of Eadgar's reign. He took much of his material from a Saxon Chronicle, like that of Winchester, but he has also matter peculiar to himself; and this raises a question whether he took such matter from a Saxon Chronicle now lost. He is grandiloquent and turgid to an extent which often obscures his meaning. In him we perceive all the word-eloquence of Saxon poetry, striving to utter itself through the medium of a Latinity at once ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... with Devenipiatissa, is addressed to "all the conquered territories of the raja, even unto the ends of the earth; as in Chola, in Pida, in Keralaputra, and in Tambapanni (or Ceylon)." This license of speech, reminding one of the grandiloquent epistles "from the Flaminian Gate," was no doubt assumed in virtue of the recent establishment of Buddhism, or, as it is called in the Mahawanso "the religion of the Vanquisher," and Asoca, as its propagator, thus claims to address the ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... shouted the marshals with grandiloquent gestures of their be-ribboned rods, the band blared out again and the teams began to move toward the west. The men stood up to look ahead, while the boys in the back end of the wagons craned perilously over the edge of the box to see how long the line was. It seemed enormous to them, ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... voyageur, who used to sing him Homerically to his chosen friends. These voyageurs are professional canoe-men; adventurers extending, sparsely, from the waters of French Canada to those of Oregon,—and sometimes back. Honest old Quatreaux! I mentioned his "residence" just now, and the term is truly grandiloquent in its application. The residence of old Quatreaux was a log cabane, about twenty feet square. Planks, laid loosely upon the cross-ties of the rafters, formed the up-stairs of the building: up-ladder would be a term more ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... would wait upon his lordship the next morning at 11 A.M.; and that from the lady was as simply a request that Mrs Quiverful would do the same by her, though it was couched in somewhat longer and more grandiloquent phraseology. ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... which the doings of the supernatural world are communicated to Manbodom. These ceremonial chants are performed not only during religious celebrations but more commonly at night. The greater part of the night is often worn away with a protracted diffuse narration in which is described, with grandiloquent circumlocution and copious imagery, the doings ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... earliest stories are of a slight and flimsy texture, and are generally intended to be nonsensical, but the nonsense has much spirit in it. They are usually preceded by a dedication of mock solemnity to some one of her family. It would seem that the grandiloquent dedications prevalent in those days had not escaped her youthful penetration. Perhaps the most characteristic feature in these early productions is that, however puerile the matter, they are always ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... became confused in mind—dazed, as it were. In odd vagary, as his ice-raft floated on down the river, he peopled the darkness about him with imaginary foes, and "squared off" at them pugnaciously. His blood warming with this exercise, he began delivering in grandiloquent tones the address which he had declaimed at school, when a voice from the darkness near at hand brought ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... use that very vague, grandiloquent word 'Ambrosial' know that it has reference to the 'ambrosia' ([Greek: ambrotos], immortal), the food of the gods! It has, however, a secondary signification, namely, that of an unguent, or perfume, hence fragrant; and this is probably the prevailing idea in our 'ambrosial': instance ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... knights, and my acquaintance with Lear and Macbeth, to furnish my drama with the most vivid situations. But one of the chief characteristics of its poetical form I took from the pathetic, humorous, and powerful language of Shakespeare. The boldness of my grandiloquent and bombastic expressions roused my uncle Adolph's alarm and astonishment. He was unable to understand how I could have selected and used with inconceivable exaggeration precisely the most extravagant ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... and Henry began to believe that his grandiloquent speech—purposely so—had met with some success. No attack was made, and delay was what he wanted. The woods seemed to remain the home of peace and quiet. Major Braithwaite had a pair of strong military glasses, and, as an additional precaution, he and Henry searched the woods ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... flower of Douglas's vaunted experiment of "popular sovereignty"—a result they professed fully to appreciate. "Hitherto," said the Judiciary Committee of the House in a long and grandiloquent report, "Congress have retained to themselves the power to mold and shape all the territorial governments according to their own peculiar notions, and to restrict within very limited and contracted bounds both the natural as well as the political rights of the bold and daring pioneer ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... the young man, somewhat surprised at the grandiloquent style of the speaker and also at being so directly addressed. In spite of the momentary desire he had just been feeling for company of any sort, on being actually spoken to he felt immediately his habitual irritable and uneasy aversion for any stranger ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... locked room for two hours; he had kept his word as long as he could endure it. Senor Don Diego had had time to come back unless he had been captured. Now he, Yaqui Juan, whom the young master had once saved, would go to him, to bring him back, or to die with him. The solemn, grandiloquent words had nothing of melodrama in them, falling from his grave lips. He took no pains to conceal his deep scorn for ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... Academy of Music will be ready for inauguration by a company of distinguished actors—all stars, more or less—from the principal theatres of the metropolis—next Saturday night," replied Big Ed in a grandiloquent outburst. ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... tenements—fungus-growth upon the city wall—single-storied, single-roomed affairs, mostly the lodging of artificers in the lesser crafts. Among them all there was but one of two floors, a substantial red-brick little house with a most grandiloquent chimney-stack. And very rightly it was so, for it belonged ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... distance from the days of Luther and Calvin, may be supposed to have been the feeling among the Polish Unitarians; whereas Dr. Pusey's jacet (lies low, in the present tense) does as certainly partake somewhat of the grandiloquent. That no "boast," however, was intended, becomes probable, when we consider that the distich was designed to convey a feeling of reverence towards Socinus rather than ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 59, December 14, 1850 • Various
... a temple to his chosen deity devoted much space to statues of himself, with grandiloquent accounts in hieroglyphs of his exploits in war and peace and of the many peoples who paid him tribute. Rameses appears to have had most of the evil traits of the arbitrary despot. With unlimited men and material he was engaged during the greater part of his long reign in erecting ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... indeed!). I had elected her my confidante and adviser, and poured all my precious opinions and plans—my very scrapes—into her curious, patient ears. Mad, have you forgotten how once, like an old-fashioned, grandiloquent muff, I showed you the picture of a perfect woman in a book of poetry—'Paradise Lost' it might have been, and 'Eve' for any special appropriateness in the picture—and broadly hinted my private idea that the perfect woman was fulfilled in Mad!—lively, faulty Mad! ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... ears of the groundlings, this must have been delivered in grandiloquent mimicry with all the paraphernalia of the tragic style. Horace notes a kindred manifestation of this tendency (to which he himself is pleasingly addicted), in Ep. II. ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... sounded so infernally grandiloquent to Old Man Grant that his hand actually trembled with emotion as he signed it—at my suggestion. You know I'd hate to be tried for forgery. Then I shook hands with him and started for Panama once ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... sentence, like Prof. Owens "axiom of the continuous operation of the ordained becoming of living things," which haunted us like an apparition. For, dim as our conception must needs be as to what such oracular and grandiloquent phrases might really mean, we felt confident that they presaged no good to old beliefs. Foreseeing, yet deprecating, the coming time of trouble, we still hoped that, with some repairs and makeshifts, the old views might last out our days. Apres nous le deluge. Still, not to lag behind the ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... And look, too, at the same table, within a few feet, Simpson, of you and of me—Selingman, Selingman who represents the real Germany; not the war party alone, intoxicated with the clash of arms, filled with bombastic desires for German triumphs on sea and land, ever ready to spout in flowery and grandiloquent phrases the glory of Germany and the Heaven-sent genius of her leaders. I tell you, Simpson, Selingman is a more dangerous man than that. He sits with folded arms, in realms of thought above these people. He sits with a map of the world before him, and he places his finger upon the ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... holiday, permitted for once to work-weary faculties, rather than as an adventure of life and death. There is nothing like taking all you do at a moderate estimate: it keeps mind and body tranquil; whereas grandiloquent notions are apt to ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... outbursts of fury injected his eyes with blood. He ground his teeth, his mouth filled with curses, his hands clenched till they grew white and bloodless. Was the Railroad to triumph then in the end? After all those months of preparation, after all those grandiloquent resolutions, after all the arrogant presumption of the League! The League! what a farce; what had it amounted to when the crisis came? Was the Trust to crush them all so easily? Was S. Behrman to swallow Los Muertos? S. Behrman! ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... nations; but, on not a few points, in accordance with the British view of what is, or ought to be, International Law, in opposition to views persistently maintained by other countries—e.g. with reference to the moment from which a blockade-runner becomes liable to capture. The fact is that, whatever grandiloquent language may have been judicially employed by Lord Stowell in a contrary sense, it will now hardly be denied that a Prize Court sits by national, not international, authority, and is bound to take the view of International Law which, if any, is prescribed to it by the constitutionally expressed ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... have actually had to return a surplus of $50,000 (L10,000) that was subscribed for its building. There are two pulpits, one occupied by a man who expounds the Bible, while in the other a woman responds with the grandiloquent platitudes of Mrs. Eddy. In other parts of the country this desire to pry into the Book of Fate assumes grosser forms. Mr. Bryce tells us that Western newspapers devote a special column to the advertisements of astrologers and soothsayers, and assures us that this profession is as much recognised ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... breath she repeated over and over, lest she forget some of its polysyllables, a sentence which was half-incomprehensible to her, yet which was sonorous enough and grandiloquent enough to impress her deeply. At last, also lest memory prove illusive, she wrote the sentence down: "Wield leniently the dangerous gift of your witchcraft—the freakish beauty of your perfect ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... "I've got immense accumulations of the wealth of the ages—ingots of Emerson and Whitman, for example, gems of Voltaire, and I can't tell what other superfluous coinage!" (And I waved my hand in the most grandiloquent manner.) "I've also quite a store of knowledge of corn and calves and cucumbers, and I've a boundless domain of exceedingly valuable landscapes. I am prepared to give bountifully of all these varied riches (for I shall still have plenty remaining), but the fact is that this generation ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... is true that during these seventy years various edicts claiming the country we issued by Louis XIV.; but as the French during all that time did not attempt to occupy a single foot of territory in Madagascar, these grandiloquent proclamations can hardly be considered as of much value. As has been remarked, French pretensions were greatest when their ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... will doubtless remember the time when Professor J——, the celebrated 'artist in hair,' was flourishing in his glory, and when his fame was perhaps as rife in New-York and Boston as that of any man living, in his line of art. His advertisements too, so unique in their grandiloquent phraseology, will not soon be forgotten by those who relish such things. The Professor is not now, as regards worldly prosperity, the man he used to be; but his gentlemanly feeling still clings to him, and his pride in his profession is as ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... see, Don Nemecio is the Alcalde, of his city, and he showered me with such grandiloquent Spanish phrases of concern for my comfort that I fancied he had outfitted me in ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... she never went into society without a sinking at the heart, dreading the welcome that would be accorded her on the morrow of a disclosure. To her hints, her entreaties, Jenkins had replied at first with vague phrases, with grandiloquent gestures: "Do you doubt me? Isn't our ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... With grandiloquent gesture he raised another of the tindery fragments and ignited it from the first. Another, and he had the beginning of a fire. He lit another piece, and, when he had it blazing, dropped it behind him and kept on with ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... contained about seventeen thousand words, the remaining three thousand words being made up of abstracts and appendices collected by the editor. The narrative was written in a very ornate and grandiloquent style, but the hero of the memoirs was so evidently a man of remarkable character, enterprise and adventure, that I saw in the few scattered bones of the story which he unfolded the skeleton of an ample ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... far the handsomest of the three, was marked by his big lion-like head and well whiskered cheeks, by his muscular shoulders, his long back, and his splendid tail, fluffy as a feather duster. There was something theatrical and grandiloquent about him, and he seemed to pose like an actor who attracts admiration. His motions were slow, undulating, and full of majesty; he seemed to be always stepping on a table covered with china ornaments and Venetian glass, so circumspectly did he select the place ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... spectators can be the judges. When, with a few brilliant exceptions, we discover nothing at all remarkable in the men that have been subjected to the classical training, we may consider it as almost a waste of time to analyse the grandiloquent assertions of Mr. Bonamy Price. But if we were to analyse them, we should find that boys never read Caesar and Tacitus through in succession; still less Thucydides Demosthenes, and Aristotle; that very few men read and understand these writers; that ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... peculiarities, it now remains to magnify him in an archaeological, fossiliferous, and antediluvian point of view. Applied to any other creature than the Leviathan —to an ant or a flea —such portly terms might justly be deemed unwarrantably grandiloquent. But when Leviathan is the text, the case is altered. Fain am I to stagger to this emprise under the weightiest words of the dictionary. And here be it said, that whenever it has been convenient to consult ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... large, huge, bulky, massive, immense, gross, voluminous, capacious, extensive; pregnant; arrogant, overbearing, lordly, magisterial, pompous; bombastic, grandiose, grandiloquent, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... Jerome, on the contrary, always liked to emphasise his part as JUDGE when correcting us, and clearly did it as much for his own satisfaction as for our good. He loved authority. Nevertheless, I always found his grandiloquent French phrases (which he pronounced with a strong emphasis on all the final syllables) inexpressibly disgusting, whereas Karl, when angry, had never said anything beyond, "What a foolish puppet-comedy it is!" or "You boys are as irritating ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... and find out the road as best thou mayest! ... why should I aid thee? For myself I am well contented here to remain and sleep,—no better couch can the Poet have than this violet-scented moss"—and he waved his arm with a grandiloquent gesture,—"no grander canopy than this star- besprinkled heaven! Leave me,—for my eyes are wondrous heavy, and I would fain slumber undisturbed till the break of day! By my soul, thou art a rough companion! ..." and he struggled violently to release himself ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... the future. The corrupt official lines his pocket with unrighteous money, preparing to flee to foreign countries or at least to the Foreign Settlements for safety. The cautious work quietly and do not desire to earn merit but merely try to avoid giving offence. The scholars and politicians are grandiloquent and discourse upon their subjects in a sublime vein, but they are no better than the corrupt officials. As for our President, he can remain at the head of the State for a few years. At most he may hold office for several terms,—or perhaps for ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... accepted the responsibility for them, received and reluctantly accepted a challenge, and selected broadswords as the weapons! "Friends," however, brought about an "explanation," and the conflict was avoided. But ink flowed in place of blood, and the newspapers were filled with a mass of silly, grandiloquent, blustering, insolent, and altogether pitiable stuff. All the parties concerned were placed in a most humiliating light, and it is gratifying to hear that Lincoln had at least the good feeling to be heartily ashamed of the affair, so that he "always seemed willing to forget" ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... bore the date of that day. She said she had written before and torn the confession up ... it was so difficult to be just to him and true to herself.... It was a roundabout, involved, youthfully grandiloquent epistle in which Mildred announced that her love for Owen was dead, that nothing could ever resuscitate it; that she could not, would not, ever marry him, and that she had returned in an accompanying packet his ring, and presents, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... our belongings from the back of the beast, and the old fellow whose grandiloquent title was "Master of the Herds," ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... inserted with the view of producing ready money, something which might have had a flavour of yielding, but which could not have been shown to Emily as an offer on his part to abandon her; and then he had a general feeling that his letter had been too grandiloquent,—all arising, no doubt, from a fall in courage incidental ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... fiction and what is actuality in it. With regard to the 'conversation' during the bombardment, it represents in its totality what I believe the ordinary soldier feels. He loathes the war, and the grandiloquent speeches of politicians irritate him by their failure to realize how loathesome war is. At the same time he knows he has got to go through with it, and only longs for the chance to hurry up. In ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... (by the help of the form that was more his own and of Jersey) in the Contemplations—he had now got in prose, by that of the smaller, more isolated, and less contaminated[109] island, into his own proper country, the dominion of the Angel of the Visions of the Sea. He has told us in his own grandiloquent way, which so often led him wrong, that when he settled to exile in the Channel Islands, his son Francois observed, "Je traduirai Shakespeare," and he said, "Je contemplerai l'ocean." He did; and good came of it. Students of his biography may know that in the dwelling which ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... a short, stout, red-faced old gentleman, with a bald head and a somewhat pompous manner, came forward and welcomed me warmly, saying 119all sorts of complimentary things to me in extremely high-flown and grandiloquent language, and referring to my having saved his son's life, in doing which, however, he quite won my heart by the evident pride and affection with which he spoke of Freddy. The lady of the house was a little, round, merry-looking woman, chiefly ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... Pierre's eyes arose a vision of the sumptuous tombs of the Appian Way, displaying the domineering pride of a whole civilisation in the sunlight—tombs of vast dimensions, with a profusion of marbles, grandiloquent inscriptions, and masterpieces of sculptured-work. Ah! what an extraordinary contrast between that pompous avenue of death, conducting, like a highway of triumph, to the regal Eternal City, when ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... This statement is hardly fair to Anastasie St. Castin, for, while her mother certainly was the daughter of an Indian chief, her father was the Baron de St. Castin and she herself a well educated woman. The genealogist of the d'Abbadie St. Castin family, however, uses rather grandiloquent language when he styles the mother of Anastasie St. Castin, "Mathilde Matacawando, princess indienne, fille de ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... blood," said Lieutenant-Colonel Hector St. Hilaire, with a little trace of the grandiloquent in his tone. "Slurs have been cast at the race from which I sprang since the rout and flight at Waterloo, but how undeserved they are! The French have burned more gunpowder and have won more great battles without the help of allies than any other nation in Europe. And their descendants in North ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... extends eastward for something like one hundred and sixty miles to the end of the Jardinillos. Those hills, inland there, are called the Organ Mountains; though, to my mind, the name is much too grandiloquent for such insignificant elevations. I hope that pilot chap who is to take us into the lagoon will be keeping a bright lookout for us; I have just been having a squint at the chart, and I tell you, Jack, that I don't half like the idea of taking ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... Schools are advertised by posters just like a country circus, except that the language is less grandiloquent. On the following page is a typical announcement presented in heavy black ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... fulfil the obligation expressed in the family compact, ordered the armament of fourteen ships of the line. On this the national assembly voted that it had the right to decide on questions of war, and on May 22 declared that the French nation renounced wars of conquest. This grandiloquent decree destroyed the effect of the armament. Nevertheless, Spain was set on war; fleets were gathered at Ferrol and Cadiz, and a loan of L4,000,000 was arranged. Florida Blanca seems to have relied on help from the United States, and ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... stalking advertizement of the attractions of Copsley, and hearing Diana call it 'the plush of speech,' she shuddered; she decided that a place where her husband's family had lived ought not to stand forth meretriciously spangled and daubed, like a show-booth at a fair, for a bait; though the grandiloquent man of advertizing letters assured Sir Lukin that a public agape for the big and gaudy mouthful is in no milder way to be caught; as it is apparently the case. She withdrew the trumpeting placard. Retract we likewise ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Grandiloquent sketches were passing and interchanging before his mind's eye—Penrod, in noble raiment, marching down the staring street, his shoulders swaying professionally, the roar of the horn he bore submerging all other sounds; Penrod on horseback, blowing the enormous horn and leading wild hordes ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... Great Universal, in sheer size, volume of business and elegance of surroundings, outdid any three of the others combined. It stood grandly alone at the edge of the Strip, the grandiloquent Las Vegas version of Broadway or Hollywood Boulevard. It had a central Tower that climbed thirty stories into the clean desert air, and the Tower was surrounded by a quarter of a square mile of single-level structures. At the base, the building spread out for five hundred feet ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... and the most unlike, of friendship. For the poor man is compelled to be the friend of the rich, and the weak requires the aid of the strong, and the sick man of the physician; and every one who is ignorant, has to love and court him who knows.' And indeed he went on to say in grandiloquent language, that the idea of friendship existing between similars is not the truth, but the very reverse of the truth, and that the most opposed are the most friendly; for that everything desires not like but that which is most unlike: for example, the dry desires the moist, ...
— Lysis • Plato
... the Prince of Upstarts, grandiloquent and at the same time unctuous, a General in a Salvation Army of Art, or a monk who is a devotee of an esthetic Doctrine which has been drawn up by a ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... inane story, and by no means certainly true; but there is enough character in this little feat, ponderous, deliberate, pompous, ostentatious, and at bottom a trick and deceitful quibble, to make it accord with the grandiloquent public manner of Columbus, and to make it easily believable of one who chose to show himself in his speech and writings so much more meanly and pretentiously than he showed himself in the true acts and business of ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... be inclined to smile at this grandiloquent prophecy of the fruits of an evening school, in the light of present difficulties of instilling four standards into the bulk of the childhood of the nation, it is impossible to move a step among the footprints of the common people ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... poet who is often inopportunely witty has the opposite vice of bombastic absurdity. The source of all grandiloquence is the want of taking for a criterion the true qualities of the object described or the emotion expressed. The grandiloquent man is never bent on saying what he feels or what he sees, but on producing a certain effect on his audience; hence he may float away into utter inanity without meeting any criterion to arrest him. Here lies the distinction between grandiloquence and genuine ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... worry about that," he mumbled vaguely. "What a grandiloquent kid you are! I hope you'll have a better time than you think, if you do ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... verse, and Cowper in both, stood high. It is well that the native good taste of herself and of those with whom she lived, saved her from the snare into which a sister novelist had fallen, of imitating the grandiloquent style of Johnson. She thoroughly enjoyed Crabbe; perhaps on account of a certain resemblance to herself in minute and highly finished detail; and would sometimes say, in jest, that, if she ever married at all, ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... Hasfeld's letters to Borrow were preserved by him. Three of them are in my possession. Others were secured by Dr. Knapp, who made far too little use of them. They are all written in Danish on foreign notepaper: flowery, grandiloquent productions we may admit, but if we may judge a man by his correspondents, we have a revelation of a more human Borrow than the correspondence with the friends at Earl ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... anomalies between the type of the men and their deeds, between their abominable crimes and their high qualities, be merely made a subject for grandiloquent disquisition. The man of the Renaissance, as we have said, had no need to be a monster to do monstrous things; a crime did not necessitate such a moral rebellion as requires complete unity of nature, unmixed wickedness; it did not precipitate a man for ever into a moral abyss where no ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... and were it not for the fact that they afforded an opportunity of making some remarks—which seemed to me to be worth making—about the influence of photography in modern art, I should have left the public to find for itself the value of this attempt, in the grandiloquent words of the catalogue, "to bring before my countrymen the aesthetic and artistic capabilities, and the beauty in various forms, that are to be found in our great Indian Empire." To criticise the pictures in detail is impossible; but I will try to give an impression of the ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... excused herself while her father bought supplies. She called at the supervisor's office. Bud Shoop beamed. She was so alert, so vivacious, and so charming in her quick slenderness. The genial Bud placed a chair for her with grandiloquent courtesy. ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... low. That his credit as an historian was sacrificed to a childish credulity and a foolish love of fable and adventure is sufficiently testified by the pretty numerous fragments which still remain (Pauly). Demetrius Phalereus, quoted by Pearce, quotes a grandiloquent description of the wasp taken from Kleitarchus, "feeding on the mountainside, her ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... brave, superb, haughty with consciousness of the gigantic new body acquired by man. The tonal pomp and ceremony, the pride of the trumpets, the arrogant stride, the magnificent address, the broad, vehement, grandiloquent pronouncements, the sumptuous texture of his music seems forever proclaiming the victory of man over the energies of fire and sea and earth, the lordship of creation, the suddenly begotten railways and shipping ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... Polish, and possibly other languages. Bonaparte was a great lover of Ossian, and carried about with him a copy of Cesarotti's Italian version. A resemblance has been fancied between MacPherson's manner and the grandiloquent style of Bonaparte's bulletins and dispatches.[36] In Germany Ossian naturally took most strongly. He was translated into hexameters by a Vienna Jesuit named Michael Denis[37] and produced many imitations. Herder gave three translations from "Ossian" in his "Stimmen ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... of manners has fallen into disrepute. Sir Charles Grandison is a comical rather than a courtly figure to this generation; and the man whose manners may be described as Grandisonian is usually called a pompous and grandiloquent old prig. Certainly the elaborately dressed gentleman speaking to a lady only with polished courtesy of phrase, and avoiding in her presence all coarse words and acts, handing her in the minuet with inexpressible ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... with his usual modesty; for this man, who was often so grandiloquent on the subject of his country, was very meek on the subject of himself. To give his own words would be to assign a very unimportant part to the chief actor in a very remarkable affair, so that the facts themselves may be ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... a fashion particularly in vogue among the Highlanders. I see no reason, therefore, to doubt the general authenticity of this speech. Exactly as it stands in the Nairne Papers probably Dundee did not deliver it; the style being somewhat more grandiloquent than he was in the habit of employing. But its general purpose, which I have endeavoured to give in a paraphrase, seems to be very much what such a man would have said at such a moment. The authority for Mackay's speech will be found in his own despatch ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... after-dinner consideration. Something might have been inserted with the view of producing ready money, something which might have had a flavour of yielding, but which could not have been shown to Emily as an offer on his part to abandon her; and then he had a general feeling that his letter had been too grandiloquent,—all arising, no doubt, from a fall in courage incidental to a ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... rule we apply to individual cases we will not apply to public. All men consent that swindling for a horse is swindling,—they punish the culprit and condemn the fault. But in a State there is no such unanimity. Swindling, Lord help you! is called by some fine name; and cheating grows grandiloquent, and styles itself "Policy." In consequence of this there is always a battle between those who call things by their right names and those who pertinaciously give them the wrong ones. Hence all sorts of confusion. This confusion extends very soon to the laws made for individual cases; and thus in ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of those who use that very vague, grandiloquent word 'Ambrosial' know that it has reference to the 'ambrosia' ([Greek: ambrotos], immortal), the food of the gods! It has, however, a secondary signification, namely, that of an unguent, or perfume, hence fragrant; and this is probably the prevailing idea in our 'ambrosial': instance Milton's ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... that Mr. Ernest Roger Halbard Melton, of Humcroft, Salop (he always gives this name and address in full, which is his way of showing contempt), would be sure to have some relevant matter, and that he would have him written to on the subject. This he did. The Chancellor wrote him in his most grandiloquent style. Mr. E. R. H. Melton, of H., S., replied by return post. His letter is a document which speaks ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... the Captain led the Colonel into a room of his house where he remained occupied with gloomy preparations for the ensuing meeting. His adversary in the other room also thought fit to make his testamentary dispositions, too, dictated by his own obedient brother and secretary, a grandiloquent letter to his mother, of whom, and by that writing, he took a solemn farewell. She would hardly, he supposed, pursue the scheme which she had in view, after the event of that morning, should he fall, as probably ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... comprehending it rather by his sensibilities and affections than his intellect,—that child is the only student that ever gets the sort of intimacy which I am now thinking of, with a literary personage. I do not remember, indeed, ever caring much about any of the stalwart Doctor's grandiloquent productions, except his two stern and masculine poems, "London," and "The Vanity of Human Wishes"; it was as a man, a talker, and a humorist, that I knew and loved him, appreciating many of his qualities perhaps more thoroughly than I do now, though never seeking to put my instinctive perception ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the metre and accent coincide with the sense, and make music when read merely as prose is read, the lines are a makeshift and a failure, and neither worth writing or reading, though they were as fanciful and overloaded as Mr. Browning's, or as grandiloquent and sugary as ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... during the hottest of the fight, he was not a whit less than a general in his own eyes. Having been enjoined what to say by his commander, this good man and valiant soldier betook himself to the preparation of these grandiloquent articles. As for the commander, he busied himself writing ponderous dispatches to Glenmoregain, who, satisfied that he had a perfect pearl of a Commander, as well as the kingdom of Kalorama safe between his thumbs, forthwith ordered the building of seven more steamships, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... another, and the most unlike, of friendship. For the poor man is compelled to be the friend of the rich, and the weak requires the aid of the strong, and the sick man of the physician; and every one who is ignorant, has to love and court him who knows.' And indeed he went on to say in grandiloquent language, that the idea of friendship existing between similars is not the truth, but the very reverse of the truth, and that the most opposed are the most friendly; for that everything desires not like but that which is most unlike: for example, ...
— Lysis • Plato
... he to Mrs. Triplet, "this family is on the eve of a great triumph!" Then, inverting that order of the grandiloquent and the homely which he invented in our first chapter, he proceeded to say: "I have reared in a single day a new avenue by which histrionic greatness, hitherto obstructed, may become accessible. Wife, I think ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... this and other kinds of domestic service. The name is said to be derived from the Persian bihisht, 'paradise,' and to have been given to them on account of the relief which their ministrations afforded to the thirsty soldiery. [355] Perhaps, too, the grandiloquent name was applied partly in derision, like similar titles given to other menial servants. They are also known as Mashki or Pakhali, after their leathern water-bag. The leather bag is a distinctive sign of the Bhishti, but when he puts ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... which stood in their bedroom, and climbing on a chair to reach the top shelf, Rhoda produced a small volume bound in red sheepskin, which she introduced to Phoebe's notice with a rather grandiloquent air. ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... king's majesty; Jean Le Mire, the future syndic des habitants; Madame d'Ailleboust, widow of a former governor; Madame Couillard, widow of Guillaume Couillard and daughter of Louis Hebert, the first tiller of the soil; Madame de Repentigny, widow of 'Admiral' de Repentigny, to use the grandiloquent expression of old chroniclers; Nicolas Marsollet, Louis Couillard de l'Espinay, Charles Roger de Colombiers, Francois Bissot, Charles Amiot, Le Gardeur de Repentigny, Dupont de Neuville, Pierre Denis ...
— The Great Intendant - A Chronicle of Jean Talon in Canada 1665-1672 • Thomas Chapais
... published for his second season was magnificently grandiloquent in its promises, but the season itself marvelous in its achievements. Eight operas "never produced in this city or country," "masterpieces of the most celebrated composers," which were his "sole property," were to be brought forward, in addition to ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... reign. He took much of his material from a Saxon Chronicle, like that of Winchester, but he has also matter peculiar to himself; and this raises a question whether he took such matter from a Saxon Chronicle now lost. He is grandiloquent and turgid to an extent which often obscures his meaning. In him we perceive all the word-eloquence of Saxon poetry, striving to utter itself through the medium of a Latinity at once ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... of a nation is a grandiloquent fallacy in the interests of commerce and ambition, political and military. All the great and good, clever and charming people belong to one secret nation, for which there is no name unless it be the Chosen People. These are the lost tribes of love, art, ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... this flag from your fair hands in behalf of my men and myself. Mere words fail to express our thanks, but in deeds most glorious will we attest our love for you, and the Stars and Stripes!'—or something like that—all very childish and grandiloquent, but we kept our word, didn't we? And again—picture it to yourselves, now—Bob Hardee's barn; your captain in the chair; Private Ryland rises, and offers the following: "Be it Resolved, that Miss Katherine Burke McDermott ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... principles, but of men against men. And as we stand on this silent hill, the prize of so many struggles, our own hearts swell with the hopes and sink with the fears that its green old bluffs have roused. Up from yon water-side came stealing the Green-Mountain Boys, with their grand and grandiloquent leader, and, at the very gateway where we stand, as tradition says, (et potius Dii numine firment,) he thundered out, with brave, barbaric voice, the imperious summons, "In the name of the great Jehovah and the Continental Congress." No wonder ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... wrote. Hasfeld's letters to Borrow were preserved by him. Three of them are in my possession. Others were secured by Dr. Knapp, who made far too little use of them. They are all written in Danish on foreign notepaper: flowery, grandiloquent productions we may admit, but if we may judge a man by his correspondents, we have a revelation of a more human Borrow than the correspondence with the friends at ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... with blood. He ground his teeth, his mouth filled with curses, his hands clenched till they grew white and bloodless. Was the Railroad to triumph then in the end? After all those months of preparation, after all those grandiloquent resolutions, after all the arrogant presumption of the League! The League! what a farce; what had it amounted to when the crisis came? Was the Trust to crush them all so easily? Was S. Behrman to swallow Los Muertos? S. Behrman! Presley ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... was sacrificed to a childish credulity and a foolish love of fable and adventure is sufficiently testified by the pretty numerous fragments which still remain (Pauly). Demetrius Phalereus, quoted by Pearce, quotes a grandiloquent description of the wasp taken from Kleitarchus, "feeding on the mountainside, her home the ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... no one," he said, "to talk me into a proceeding which I know to be wrong; nor will I allow any one to talk me out of a proceeding which I believe to be right." And then, having uttered these somewhat grandiloquent words, he shut himself up as though there were no longer any need ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... number by the time she was sixteen. Her earliest stories are of a slight and flimsy texture, and are generally intended to be nonsensical, but the nonsense has much spirit in it. They are usually preceded by a dedication of mock solemnity to some one of her family. It would seem that the grandiloquent dedications prevalent in those days had not escaped her youthful penetration. Perhaps the most characteristic feature in these early productions is that, however puerile the matter, they are always composed in pure simple English, quite free from the over- ornamented style which might be expected ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... for the fact that they afforded an opportunity of making some remarks—which seemed to me to be worth making—about the influence of photography in modern art, I should have left the public to find for itself the value of this attempt, in the grandiloquent words of the catalogue, "to bring before my countrymen the aesthetic and artistic capabilities, and the beauty in various forms, that are to be found in our great Indian Empire." To criticise the pictures in detail is impossible; ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... poetry. The splendour and elegance at the new imperial court of the Han dynasty attracted many poets who sang the praises of the emperor and his court and were given official posts and dignities. These praises were in the form of grandiloquent, overloaded poetry, full of strange similes and allusions, but with little real feeling. In contrast, the many women singers and dancers at the court, mostly slaves from southern China, introduced at the court southern Chinese forms of song and poem, ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... become a doer, a creator in the common need, while he remained a gleaner in the field of self-interest. Thompson rather resented that imputation. Privately he considered Tommy's speech a trifle grandiloquent. He began to think he had underestimated Tommy, in more ways ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... last years of his life from Lord Rolle. During this period he dictated his memoirs for publication in Sidmouth, to an editor who unconsciously gave the book a delicious touch of humour by putting into the mouth of this son of a Devon shoemaker the grandiloquent phrases of ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... it. It was too spontaneous, one would almost say, too unconscious, ever to be clannish. It grew, untrammelled by codes, uncrystallized into formulas, a living thing always, not a subject-matter for grandiloquent manifestoes and more or less dignified squabbles. It could therefore absorb and turn to account elements which seemed antagonistic to it in the more sophisticated forms it assumed in other literatures. Thus, whilst French Romanticism—in spite of what ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... immense accumulations of the wealth of the ages—ingots of Emerson and Whitman, for example, gems of Voltaire, and I can't tell what other superfluous coinage!" (And I waved my hand in the most grandiloquent manner.) "I've also quite a store of knowledge of corn and calves and cucumbers, and I've a boundless domain of exceedingly valuable landscapes. I am prepared to give bountifully of all these varied riches (for I shall still have plenty remaining), but the fact is that this generation of vipers doesn't ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... ministered. Everybody knows Mr. Chilvers; at least everybody who loves George Gissing knows that very excellent gentleman. Mr. Chilvers loved to adorn his dainty discourses with certain words of strangely grandiloquent sound. '"Nullifidian," "morbific," "renascent"—these were among his favourites. Once or twice he spoke of "psychogenesis" with an emphatic enunciation which seemed to invite respectful wonder. In using Latin words which have ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... hardly fear you. Again, you do not know what justice can become in man's hands, and how a criminal trial is conducted and decided when one of the parties will not stick at any kind of bribery and intimidation. The Church is powerful, the law grandiloquent. The words 'honesty' and 'integrity' have for centuries been ringing against the hardened walls of courts of justice; but that has not prevented judges from being false or verdicts from being iniquitous. Have a care; have a care! The Trappist may start the cowled pack on his own track and throw ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... (let the criminal blush to own that quizzing his fellow-creatures used at one time to form part of his youthful amusement) that F. B. was the son of a gentleman of most ancient family and vast landed possessions, and as Bayham was particularly attentive to the widow, and grandiloquent in his remarks, she was greatly pleased by his politeness, and pronounced him a most distinque man—reminding her, indeed, of General Hopkirk, who commanded in Canada. And she bade Rosey sing for Mr. ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... anatomical peculiarities, it now remains to magnify him in an archaeological, fossiliferous, and antediluvian point of view. Applied to any other creature than the Leviathan —to an ant or a flea —such portly terms might justly be deemed unwarrantably grandiloquent. But when Leviathan is the text, the case is altered. Fain am I to stagger to this emprise under the weightiest words of the dictionary. And here be it said, that whenever it has been convenient to consult one in the course of these dissertations, I have invariably used a huge ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... descendant, Pereo, the mayordomo, moved in an atmosphere of superstitious adulation and respect among the domestics and common people. This recognition of his power he received at times with a certain exaltation of grandiloquent pride beyond the conception of any but a Spanish servant, and at times with a certain dull, pained vacancy of perception and an expression of frightened bewilderment which also went far to establish his reputation as an unconscious seer and thaumaturgist. "Thou seest," said Sanchez to the partly ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... early, a slight and unimpressive figure in somewhat worn field-grey, the German khaki. The "debate" having begun, I noticed how he listened eagerly to every word spoken, jotting down notes incessantly for the evident purpose of replying to the grandiloquent utterances about our "glorious army of Kultur-bearers" which were falling from the lips of "patriotic" party orators. Liebknecht had earned the displeasure of the House a few days before by asking some embarrassing ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... writing is associated with the greater number of them. Give a clever young medical student a book about aural or dental surgery to review, and the chances are ten to one that the criticism will be little else than a high-flown grandiloquent treatise on the wonders of the creation. A regular "literary hack" will ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... Soloviev. "It may be even grandiloquent, but still that makes no difference! As an elder of our garret commune, I declare Liuba an honourable member with full rights!" He got up, made a sweeping gesture with his ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... difficulties and objections were overthrown by make-believe answers; an unnatural position both in speaker and hearers, an unreal state of feeling and view of facts, a systematic conventional exaggeration, seemed almost impossible to be avoided; and those who tried to escape being laboured and grandiloquent only escaped it, for the most part, by being vulgar or slovenly. The strong severe thinkers, jealous for accuracy, and loathing clap-trap as they loathed loose argument, addressed and influenced intelligence; ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... and I adore it!" said Rebecca, who was in a grandiloquent mood. "Why don't you like it? It's your ...
— The Flag-raising • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... National treasury, diverted from the regular channels of trade by an ignorant set of legislators who have not gumption enough to reduce unnecessary and burdensome taxation without upsetting the industries of the country—with all its grandiloquent exhibition of happiness and prosperity, the laboring classes of the country starve to death, or eke out an existence ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... conclusion. Like all things, however, his four years' battle came finally to an end. One, two, three, four: despair, unhappiness, resignation, and, lastly, some sort of authority as the recognized leader in his work, at least, of the grandiloquent first form: so passed the years of his cadetship, till, in the June of 1860, he graduated, honorably, and went off to spend the summer at Klin in his own fashion, giving very little thought to that impending ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... Paul rewarded his victorious general with the honorable designation of Italienski, or the Italian, and, in his grandiloquent fashion, issued a ukase commanding all people to regard Suwarrow as the greatest commander ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... of Little Rivers, I expected you in a gondola of state!" said Jack, with a playfully grandiloquent gesture, as Jasper's abundance filled the doorway. "But it is all the more compliment to me that you ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... Confederate General, Robert Garnett, was killed. It is but fair to admit that the South had not emulated the wisdom of Solomon nor the modesty of Godolphin. The capture of Fort Sumter, with its garrison of less than a hundred men, was hardly Gibraltar; yet it would put the grandiloquent hidalgoes of Spain on their mettle to make more clatter over the downfall of the cross of St. George from that historic rock. McClellan was the young Napoleon, the very god of war in his latest avatar. While this ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... moved slowly, and Henry began to believe that his grandiloquent speech—purposely so—had met with some success. No attack was made, and delay was what he wanted. The woods seemed to remain the home of peace and quiet. Major Braithwaite had a pair of strong ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of the days of chivalry, seeking for glory and honours, not by the sword, but by learning. This Vanini was a somewhat vain and ridiculous person. Not content with his Christian name Lucilio, he assumed the grandiloquent and high-sounding cognomen of Julius Caesar, wishing to attach to himself some of the glory of the illustrious founder of the Roman empire. As the proud Roman declared Veni, Vidi, Vici, so would he carry on the same victorious career, subduing all ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... she said, in a tone that was intended to be grandiloquent, but which failed grievously; "I will tell him that he has your permission to think a second time on this matter. I do not doubt but that he will do so." Mary would not condescend to answer, but curtsied ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... that she never went into society without a sinking at the heart, dreading the welcome that would be accorded her on the morrow of a disclosure. To her hints, her entreaties, Jenkins had replied at first with vague phrases, with grandiloquent gestures: "Do you doubt me? Isn't ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... given with his usual modesty; for this man, who was often so grandiloquent on the subject of his country, was very meek on the subject of himself. To give his own words would be to assign a very unimportant part to the chief actor in a very remarkable affair, so that the facts themselves may be more appropriately ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... driving at!" Pao-yue smiled. "You keep before your mind the thought that you're the only servant, who has followed me as an attendant out of town, and you give way to fear that you will, on your return, have to bear the consequences. You hence have recourse to these grandiloquent arguments to shove words of counsel down my throat! I've come here now with the sole object of satisfying certain rites, and then going to partake of the banquet and be a spectator of the plays; and I never mentioned one single word about any intention on my part not to go back to town for ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... supper of stewed hare and tortillas. We were officers and caballeros and could not be ignored. After turning our horses to grass, at his invitation we joined him at supper. The allowance, though ample for one, was rather short for three, and I thought the Spanish grandiloquent politeness of Gomez, who was fat and old, was not over-cordial. However, down we sat, and I was helped to a dish of rabbit, with what I thought to be an abundant sauce of tomato. Taking a good mouthful, I felt as though ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... could think of more grandiloquent words to express him, I'd use them," said Marise defiantly, launching out into yet more outrageous flights of rhetoric. "I could stand for hours on a street corner, admiring the completeness with ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... laughing at the ludicrous spectacle of four lads rubbing their eyes, scratching their heads, shaking themselves straight in their clothes, and looking as if there never had been half an idea in one of their minds. But Yaspard shouted in grandiloquent style— ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... absolutely powerful—though not to my way of thinking of course. Mrs. Purdick happened to say "You are certainly unorthodox, Mr. Huttle." Mr. Huttle, with a peculiar expression (I can see it now) said in a slow rich voice: "Mrs. Purdick, 'orthodox' is a grandiloquent word implying sticking-in- the-mud. If Columbus and Stephenson had been orthodox, there would neither have been the discovery of America nor the steam-engine." There was quite a silence. It appeared to me that such teaching was absolutely dangerous, ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
... in Kentucky, and now a prosperous gold miner) had a learned discussion as to the formation of the membranes of the human stomach, in which they used words that were over a foot long by actual measurement. I have never heard such splendid words in my life; but such were their grandiloquent profundity, and their far-reaching lucidity, that I understood rather less about it when they had finished than I did ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... depressed; David struck him as an 'impudent varmint,' and the doctor as little better; but the lad's solicitude nevertheless flattered the old featherbrain, and in the end he fell into a burst of grandiloquent and self-excusing confidence. The doctor played him; prescribed; and when he and David left together it really seemed as though the old man from sheer curiosity about and interest in his own symptoms would probably make an attempt to ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and of course it has been the part of the academic mind to imitate them ever since. The orthodox economists are in the unenviable position of having taken their morals from the exploiter and of having translated them into the grandiloquent language of high public policy. They gave capitalism the sanction of the intellect. When later, Carlyle and Ruskin battered the economists into silence with invective and irony they were voicing the dumb protest ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... one's exact meaning. Finally the New York Press will not let us use the word "commence;" we must always "begin." This is an excellent example of unreflecting or half-reflecting purism. "Commence" is a very old word; it is used by the best writers; it is easily pronounceable and not in the least grandiloquent; indeed it has precisely the length and cadence of its competitor. But somebody or other one day observed that it was Latin, whereas "begin" was Saxon; and since then there has been a systematic attempt, in ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... "I have received with silent composure all the arrogant phrases which you have ventured to utter here in the name of your emperor. I look on them as one of the famous proud bulletins for which your emperor is noted, and to whose overbearing and grandiloquent language all Europe is accustomed. But it is well known too that these bulletins are not exactly models of veracity, but sometimes the very reverse of it. An instance of the latter is your emperor's assertion that he observes ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... scorned and banished, the spirit of Jean Paul Marat and John Brown of Ossawatomie rises to the fore in the shape of one Andres Bonifacio, warehouse porter, who sits up o' nights copying all the letters and documents that he can lay hands on; composing grandiloquent manifestoes in Tagalog; drawing up magnificent appointments in the names of prominent persons who would later suffer even to the shedding of their life's blood through his mania for writing history in advance; spelling out Spanish tales of the French Revolution; babbling of ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... a little ugly man with a badly shaven head, coarse features, pug nose, angry eyes, and stubby beard, the Amir made a sign for us to retire. The baise main was repeated, and we backed out of the audience-shed in high favour. According to grandiloquent Bruce, "the Court of London and that of Abyssinia are, in their principles, one:" the loiterers in the Harar palace yard, who had before regarded us with cut- throat looks, now smiled as though they loved us. Marshalled by the guard, we issued from the precincts, and ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... Dromanus) whose litter I was escorting. I was rather tickled that they took me for my own intendant. I judged we must be approaching the entrance to Villa Satronia and that they were people from there. I assumed an exaggerated imitation of Dromanus' most grandiloquent manner and in his orotund unctuous ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... sable pair was supreme. For the moment she really looked beautiful in his eyes, and with tears in their depths—the result of affection, not of the onions he assured her—he implored her to make him the happiest of men. He performed his part in the most grandiloquent style, dropping on one knee as he had seen lovers do from the upper loft of the Bowery Theatre, and holding her hands fast, one of which grasped a knife and ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... without batting an eye at Monsieur's grandiloquent outburst—which seemed to me the absolute frustration of our plan, "we don't know this man. He's a tramp we picked up at Key West. Do you recognize his credentials, or would ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... of which he gave delightful descriptions in a series of letters to his friend Mrs. Thrale, which he afterwards wrote out in more pompous style for publication. The letters are current, witty, and simple; the published work is stilted and grandiloquent. ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... at once before Pierre's eyes arose a vision of the sumptuous tombs of the Appian Way, displaying the domineering pride of a whole civilisation in the sunlight—tombs of vast dimensions, with a profusion of marbles, grandiloquent inscriptions, and masterpieces of sculptured-work. Ah! what an extraordinary contrast between that pompous avenue of death, conducting, like a highway of triumph, to the regal Eternal City, when compared with the subterranean necropolis of the Christians, that city of hidden ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Langlois in his petition asks that he be permitted to "raise without fear the veil of the future, and to assure the municipal council a place in the memory of the world for having been the first to endow their country with one more great name." Grandiloquent promise has often been made without result; but one must admire the hard-headed Norman councillors who, representing a little provincial city which in 1884 had but thirty-six thousand inhabitants, gave even this modest ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... invincible so far as men were concerned. He did, however, allow the hint to escape him that Prussia, which was still bound by her treaty, might hope for some territorial increase, and that Austria might expect Illyria. Such ideas, expressed in grandiloquent phrase, could not be regarded as indicating a pacific feeling. Every social class in France had a grievance; yet amid the din of arms, and in the dazzling splendors of military preparation, even the retraction of the Concordat ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... grace; and each leader set a fashion which was followed by a host of young writers. Hardly had the Addisonian style crossed the Atlantic, to be the model for American writers for a century, when London acclaimed a new prose fashion—a ponderous, grandiloquent fashion, characterized by mouth-filling words, antithetical sentences, rounded periods, sonorous commonplaces—which was eagerly adopted by orators and historians especially. The man who did more than any other to set this new oratorical fashion in motion ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... and stable currency; but from the stand-point of the President, and with his views of the efficiency of legislative restrictions upon banks, we do not see how he could consistently avoid recommending the instant action of Congress. On the heel of his grandiloquent description of the evils of redundant paper money,—evils which are felt all over the country,— it is a lamentably impotent conclusion to say, "After all, we can't do much to help it! Yes, let us confide piously in 'the wisdom and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... than usual were coming forward with nominations in their fists. Many of these men were not telling any one how they felt on the big questions that were agitating the State. Some announced themselves with the usual grandiloquent generalities. It is easy enough to say that one believes in reform and good citizenship, for one can construe that later to ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... tried every door, peeped in the windows, pounded and rapped, while I watched them through the blind-slats. Presently the fattest one, a real Falstaffian man, came back to the front door and rang a thundering peal. I saw the chance for fun and for putting on their own grandiloquent style. Stealing on tiptoe to the door, I turned the key and bolt noiselessly, and suddenly threw wide back the door and appeared behind it. He had been leaning on it, and nearly pitched forward with an "Oh! what's this!" Then seeing me as he straightened up, "Ah, madam!" ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... a word-play, and the companion of classical annotations. The sermons of the present ministry partake of Reinhard's earnestness and faith. Gallicisms and technical terminology are no longer proclaimed to the peasants, while the artisan is no more entertained with grandiloquent descriptions of the last night of Socrates, or with Ciceronian laudations of the Schoolmen.[83] The popular attendance at the public services is greatly on the increase, and the congregations are expressing in no doubtful terms their desire for the restoration of the thrilling evangelical hymns ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... knew nothing of the English character, but Cardinal Wiseman, at least, could not plead ignorance of the real issues at stake; and therefore his grandiloquent and, under all the circumstances, ridiculous pastoral letter, which he dated 'From out of the Flaminian Gate at Rome,' was justly regarded as an insult to the religious convictions of the vast majority of the English people. Anglicans and Nonconformists ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... am studying," answered the young man, somewhat surprised at the grandiloquent style of the speaker and also at being so directly addressed. In spite of the momentary desire he had just been feeling for company of any sort, on being actually spoken to he felt immediately his habitual irritable and uneasy aversion for any ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... whiskers, who at times suggested to Bently an octogenarian angel, and, at others, a certain ancient baboon once observed in the Primates cage at the Bronz Zoo; the harried, anxious little clerk with his paradoxically grandiloquent intonation; the comedy assistant district attorney with his wheezy voice emanating from a Falstaffian body, who suffered from a soporific malady and was accustomed to open a case and then let it take care of itself while he slumbered ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... Appallacheosmocommetico has vouchsafed to stop here and confer his blessings upon the inhabitants of this town." Hereupon Num again blew the trumpet till he was black in the face; and Timothy, dropping on his donkey, rode away to other parts of the town, where he repeated his grandiloquent announcement, followed, as may be supposed, by a numerous cortege of ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... objurgation; a little more of this medley while the fit lasts, and afterward a staid course of better accustomed messes; a few further variations on this lawless theme of authorship, and then to try simpler tunes; briefly, and yet to be grandiloquent, as a last round of this giddy climax, after noisy clashing Chaos there shall roll out, "perfect, smooth, and round," green young worldlets, moving in quiet harmony, and moulded with ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Surtaine went to bed pondering on the strange attitude of the newspaper mind toward so matter-of-fact a quality as honesty; and he dreamed of a roomful of advertisers listening in sodden silence to his own grandiloquent announcement, "Gentlemen: honesty is the best policy," while, in a corner, McGuire Ellis and Max Veltman clasped each other in an ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... wish to take callow writing too seriously, but I reproduce from an oratorical contest the following bit of premature pragmatism, doubtless due much more to temperament than to perception, because I am still ready to subscribe to it, although the grandiloquent style is, I hope, a thing of the past: "Those who believe that Justice is but a poetical longing within us, the enthusiast who thinks it will come in the form of a millennium, those who see it ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... said he, in a grandiloquent tone when I had completed my examination of the beetle, "I sent for you, that I might have your counsel and assistance in furthering the views of Fate and of ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... returns to his country; and his fellow-citizens, his relations, his friends will all hail his return with joy. Let us beware of jabbering with Socrates and of disdaining the sublime notes of the tragic Muse. To pass an idle life reeling off grandiloquent speeches and foolish quibbles, is the ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... money—for, mind you, my father or my uncle would have helped me out had I written to them, but I could not do that. So long as I was able to keep a roof over my head, I remained silent. I was in the world and I intended to keep going without asking a cent from anyone. Besides, the grandiloquent plans for travel and success which I had so confidently outlined to ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... machinery in Western civilization show the inadequacy of political and economic measures to meet the terrific rise in population. The advent of the factory system, due especially to the development of machinery at the beginning of the nineteenth century, upset all the grandiloquent theories of the previous era. To meet the new situation created by the industrial revolution arose the new science of "political economy," or economics. Old political methods proved inadequate to keep pace with the problem presented ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... I. "I delight in doing so. It is from envy. By all the standards that you know he is the most egregious and grandiloquent and gorgeous fool in all the world. That's why you want to ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... song with a thrill of pleasure. Then I saw him come driving by my farm, sitting on the spring seat of his one-horse wagon, and if he chanced to see me in my field, he would take off his hat and make me a grandiloquent bow, but never for a moment stop his singing. And so he passed by the house and I, with a smile, saw him moving up the hill in the north road, until finally his voice, still singing, ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... simple toilet and donning their unique, but scanty, costume, the kumu, aided by others, soothes the impatience of the audience and stimulates their imagination by cantillating a mele that sets forth in grandiloquent imagery the ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... type. On the other hand, while the Optimates had begun the struggle with a measured resistance and with a defence which earnestly held out even at the forlorn posts, they ended with taking the initiative in club-law, with grandiloquent weakness, and with pitiful perjury. What had once appeared a daring dream, was now attained; the senate had ceased to govern. But when the few old men who had seen the first storms of revolution and heard the words of the Gracchi, compared ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... Laudatory and congratulatory speeches, uttered in British colonies, in the presence of American officials, and hope-inspiring expressions which fell from their lips before Aguinaldo's return to Cavite from exile, strengthened that conviction. Sympathetic avowals and grandiloquent phrases, such as "for the sake of humanity," and "the cause of civilization," which were so freely bandied about at the time by unauthorized Americans, drew Aguinaldo into the error of believing that some sort of bond really existed between the United ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... prodigious memory, he has profited much by intercourse with superior minds. He can recollect every body that ever visited the cave, and all the terms of geology and mineralogy are at his tongue's end. He is extremely attentive, and peculiarly polite to ladies. Like most of his race, he is fond of grandiloquent language, and his rapturous expressions, as he lights up some fine point of view, are at times fine specimens of glorification. His knowledge of the place is ample and accurate, and he is altogether an ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... her father's biography was doomed. Against her mother's wish it could not, with any grace, any dignity, be published. Mr. Potts would put forth appreciation of his departed chief in the small, grandiloquent review to which he contributed—he had only delayed because of the greater project—but such a tribute would be a sealing of public failure rather than the kindling of public recognition. Already her father, by that larger public, was forgotten—forgotten; ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... filled with occasional visits to some sick person in the village; with long walks alone over the moors, and with the composition of his 'Cottage in the Wood' and those grandiloquent sermons which still linger in the memory of Haworth. Occasionally a clergyman from one of the neighbouring villages would walk over to see him; but as Mrs. Bronte had died so soon after her arrival at Haworth their ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... nocturnal repose behind the western horizon." Great writers—the true masters—have often held "fine writing" and pretentious speaking up to ridicule. Thus Shakespeare has Kent, who has been rebuked for his bluntness, indulge in a grandiloquent outburst: ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... you," said he, in a grandiloquent tone, when I had completed my examination of the beetle, "I sent for you that I might have your counsel and assistance in furthering the views of Fate ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... to-day, containing Gen. Hooker's grandiloquent address to his army, a few days after his flight. I preserve it here for the inspection of the future generation, and to deter other generals from the bad policy ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... reels of flax and yards of Hannah More? Give us Hannah's company, but not—not her writings!' It is only fair to say that Mrs. Walford has thoroughly carried out the views she expresses in this passage, for she gives us nothing of Hannah More's grandiloquent literary productions, and yet succeeds in making us know her thoroughly. The whole book is well written, but the biography of Hannah More is a wonderfully brilliant ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... of critics whose cant is simply can't, and who, being unable or unwilling to surrender themselves to these simple sources of enjoyment, are grandiloquent upon the dignity of manhood, and the absurdity of full-grown men in playing monkey-tricks with their bodies. Full-grown men? There is not a person in the world who can afford to be a "full-grown man" through ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... hunchback, who was very happy to show me over the church. Among the monuments was one that interested me; it was erected to commemorate the very Squire Bowes from whom my two old maids had inherited the house and estate of Barwyke. It spoke of him in terms of grandiloquent eulogy, and informed the Christian reader that he had died, in the bosom of the Church of England, at ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... summer-houses, and sunk a ha-ha fence below the orchard, and had contrived to give to the place the unmistakable appearance of an English gentleman's country-house. Nevertheless, Sir Joseph had never bestowed upon his estate, nor had it ever deserved, a more grandiloquent name than that which it had possessed ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... wearisome, though at the same time delightful, journey—under the magnificent roof of the "Empire," which, by the way, is the hotel of the place, not but that nearly ever other shanty on the Bar claims the same grandiloquent title. Indeed, for that matter, California herself might be called the Hotel State, so completely is she inundated with taverns, boarding-houses, etc. The Empire is the only two-story building in town, and absolutely has a live "upstairs." Here you will find two or three ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... that he was using rather grandiloquent language in the wording of this enigmatical little speech, that caused the good professor to look so red and embarrassed. Abbie drew her hand away, and laid her ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... word to conjure by in Lost Valley. Steptoe Service prated of Gov'ment. It was a farce, a synonym for juggled duty, a word to suggest the one-man law of the place, for even Courtrey, who made the sheriffs—and unmade them—did it under the grandiloquent name of Government. She looked at him keenly, and there was a sudden hardening in ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... Frank, who was falling into a trick of addressing the stately Krooman in the same grandiloquent fashion as the latter was in the habit of using, "I place my ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... some fiery spirits among these young men are to raise before I dare express my real opinions concerning questions about which we older men had to fight, in the teeth of fierce public opposition and obloquy—of something which might almost justify even the grandiloquent epithet of a Reign of Terror—before our excellent ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... contemptuously referred to Conkling's "haughty disdain, his grandiloquent swell, his majestic, supereminent, overpowering, turkey-gobbler strut." Accordingly when Garfield disregarded Conkling's wishes in regard to the representation which New York should have in the cabinet, Conkling laid the blame upon his ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... hard to come to any decision. For, as you know by this, it was the colonel's besetting infirmity to shrink from making changes; instinctively he balked—under shelter of whatever grandiloquent excuse—against commission of any action which would alter his relations with accustomed circumstances or persons. To guide events was never his forte, as he forlornly knew; and here he was condemned perforce to play that uncongenial role, ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... Not in the least likely. Mr. Sapsea, in a grandiloquent state of absence of mind, seems to refill his visitor's glass, which is full already; and does really refill his own, which ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... hotel: "I remember a rich scene at the breakfast table. Aaron Powell was with us and the colored waiter pointedly offered him the bill of fare. Miss Anthony glanced at it and began to give her order, not to Powell in ladylike modesty, but promptly and energetically to the waiter. He turned a grandiloquent, deaf ear; Powell fidgeted and studied his newspaper; she persisted, determined that no man should come between her and her own order for coffee, cornbread and beefsteak. 'What do I understand is the full order, sir, for your party?' demanded the waiter, doggedly and suggestively. ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... the room at this moment. His mock applause was accompanied by a clamorous clapping of his hands. I felt my cheeks burn, and my blood boil. The truth is, I was not free from the consciousness that I had suffered some of the grandiloquent to appear in my manner while speaking the sentence which had provoked the ridicule of my uncle. The sarcasm acquired increase of sting in consequence of its being partially well-merited. I replied with some little show of temper, which the ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... foreigner of distinction unequipped with intellectual resources. The hour one spends with Byron's memory then is almost compassionate. After all, one says to one's self as one turns away from the grandiloquent little slab in front of his house and looks down the deadly provincial vista of the empty, sunny street, the author of so many superb stanzas asked less from the world than he gave it. One of his diversions was to ride in the Pineta, which, beginning a couple of miles from the city, extends some ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... villages, with little more than the POSADA, and a few poor houses, and all very dirty. The country, however, improves in cultivation and fertility, though the chief trees are the sombre pines. Still accompanied by our two escorts, which had a very grandiloquent effect, we entered, by four o'clock, Puebla de los Angeles, the second city to Mexico (after Guadalajara) in the republic, where we found very fine apartments prepared for us in the inn, and where, after a short rest and a fresh toilet, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... desires. And when people blame Bernard Shaw for his pitiless and prosaic coldness, his cutting refusal to reverence or admire, I think they should remember this riff-raff of lawless sentimentalism against which his commonsense had to strive, all the grandiloquent "comrades" and all the gushing "affinities," all the sweetstuff sensuality and senseless sulking against law. If Bernard Shaw became a little too fond of throwing cold water upon prophecies or ideals, ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... of the supernatural world are communicated to Manbodom. These ceremonial chants are performed not only during religious celebrations but more commonly at night. The greater part of the night is often worn away with a protracted diffuse narration in which is described, with grandiloquent circumlocution and copious imagery, the ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... regardless of creed. This young woman displayed more courage, more enthusiasm, more wit, to be sure also more precise knowledge of Judaism, than thousands of men of our time, young and old, who fancy grandiloquent periods sufficient to solve the great religious ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... superseded; but the President had found a general who had caught the confidence of the nation. In the same month that had witnessed McDowell's defeat, a young officer had gained a cheap victory over a small Confederate force in West Virginia, and his grandiloquent dispatches had magnified the achievement in the eyes of the Northern people. He was at once nicknamed the "Young Napoleon," and his accession to the chief command of the Federal armies was enthusiastically approved. General McClellan had been ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... great assembly to Moscow to consider a new code; and her "Instruction" to the delegates, saturated as it is with Montesquieu and the rest, shows her abreast of her time. Politicians of the old school, indeed, shuddered at its array of grandiloquent maxims—"there are bombs enough in it," cried Panin, "to bring the walls about our ears." She is here, in spite of all that has been said, exactly where we invariably find her, neither a day in front of her age nor ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... Professor Owen's "axiom of the continuous operation of the ordained becoming of living things," which haunted us like an apparition. For, dim as our conception must needs be as to what such oracular and grandiloquent phrases might really mean, we felt confident that they presaged no good to old beliefs. Foreseeing, yet deprecating, the coming time of trouble, we still hoped, that, with some repairs and make-shifts, the old views might last ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... temple to his chosen deity devoted much space to statues of himself, with grandiloquent accounts in hieroglyphs of his exploits in war and peace and of the many peoples who paid him tribute. Rameses appears to have had most of the evil traits of the arbitrary despot. With unlimited men and material he was engaged during the greater part of his long reign in erecting ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... splits." Searching for him I found this industrious youth lying on his back complacently contemplating the heavens. To my remonstrance he somewhat indignantly remarked that he was only "taking a spell." A really magnificent and grandiloquent appeal to the boy's sense of honour and a homily on the dignity of labour were abruptly terminated by shrill cries resounding from the house. Rushing in, I was informed that Noah was "bawling" (which fact was perfectly evident), having jammed his fingers in trying to "hist" the ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... is this speech of the instant that playlet dialogue needs— the short, sharp, seemingly thoughtless but vividly pulsating words of everyday life. If today men talked in long speeches filled with grandiloquent periods, the playlet would mimic their length and tone, but men today do not speak that way and the playlet must mimic today's shortness and crispness. As Alexander Black says, "The language of the moment is the bridge; that carries us straight ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... curiosity to know all about the strangers, whence they came whither they were going, the object of their journey, and the adventures they had experienced. All these, of course, were ample and eloquently set forth by the communicative old chief. To all his grandiloquent account of the bald-headed chief and his countrymen, the Big Hearts of the East, his cousin listened with great attention, and replied in the customary style of Indian welcome. He then desired the party to ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... "Not so grandiloquent, my little abbe," replied De Bouillon, superciliously. "Methinks, were I so disposed, I might snap the feeble thread of your existence, without any extraordinary display of valor, but I have no desire to deprive the countess of so valiant a knight. I come, not ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... been expected to be low; but they were not. He ran up and down, joked with Martha, soothed his mother, and sang until Martha, who thought that a minister's deportment at a wedding should be only a little less grandiloquent than ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... meanest ever recorded of any low squire, though as he said to himself, the achievements of squires never were recorded. If, however, it were the fact that such a history were in existence, it must necessarily, being the story of a knight-errant, be grandiloquent, lofty, imposing, grand and true. With this he comforted himself somewhat, though it made him uncomfortable to think that the author was a Moor, judging by the title of "Cide;" and that no truth was to be looked for from Moors, as they are all impostors, cheats, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... displays his wounds and sores, proudly, so Wilson Avenue throws open its one-room front door with a grandiloquent gesture as it boasts, "Two hundred and fifty a month!" Shylock, purchasing a paper-thin slice of pinky ham in Wilson Avenue, would know his own early Venetian transaction to have been ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... true explanation of the paradox—that a poet who is often inopportunely witty has the opposite vice of bombastic absurdity. The source of all grandiloquence is the want of taking for a criterion the true qualities of the object described or the emotion expressed. The grandiloquent man is never bent on saying what he feels or what he sees, but on producing a certain effect on his audience; hence he may float away into utter inanity without meeting any criterion to arrest him. Here lies the distinction ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... right; don't worry about that," he mumbled vaguely. "What a grandiloquent kid you are! I hope you'll have a better time than you think, if you do ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... son, and a member of St. John's, Cambridge. He had come to London about this time, and instituted a series of lectures on universal knowledge and primitive Christianity. He styled himself a Rationalist, a title then more honourable than it is now; and in grandiloquent language, 'spouted' on religious subjects to an audience admitted at a shilling a-head. On one occasion he announced a disputation among any two of his hearers, offering to give an impartial hearing and judgment to both. Selwyn and the young Lord Carteret were prepared, and ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... of Music will be ready for inauguration by a company of distinguished actors—all stars, more or less—from the principal theatres of the metropolis—next Saturday night," replied Big Ed in a grandiloquent outburst. ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... subsequently to my story it was taken by a quack doctor, who called himself Baron Duhlstoerf, and filled the parlour windows with bottles of indescribable horrors preserved in brandy, and the newspapers with the usual grandiloquent and mendacious advertisements. This gentleman among his virtues did not reckon sobriety, and one night, being overcome with much wine, he set fire to his bed curtains, partially burned himself, and totally consumed the house. It was afterwards ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... and the light they throw upon the annals is interesting. To these we may add the prayers at the oracle of the sun god, coming from the reigns of Esarhaddon and Ashur bani apal, and they show us the break up of the empire as we never should have suspected from the grandiloquent accounts of the monarchs themselves. Even the business documents occasionally yield us a slight help toward criticism. Add to this the references in foreign sources such as Hebrew or Babylonian, and we ...
— Assyrian Historiography • Albert Ten Eyck Olmstead
... China's simple "greeting," Japan returned a "respectful address;" to China's expression of ineffable superiority Japan replied that the coming of the embassy had "dissolved her long-harboured cares;" and to China's grandiloquent prolixity Japan made answer with half a dozen brief lines. Imoko was now accompanied by eight students four of literature and four of religion. Thus was established, and for long afterwards maintained, a bridge over which ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... infernally grandiloquent to Old Man Grant that his hand actually trembled with emotion as he signed it—at my suggestion. You know I'd hate to be tried for forgery. Then I shook hands with him and started for Panama once more—only ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... trivial appellations. Among Anglo-American hunters, it is called the panther—in their patois, "painter." In most parts of South America, as well as in Mexico, it receives the grandiloquent title of "lion" (leon), and in the Peruvian countries is called the "puma," or "poma." The absence of stripes, such as those of the tiger—or spots, as upon the leopard—or rosettes, as upon the jaguar, have suggested the name of the naturalists, concolor. ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... advertised by posters just like a country circus, except that the language is less grandiloquent. On the following page is a typical announcement presented in heavy black ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... bishop was simply a request that Mr. Quiverful would wait upon his lordship the next morning at 11 A.M.; that from the lady was as simply a request that Mrs. Quiverful would do the same by her, though it was couched in somewhat longer and more grandiloquent phraseology. ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... a challenge, and selected broadswords as the weapons! "Friends," however, brought about an "explanation," and the conflict was avoided. But ink flowed in place of blood, and the newspapers were filled with a mass of silly, grandiloquent, blustering, insolent, and altogether pitiable stuff. All the parties concerned were placed in a most humiliating light, and it is gratifying to hear that Lincoln had at least the good feeling to be heartily ashamed of the affair, ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... their frivolity. I sincerely trust, therefore, if they do seriously resist their besiegers, that the assurances of the Government that there are ample supplies of food and of ammunition, are not part of the system of official lying which was pursued by their predecessors; and I hope that the grandiloquent boasts and brave words that one hears from morning to night will be ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
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