"Exordium" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the compass of a period, it would read like no bad prose at present. He had undoubtedly an excellent ear, and we must conclude he must have succeeded considerably in erotic or pastoral poetry, from the following stanza's, in his Defiance to Envy, which may be considered as an exordium to his ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... truth, but only to keep up the character of Antonius, who was a connoisseur at concealing art. Lysias seems to be of the same opinion, which he defends by saying that the most simple and ignorant people possess a kind of rhetoric when they speak for themselves. They find something like an exordium, they make a narration, they prove, refute, and their prayers and entreaties have the force of a peroration. Lysias and his adherents proceed afterward to vain subtleties. "That which is the effect of art," say they, "could not have existed before art. In all times men have known ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... sat in an amazed speculation as to whither the orator was being led by this extraordinary exordium, but Mr Disraeli ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... circumstances which he might have been expected to have retained, and adding others with good judgment and in general with good effect, but which by some fatality usually tend in his hands to excessive prolixity. This is certainly not the case with his dignified and spirited exordium, but in the fourth stanza he begins to copy history, and his muse's wing immediately flags. No more striking example of the superiority of dramatic to narrative poetry in vividness of delineation could ...
— The Battaile of Agincourt • Michael Drayton
... unfolded in his hand. He looked at the letter, and then at Mr. Stoute. The fat professor laughed, but the lean professor frowned. The jolly one knew just what the precise one wanted, but he waited patiently for the exordium. ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... science,—"Jonathan Weatherwise's Prognostications. As it is not likely that I have a long Time to act on the Stage of this Life, for what with Head-Aches, hard Labour, Storms and broken Spectacles I feel my Blood chilling, and Time, that greedy Tyrant, devouring my whole Constitution," etc.,—an exordium which is certainly well adapted to excite our sympathy for Jonathan, even if it fail to inspire confidence in his "Prognostications," and leave us a little in the dark as to the necessary connection between "broken spectacles" and the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... making all the world laugh also. I approve of your being angry, I tell you I am angry too, but you should not have shown it so outrageously. Your solemn 'if somebody personating the Editor of the, &c. &c. has received from Lord B. or from any other person,' reminds me of Charley Incledon's usual exordium when people came into the tavern to hear him sing without paying their share of the reckoning—'if a maun, or ony maun, or ony other maun,' &c. &c.; you have both the same redundant eloquence. But why should ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... of exordium by an old-fashioned foreman, who believed that the best results could be obtained by the most scurrilous abuse of his men—and the immediate efforts of Vienna seemed to endorse ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... water, and settling himself in his place; then he started a babble of words without sense, with the nauseous facility of the bar; misusing vague ideas, abstract terms, and words in ly and ion, stereotyped words, and ready-made phrases. A flattering murmur greeted the end of his exordium; for the French people in general, and the political world in particular, manifest a depraved taste for that sort of eloquence. Encouraged, the fine speaker entered the heart of his subject, and cynically sang his recantation. He abjured ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... discretion—now declare it, and save yourself from the infamy, and the fatal consequences, which may attend a breach of your oath;—if, on the contrary, you believe yourself capable of a strict integrity—now accept the terms, and receive the secret I offer.' Ferdinand was awed by this exordium—the impatience of curiosity was for a while suspended, and he hesitated whether he should receive the secret upon such terms. At length he signified his consent, and the marquis arising, drew his sword from the scabbard.—'Here,' said he, offering it to Ferdinand, 'seal your vows—swear by ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... the audience in these words: [50]"Messieurs, dans l'univers il n'ya qu'un soleil; dans le royaume de France il n'ya qu'un Roi; dans la medicine il n'ya que Charini." With this he placed his hand on his heart, bowed, and drew himself up with a look of the most glorious complacency. This exordium was received with the most rapturous applause by the crowd, who, from having often seen him in his progress through the kingdom, had known before that this was Charini himself, the celebrated itinerant worm doctor. "Gentlemen," he then proceeded, "it has been the ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... figure to the end and for 100 write 101; for 1000, 1001. But the grand fact of the Hazar Afsanah is its being the archetype of The Nights, unquestionably proving that the Arab work borrows from the Persian bodily its cadre or frame-work, the principal characteristic; its exordium and its denouement, whilst the two heroines still ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... Now such a distinction probably, if conceived as a conscious principle, is alien to ancient thought, at any rate at the time of Protagoras; and yet it may contain a grain of truth. When it is borne in mind that the incriminated passage represents the very exordium of the work of Protagoras, the impression cannot be avoided that he himself did not intend his work to disturb the established religion, but that he quite naively took up the existence of the gods as a subject, as good as any ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... concerning the relative maritime power of France and Great Britain. Livingston suggests that if Great Britain invade Louisiana, who can oppose her? Once more he refers to Great Britain's superior fleet. This interesting address concludes with the following exordium to France: "She will cheaply purchase the esteem of men and the favor of Heaven by the surrender of a distant wilderness, which can neither add to her wealth nor to her strength." This, as you will perceive, is quite a pointed remark. Throughout the Louisiana diplomacy, ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... through the bitter and foul air, Listening unto my Leader, who said only, 'Look that from me thou be not separated.' Voices I heard, and every one appeared To supplicate for peace and misericord The Lamb of God who takes away our sins. Still Agnus Dei their exordium was; One word there was in all, and metre one, So that all harmony appeared among them. 'Master,' I said, 'are spirits those I hear?' And he to me: 'Thou apprehendest truly, And they the knot of anger go unloosing.'" (Canto, ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... a consolation, nor its remnant as a sign of past triumphs, 'only this and nothing more,' as that wonderful man Poe makes his raven say. We never find our level until we go among people who know and care nothing about us, who have never 'heard of us'—that exordium of most greetings from folks of our own class. It is absolutely refreshing to be so unaffectedly despised and slighted—it does one a world of good, there is no doubt of that, especially when one's grandfather was a ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... infamous fiction of Spelling-Books: "A more lying, roundabout, puzzle-headed delusion than that by which we Confuse the clear instincts of truth in our accursed systems of spelling, was never concocted by the father of falsehood." Such was the exordium of this famous treatise. For instance, take the monosyllable Cat. What a brazen forehead you must have when you say to an infant, c, a, t,—spell Cat: that is, three sounds, forming a totally opposite compound,—opposite in every detail, opposite in the whole,—compose ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... for happiness in singularity; and dread a refinement of wisdom as a deviation into folly." Thus she dogmatically addresses a new married man; and to elucidate this pompous exordium, she adds, "I said that the person of your lady would not grow more pleasing to you, but pray let her never suspect that it grows less so: that a woman will pardon an affront to her understanding much sooner than one to her person, is well known; nor will any of us contradict ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... lengthy exordium, Orris discreetly, changed the subject by wanting to know when he and Buck would be ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... Heir-Apparent, every line of which betrays itself as false and spurious to a reader who has made any direct or effectual study of Frederick or his manners or affairs,—it is set forth, in the way of exordium to these pretended royal confessions, that 'notre maison,' our Family of Hohenzollern, ever since the first origin of it among the Swabian mountains, or its first descent therefrom into the Castle and Imperial ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... envy his death." The deep serenity of a powerful mind was felt in his every tone—a mind resolute to contend against factions unto death. He then read a memorial relating to the ministry of war. His exordium was an attack upon the Jacobins, and a claim for the respect due to the ministers of the executive power. "Do you hear Cromwell!" exclaimed Guadet, in a voice of thunder. "He thinks himself already so sure of ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... think, mistaken the whole affair. The Irish editor did not attempt to unite Malone's fragments—quite the contrary—he left Malone's first fragment as he found it; but he took the second fragment, namely, the exordium of the pretended will of John Shakspeare, and substituted it bodily as the exordium of the will of William Shakspeare, suppressing altogether the real exordium of the latter. So that this Irish will begins, "I, John Shakspeare," &c., and ends, "by me, ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 28. Saturday, May 11, 1850 • Various
... cause very briefly.... And now came on the first trial of Patrick Henry's strength. No one had ever heard him speak,[53] and curiosity was on tiptoe. He rose very awkwardly, and faltered much in his exordium. The people hung their heads at so unpromising a commencement; the clergy were observed to exchange sly looks with each other; and his father is described as having almost sunk with confusion, from his seat. But these feelings were of ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... somewhat twisted state, in that good old mind of his. "What have you been reading lately, M. de Beausobre?" said the Prince, to begin conversation. "Ah, Monseigneur, I have just risen from reading the sublimest piece of writing that exists."—"And what?" "The exordium of St. John's Gospel: In the Beginning was the Word; and the Word was with God, and the Word was—" Which somewhat took the Prince by surprise, as Formey reports; though he rallied straightway, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... as we have it[34] begins with a double exordium, from which the jongleur might perhaps choose as from alternative collects in a liturgy. Each is ten lines long, and while the first rhymes throughout, the second has only a very imperfect assonance. Each bespeaks attention and promises satisfaction in the usual ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... disbelief of a Supreme Deity, and state that he could not credit the existence of a Being, whose power was said to extend every where, but whom he had not yet seen, although he was now an old man. The aged sceptic is not a little conceited, as the following exordium to one of his speeches evinces: "It is very strange that I never meet with any one who is equal in sense to myself." The same old man, in one of his communicative moods, related to us the following tradition. The earth had been formed, but continued ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... himself an exile from Athens at this period, and may probably have been at Sparta, and heard Alcibiades speak), we are at loss whether most to admire or abhor his subtile and traitorous counsels. After an artful exordium, in which he tried to disarm the suspicions which he felt must be entertained of him, and to point out to the Spartans how completely his interests and theirs were identified, through hatred of the Athenian democracy, he thus proceeded:—"Hear ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... [Footnote 12: This exordium, which has points of resemblance with that of the insufferable Bana's Harsha-charita, is only the Hindoo method of declaring that the two characters presently to be brought upon the scene are mortal incarnations ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... During this exordium I had noticed a venerable man in a fine blue surtout and a wide-brimmed hat, who sat upon the shaft of a cart and puffed slowly at a great pipe. And as he puffed, he listened intently to the quack-salver's address, ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... Snitterfield, with two farmhouses which he let out to tenants. The post-mortem inventory of his goods, which was made on December 9, 1556, shows that he had lived in comfort; his house was adorned by as many as eleven 'painted cloths,' which then did duty for tapestries among the middle class. The exordium of his will, which was drawn up on November 24, 1556, and proved on December 16 following, indicates that he was an observant Catholic. For his two youngest daughters, Alice and Mary, he showed especial affection by nominating them his executors. ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... my last public exordium, a contemptible fellow sought a quarrel with me, and obliged me to draw in my own defence, whom, on this occasion, I wounded ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... to see the people that I like!" is an exordium which has served for a manifesto in most homes. This phrase, with all the ideas that are concomitant, is oftenest employed ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... detested cousin. They wed, and she becomes the purest gem of the court of Guinevere, her place in which is described in the beautiful exordium of the poem. An accident, slight perhaps for the weight it is made to carry, arouses his jealousy, and he tries her severely by isolation and rude offices on one of his tours; but her gentleness, purity, and patience ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... to ask is liberty to look at her, and he protests that he would never aspire to any higher privilege. It is gratifying to add that he follows her through many startling vicissitudes of fortune in a spirit worthy of this exordium, and of course is finally persuaded that he may allow himself a nearer approach to his goddess. The Maid of Honour has two lovers, who accept a rather similar position. One of them is unlucky enough to be always making mischief by well-meant efforts to ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... there is that which is prior and that which is posterior in order; in geometry, the elements are prior to the propositions; in reading and writing, the letters of the alphabet are prior to the syllables. Similarly, in the case of speeches, the exordium is prior in order to ...
— The Categories • Aristotle
... doubtful if John understood the drift of Felix's exordium, it is doubtful if he had quite listened—he having so much to not listen to at the Home Office that the practice was growing on him. A vested interest to John was a vested interest, culture was culture, and security was certainly ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... exordium, the rough-and-ready surgeon took his departure, leaving Horatio Paget alone with the woman ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... Macedonian, of the 'Marriage of Alexander and Roxana,' and I hereby request those among you to come upon the stage whom our artists have selected to take part in this scene in the procession." After this exordium he shouted in a deep and resonant voice a long list of names, and while this was going on every other sound was ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... a man who only writes what he believes will be more agreeable to you than the ornate laudations of those who have studied the art of compliment. For this reason, I will give insertion to nothing in this letter for which I have not the certainty both of experience and reason; and in the exordium, as in the rest of the work, I will write only as becomes a philosopher. There is a vast difference between real and apparent virtues; and there is also a great discrepancy between those real virtues that proceed from an accurate knowledge of the truth, ...
— The Principles of Philosophy • Rene Descartes
... progeny. From the open shells in two cases, the little geese are seen protruding, whilst several of the fully-fledged fowls are disporting themselves in the sea below. Gerard's concluding piece of information, with its exordium, must not be omitted. "They spawne," says the wise apothecary, "as it were, in March or Aprill; the Geese are found in Maie or June, and come to fulnesse of feathers in the moneth after. And thus hauing, through God's assistance, discoursed somewhat at large of Grasses, Herbes, Shrubs, Trees, ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... shudder with a creeping, nameless terror as the scene after the murder of Duncan, when Macbeth rushes out from the chamber of death, crying, "I have done the deed. Didst thou not hear a noise?" I have studied this famous exordium with extreme care, and I have sought diligently in the works of all the great modern orators, and of some of the ancient as well, for similar passages of higher merit. My quest has been in vain. Mr. Webster's description ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... to the place designated for the lecture; and Captain de Banyan betrayed his interest in that memorable battle, where he had served on the staff of General Fremont, by going to sleep before the eloquent "participant" had got half-way through the exordium. Lieutenant Somers listened attentively until he was satisfied that Colonel Staggerback either was not in the battle, or that he had escorted "Bull Run ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... out,[135] with some sentimental sing-song of my own to fill up,—and how does it take, eh? and where the devil is the second edition of my Satire, with additions? and my name on the title page? and more lines tagged to the end, with a new exordium and what not, hot from my anvil before I cleared the Channel? The Mediterranean and the Atlantic roll between me and criticism; and the thunders of the Hyperborean Review are deafened by ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... in the assemblies of the people, if any important affair come to be debated there, he will not fail to give his judgment of it; and in my opinion he would introduce his harangue by a very pleasant exordium, if he should begin with giving them to understand that he had never learnt anything of any man whatsoever; he must address himself to them in ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon
... ladies form a very considerable portion of his works: the particular treatise, which he styles the Epitaph of Paula, (tom. i. p. 169-192,) is an elaborate and extravagant panegyric. The exordium is ridiculously turgid: "If all the members of my body were changed into tongues, and if all my limbs resounded with a human voice, yet should I be ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... disarmed by this straightforward mode of procedure. He dropped unuttered the elaborate exordium he had been preparing on the tendency of young men to be led astray by speciously pleading schemers, and found himself replying mildly to questions about himself and various old friends of his, whom Drusus had known as a boy before he went to Athens. ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... night, shown off like the hyena of Exeter 'Change, looking almost as wild and feeling quite as savage. Presenting me to each and all of the splendid crowd which an idle curiosity, easily excited and as soon satisfied, had gathered round us, she prefaced every introduction with a little exordium which seemed to amuse every one but its object: 'Lord Erskine, this is the Wild Irish Girl whom you are so anxious to know. I assure you she talks quite as well as she writes.—Now, my dear, do tell my Lord Erskine ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... puzzled by this pompous and peevish exordium. It did not promise well; it sounded quite unlike Mr. Keith's usually bland address. Perhaps he had not yet breakfasted. "We ought to have waited," they thought. One of the listeners was so annoyed that ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... first time, because all were thoroughly known, and, therefore, thoroughly well appreciated. The opening address of Serjeant Buzfuz every one naturally enough regarded as one of the most mirth-moving portions of the whole representation. In the very exordium of it there was something eminently absurd in the Serjeant's extraordinarily precise, almost mincing pronunciation. As where he said, that "never in the whole course of his professional experience—never from the first moment of his applying himself to ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... this paper, or it would be pleasant to dwell upon Mr. Thomson's modesty, his untiring industry, and his devotion to his art. But in regard to that art, it may be observed that to characterise it solely as "packing the memory with pleasant fancies" may suffice for an exordium, but is inadequate as a final appreciation. Let me therefore note down, as they occur to me, some of his more prominent pictorial characteristics. With three of the artists mentioned in this and the preceding paper, he has obvious affinities, while, in a sense, he includes them all. If he does ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... that this strange exordium dashed hopes which had already risen to a high pitch. Recovering myself as quickly as possible, however, I murmured that the honour of a visit from the King of Navarre was sufficient ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... the exordium of a letter preceding its business-matter and in which the writer displays all his art. It ends with "Amm ba'd," lit.but after, equivalent to our "To proceed." This "Khitb" is mostly skipped ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... with him, if he would bring home knowledge." We think Mr. Hazlitt talks of lying a whole day on Salisbury Plain as one of his greatest enjoyments, and he is doubtless sincere. When we set out on such a walk as we are about to take, with the reader's consent, we quote Thomson for our exordium:— ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 363, Saturday, March 28, 1829 • Various
... publication[12] by Dr. Cocker of the Michigan State University. In the "Theistic Conception of the World" he treats the first two chapters of the Bible as a poem, which he calls the "symbolical hymn of creation." It has an exordium, six strophes, each with its refrain, and an episode. He does not believe the sacred narrative intends to describe the exact mode of forming the world, nor even to set the successive events in order. It is ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... men, equally surprised and interested by this exordium, could only entreat their host to "use their ears as those of his slaves," on which, after ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... improvises an address, in which he announces the subject of the piece; his manner is partly serious, partly jesting. He points out the advocate who is to plead the cause of morals and propriety: this one rises, and, in the course of his exordium, takes care to throw out all the sarcasm he can against his rival, who rouses himself, and the battle of tongues begins, and is carried on in a sort of rhyming prose, in which nothing is spared to give force to jest or argument against the reigning vices or follies of the day. As the orators ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... its containing damaging reflections on the elders. Then the present opening (vv. 1—5) was borrowed from Θ, and is marked in both Cod. Chis. and Syro-Hex. as not part of the original work, but a foreign exordium. Rothstein (p. 184, note) thinks that in place of the present borrowed commencement there stood a short introductory remark on the two judging elders. Though lacking proof, this conjecture is well within the bounds of possibility. Yet ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... a moment, but Aurelia had no word of reply to this exordium. Seeing her keep the same haughty posture in her chair, with eyes scornfully averted as if she scarce listened, Leander proceeded to disclose his mind in less ornate terms By subtle grades of confidential speech, beginning ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... feelings, and I trust that when the time arrives for the settlement of any pecuniary consideration which I am to derive from these irksome and uncongenial labours, my wounded self-respect may not be omitted from the reckoning. The above exordium may appear to you tedious, but it is only just to myself to remind you that you are not dealing with a vulgar hireling. My first step, after duly meditating your suggestions, was to find a fitting watch for the movements of Hawkehurst. I opined that the best person ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... bosom of the fold. So far from manifesting an outward hostility, the papal demeanor was conciliating. The letters of invitation from the Pope to the princes were sent by a legate, each commencing with the exordium, "To my beloved son," and were all sent back to his Holiness, contemptuously, with the coarse jest for answer, "We believe our mothers to have been honest women, and hope that we had better fathers." The great council had not yet given its decisions. Marriages were of continual occurrence, especially ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... This presumptuous exordium so thoroughly irritated the minds of the conservatives that they swore in their hearts to ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... the close, together with the exordium, chap. lii. 13-15, occupy five verses—five being the signature of the half and incomplete. The main body, ten verses, is divided into seven referring to the humiliation and suffering, and three referring to the exaltation of the Servant of God. The seven ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... Sypher entered on the exordium of the speech which convinced her of the diabolical noisomeness of the Jebusa Jones unguent. His peroration summed up the contest as that between Mithra ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... stretching on and on; but, filled to the brim, he would get into an omnibus and return. The omnibus awoke him to other issues: the omnibus was an antidote. In the omnibus cleanliness was nigh to godliness. On one pane a soap was extolled, and on another the exordium, "For this is a true saying and worthy of all acceptation," was followed by the statement of a religious dogma; while on another pane was an urgent appeal not to do in the omnibus what you would not do in a drawing-room. Yes, Priam Farll ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... deprive thy friends of thy presence!" returned the Jinnee, who was apparently touched by this exordium, "for truly thou art a most ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... day, Easter-Sunday, preached a most zealous and eloquent sermon, Against the Games and Shows of the Theatre and Circus. Indignation made him not so much as mention the paschal solemnity;{242} but by an abrupt exordium he burst into the most vehement pathos, as follows: "Are these things to be borne? Can they be tolerated? I appeal to yourselves, be you your own judges. Thus did God expostulate with the Jews."[17] This exclamation he often repeated to assuage his grief. He put the people in mind of the sanctity ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... manner. He ate scarcely anything, and his appearance was so remarkable, as to excite the wonder of all present. At length on the third or fourth day of the council, he arose with great dignity, and solemnity of air, and commenced speaking. His exordium was for the most part a beautiful and highly wrought enconium on the character and history of the Indians; particularly of his own people, in the past. They were taken back, as by a magic spell, to primitive times. The days of their renown, when the name and glory of their ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... exordium, he set himself to criticise the coiffure of the Queen, on account of the coloured knots that ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... cancelled him, and went back straight to John the Baptist and his formula of securing remission of sins by repentance and the rite of baptism (being born again of water and the spirit). Peter's first harangue softens us by the human touch of its exordium, which was a quaint assurance to his hearers that they must believe him to be sober because it was too early in the day to get drunk; but of Jesus he had nothing to say except that he was the Christ foretold by the prophets as coming ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... The solemnity of this exordium, and the imposing manner of Don Estevan, following so closely upon the jocular mien he had hitherto exhibited, made a painful impression upon the mind of the Senator. There was a short moment in which he regretted ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... who in his day had had many an opportunity to become acquainted with the manners of these religionists, was not far mistaken in his conjecture; only that, instead of a prose exordium, the Laird of Langcale—for it was no less a personage—uplifted, with a Stentorian voice, a ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... our enemies the barbarians. After investigating the cause of the war, he begins thus: "That vilest of all wretches, Vologesus, entered upon the war for these reasons." Such is this historian's manner. Another, a close imitator of Thucydides, that he may set out as his master does, gives us an exordium that smells of the true Attic honey, and begins thus: "Creperius Calpurnianus, a citizen of Pompeia, hath written the history of the war between the Parthians and the Romans, showing how they fought with one another, commencing at the time when it first broke ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... scold; does not terrify. He lays his stress on the benefits of a strong navy—on the renown it has won for England in the past. He assumes his readers to be intelligent men, amenable to advice which will help them to perpetuate this renown and secure these benefits in time to come. His exordium over, he settles down to an exposition of the abuses which are impairing our naval efficiency, and suggests reforms, some wisely conceived, others not so wisely, with the business-like, confident air of one who knows what he is ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... depth to the whole—a sense of duty, a duty that must be done, whether pleasant or otherwise, and about which there was no choice. What a world of anxiety and doubt the consciousness of this saves us!" This exordium reads more like the utterance of a man being led out to execution than a Minister going to a country possessing an ancient civilisation—a civilisation which had had its effect on every phase of the national life. What would not many of us now give to have been in the place of Sir Rutherford Alcock, ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... he continued, clearing his throat which had grown somewhat rusty from his pompous exordium "the late respected gentleman in question did not leave matters in as satisfactory a condition as might have been desired—in fact—eh—well, altogether, the residue of his once considerable fortune makes but a paltry annuity for his bereaved ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... Johnian Newton." His hit at the present Chief Secretary for Ireland,[22] when he was a junior Fellow of Trinity, is classical—"We are none of us infallible—not even the youngest of us." But it requires an eye-witness of the scene to do justice to the exordium of the Master's sermon on the Parable of the Talents, addressed in Trinity Chapel to what considers itself, and not without justice, the cleverest congregation in the world. "It would be obviously superfluous in a congregation such ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... was sung by the choir, His Majesty for the first time took his place upon the Throne surrounded by the leading officials, nobles and clergy, and listened to a brief exordium from the Archbishop, ending with the hope that God would "establish your Throne in righteousness that it may stand fast for evermore." Then came the impressive ceremony of Homage. First the Archbishop ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... in the liberties of the people, and the first article of the Constitution declared that "no authority shall, on any pretence whatever, be exercised over the people of the State, but such as shall be derived from and granted by them." This high-sounding exordium promised the rights of popular sovereignty; but in practice the makers of the Constitution, fearing the passions of the multitude as much as the tyranny of kings, deemed it wise to keep power in the hands of a few. A male ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... liberator and restorer of this realm to that of king, make me find everything easy and honorable." M. de Calonne had reserved to himself the duty of explaining the great projects he had suggested to the king. "Gentle men," said he in his exordium, "the orders I am under at present do me the more honor in that the views of which the king has charged me to set before you the sum and the motives have been entirely adopted by him personally." Henry IV. might have said to the notables assembled by his successor, as he had said regarding ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the admiral's widow, Jaqueline d'Entremont, or Antremont, had placed all the documents she possessed, entreating him to undertake the pious task of compiling a life of her husband. In a remarkable letter which has but lately come to light, dated January 15, 1572 (new style 1573), after an exordium full of those classical allusions of which the age was so fond, she writes: "Ne trouvez etrange, je vous supplie, si j'ai essaye de reveiller vostre plume pour laisser a la posterite autant de temoignages de la vertu de feu monseigneur et mari, que nos ennemis la veulent ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... beautiful exordium of his invective against Rufinus, which is curiously discussed by the sceptic Bayle, Dictionnaire ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... molendino aquatico submersus fuerat (et) ad inuocacionem beati regis henrici resuscitatus a mortuis anno dominice incarnacionis 1481. qui erat annus regni Edwardi quarti regis famosissimi vicesimus primus. Et primo ponitur exordium breue et deinde ...
— Henry the Sixth - A Reprint of John Blacman's Memoir with Translation and Notes • John Blacman
... of Tullie, after the exordium or beginnyng of Oracion, as the seconde parte: whiche parte of Rhetorike, is as it were the light of all the Oracion folowing: conteining the cause, mat- ter, persone, tyme, with all breuitie, bothe of wordes, and in- uencion ...
— A booke called the Foundacion of Rhetorike • Richard Rainolde
... like this exordium; he replied, stepping into the road at the same time, "I've no money, and the ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... brief exordium, containing some general proposition on the subject of human testimony, which meant no more than to suggest the propriety of giving to the prisoner the benefit of what was doubtful and obscure in the testimony which had been taken against him—I proceeded to compare and contrast its several parts. ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... all the autumn. At the opening of the Opera House, on the 20th of November, Mrs. Yates, an actress whom he held in great esteem, delivered a poetical exordium of his composition. Beauclerc, in a letter to Lord Charlemont, pronounced it very good, and predicted that it would soon be in all the papers. It does not appear, however, to have been ever published. In his fitful state of mind Goldsmith may have ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... use of pictures in the churches. It was made the occasion of "charitable rebuke" and then of formal complaint against Roussel by his fellow canons, that he failed to repeat the angelic salutation, according to the orthodox practice, after the exordium of his sermon. To the combined exhortations and threats of his accusers Roussel replied in the chapter that, if he had done wrong, it belonged to the bishop to reprove him, but that as to himself he esteemed the repetition of the Lord's Prayer ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... as any one, or perhaps more. But you must know that I have not been guilty in the affair for which you take me to task now, neither as regards them nor any one else, except it be in doing more than was my duty." After this exordium he proceeds to give an elaborate explanation of his dealings with Lapo, ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... the men. The moment is unpropitious, but it doesn't matter! Let us try the power of a speech; an eloquent speech is never out of place. Listen, Gwynplaine, to my attractive exordium. Ladies and gentlemen, I am a bear. I take off my head to address you. I humbly appeal to you for silence." Ursus, lending a cry to ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... my narrative needs not any such exordium. The occasion that caused the conversation simply demands a chorus for the action and a stage, nothing else is wanting to the drama, let us only pray to the Mother of the Muses to be propitious, and give me ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... under terrible sarcasms, and his sneers at the young warriors for want of ardour in resisting Gudabirsi encroachments, were quoted as models of the "withering." Stimulated by the present of a Tobe, he composed a song in honor of the pilgrim: I will offer a literal translation of the exordium, though sentient of the fact that modesty shrinks from ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... hobbled through Florence on his way to Ireland, to take possession of this scrap of his recovered domains; but I may as well tell you at once, for to be sure you and the loyal body of English in Tuscany will slip over all this exordium to come to the account of so extraordinary a revolution. Well, here it is. Last week Monsieur Thurot—oh! now you are au fait!—Monsieur Thurot, as I was saying, landed last week in the isle of Islay, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... to the Muse who inspired Moses in those Books from whence our Author drew his Subject, and to the Holy Spirit who is therein represented as operating after a particular manner in the first Production of Nature. This whole Exordium rises very happily into noble Language and Sentiment, as I think the Transition to the Fable is exquisitely ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... distinctly. A certain freshman had been elected. The man who was to have read an essay had fallen ill, and the freshman had been asked to step into the breach. This he did, with an essay on 'The Ideals of Mazzini,' and with strange and terrific effect. During the exordium we raised our eyebrows. Presently we were staring open-mouthed. Where were we? In what wild dream were we drifting? To this day I can recite the peroration. Mazzini is dead. But his spirit lives, and can never be crushed. And his motto—the motto that he planted on the gallant banner of the ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... poor lady's by-laws and regulations for the upbringing of families and the conduct of life. The elemental mother in her battled on the side of her only son—foolishly, irrationally, unkindly. Her exordium was as correct as could be. The tragedy shocked her, the scandal grieved her, the innuendoes of the Press she refused to believe; she sympathised with me deeply. But then she turned from me to Dale, and feminine unreason took ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... had recourse to the longest and the strongest words she could possibly lay her hands upon; and Mary had been well accustomed to hear her childish faults and juvenile indiscretions denounced in the most awful terms as crimes of the deepest dye. Many an exordium she had listened to on the tearing of her frock, or the losing of her glove, that might have served as a preface to the "Newgate Calendar," "Colquhoun on the Police," or any other register of crimes. Still she had always been ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... in Ciceronian periphrases, flanked with quotations from Plautus, his favorite comic author. We regret that we are not able to offer to our readers this remarkable piece. The orator pronounced it with marvellous action. Before he had finished the exordium, the perspiration was starting from his brow, and his eyes ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... de' Medici, does not greatly differ from the Maggio in structure. It admitted, however, of great varieties, and was generally more complex in its interweaving of rhymes. Yet the essential principle of an exordium which should also serve for a refrain, was rarely, if ever, departed from. Two specimens of the Carnival Song will serve to bring into close contrast two very different aspects of Florentine history. The earlier was composed ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... donate large sums of money to certain poor, but honest men, who adorn the lobby of the House, while they are waiting for generous patrons like unto you, then go home and calmly await the result. Your representative makes a speech, the exordium of which is Patriotism, the peroration of which is Star-Spangled Banner, and the central plum of which is your coal mine or iron mill. Your poor and honest friends wear out several pairs of shoes, the tariff bill ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 9, May 28, 1870 • Various
... exordium. As an exordium, it was faultless. But it was destined to remain a fragment. It goes down to history as a perfect fragment, like the beginning of a pagan temple that the death of gods ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... relished and enjoyed. And when hearing it sometimes regretted, with reference to at least one remarkable man, that he did not visit his flock quite so often as was desirable—many of the complainants' sole idea of a ministerial visit, meanwhile, being simply that it was a long exordium of agreeable gossip, with a short tail-piece of prayer stuck to its hinder end—we have strongly felt how immensely better it was that the assembled congregation should enjoy each year fifty-two Sabbaths of their minister at his best, than that the tone of his pulpit services should be ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... had an opening provided for him, by making use of which he was able to bring his illustrious qualities into play. The achievement in each case was afterwards due solely to his own ability, and the conquest which he made with difficulty was preserved with ease. This exordium is not without practical importance, as will be seen when we reach the application of the whole argument to the house of Medici at the conclusion of the treatise. The initial obstacles which an innovator ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... actuated Disraeli on his marriage. The compact was based upon convenience and mutual esteem, and there is no reason to doubt that it conduced not only to Borrow's comfort and security, but also to his happiness. There were no children. The "daughter" whose accomplishments Borrow celebrated in the exordium to "Wild Wales" was his stepdaughter, Henrietta Clarke. He seemed now in an enviable position, with a small but agreeable freehold on the banks of Oulton Broad, able to indulge in "idleness and the pride of literature" to his heart's content. If he had had a ...
— George Borrow - Times Literary Supplement, 10th July 1903 • Thomas Seccombe
... clearly cut, simply and perfectly articulated. "It is often said that the day for speaking has passed, and that of action has arrived." It was a direct, plain introduction; not a florid exordium. The voice was clear and cold and distinct; not especially musical, not at all magnetic. The orator was incessantly moving; not rushing vehemently forward or stepping defiantly backward, with that quaint planting of the foot, like Beecher; but restlessly changing his place, with ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... pretending that their sole purpose is to apply "moral suasion" to the slaveholders themselves. As a matter of curiosity, I should like to know what their idea of this "moral suasion" is. Their discourses—yours is no exception—are all tirades, the exordium, argument and peroration, turning on the epithets "tyrants," "thieves," "murderers," addressed to us. They revile us as "atrocious monsters," "violators of the laws of nature, God and man," our homes the abode of every iniquity, our land a "brothel." We retort, that they ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... listened to Rogers' exordium on the duties of a citizen in an emergency, I remembered the "Standard Oil" code—"Everything for God (our God); God (our God) in everything." It was so essentially "Standard Oil," this willingness to commit even that greatest wrong, subverting the will of the people in the exercise ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... Glanville's house. It was long since I had been there, and the servant who admitted me, seemed somewhat surprised at the earliness of my visit. I desired to see the mother, and waited in the parlour till she came. I made but a scanty exordium to my speech. In very few words I expressed my love to Ellen, and besought her mediation in my behalf; nor did I think it would be a slight consideration in my favour, with the fond mother, to mention Glanville's concurrence with ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... than whisky, and that he never spared it out of pity,—adding as the cause, and seeming well pleased that he could boast a deficiency so well befitting a warrior, that he had "no heart,"—his interior being framed of stone as hard as the flinty rock under his feet. This exordium finished, he proceeded to bestow sundry abusive epithets upon the prisoner, charging him with having put his young men to a great deal of needless trouble, besides having killed several; for which, he added, the Longknife ought to expect ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... more than electoral anxieties. Jorian wrote, 'My best wishes to you. Be careful of your heads. The habit of the Anglo-Saxon is to conclude his burlesques with a play of cudgels. It is his notion of freedom, and at once the exordium and peroration of his eloquence. Spare me the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... adorned with pink ribbons, Natalie seemed to her mother so beautiful as to guarantee victory. When the lady's-maid left the room and Madame Evangelista was certain that no one could overhear her, she arranged a few curls on her daughter's head by way of exordium. ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... plainly declareth in Cornelius Tacitus. The Ambassadours of Samos being come to Cleomenes King of Sparta, prepared with a long prolix Oration, to stir him up to war against the tyrant Policrates, after he had listned a good while unto them, his answer was: "Touching your Exordium or beginning I have forgotten it; the middle I remember not; and for your conclusion I will do nothing in it." A fit, and (to my thinking) a verie good answer; and the Orators were put to such a shift; as they knew not what to replie. ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... et filius ac spiritus sanctus de diuinitate substantialiter praedicentur an alio quolibet modo; uiamque indaginis hinc arbitror esse sumendam, unde rerum omnium manifestum constat exordium, id est ab ipsis catholicae fidei fundamentis. Si igitur interrogem, an qui dicitur pater substantia sit, respondetur esse substantia. Quod si quaeram, an filius substantia sit, idem dicitur. Spiritum quoque sanctum substantiam ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... lifting it thence to the joys of heaven. Terrible, electrical preaching! It was the product of uncultured genius and human disappointment. Marion sat in awe, hardly knowing whether it was impious or angelic. In a blind exordium the old zealot commanded those who would save their souls to walk forward and kneel publicly at the altar, and make ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... banquet of the Royal Academy, London, April 29, 1876. The President, Sir Francis Grant, in introducing Mr. Froude, said: "The next toast is 'The Interests of Literature and Science.' This toast is always so welcome and so highly appreciated that it needs no exordium from the chair. I cannot associate with the interests of literature a name more worthy than that of Mr. Froude, the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... whole will compel admiration, and not weary in the survey. This other makes me yawn. Better choose the bold, the frank, the generous, with all his faults; he may be rash, unthinking, wasting the powers whose force he knows not; but the capabilities of amendment are within him. What say you to my exordium?" ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... easily to bestow for the benefit of her infant children the shilling his sister Winnie presented him with from time to time. On all fours amongst the puddles, wet and begrimed, like a sort of amphibious and domestic animal living in ash-bins and dirty water, she uttered the usual exordium: "It's all very well for you, kept doing nothing like a gentleman." And she followed it with the everlasting plaint of the poor, pathetically mendacious, miserably authenticated by the horrible breath of cheap rum ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... us how Browning wished his metrical movement to be judged. This is the exordium, and it is already full of his theory of life—the soul forced from within to aspire to the perfect whole, the necessary failure, the despair, the new impulse to love arising out of the despair; failure making fresh growth, fresh uncontentment. God has sent ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... Doctor, the Regimental Sergeant-Major, the Adjutant, the Colonel—the Oath on the Bible before that dread Superman.... How well he remembered his brief exordium—"Obey your Superiors blindly; serve your Queen, Country, and Regiment to the best of your ability; keep clean, don't drink, fear God, and—most important of all—take care of your horse. Take care of your ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... of complaints with great round eyes, which evinced no exact intelligence of the orator's meaning; and when the knight paused to take breath, he looked with a doubtful and inquiring eye at the Sub-Prior, not well knowing in what tone he should reply to an exordium so extraordinary. The Sub-Prior accordingly stepped in to ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... manner in which they conduct meetings. They have no system of elocution in England such as we have—a thorough training of the voice, in what is called vocal gymnastics. A hesitating, apologetic way seems to be the national idea for an exordium on all questions. Even their ablest men who have visited this country, such as Kingsley, Stanley, Arnold, Spencer, Tyndal, Huxley, and Canon Farrar, have all been criticised by the American public ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... the classic legend: "Please do not look on my back." But what is dearest to the souls of these editors is a mean commonplace. One leader, which surely had a triumphant success, is headed, "What the Bar-tender Sees." And the exordium is worthy so profound a speculation. "Did you ever stop to think," murmurs the Yellow philosopher, "of all the strange beings that pass before him?" There's profundity for you! There's invention! Is it wonderful that five ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... Horace Greeley was the editor of the war epoch. Greeley said, "Emancipation is first, the Union secondary. If they prefer slavery to liberty let the erring sisters go." Beecher was the all-round man of genius. His great speech in England began with an exordium at Manchester; he stated the arguments at Edinburgh, Glasgow and Liverpool; he pronounced the peroration at Exeter Hall, in London, and no such peroration and eloquence has been heard since Demosthenes' philippic against the tyrant of Macedon. But Beecher's criticisms ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... his not inappropriate exordium. 'To business. Mark me closely. I am an Australian. My name is John Dickson, though you mightn't think it from my unassuming appearance. You will be relieved to hear that I am rich, sir, very rich. You can't go into this sort of thing ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... shoul and St. Patrick! By Jasus! Arrah, honey! My dear joy!" &c., because all such phrases, besides being absolutely out of date and fashion in Ireland, raise too high an expectation in the minds of a British audience, operating as much to the disadvantage of the story-teller as the dangerous exordium of—"I'll tell you an excellent story;" an exordium ever to be ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... exordium I think I may proceed to narrate the journey of myself and family into Wales. As perhaps, however, it will be thought that, though I have said quite enough about myself and a certain groom, I have not said quite enough about my wife and daughter, I will add ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... extremes, requested Rosader to discourse, if it were not any way prejudicial unto him, the cause of his travel. Rosader, desirous any way to satisfy the courtesy of his favorable host, first beginning his exordium with a volley of sighs, and a few lukewarm tears, prosecuted his discourse, and told him from point to point all his fortunes: how he was the youngest son of Sir John of Bordeaux, his name Rosader, how his brother sundry times had wronged ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... to be the "order of the day." You imagine that the orator will lose self and party in his country. Nothing of all this follows, however. You have some common-places, perhaps common truisms, some undefined, mean-all-or-nothing, declamation about "constitution" and "principles," by way of exordium; for the rest, Rome is sunk as if it existed not, down to the peroration it is all about Cato himself, and his little Whig ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... examining the facts on which my conclusions were founded, or showing, by one or two cases, at least, that I had made a mistake or offended against the strict rules of logic, there appears the following sweeping exordium, which has done service before in many an opening address of the counsel for ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... With such an exordium Mr. Sliverstone launches out into glowing praises of the conduct of Mrs. Sliverstone in the production of eight young children, and the subsequent rearing and fostering of the same; and thus the husband magnifies the wife, and the wife ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... to hear a word of this exordium, smiled sheepishly,— and twirling the cap he held, put his coloured handkerchief into it and squeezed it tightly within the lining. Bainton, with the impending fate of the Five Sisters in view, judged it advisable not to irritate or disobey the old gentleman whom he had ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... heard was uncertain; she leant on a chair with drooping head and averted face, trembling, and suppressing a sob, apparently too much frightened to attend. Just when the exordium was over, and 'Therefore I lay my commands on you' might have been expected, it turned into, 'However, upon Mr. Dusautoy's kind representation, I have resolved to give the young man a trial, and provided he convinces me by his conduct that ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... nervous coughing ended this extraordinary exordium; and half sitting, half leaning against the veranda, Mr. McClosky's guest turned his face, and part of a slight elegant figure, toward his host. The lower portion of this upturned face wore an habitual expression of fastidious discontent, with an occasional ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... shows youth in a certain inequality, in a slight overdose of ornament, and especially in a very inartistic conclusion. But nowhere even in Milton does the mastery of harmonies appear better than in the exquisite rhythmical arrangement of the piece, in the almost unearthly beauty of the exordium, and in the famous stanzas beginning "The oracles are dumb." It must be remembered that at this time English lyric was in a very rudimentary and ill-organised condition. The exquisite snatches in the dramatists had been snatches merely; ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... beguiled into taking another sponge-cake. "If they'd only let us walk about the corridors, or lounge in the House, it would be better. But to sit cooped up here is terrible. Worst of it is I've conned my speech over so often, got it mixed up; end turning up in middle; exordium marching in with rear-guard; was just right to go off at half-past six; now it's eight, and we won't be off duty ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 22nd, 1890 • Various
... exordium with the rising inflection, which denoted a direct question as to his status in the meeting. "Go on!" "You've got as good a right as any one!" "You're all right, old man!" Such exclamations as these came to Jim's ears with ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... Many of Nostromo's speeches I have heard first in Dominic's voice. His hand on the tiller and his fearless eyes roaming the horizon from within the monkish hood shadowing his face, he would utter the usual exordium of his remorseless wisdom: "Vous autres gentilhommes!" in a caustic tone that hangs on my ear yet. Like Nostromo! "You hombres finos!" Very much like Nostromo. But Dominic the Corsican nursed a certain ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... detail; and his first object is evidently to deprive Talleyrand, to whom on all occasions he manifests a singular bitterness, of the credit generally given him of having aided materially in the recall of the Bourbons in 1814. But does he effect this by showing, as from this exordium we might expect, that his countrymen of the middle class, wearied of the costly triumphs and disasters of the empire, had begun to sigh for peace and their old kings? Not at all. He transfers the personal share in the drama from Prince Talleyrand to Baron de Vitrolles. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... Purdy, laying bare a great gash in the upper arm—"a little blood, but simple—simple!" and he fell to work a-sponging and bandaging, with a running exordium upon the humanity of the sword as opposed to the more deadly bullet—until at length, the dressing in place, Mr. Tawnish ...
— The Honourable Mr. Tawnish • Jeffery Farnol
... blessed!" cried old Masters, completely flabbergasted at this exordium of mine; "I never thought, Mister Haldane, to hear you speak ag'in me like that. I allays believed you was a friend, ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... credit the existence of a Being whose power was said to extend everywhere but whom he had not yet seen, although he was now an old man. The aged sceptic is not a little conceited as the following exordium to one of his speeches evinces: "It is very strange that I never meet with anyone who is equal in sense to myself." The same old man in one of his communicative moods related to us the following tradition: The earth had been formed but continued enveloped in total darkness, ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... certain words in the exordium of the Fourth Gospel: "That [Word] was the true light which lighteth every man ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... This exordium led me to expect something terrible. I trembled, and would have spoken to deprecate her wrath: but a motion of the Domina commanded me to ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... memory of the fact that nine days it was when she was apprised of the incarnation of the divine Messiah, and also because of the nine months in which she carried Him in her virgin womb. (Novena to Jesus, Maria, and Jose, Manila, 1903, in the Exordium.) ...
— The Legacy of Ignorantism • T.H. Pardo de Tavera
... With this exordium, which the occasion seemed to require, let us proceed to consider the most powerful and radical measure, which belongs to the science of education, and which has been developed by ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... to me later that this exordium so bewildered him that he knew not "at which end to take hold of it," to use his own expression. ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... "First of all, madame," he remarked, "I must tell you that I was the count's confidential agent. In him I lose a protector. Respect alone prevents me from saying a friend. He had no secrets from me." M. Fortunat saw so plainly that Madame d'Argeles did not understand a word of this sentimental exordium that he thought it necessary to add: "I tell you this, not so much to gain your consideration and good-will, as to explain to you how I became acquainted with these matters relating to your family—how ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... keep mine. I know but of one way of making what I send you useful, which is, by sending you a blank sheet: sure you would not grudge threepence for a halfpenny sheet, when you give as much for one not worth a farthing. You drew this last paragraph on you by your exordium, as you call it, and conclusion. I hope, for the future, our correspondence will run a little more glibly, with dear George, and dear Harry [Conway]; not as formally as if we were playing a game at chess in Spain and Portugal; and Don Horatio was to have the honour of ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... decade later than Thackeray, but seems more than a decade nearer to us. With her the full pulse of modern realism is felt a-throbbing. There is no more of the ye's and thous with which, when he would make an exordium, Thackeray addressed the world—a fashion long since laid aside. Eliot drew much nearer to the truth, the quiet, homely verity of her scenes is a closer approximation to life, realizes life more vitally than the most veracious page of "Vanity Fair." Not that the great woman novelist made the ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... England of having some personal motive. In his fifteenth letter home, therefore, Smollett is assiduous in disclaiming anything of the kind. He begins by attempting an amende honorable, but before he has got well away from his exordium he insensibly and most characteristically diverges into the more congenial path of censure, and expands indeed into one of his most eloquent passages—a disquisition upon the French punctilio (conceived upon lines somewhat similar to Mercutio's address to Benvolio), to which is appended a satire ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... pronounce, Whether on the utmost verge of our actual horizon there is not a looming as of Land; a promise of new Fortunate Islands, perhaps whole undiscovered Americas, for such as have canvas to sail thither?—As exordium to the whole, stand here ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... Englishman of October 29, 1713, which was probably written by Addison, speaks handsomely of this poem. The Last Day was published soon after the peace. The vicechancellor's imprimatur, for it was printed at Oxford, is dated May the 19th, 1713. From the exordium, Young appears to have spent some time on the composition of it. While other bards "with Britain's hero set their souls on fire," he draws, he says, a deeper scene. Marlborough had been considered by Britain as her hero; but, when the Last Day was ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson |
