"Demosthenes" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... expect one of my age To speak in public on the stage; And if I chance to fall below Demosthenes or Cicero, Don't view me with a critic's eye, But pass my imperfections by. Large streams from little fountains flow, Tall oaks from ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... paramount in schools, neglected in universities—the recreation rather than the occupation of mature scholars. He is a great worthy, a man of renown; "nevertheless, he did not attain unto the first three"—the two masters of his own day, and the colossal Demosthenes. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... bequests from his father, and his uncle the earl of Bath, he was chosen into parliament for Fowey. He soon after engaged in a joint translation of the Invectives against Philip, with a design, surely weak and puerile, of turning the thunder of Demosthenes upon the head ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... 20th of September, 1776, all the troops in Charleston were ordered to rendezvous without the gates of the city, to hear, as we were told, "Some great news." Soon as we were paraded, governor Rutledge ascended a stage, and in the forcible manner of a Demosthenes, informed, that Congress had dissolved all relation with England, by ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... much?' JOHNSON. 'I don't believe it, sir. Burke has great knowledge, great fluency of words, and great promptness of ideas, so that he can speak with great illustration on any subject that comes before him. He is neither like Cicero, nor like Demosthenes, nor like any one else, but speaks as well ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... cavalry. In older countries, where it has been a merely undisciplined and irregular force, it has often done mischief; and public men, from Demosthenes down, have been lamenting that measures which the statesman has meditated a whole year may be overturned in a day by a woman. Under our American government we have foolishly attempted to leave out this ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Palm, editor of the same Greek Dictionary which, in the hands of Dr. Liddell, has reached its highest perfection. Then there was Funkhaenel, known beyond Germany by his edition of the Orations of Demosthenes, and his studies on Greek orators. We were indeed well off for masters, and most of them seemed to enjoy their work and to be fond of the boys. Our head master was very popular. He was a man of the old German type, powerfully built, with a large square head, ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... were frequented by men not a whit less barbarous and bigoted than their modern representatives—nothing is a greater mistake than to suppose that the crowds of old Rome and Athens were more refined than our own ("Demosthenes, sir, was talking to an assembly of brutes"). For thirty centuries then, let us say, a deity has attracted the faithful to his shrine—Sant' Angelo has become a vacuum, as it were, which must be periodically filled up from the surrounding country. These pilgrimages are ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... and went with him to the Sistine Chapel. He has no feeling for art, and, being very true and earnest, could only do his best to try to admire Michael Angelo; but here and there, where he understood, the pleasure was expressed with a blunt characteristic simplicity. Standing before the statue of Demosthenes, he said: 'That man is persuaded himself of what he speaks, and will therefore persuade others.' She liked him exceedingly. For my part, I should join in more admiration if it were not for his having accepted money, but paid ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... letting it work itself out and stamp itself upon his memory. It made no difference how long the scene might be, he would not write a word of it; it might be some battle- picture, that would fill thirty or forty pages—he would know it all by heart, as Demosthenes or Webster might have known an oration. And only at the end ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... remarkable than his dexterity in presenting his case. James Mill used to point out to his son among other skilful arts of Demosthenes, these two: first, that he said everything important to his purpose at the exact moment when he had brought the minds of his hearers into the state most fitted to receive it; second, that he insinuated gradually and indirectly into their minds ideas ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... Thus it was not merely at hazard that he selected the statues of great men to adorn the gallery of the Tuileries. Among the Greeks he made choice of Demosthenes and Alesander, thus rendering homage at once to the genius of eloquence and the genius of victory. The statue of Hannibal was intended to recall the memory of Rome's most formidable enemy; and Rome herself was represented ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... quite as much as their gowns, or perhaps venture into society with minds naked to the verge of indecent ignorance, then I say to these, "Talk to me only with your eyes,"—and they can be more eloquent than any Demosthenes of your New England Athens. Women are younger than men, and nearer to nature; they have more animal life and spirits and glee. Their lively, frolicsome, sunshiny chatter keeps existence from growing mouldy and stale. We have it on the authority of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... force consisted in his cavalry, would have been engaged in a very unequal combat: and Sapor was permitted to form the siege of Caesarea, the capital of Cappadocia; a city, though of the second rank, which was supposed to contain four hundred thousand inhabitants. Demosthenes commanded in the place, not so much by the commission of the emperor, as in the voluntary defence of his country. For a long time he deferred its fate; and when at last Caesarea was betrayed by the perfidy of a physician, he cut his way through the Persians, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... The historical? What finer history than Titian's Paul III., Raphael's Leo X., Albert Duerer's head of himself? What finer than the Pericles, the Marcus Aurelius of the Capitol, the Demosthenes of the Vatican, Chantrey's Scott, Houdon's Voltaire, Powers's Jackson?—Heroic? what more heroic than the Lateran Sophocles, the Venetian Colleoni, or Rauch's statue of Frederick the Great?—Poetical? What picture more sweetly poetical than Raphael's head of himself ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... Englishman, if the work had been published recently, insist that the work must have been written by an Englishman, as the allusion could apply to no one so well as him, who, having been a judge without law, and a translator of Demosthenes without Greek, had, to his other titles to public esteem, added that of being an historian ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... most wonderful drawing in the entire collection is No. 89. Never did Keene show greater mastery over his material. In this drawing every line of the black-lead pencil is more eloquent than Demosthenes' most eloquent period. The roll and the lurch of the vessel, the tumult of waves and wind, the mental and physical condition of the passengers, all are given as nothing in this world could give them except that magic pencil. The figure, the man that the wind blows out of the picture, his hat about ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... the unrivalled productions of her poets, orators, and philosophers, has left a lingering glory on the historic page, which twenty centuries have not been able to eclipse or dim. The names of Solon and Pericles; of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle; of Isocrates and Demosthenes; of Myron, Phidias, and Praxiteles; of Herodotus, Xenophon, and Thucydides; of Sophocles and Euripides, have shed an undying lustre on ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... Latin Testament for half that amount, a Latin folio Bible published in 1532 for $4, Luther's first New Testament at 84 cents. One might get a copy of the Pandects for $1.60, of Vergil for 10 cents, a Greek grammar for 8 cents, Demosthenes and Aeschines in one volume at 20 cents, one of Luther's more important tracts for 30 cents and the condemnation of him by the universities in a small pamphlet at 6 cents. One of the things that has gone down most in price since that day is postage. Duerer while in the Netherlands paid a messenger ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... do at home, the plain mother tongue, which everyone is acquainted with. It may be allowed in courtiers, lawyers, advocates, etc., to use quaint, curious words. St. Paul never used such high and stately words as Demosthenes and Cicero used. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... Terence Roman epic poetry: Virgil Lyrical poetry: Horace, Catullus Didactic poetry: Lucretius Elegiac poetry: Ovid, Tibullus Satire: Horace, Martial, Juvenal Perfection of Greek prose writers History: Herodotus Thucydides, Xenophon Roman historians Julius Caesar Livy Tacitus Orators Pericles Demosthenes Aeschines Cicero Learned men: Varro Seneca ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... the Greek customs is summed up in a few words by Demosthenes: "We marry wives in order to have legitimate children and a faithful guardian for our household; we have concubines for our daily service, and hetairas for the enjoyment ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... sojourner at Athens would understand how a tragic poet can write, he must betake himself to the theatre on the south, and see and hear the drama literally in action. Or let him go westward to the Agora, and there he will hear Lysias or Andocides pleading, or Demosthenes haranguing. He goes farther west still, along the shade of those noble planes, which Cimon has planted there; and he looks around him at the statues and porticos and vestibules, each by itself a work of genius and skill, enough ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... never read any invective of Cato's so fine as your encomtum. O if my Lord(2) could be sufficiently praised, sufficiently praised he would have been undoubtedly by you! This kind of thing is not done nowadays.(3) It were easier to match Pheidias, easier to match Apelles, easier in a word to match Demosthenes himself, or Cato himself; than to match this finisht and perfect work. Never have I read anything more refined, anything more after the ancient type, anything more delicious, anything more Latin. O happy you, to be endowed with eloquence so great! O happy I, to be tinder the charge of such a master! ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... the evils which befell me, and the gross mismanagement, under my guardians, of my small fortune, and that of my brothers and sisters, it has often occurred to me that so important an office, which, from the time of Demosthenes, has been proverbially maladministered, ought to be put upon a new footing, plainly guarded by a few obvious provisions. As under the Roman laws, for a long period, the guardian should be made responsible in law, and should give security ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... became an artifice of politics. Themistocles, with a design of engaging the Athenians to quit Athens, in order to be in a better condition to resist Xerxes, made the Pythoness deliver an oracle, commanding them to take refuge in wooden walls. Demosthenes said, that the Pythoness philippised, to signify that she was ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... beauty of Mrs. Woffington. Pomander sneered, to draw him out. Cibber smiled, with good-natured superiority. This nettled the young gentleman, he fired up, his handsome countenance glowed, he turned Demosthenes for her he loved. One advantage he had over both Cibber and Pomander, a fair stock of classical learning; ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... The handsome, in admiring their beauty therein, were admonished that handsome is who handsome does; and the more the ugly stared at themselves, the more they became naturally anxious to hide the disgrace of their features in the loveliness of their merits. Was not Demosthenes always at his speculum? Did he not rehearse his causes before it as before a master in the art? He learned his eloquence from Plato, his dialectics from Eubulides; but as for his delivery—there, he came ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... AEschines spoke of Demosthenes' delivery of his "Oration on the Crown" as having the ferocity of a wild beast. I do not see how that can be, however, because Demosthenes selected Isaeus as his teacher for the reason that Isaeus was ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... sneered and his sharp black eyes gleamed venom as he instructed business men, bankers, smart young officers, lorgnetted dowagers and sweet-faced girls, in the duty of hating with the whole heart and the whole mind. I soon felt that if Lissauer is the Horace of Hate, Sombart is its Demosthenes. ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... wear not thy body out To please our willing ears. Thou hast exceeded Thy feeble strength already. Cease, man; Demosthenes himself could not have stood The strain ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... thynges as he hath inuen- ted: and by Iugement knowen apte to his purpose whan they are set in theyr order so to speke them that it may be pleasaunt and delectable to the audience / so that it may be sayd of hym that hystories make mencion that an olde woman sayd ones [A.iiii.v] by Demosthenes / & syns hath ben a como[n] prouerbe amonge the Grekes [Greek: outos esti] which is as moche to say as (This is he) And this last p[ro]perty is called among ler- ned men ( Eloquence. Of these foure the moost ...
— The Art or Crafte of Rhetoryke • Leonard Cox
... exemplary a life, was so busy in virtue, so unblemished of fault, that he could not be overlooked by the managers of the quadrennial national performance, searching with Demosthenes' lantern for a man against whom nothing could be said. They called Eric from private life to be headliner ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... been, Laurie studied to some purpose that year, for he graduated with honor, and gave the Latin oration with the grace of a Phillips and the eloquence of a Demosthenes, so his friends said. They were all there, his grandfather—oh, so proud—Mr. and Mrs. March, John and Meg, Jo and Beth, and all exulted over him with the sincere admiration which boys make light of at the time, but fail to win from the ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... Vols. Livy. 2 Vols. Cicero's Orations. Cicero's Offices, Laelius, Cato Major, Paradoxes, Scipio's Dream, Letter to Quintus. Cicero On Oratory and Orators. Cicero's Tusculan Disputations, The Nature of the Gods, and The Commonwealth. Juvenal. Xenophon. Homer's Iliad. Homer's Odyssey. Herodotus. Demosthenes. 2 Vols. Thucydides. AEschylus. Sophocles. Euripides. 2 ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... "Stutterin' Demosthenes! I didn't think there were enough horses in the world to move the thing! Madam, I have swiftly reached the conclusion that I am not a jerkline skinner. Are ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... rail-splitter. I knew of his discussions with Douglas, but never did I completely vanquish them until Mr. Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg oration, and "that ball fetched all the pins and knocked a hole through the alley." And it must be noted that I thought myself, somewhat like a Demosthenes, for I had practiced in that little school house on "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" and two verses of "On Linden When the Sun Was Low," much to mother's delight. So equipped, or so not equipped, I began my duties ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith
... the meanness of their body by the glory of their virtue? You see; the wisest man of his day actually went so far as to use the mirror as an instrument of moral discipline. Again, who is ignorant of the fact that Demosthenes, the greatest master of the art of speaking, always practised pleading before a mirror as though before a professor of rhetoric? When that supreme orator had drained deep draughts of eloquence in the study of Plato the philosopher, and had learned all that could be learned of argumentation from ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... b. in Lincolnshire, was at Camb., and held various high positions under Queen Elizabeth. He was the author of The Rule of Reason containing the Arte of Logique (1551), and The Arte of Rhetorique (1553), and made translations from Demosthenes. He endeavoured to maintain the purity of the language against ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... Dio has in this sentence imitated almost word for word the utterance of Demosthenes, inveighing against Aischines, in the speech on the crown ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... moved again through the temple, I wished that the illustrious men who had sat in it in the remote ages could visit it again and reveal themselves to our curious eyes—Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Socrates, Phocion, Pythagoras, Euclid, Pindar, Xenophon, Herodotus, Praxiteles and Phidias, Zeuxis the painter. What a constellation of celebrated names! But more than all, I wished that old Diogenes, groping ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... whole matter was a mixture of cowardice and meanness. Recollecting his poetical temperament, and the well-known stories of Demosthenes at Cheronea, and Horace at Philippi, we are not disposed to be harsh on his cowardice, but we have no excuse for his meanness. It discovers a want of heart, and an infinite littleness of soul. We can hardly conceive him to have possessed a drop of the blood of Hampden or ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... reference in the Republic (ii, 364 f.) to the mendicant prophets with their formulas for expiation of sin and salvation from future punishment, and Demosthenes's derisive description of AEschines as ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... withdraw during a division of the House. This responsible office could not have been conferred upon any one so capable of discharging its onerous duties as the Colonel. We will stake our hump, that half-a-dozen words of the gallant Demosthenes would, at any time have the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 5, 1841 • Various
... literary reputation is not more than two or three beggarly townlands, whom, by the way, he is inoculating successfully wid his own ripe and flourishing ignorance. No, sir; nor like Gusty Gibberish, or (as he has been most facetiously christened by his Reverence, Father O'Flaherty) Demosthenes M'Gosther, inasmuch as he is distinguished for an aisy and prodigal superfluity of mere words, unsustained by intelligibility or meaning, but who cannot claim in his own person a mile and a half of dacent reputation. However, quid multis Mr. Hyacinthus; 'tis no ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... picturesque, his positiveness wearied me at times, and his frequent sacrifices of truth to effect kept me in a questioning attitude very unlike the attitude of reverence in which I had listened to the Demosthenes of Great Britain. ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... happened, which compelled the besiegers to retreat. The patriots characterized this storm as Providential. Had the weather remained fair, the patriots would have been beaten, the democracy would not have been restored, and we should never have had the orations of Demosthenes; and perhaps even Plato might not have written and thought for all ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... to the regularly repeated tradition the great Greek orator, Demosthenes, overcame impediments that would have daunted any ordinary man. His voice was weak. He lisped, and his manner was awkward. With pebbles in his mouth he tried his lungs against the noise of the dashing waves. This strengthened his voice and gave him presence of mind in case of tumult among ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... him, they came and went at will, undisturbed by any gross collision with reality. There was hardly any part of it that was not consecrated by some divine visitation. It was in the corner by the window, standing on a step-ladder and fumbling in the darkness for a copy of Demosthenes, De Corona, that he lit on his first Idea. From his seat behind the counter, staring, as was his custom, into the recess where the coal-scuttle was, he first saw the immortal face of ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... besides Speusippus, Xenocrates, Aristotle, Heraclides Ponticus, and others, who were devoted solely to philosophical studies, he is said to have occasionally numbered Chabrias, Iphicrates, Timotheus, Phocion, Isocrates, and (by some) Demosthenes among his hearers. He died at a great ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... or one of your learned correspondents, tell me the origin or first user of the literary "smelling of the lamp?" I know that it is commonly attributed to Demosthenes? but if it is his, I want chapter and verse ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.03.23 • Various
... certain forms of purification which one does not know whether to describe as ablutions or anointings. Thus Demosthenes in his speech "On the crown', accused Aeschines of having "purified the initiated and wiped them clean with (not from) mud and pitch.'' Smearing with gypsum (titanos. titanos) had a similar purifying effect, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Milutinovich, who is the best of the living poets of Servia, and has been sometimes called the Ossian of the Balkan. As for his other pseudonyme, "the Homer of a hundred sieges," that must have been invented by Mr. George Robins, the Demosthenes of "one hundred rostra." The reading public in Servia is not yet large enough to enable a man of letters to live solely by his works; so our bard has a situation in the ministry of public instruction. One of the most remarkable compositions of Milutinovich is an address ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... philosophy, both ancient and modern, there is probably no one who has attained so eminent a position as Plato. What Homer was to Epic poetry, what Cicero and Demosthenes were to oratory, and what Shakespeare was to the drama of England, Plato was to ancient philosophy, not unapproachable nor unapproached, but possessing an inexplicable ...
— Apology, Crito, and Phaedo of Socrates • Plato
... college while it stands by the Greek and the Latin, and certainly as representatives of the great mass of graduates we can now talk more of Greek and Latin as a common accomplishment than the greatest genius and orators of ancient times, Demosthenes or Cicero, could of ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... point before us. In the Attic {56b} commonwealth it was the privilege and birthright of every citizen and poet to rail aloud and in public, or to expose upon the stage by name any person they pleased, though of the greatest figure, whether a Creon, an Hyperbolus, an Alcibiades, or a Demosthenes. But, on the other side, the least reflecting word let fall against the people in general was immediately caught up and revenged upon the authors, however considerable for their quality or their merits; whereas in England it is just the reverse of all this. Here you ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... from the Timaeus; abuse of Metaphors; certain tasteless conceits blamed in Plato (c. xxxii). [Hence arises a digression (cc. xxxiii-xxxvi) on the spirit in which we should judge of the faults of great authors. Demosthenes compared with Hyperides, Lysias with Plato. Sublimity, however far from faultless, to be always ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... always openly and frankly prepared his speeches, and I have seen him entranced in the process. As he always had a classical reference for everything he did, he was in the habit of mentioning that Demosthenes also was unwilling to "put his faculty at ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... are coming to the front. Among those named more and more frequently of late is T. C. DeLeon. The story is as full of plot as it can hold; and if action plays as large a part in fiction, as Demosthenes averred it did in oratory, "Juny" should be a popular ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... than you and me, have accepted the offers of those who came forward to indemnify the persecuted for the demolition of their property. Ask yourself if Demosthenes or Milton, the two most illustrious defenders of liberty, by speech and pen, would have thrust aside the tribute which is due to such men alone. Would you dash out the signature of one who declares you his trustee for a legacy to your children? No, you would not. Neither ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... members of the Lower House, the box in which the managers stood contained an array of speakers such as perhaps had not appeared together since the great age of Athenian eloquence. There were Fox and Sheridan, the English Demosthenes and the English Hyperides. There was Burke—ignorant indeed, or negligent, of the art of adapting his reasonings and his style to the capacity and taste of his hearers, but in amplitude of comprehension and richness of imagination superior to every ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... next visited what is called Demosthenes's Lantern, situated close to a ruined house, formerly the Franciscan convent. Mr. Finlay and some others have cleared away the rubbish and masses of fallen masonry from about the Lantern: they have also dug a ditch around it, to prevent the devastation committed by visitors ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... the doctor, sort of playing with Billy with his eyes and grin, and turning like to let the whole crowd in on the joke, "DECLINE? The eminent gentleman declines! And he is going to sit down, too, with all that speech bottled up in him! O Demosthenes!" he says, "you have lost your pebble in front ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... grandeur of design no man ever displayed such a countenance and port, handsome and sublime. In his intentness and earnestness, he did not suspect the liability of his expressions to the charge of a vindictiveness he was unconscious of in his own breast. It was like a philippic of Demosthenes; it was a Ciceronian oration against some Catiline, real or supposed. A poetic sort of revenge was all he meant to take, although his language to opponents, whom perhaps he sometimes mistook, may ...
— Senatorial Character - A Sermon in West Church, Boston, Sunday, 15th of March, - After the Decease of Charles Sumner. • C. A. Bartol
... "Historical Sketches of the Statesmen who flourished in the Time of George the Third;" in 1845-6, "Lives of Men of Letters and Science who flourished in the Time of George the Third;" and he has since given to the world works on "The French Revolution," on "Instinct," "Demosthenes' Oration on the Crown," &c., &c. Collections of his Speeches and Forensic Arguments, and of his Critical Essays, as well as the other works above referred to, have been republished in ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... elegance and accuracy of composition which is admired in Isocrates, with much greater variety and freedom. According as his subject requires, he has the easiness and sweetness of Xenophon, and the pathetic force and rapid simplicity of Demosthenes. His judgment is exquisite, his images noble, his morality sensible and beautiful. No man understands human nature to greater perfection, nor has a happier power of persuasion. He is always clear and intelligible upon the loftiest and greatest subjects, and ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... neighbors whom he considered ciphers. At the afternoon's dinner, the pudding of praise was served out in slices to favored individuals; dry toasts were drunk by drier dignitaries; the Governor was compared to Solon; the Chief Justice to Brutus; the Orator of the Day to Demosthenes; the Colonel of the Boston Regiment to Julius Caesar; and everybody went home happy from a feast where the historic parallels were sure to hold out to the last ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... the Balliol College Endowment Fund, as well as the Master and Fellows of Balliol College, has enabled me to revise them and to furnish them with brief introductions and notes. Only those speeches are included which are generally admitted to be the work of Demosthenes, and the spurious documents contained in the MSS. of the Speech on the Crown are omitted. The speeches are arranged in chronological order, and the several introductions to them are intended to supply ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... the genius of her ORATORS and PHILOSOPHERS. There were ten Attic orators, whose works were collected by the Greek grammarians, and many of whose orations have come down to us. Their names are Antiphon, Andocides, Lysias, Isocrates, Isaeus, AEschines, Lycurgus, Demosthenes, Hyperides and Dinarchus. ANTIPHON, the earliest of the ten was born B.C. 480. He opened a school of rhetoric, and numbered among his pupils the historian Thucydides. Antiphon was put to death in 411 B.C. for the part which he took in establishing ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... so foolish as to let your own difficulties or your own abilities stand in the way. It is said that people would go to hear Cicero and would come away and say, "Did you ever hear anything like it? wasn't it sublime? wasn't it grand?" But they would go and hear Demosthenes, and he would fire them so with the subject that they would want to go and fight at once. They forgot all about Demosthenes, but were stirred by his message; that was the difference ...
— Men of the Bible • Dwight Moody
... ages of woman, considered after Demosthenes in her three-fold character, prostitute for pleasure, concubine for ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... great animation of the advantage of classical study, Greek especially. "Where," he said, "would one look for a greater orator than Demosthenes; or finer dramatic poetry, next to Shakspere, than that of Aeschylus or Sophocles, not to speak of Euripides." Herodotus he thought "the most interesting and instructive book, next to the Bible, which ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... will say, too blind, to abandon their life-long devotion to 'Athens' or to 'Freedom' because the world considered such ideals out of date. They could look the ruined Athenians in the face, after the lost battle, and say with Demosthenes, 'Ouk estin, ouk estin hopos hemartete. It cannot be that you ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... turning to Maurice with a fascinating smile, "that I had forgotten my appointment; but, at the Russian embassy, yesterday, I was prevailed upon to promise that I would be present at the senate to-day to hear the speech of a Vermont orator, a sort of Orson Demosthenes, who has gained great renown by his rude but stirring eloquence. We ladies have been promised admission (which is now and then granted) to the floor of the house, instead of being crammed into the close galleries. It will be a brilliant occasion. I invited the Countess ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... of abstract reasoning, between the language spoken by the people and that of the learned; the one was a counterpart of the other; there was no term in any of Plato's dialogues which a youth, leaving his gymnasia, could not comprehend; there is not a phrase in any of Demosthenes' harangues which did not readily find a lodging-place in the brain of an Athenian peasant or blacksmith. Attempt to translate into Greek one of Pitt's or Mirabeau's discourses, or an extract from Addison or Nicole, and you will be obliged to recast ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... of Thucydides, a deme of Attica of the tribe of Leontis. Demosthenes tells us it was thirty-five ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes
... Democratic organ. This unquestionably had a disastrous effect upon the eloquence of Congress, which no longer hung upon the accents of its leading members, and rarely read what appeared in the report of the debates. Imitating Demosthenes and Cicero, Chatham and Burke, Mirabeau and Lamartine, the Congressmen of the first fifty years of the Republic poured forth their breathing thoughts and burning words in polished and elegant language, and were listened to by their colleagues ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... by the weakness of a democracy in war time as compared with an autocracy like the German. It is a complaint as old as Demosthenes. But it does not shake my faith in democracy as the best form of Government, because mere strength and efficiency is not my ideal. If a magician were to offer to change us to-morrow into a state on the German model, I shouldn't accept the offer, not ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... governor's council, was composed of upright and virtuous men, and John Rutledge was one of the most distinguished sons, to whom South Carolina has given birth. His eloquence was proverbial, both in congress, and at home. It was that of Demosthenes, concise, energetic, and commanding. There was something in his very manner, and the tone of his voice, that riveted the attention of his audience. They stood subdued before him. He swayed the councils of the state, he swayed the councils of the general who commanded ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James
... preparatory school at Andover, Mass., when he was seven years old, and showed himself an eager pupil. Among other books, he was delighted with Plutarch's LIVES, and at thirteen he composed a biography of Demosthenes, long preserved by his family. A year later he entered Yale ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... on that throne and rule all that comes within its reach?" She directed his attention to the throne at the opposite end of the hall. "From its seat I calmly instruct gray-haired statesmen, weigh their wisdom and pass upon it as if I were Demosthenes, challenge the evils that may drive monarchs mad, and wonder if my crown ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... house to run up a tent, but his advice is completely ignored. New laws are made for every change in the weather, for every little daily incident in politics. We are getting used to this hand-to-mouth legislation. Like the barbarian warrior, of whom Demosthenes tells us, who always protected that portion of his person which had just received a blow, holding his shield up to his shoulder, when his shoulder had been struck, down again to his thigh when the blow fell there, the dominant faction only makes laws to protect itself against an ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... my grandfather, as Paul was driven, in his epistle to the Corinthians, and as Demosthenes was forced in his oration for the crown, to enter somewhat upon his own past record. Though a very modest and unpretentious man, yet it is said that the author of the Log-Book, on this memorable occasion straightened himself up, and boldly ...
— Log-book of Timothy Boardman • Samuel W Boardman
... regards he was what we are accustomed to designate as a fool; but to connect the two as cause and effect is like saying that a man was a great athlete because he was lame, or that Lord Byron had a beautiful face because he had a club-foot, or that Demosthenes was a great orator because he stammered. Men have been made by their foibles, but in those cases weakness in some directions has been more than compensated for by strength in others. Boswell lacked some of the great literary powers, but he possessed ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... the temper of the writer, is of consequence more pleasing to the reader. One warms you by degrees: the other sets you on fire all at once, and never intermits his heat. 'Tis the same difference which Longinus makes betwixt the effects of eloquence in Demosthenes and Tully. One persuades; the other commands. You never cool while you read Homer, even not in the second book (a graceful flattery to his countrymen); but he hastens from the ships, and concludes not that book till he has made you an amends by the violent playing of a new machine. From thence ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... flame resplendent even in spite of an unworthy possessor's neglect. But the man with talent which must be carefully cherished and increased if he would attain distinction by its help—that man is the true self-helper to whom our hearts go out in sympathy. Every schoolboy knows that Demosthenes practised declamation on the seashore, with his mouth full of pebbles. This description of the unlovely old Athenian with the compelling tongue is Plutarch's contribution to the literature ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... school or a person, may, if produced after his death, become epistles. Some of these, genuine or forgeries, under some eminent name, have come down to us from the days of the early Roman Empire. Cicero, Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, are the principal names to which these epistles, genuine ...
— How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) - A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence • Mary Owens Crowther
... as this word is, it says ever so much. It says: "My Father, I am in great trouble and you seem so far away. But I know I am your child, because you are my Father for Christ's sake. I am loved by you because of the Beloved." This one little word "Abba" surpasses the eloquence of a Demosthenes and a Cicero. ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... nun, and showed his disposition to make the best of it by making her a wedding-present of his new Latin treatise, just finished, on The Origin of Evil, and receiving in tender return a Greek copy of the Philippics of Demosthenes. Three years later the wretched woman was accused of adultery, and being put to the torture confessed her crime and was drowned in a sack, while her paramour was beheaded. Bonivard, being questioned, declared his belief of her innocence, and that her worst faults were that she wanted to make him ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... Roman war and Grecian art had left dark and barbarous. Where one man is charmed by the Odyssey, tens and hundreds of thousands are delighted by the Pentateuch; where one man is enthused by the Philippics of Demosthenes, millions are enthused by the orations of Isaiah; where one man is inspired by the valor of Horatious, tens of millions are inspired by the bravery of David; where one man's life is ennobled by the art in the Parthenon, scores of millions of lives are ennobled by the art in the ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... form a judgment from the three which are extant (for the so-called Funeral Oration of Demosthenes is a bad and spurious imitation of Thucydides and Lysias), conformed to a regular type. They began with Gods and ancestors, and the legendary history of Athens, to which succeeded an almost equally fictitious account of later times. The Persian war usually ...
— Menexenus • Plato
... conception of the classic. Now there is an obvious unlikeness between the thought and art of the nations of pagan antiquity and the thought and art of the peoples of Christian, feudal Europe. Everyone will agree to call the Parthenon, the "Diana" of the Louvre, the "Oedipus" of Sophocles, the orations of Demosthenes classical; and to call the cathedral of Chartres, the walls of Nuremberg—die Perle des Mittelalters—the "Legenda Aurea" of Jacobus de Voragine, the "Tristan und Isolde" of Gottfried of Strasburg, and the illuminations in a ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... hours I piled the Pelion of passion upon the Ossa of elocutionary correctness, still without surmounting the zone of plant life; which in the Arts, sir, must extend higher than geographers concede. And yet I evoked laughter; from which I may conclude that my efforts amused. The great Demosthenes, sir, practised declamation with his mouth full of pebbles—for retaliatory ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... even get hydrophobia, that fact would scarce become historic. The public marks and magnifies a great man's foibles, but forgets both the little fellow and his faults. Jeanjean may hide from the battle in a hollow log, and none hear of it; but let a Demosthenes lose his shield and the world cackles over it for two-and-twenty centuries. To digress for a moment, I believe the story of Demosthenes' cowardice as damnable a lie as that relating to Col. Ingersoll's surrender. Even in his day human vermin sought to wreck with falsehood ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... their place in the rank of British classics. It is the highest praise that can be given to a work of this character to say that it may be placed on the bookshelf side by side with Jeremy Collier's "Marcus Aurelius," Leland's "Demosthenes," and the "Montaigne" of Charles Cotton. It embalms the genuine spirit and life of an Oriental poem in the simple yet tasteful form of English narrative. The blending of verse and prose is a happy expedient. If we may use ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... grammar-school text, but yet worthy a wise man's consideration. Question was asked of Demosthenes, what was the chief part of an orator? he answered, action; what next? action; what next again? action. He said it, that knew it best, and had, by nature, himself no advantage in that he commended. A strange thing, that that part of an orator, ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... times, of which we now speak, will not produce orators like Patrick Henry and James Otis at the opening of our Revolutionary struggle, like Mirabeau in France, or Cicero in Rome, pleading for a dying republic, or Demosthenes in Athens contending hopelessly against the domination of one ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... any town, he took the pains to find out something of the local history, and thus touched the patriotism of his audience in the parish bounds, and the past glories of America were revived in terms of a new and strange flattery. We were like the Athenians after hearing the Philippics of Demosthenes,—all ready to march against the Austrian. Before he left New York I had volunteered to fight or conspire, or take any part in the struggle which might fall to me. I kept my counsel from my family, and when Kossuth went on his ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... impervious to human sight. The doom of tyrannies was thenceforth sealed. Satire and invective became potent as armies. The unseen hands of the Juniuses could launch the thunderbolts, and make the ministers tremble. One whisper from this giant fills the earth as easily as Demosthenes filled the Agora. It will soon be heard at the antipodes as easily as in the next street. It travels with the lightning under the oceans. It makes the mass one man, speaks to it in the same common language, and elicits a sure and single response. Speech ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... Physics, Astronomy, and Ethics, principally "Butler's Analogy." In the Classics course selections from Homer, Virgil, Euripides and Horace were read in the first year; selections from Cicero, Horace, Demosthenes and Sophocles in the second year; and selections from Herodotus, AEschylus, Thucydides, and Tacitus in the third year. In the first and second years the students were "exercised in Greek and Latin Composition, and ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... between Boswell and his book. As a biographer, according to Macaulay, Boswell has easily surpassed all rivals. "Homer is not more decidedly the first of Epic poets, Shakespeare is not more decidedly the first of dramatists, Demosthenes is not more decidedly the first of orators than Boswell is the first of biographers. He has no second. Eclipse is first, and the rest nowhere." And yet this same Boswell is "a man of the meanest and feeblest intellect"; and, strangest of all, only achieves ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... Virgil and Demosthenes, he had begun to write a Treatise upon the Will, a symbolic work which contained the germs of his entire destiny. His fellow students, rendered curious by his sustained application, continuing month after month, tried in vain to steal glimpses over his shoulder, but ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... the queen of his heart, because home life is the ideal of every Greek and he is a model as head of the family, in his moderate means trying to raise children to his generation and give them the best he can afford. Hopeful, that some Socrates or Demosthenes might develop out of his offspring. The Greek has never been identified with any unlawful or criminal movement of the so-called Anarchistic or Socialistic. The Greek at all times and under all circumstances is an example as a ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... to be a Dunce," and although in mature life he was "on the side of his masters" and grateful to them "that my persistent efforts not to learn Latin were frustrated; and that I was not entirely successful even in escaping the contamination of the language of Aristotle and Demosthenes," he still contrasts childhood as a time when one "wants to know nearly everything" with "the period of what is commonly called education; that is, the period during which I was being instructed by somebody I did not know about something I ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... been saved, in spite of its inefficient armament, was accepted as the finest possible compliment to the guest of the evening. The note of all the other speeches was their exquisite impersonality. They got further and further from the occasion of the evening, until the effort of Demosthenes closed the speaking with a scathing denunciation of the machine politicians who had involved the Athenians in a war with Persia to further the interests of Sparta. It was held that this was the noblest tribute which could be paid to the ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... of man, and being quite poor, and entirely hopeless of family wealth or influence, there were only two fields open to him, Art or Nonconformity. To art in the usual sense of the word he was not called, but to the art of Demosthenes he was unmistakably called; and for this Nonconformity—with a side entrance ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... now became renowned not only in Greece, but throughout the ancient world, for the magnificence of its public buildings. Thucydides, writing about this time, says that should Athens be destroyed, posterity would infer from its ruins that the city had been twice as populous as it actually was. Demosthenes speaks of the strangers who came to visit its attractions. But the changes of twenty-three centuries have passed upon this splendor—a sad story of violence and neglect—and the queenly city has long ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... when the Persian monarchy seemed to have recovered almost its pristine force and strength, that the attention of its rulers was called to a small cloud on the distant horizon, which some were wise enough to see portended storm and tempest. The growing power of Macedon, against which Demosthenes was at this time in vain warning the careless Athenians, attracted the consideration of Ochus or of his counsellors; and orders went forth from the Court that Persian influence was to be used to check and depress the rising kingdom. A force was consequently despatched to assist ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... as these: "Think of the many elements of thought a boy comes in contact with when he reads Caesar and Tacitus in succession, Herodotus and Homer, Thucydides and Aristotle". "See what is implied in having read Homer intelligently through, or Thucydides or Demosthenes; what light will have been shed on the essence and laws of human existence, on political society, on the relations of man to man, on human nature itself." There are various conceivable ways of counter-arguing these assertions, but the shortest is ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... Sheep and the Wolves)—Ver. 1. Demosthenes is said to have related this Fable to the Athenians, when dissuading them from surrendering the Orators ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... 389 B.C., six years before his lifelong rival Demosthenes. If we may trust that rival's elaborate details of his early life, his father taught a primary school and his mother was overseer of certain initiatory rites, to both of which occupations Aeschines gave his youthful hand and assistance. He became in time a third-rate actor, and ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... rode home, "his Lordship will be surprised and gratified, I dare say, to find himself a perfect Demosthenes in the newspaper reports of to-morrow morning. Hems, coughs, stammerings, blowing of the nose, and ten-minute lapses of memory, all vanish in passing through the sieves and bolters of a report. What magicians the reporters are! What talents, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... You see, we of to-day are rather ahead of Demosthenes and Cicero, and those old fellows. I suppose Rome was ...
— Walter Sherwood's Probation • Horatio Alger
... ground of Epipolae upon the southern side from the plain, so very gradual is the line of ascent and so comparatively even is the rocky surface of the hill. Thucydides, in narrating the night attack of Demosthenes upon the lines of Gylippus (book vii. 43-45), lays stress upon the necessity of approaching Epipolae from the western side by Euryalus, and again asserts that during the hurried retreat of the Athenians great numbers died by leaping from the cliffs, while still more had to throw ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... Landgrave of Hesse and the Elector of Saxony, promised him assistance. He brought all his powers of eloquence and of diplomacy to make friends for the cause which he had now boldly espoused. The high-born Demosthenes electrified large assemblies by his indignant invectives against the Spanish Philip. He excelled even his royal antagonist in the industrious subtlety with which he began to form a thousand combinations. Swift, secret, incapable ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... at this moment that President Boomer, who understood faculties as few men have done, quietly entered the room, laid his silk hat on a volume of Demosthenes, and proposed the vote of a degree of Doctor of Letters for Edward Tomlinson. He said that there was no need to remind the faculty of Tomlinson's services to the nation; they knew them. Of the members of the faculty, indeed, some thought ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... the unity of national feeling, and her only statesman, Pitt, remained in studied seclusion, the First Consul might well feel assured of the impotence of the Island Power, and view the bickering of her politicians with the same quiet contempt that Philip felt for the Athens of Demosthenes. ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... men and books, one must always remember this important distinction—that one can put the books down at any time. As Macaulay says, "Plato is never sullen. Cervantes is never petulant. Demosthenes never comes unseasonably. Dante never stays ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... there belong to it sublimities of virtues which all men may attain, and which no man can transcend: and though this be not true in an equal degree of intellectual power, yet in the persons of Plato, Demosthenes, and Homer, and in those of Shakespeare, Milton, and Lord Bacon, were enshrined as much of the divinity of intellect as the inhabitants of this planet can hope will ever take up its abode among them. But the question is not of the power or worth of individual minds, but of the general ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... PEACE OF NICIAS (421 B.C.).—Soon after the affair at Mytilene and the destruction of Plataea, an enterprising general of the Athenians, named Demosthenes, seized and fortified a point of land (Pylos) on the coast of Messenia. The Spartans made every effort to dislodge the enemy. In the course of the siege, four hundred Spartans under Brasidas, having landed ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... glory of Great Britain rests, in no small degree, on the refined taste and classical education of her politicians; and the portion of her oratory acknowledged to be the most energetic, bears the greatest resemblance to the spirit of Demosthenes.—North American Review. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 357 - Vol. XIII, No. 357., Saturday, February 21, 1829 • Various
... I met him at the theatre whilst our Thais was acting. He was furiously excited, and spoke with violence, as I can testify. He is an honest man, but he will abuse us all; his eloquence is terrible. If Marcus is the Plato of the Christians, Paphnutius is the Demosthenes. Epicurus, in his little garden, never ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... plain below were the temples of Theseus and Jupiter Olympus, and innumerable others. He stood where Socrates had stood four hundred years before, defending himself against the charge of atheism; where Demosthenes had pleaded in immortal strains of eloquence in behalf of Hellenic freedom; where the most solemn and venerable court of justice known among men was wont to assemble. There he made the memorable discourse, a few fragments only of which ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... assured, the palm, with Homer, Virgil and our Milton; though unlike bright Patroclus and the peerless Lycidas, the subject of the eulogy had not suffered change when it was penned. The eulogy in question compared Ralph to Demosthenes, and said that he must go on in his high course, and gripe the palm from Graecia's greatest son; and that from the obscure shades of private life, his devoted Tumles would watch the culmination of his genius, and rejoice to reflect that they ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... can fall back on the eloquence of the world's greatest orator, we turn with gratitude to the greatest tribute ever spoken to the memory of those men to whom the world owes most. Demosthenes, in the finest height of his finest oration, vindicates the men of every age and nation who fight the forlorn hope. He was arraigned by his rival, AEschines, for having counselled the Athenians to pursue a course that ended in defeat, ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... much that he had been saying, and in his best style, had fallen upon drowsy senses. Nobody likes to have his best things thrown away, and, as the reader will readily conceive, our friend Forrester had a sneaking consciousness that all the world's eloquence did not cease on the day when Demosthenes died. But he was not the person to be offended because the patient desired to sleep. Far from it. He was only reasonable enough to suppose that this was the properest thing that the wounded man could do. And so he told him; and adjusting carefully the ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... Demosthenes and Cicero Are doubtless stately names to hear, But that of good Amphitryon Sounds far more ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... Michael Angelo; as an astronomer, Newton or Galileo; as an actor, Garrick, or his beloved Talma—as he had equalled Caesar and Hannibal, and greatly surpassed Marlborough, Frederick the Great, and Charles XII.; as an orator, Demosthenes; and as a statesman, the greatest ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... can survey the face of an excited assembly, without being apprised of new opportunity for painting in fire human thought, and being agitated to agitate. How many orators sit mute there below! They come to get justice done to that ear and intuition which no Chatham and no Demosthenes has begun ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... French the historical explanations in Mingault's notes. In Greek I read the Iliad and Odyssey through; one or two plays of Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes, though by these I profited little; all Thucydides; the Hellenics of Xenophon; a great part of Demosthenes, Aeschines, and Lysias; Theocritus; Anacreon; part of the Anthology; a little of Dionysius; several books of Polybius; and lastly Aristotle's Rhetoric, which, as the first expressly scientific ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... speakers there, lots of them that can talk two or three hours at a stretch, but the old war horse could beat them all. They say that when John Henry Bagshaw got well started, say after a couple of hours of talk, he could speak as Pericles or Demosthenes or ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... garden and palace of the Luxembourg. These gardens form the midday and afternoon promenade of that part of the city. In one wing of the Palace is the Chamber of Peers, elegantly fitted up and in some respect resembling a Greek theatre. The busts of Cicero, Brutus, Demosthenes, Phocion and other great men of antiquity adorn the niches of this chamber and on the grand escalier are the statues in natural size of Kleber, Dessaix, Caffarelli and other French generals. Report says that these statues ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... the Vision Splendid. She gossiped with old Herodotus across the earth to the black and blameless Ethiopians; she saw the sculptured glories of Phidias marbled amid the splendor of the swamp; she listened to Demosthenes and walked the Appian Way with Cornelia—while all New York ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... tingling noise like the sound of bells was in my ears, and for a moment the whole universe seemed to have but one real fixed star—the fair, pale face before me. "Will you stay?" she asked, with a sweet smile and a pressure of her hand; and I ask, Is there on earth a Cicero or a Demosthenes so eloquent as the pressure of a ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... "Demosthenes Alphonso Dane. D. A. D." Sally commented irrepressibly. Then she swept across the room and, parting the curtains, peeped out between them. "Beatrix, the Philistines be upon you! Here comes Mrs. Lloyd Avalons. Oh, why was I the first to come? ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... my hat to virtuosity in any form. I admire Demosthenes, for whom pebbles in the mouth were a means to the end of oratory. I admire the Demosthenes de nos jours, for whom oratory is a means to the end of pebbles in the mouth. But I desire that the intelligent foreigner and the intelligent country cousin be not disappointed ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... man," exclaimed Mr Donnithorne, as he carefully filled his pipe with precious weed, "your oratorical powers are uncommon! Surely thy talents had been better bestowed in the Church or at the Bar than in the sickroom or the hospital. Demosthenes himself would have paled before thee, lad—though, if truth must be told, there is a dash more sound ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... taken from Hesiod. The Latin tragedies are bad copies of the masterpieces of Sophocles and Euripides. The Latin philosophy was borrowed, without alteration, from the Portico and the Academy; and the great Latin orators constantly proposed to themselves as patterns the speeches of Demosthenes and Lysias. ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... as for men, they may, without failing in rational conduct, govern themselves by different principles, and tend towards a different result. It is as reasonable for a woman to concern herself respecting her personal attractions as it was for Demosthenes to cultivate his ...
— The First Essay on the Political Rights of Women • Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat Condorcet
... Dr. Francis's Translation of Select Speeches from Demosthenes, which Lord Brougham naturally used a little in his own labors on that theme, there may be traced several peculiarities of diction that startle us in Junius. Sir P. had them from his father. And Lord Brougham ought not to have ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... instance, being ducks in England, docks in Italy, and dukes in France: yet there is a 'je ne sais quoi,' a delicacy in the auricular taste of a true scholar, that will rarely lead him astray when his ears are greeted with words that have been used by Demosthenes or Cicero. [Footnote: Or Chichero, or Kickero, whichever may happen to suit the prejudices of the reader.] In the present instance I distinctly heard the word my-bom-y-nos-fos-kom-i-ton, which I made sure was a verb in the dual number and second person, of a Greek ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... orations of Demosthenes. ... English'd from the Greek by several hands. London, for ...
— The Library of William Congreve • John C. Hodges
... him in private about casting their nativities, and finding their fates among the stars. But the statesman, who dealt with more practical matters, hired him as an advocate and rhetorician, who could fight his master's enemies with the weapons of Demosthenes and Cicero. Wherever the scholar's steps were turned, he might be master of others, as long as he was master of himself. The complaints which he so often uttered concerning the cruelty of fortune, the fickleness of princes, ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... his rival. In this effort he was supported by the oratory of Cicero, who began to compose and deliver or publish a remarkable series of fourteen speeches known as Philippics, from their resemblance to the four acrimonious invectives against Philip of Macedon which the great Demosthenes launched at Athens during the eleven years in which he strove to arouse the weakened Greeks from ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... who would excuse the sudden wheel, Upon his courser might the blame bestow: But, after, he so ill his strokes did deal, Demosthenes his cause might well forego. With paper armed he seems, and not with steel, So shrinks he at the wind of every blow: At length he breaks the ordered champions through, Amid loud laughter from ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... Demosthenes, the great Athenian orator, in a desperate effort to save his people from this man, delivered a set of orations denouncing Philip. These are the famous "Philippics," of which ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 25, April 29, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... force, never attempted before, was merely an exemplification of the value of the phonograph not only in establishing at first hand the facts of history, but in preserving the human voice. What would we not give to listen to the very accents and tones of the Sermon on the Mount, the orations of Demosthenes, the first Pitt's appeal for American liberty, the Farewell of Washington, or the Address at Gettysburg? Until Edison made his wonderful invention in 1877, the human race was entirely without means for preserving or passing on to posterity its own linguistic utterances or any ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... orador de Atenas: Demosthenes (385-322 B.C.), especially famous for his Philippics, a series of twelve orations directed against Philip of Macedon, the tirano macedonio here alluded to. All these classical allusions seem to show that Espronceda, like most of the ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... gracious prince, vouchsafe to hear me speak, In that the law of kindred pricks me on; And though I speak contrary to your mind, Yet do I build on hope you will pardon me. Were I as eloquent as Demosthenes, Or like Isocrates were given to oratory, Your grace, no doubt, will think the time well-spent, And I should gain me commendations: But for my note is tuned contrary, I must entreat your grace to pardon me, If I ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... view of the fallen Jewish people. In Greece, the Cynic and Epicurean schools were only different phases of the same degeneration. "Thirst, for money, and nothing else, will be the ruin of Sparta!" (Cicero, De Offic, II, 22, 77.) See the magnificent description by Demosthenes, in which he shows the over-estimation of material things to be the principal cause of the decline of Athens, and in which he lays great stress on the fact, that Athens, on its decay, had a larger ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... Webster who caused the Friday Afternoon to become an institution in the schools of America. His early struggles were dwelt upon and rehearsed by parents and pedagogues until every boy was looked upon as a possible Demosthenes ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard |
