"Fluent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rather than from convenience, a wife puts kindred before husband, her affection remaining chiefly where it was before marriage. But if the moralist desires yet more solid virtues, he need only inquire of the first Sevillan he meets, who will give at shortest notice, in choice and fluent language, a far more impressive list than I ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... tracts of fluent heat began, And grew to seeming-random forms, 10 The seeming prey of cyclic storms, Till at the ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... adorned, sitting on a bench at Helmeih Station having his boots and bandolier polished by four jabbering, disreputable "Gyppie" youngsters, who swore glibly the while the most lurid English oaths. Incidentally, they often terminated an exceptionally fluent flow with "Eh, Mistah Mickkenzie?" the usual mode of native address to New Zealanders after the High Commissioner's visit, which sometimes ruffled Mac's dignity, but more often amused him. His toilet ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... voir dans un tout petit moment.' So saying, with a smile, she seated herself; and, discovering that I was an American, began to talk bad English to me. I may say execrable English; for it is a habit your Frenchwoman often has, to abandon her own facile and fluent vernacular, which she speaks so charmingly, in order to show off a wretched smattering she may have acquired of your language,—from politeness, possibly, but I rather think from vanity. In the mean ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... in New England is a theologian." I have already intimated that Webster dissipated his strength, and it is only fair to state the facts in the light of the conditions under which he lived. In the unorganized and fluent state of society there was little room for a specialist; or, to change the phrase for a more exact one, there was too much room. Every educated man was called upon to occupy himself with a great variety of tasks. The demand made by the republican experiment was very great. People had practiced ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... disclosed to the father and daughter; and the former seeing how entranced we were with each other's company, like a prudent parent, left us to ourselves. My French was much purer and more grammatical than hers, hers much more fluent than mine. Yet, notwithstanding this deficiency on both sides, we understood each other perfectly, and we had not been above two hours together alone, before I told her that I loved her for her very ignorance, and she had confessed to me that she loved me, because—because—the ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... baby boys, two and four years old, respectively, were in charge of Miss Margaret Hays, who is a fluent speaker of French, and she had tried vainly to get from the lisping lips of the two little ones some information that would lead to the ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... Vatican walls. The German artist's manner is less rhetorical, but his conception is hardly less grandiose; and his taste does not so closely border on over-emphasis, but neither is it so conscious or so fluent. Technically it seems to me that the chief influence is a recollection of the large canvases of Jan and Hubert Van Eyck and Hubert Van der Goes which Duerer had admired in the Netherlands; these had strengthened and ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... Economy. The reader's pleasure must not be forgotten; and he cannot be pleased by a style which always leaps and never flows. A harsh, abrupt, and dislocated manner irritates and perplexes him by its sudden jerks. It is easier to write short sentences than to read them. An easy, fluent, and harmonious phrase steals unobtrusively upon the mind, and allows the thought to expand quietly like an opening flower. But the very suasiveness of harmonious writing needs to be varied lest it become a drowsy monotony; and the sharp short sentences which are ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... sat down Fisker made his speech, and it was fluent, fast, and florid. Without giving it word for word, which would be tedious, I could not adequately set before the reader's eye the speaker's pleasing picture of world-wide commercial love and harmony which was to be ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... name a talisman and a challenge to succeeding generations. The comparative oratory of Grattan and Flood is still debated. Both after a manner were unique and unsurpassed. Flood possessed staying power in sheer invective and sustained reasoning. Grattan was fluent in epigram and most inspiring when condensed, and he had an immense moral advantage. The parliament which made him a grant was independent, but it was from one of subservience that Flood drew his salary. ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... knew another lady. She was on the whole a superior kind of person. A fair poetess, a good musician, and a fluent speaker, with good enunciation, and graceful in her movements. All these admirable qualities I noticed myself, and heard them spoken of by others. As my acquaintance with her commenced at the time when I was not on the best of terms with my former companion, I was glad to enjoy her ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... rather felt, with whom it was necessary to be reserved, and with whom he might safely venture to be communicative. The consequence was that he did what Mordaunt, with all his vivacity and invention, or Burnet, with all his multifarious knowledge and fluent elocution ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... playful yet somewhat melancholy strain of irony upon men and their pursuits. The peculiar features of her mind made her, indeed, like the latter more than she could appreciate the former; for in her nature there was more bitterness than sentiment. Still, his rich language and fluent periods, even in description, touched her ear and fancy, though they sank not to her heart; and she yielded insensibly to the spells she would almost have despised ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... when talking in a company with fluent vivacity, and, as he flattered himself, to the admiration of all who were present; a German who sat next him, and perceived Johnson rolling himself, as if about to speak, suddenly stopped him, saying, 'Stay, stay,—Toctor Shonson is going to say something.' This was, no doubt, very provoking, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... Fleda,—but she was not fluent to-day. She sat up and repeated, "I have not forgotten old times either, ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... well-proportioned frame was invigorated by the toils of war, and by the chivalrous exercises in which he delighted. He was one of the best horsemen in his court, and excelled in field sports of every kind. His voice was somewhat sharp, but he possessed a fluent eloquence; and, when he had a point to carry, his address was courteous and even insinuating. He secured his health by extreme temperance in his diet, and by such habits of activity, that it was said ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... to their sockets; and he had a sudden outburst of fluent German. He did not think that any of his hearers could understand that portion of his native tongue he was using; he hoped they could not; he could not ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... then had an Audience to explain what he intended to state in Parliament this evening as the programme of his Ministerial Policy. It was very fluent and very able, but so completely the same as the Speech which he has since delivered, that I must refer to its account in the reports. When he came to the passage regarding the Church, the Queen expressed to him her sense of the importance not to have Puseyites ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... understand our language well, for he immediately turned with gentle urbanity, and discerning, perhaps, something in my face which assured him of my sympathy and respect, entered into a fluent conversation with me that at once increased my admiration and awakened my pity. For I saw that his nature was strong and his feelings deep, and as the future could have nothing but shame and misery, I instinctively felt oppressed by the fate which ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... pedestal, halting on one knee from the wound which had not hindered him from swimming the swollen Tiber; Claelia the hostage on her brazen steed; and many another, handed down inviolate from the days of the ancient kings. Here was the rostrum, beaked with the prows of ships, a fluent orator already haranguing the assembled people from its platform—there, the seat of the city Praetor, better known as the Puteal Libonis, with that officer in session on his curule chair, his six lictors leaning on their fasces at his back, as ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... dark eyes, and no vulgarity in tone or appearance. His hands were delicate; there was nothing of the "greasy foreigner" about him, but rather an air of finesse, especially in his exquisitely trimmed little moustache and pointed beard, and his voice and language were persuasive and fluent. It might have been worse, was the prominent ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... which is laid down as the proper thing in polite society at quadrille, during the intermissions between the figures of the dance. And, also, the long-legged, aged Roly-Poly wandered over the room, sitting down now next one girl, now another, and entertaining them all with his fluent chatter. ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... were getting out of sleep all that there is in it for tired, healthy children. In the room below, her father and the eldest boy were resting; and through the rafters of the flooring she could hear them both: her father a large, fluent, well-seasoned, self-comforting bassoon; and her brother a sappy, inexperienced bassoon trying to imitate it. Wakefulness was a novel state for Pansy herself, who was always tired when bedtime came and as full of wild vitality as one of her young guineas in the summer wheat; so that she sank ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... details, little touches of local colour, revision of choice of words, heart-rending erasions. And here, my child," I concluded, bringing out the beautiful, clean, smooth typed copy—"here is the finished work itself, light, pleasant, fluent, humorous and, most important ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 8, 1919 • Various
... prepared to part with the book. He proceeded instead, in fluent speech and not inappropriate language, to set forth, not the power of the poem—that he both took and left as a matter of course—but the beauty of those phrases, and the turns of those expressions, which particularly pleased him—nor failing to remark ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... as he informed the Commander, in Spanish that was more fluent than elegant or precise—his name was Peleg Scudder. He was master of the schooner GENERAL COURT, of the port of Salem in Massachusetts, on a trading voyage to the South Seas, but now driven by stress of weather into the bay of San Carlos. He begged ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... behind her a foot long by six inches wide, which effectually put a stop to all further fishing operations on the part of Goliath and his merry men for that day, at any rate. It was all so quiet, and so tame and so stupid, no wonder Mistah Jones felt savage. When Captain Slocum's fluent profanity flickered around him, including vehemently all he might be supposed to have any respect for, he did not even LOOK as if he would like to talk back; he only looked sick and tired ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... introduction, held out her hand so cordially that I knew it must be one of his daughters. It was Madame de Lasteyrie, who, like her mother and sister, had shared his dungeon at Olmuetz. Her English, though perfectly intelligible, was not as fluent as her father's, but she had no difficulty in saying some pleasant things about family friendship which made me very happy. She lived in the same street, though not in the same house with the General, and that morning my good-fortune ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... but suggested none, while Raffles turned this much of his statement into sufficiently fluent Italian. But when he faced me again his face was ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... went on the fluent Mexican. "You sail to Panama. You have an easy and safe land trip of a few days. Then steamers again. Poff! you are there. By all means, ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... times, has what is called its sea and its trough of the sea; but it has neither rivers, woods, banks, towns, nor mountains. In mild weather it is one hammered plain. Stratagems, like those of disciplined armies—ambuscades, like those of Indians, are impossible. All is clear, open, fluent. The very element which sustains the combatants, yields at the stroke of a feather. One wind and one tide at one time operate upon all who here engage. This simplicity renders a battle between two men-of-war, with their huge white wings, more akin to the Miltonic contests of archangels ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... he is failing miserably. He, the fluent speaker at lectures, and on public platforms, is now bereft of the power ...
— A Little Rebel - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... looking at the pictures an alcoholic breath assailed me from the region of my left ear, and a voice said in thick but fluent French, "I see, by the way you admire the paintings, that you are foreigners." He was a short, puffy man with a baldish head ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... explanation of the views of the Prophet and himself, in calling around them a band of Indians—disavowed all hostile intentions towards the United States, and denied that he or those under his control had committed any aggressions upon the whites. His manner, when speaking, was animated, fluent and rapid, and made a strong impression upon those present. The council terminated. In the course of it, the two hostile parties became reconciled to each other, and quiet was restored ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... eight-syllabled couplet with variations and alternate riming, the style follows the graceful, fluent simplicity of the Old French; and in its softly articulated, bright-coloured prolixity, the narrative frequently suggests "The Earthly Paradise" or "The Story of Rimini." The most remarkable of these pieces is "Chaitivel," in which the body of ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... devoted friend, Judge Paterson, [3] a fault in his mode of speaking while a youth, and seems never to have been fully corrected, as he did that of rapid utterance, attaining the true medium for public speaking in this respect. He spoke with great apparent ease, but could not be called fluent, although he never appeared at a loss for words, which were always so chaste and appropriate that they seemed to, have been as carefully selected before they fell from his lips as if they had been written down in a prepared speech and committed to memory. His manner ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... he returned, and reported that he was unable to find a single person who could speak a word of French. Doubtless many of the officers, who were of higher grade than any on board of the Chateaugay, were fluent enough in the language, but they were not to be found in the smaller vessels of the navy; for, whatever their rank before the war, they had all been advanced to the higher positions. Every one of the officers on board of this steamer had been the captain of a vessel, and had ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... bench, to enforce that very liturgy which they condemned. He was the chief speaker for the Presbyterians at the famous Savoy Conference, summoned to advise and consult upon the Book of Common Prayer. His antagonist was Dr. Gunning, ready, fluent, and impassioned. "They spent," as Gilbert Burnet says, "several days in logical arguing, to the diversion of the town, who looked upon them as a couple of fencers, engaged in a discussion which could not be brought to an end." In ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... a few words on a subject on which all men are supposed to be fluent, and none agreeable?—Self. I have written much, and published more than enough to demand a longer silence than I now meditate; but, for some years to come, it is my intention to tempt no further the ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... occasionally from Fred. directly and very often through the papers. He has enjoyed his European trip very much and I think will be much improved by it. Nellie writes very often; she is a very much better writer than either of the boys. Her composition is easy and fluent, and she writes very correctly. She seems to have made a very good impression where she has been.—Buck sails for Europe on the 6th of July. He will travel but little however. He expects to study his third year Harvard course in some ...
— Letters of Ulysses S. Grant to His Father and His Youngest Sister, - 1857-78 • Ulysses S. Grant
... of a character self-absorbed and contemplative. He was short and sturdy in build, and in his sober dress and grave deportments, suggested rather the dissenting preacher than the prophet of philosophic anarchism. He was not a ready debater or a fluent talker. His genius was not spontaneous or intuitive. It was rather an elaborate effort of the will, which deliberately used the fruits of his accumulative study and incessant activity of mind. He resembled, says Hazlitt, who admired and liked him, "an eight-day clock that must ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... is harsh or hissing; that this method or his tropes are inadequate? That message will find method and imagery, articulation and melody. Though he were dumb, it would speak. If not,—if there be no such God's word in the man,—what care we how adroit, how fluent, how brilliant he is? ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... comminatory swearing alone is practised, and you have to offend a man very grievously to get him to disgorge his treasure. In this country, except among ladies in comparatively humble circumstances, anything like this fluent, explicit, detailed, and sincere cursing, aimed, missile-fashion, at a personal enemy, is not found. It was quite common a few centuries ago; indeed, in the Middle Ages it was part of the recognised procedure. Aggrieved ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... that occupy him are held together by the unity of the personal and social interests which his life carries along. Whatever is uppermost in his mind constitutes to him, for the time being, the whole universe. That universe is fluid and fluent; its contents dissolve and re-form with amazing rapidity. But, after all, it is the child's own world. It has the unity and completeness of his own life. He goes to school, and various studies divide and fractionize the world for him. Geography ...
— The Child and the Curriculum • John Dewey
... road unwound itself before them, a dun-white band flung across the darkening down. A veil of grey air was drawn across the landscape. To their left the further moors streamed to the horizon, line after line, curve after curve, fluent in the watery air. Nearer, on the hillside to their right, under the haze that drenched its green to darkness, the furze threw out ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... was easy and his tongue fluent. Beatrice had only to lean her head back and smile faintly from time to time. The General suddenly paused—so suddenly that Beatrice looked up and noticed the sudden pallor of his face, his ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... in these days of the charm of fluent writing. We hear it complained of some works of genius, that they have fine thoughts, but are irregular and have no flow. But even the mountain peaks in the horizon are, to the eye of science, parts of one range. We should consider that the flow ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... were few abolitionists. Rufus Saxton told me that Lyon was the only one of any distinction who could be so classed among the men he knew. T.W. Sherman was like his fellows and listened impatiently to what he felt was fanaticism gone mad, but the fluent old farmer drove home his radicalism undauntedly. T.W. Sherman before the war had been a well-known figure as commander of Sherman's flying artillery, which was perhaps the most famous organisation of the regular army, but his name scarcely appears in the history of the ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... the Elburz. Tabriz (180), in the NW., is the emporium of trade. Ispahan (60), Meshed (60), Barfurush (60), and Shiraz (30) are the other important towns. The Government is despotic; the emperor is called the Shah. The people are courteous and refined in manner, witty, and fluent in speech; they are of Aryan stock and Mohammedan faith. The original empire of Persia was established by Cyrus 537 B.C. A century later decay set in. Revival under Parthian and Sassanian dynasties lasted from 138 B.C. till A.D. 639. Persia became then a province of the Arabs. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... worn mother in her household duties, a haunter of the beautiful places in the city of her adoption, an occasional mingler in the scant festivities of artists, a good linguist, knowing English thoroughly and speaking French and German with fluent accuracy. Watch her, with me, as she walks one spring day along the narrow Via Robbia, down which a slip of sunlight glints scantily on her young head, and, emerging into a wider thoroughfare, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... successor was chosen the seceders exercised their rights, and were strong enough to elect a student fresh from college, who had taken an M.A. degree at the University of London. He preached his first sermon from the text, "I am crucified with Christ," and told his hearers, with fluent self-confidence, that salvation meant perfect sympathy with Christ—"Not I, but Christ liveth in me;" that the office of Christ was not to reconcile God to man, but man to God; and this is effected in proportion as Christ dwells in us, bringing us more and more into harmony with the Divine. ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... bitter ill-feeling!—true religion, too, for these Lestrigonians were most seriously in earnest in their chapelling. Yet no doubt they fomented the row, for the pastor himself was much too clever a man to proceed to such extremities. By nature he was a fluent speaker, rising to eloquence as eloquence is understood among that kind of audience. He carried them with him, quite swept them away. They came to hear him from miles round about; there were plenty of other chapels, but no one like the man at Bethel. Once they ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... long, in fluent pauses, falling far, but full, but fine, Faultless friend of flowers and fountains, do I hear that voice of thine— All night long, amidst the burden of the lordly storm, that sings High above the tumbled forelands, fleet and fierce with thunderings! Then and then, my love, ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... argument, full of a well-aimed satire which amuses while it stings; and through all this there runs a pervading, may we not say, a matchless charm. He is most apt in moving compassion; his mythical digressions show a fluent ease, and he is perfect in bending his course and finding a way out of them without violence or effort. Thus when he tells the story of Leto he is really almost a poet; and his funeral oration shows a declamatory magnificence to which ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... camp fire evenings were highly interesting too, for Big Pete was a fluent talker with a wealth of stories of the Great West at his tongue's end. Indeed, the story of his family and their migration west was one that fascinated me. His father had been a trapper in the old ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... before I began to speak, he [my father] committed me to the care of a German,... totally ignorant of our language, but very fluent, and a great critic, in Latin. This man, whom he had fetched out of his own country, and whom he entertained with a very great salary, for this only end, had me continually with him: to him there were also joined two others, of inferior learning, ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... leader folded his arms across his chest and looked down upon his prisoner. He spoke, in Latin sufficiently fluent. ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... us, and when it came alongside, we were surprised to find Lieutenant Henry Wise, master of the Independence frigate, that we had left at Valparaiso. Wise had come off to pilot us to our anchorage. While giving orders to the man at the wheel, he, in his peculiar fluent style, told to us, gathered about him, that the Independence had sailed from Valparaiso a week after us and had been in Monterey a week; that the Californians had broken out into an insurrection; that the naval fleet under Commodore ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... repeat the whole of Paradise Lost by heart, and thought it probable that he could rewrite Sir Charles Grandison from memory. In his books, in his speeches in the House of Commons, and in private conversation—for he was an eager and fluent talker, running on often for hours at a stretch—he was never at a loss to fortify and illustrate his positions by citation after citation of dates, names, facts of all kinds, and passages quoted verbatim from ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... and an extra allowance for expenses subscribed by the Bristol merchants. He thus describes his feelings: "It was past eight o'clock when I reached the Gloucester Coffee-House, and, the Bristol mail being on the point of going off, I mounted on the outside. The fine fluent motion of the mail soon laid me asleep. It is somewhat remarkable that the first easy or refreshing sleep which I had enjoyed for some months was on ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde
... Facile, fluent, full of color, Tschaikowsky seems equipped less for subjective than for lyric and dramatic utterance, as in his "Romeo and Juliet" overture. In the "Manfred" Symphony we may see the most fitting employment ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... lead in ever widening circles, away from the topic under discussion when the events of his own life were discussed, but he is a fluent speaker and a student of psychology. Psychology as that philosophy relates to the mental and bodily tendencies of the African race has long since become one of the major subjects with which this unusual man struggles. "Why is the negro?" is ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... cannot all your fluent witt interpret Why she procastinatts your promisd match? By this light, her daughter would be married tomorrow If her mother and I had concluded on ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... herself. "Angele de la Mole, mi—mi fren." Having wavered so far, between Spanish and English, she flung herself headlong into her native tongue. This was the signal for the Cherub also to begin fluent explanations, both fluting Andaluz together, and so fast, that Dick (painstakingly taught a little Castilian by me in leisure moments) found ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... of the pines into the path along the edge of the herbaceous border. And then Mr. Brumley became aware of an effect away between the white-stemmed trees towards the house as if the Cambridge boat-race crew was indulging in a vigorous scrimmage. Drawing nearer this resolved itself into the fluent contours of Lady Beach-Mandarin, dressed in sky-blue and with a black summer straw hat larger than ever and trimmed ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... will the fame of George Sand mainly rest? According to some critics, on her gifts of fertile invention and fluent narration alone, which make her novels attractive in spite of the chimerical theories, social, political and religious, everywhere interwoven. According to other judges again, her fictions transcend and are likely to outlive other fictions by virtue of certain ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... "Merry Islington," return to a temperate dinner and cheerful evening, and, before going to bed, write off what had arranged itself in his head from the studies of the morning. In this way he took a more general view of the subject, and wrote in a more free and fluent style than if he had been mousing at the time among authorities. The influence of this way of composing history is plainly seen in the entertaining, but not immortal, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... lumber yards and factories that were the chief sources of the city's prosperity. Beyond these they could see the fleet of ships that lined the coal and iron ore docks of the harbor. Mr. Johnson, who was quite a fluent talker, enlarged upon the wealth and prosperity of the city; and Wellington, who had never before been in a town of more than three thousand inhabitants, manifested sufficient interest and wonder to satisfy the most exacting cicerone. They called at the office of a colored lawyer and member ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... meantime, Mrs. Eyrecourt was satisfied. She dashed at the next subject as fluent and as confident ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... Colonization Society resolved, if possible, to capture that sentiment, and with it the pecuniary aid the British Abolitionists might render. It was always a tremendous beggar. They, accordingly, selected a fluent-tongued agent and sent him to England to advocate their cause. He did not hesitate to represent that the Colonization Society was the especial friend of the negro, working for his deliverance from bondage, and, in addition, that it ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... it a part of his duty to console and soothe the ruffled feelings of his zealous and fluent parishioner, and to Virginia's pride his offer of escort to Willow Bluff was ample reparation for the untoward interruption of her oratory. She delivered into his hands, with sensitive upward glance, the receptacle containing her manuscript, and set a brisk pace, at which she insured the ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... delirium plunged him back to Houndsditch, though it gave me a jerk, I could account for it as reversion to an old habit that had been put off before ever we met. What beat me was, that his second style, accent and choice of words—though still fluent in cursing—far surpassed in purity any speech I had heard from him ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... naturally, it seems, certainly not by dint of wrestling with Greek prose, the mastery of language. His light verse is wonderfully handled, quaint, fluent, right. Modest as he was, he was ambitious, as we said, but not ambitious of any gain; merely eager, in his own way, to excel. His ideal is plainly stated in the ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... with fluent energy of the Tsar's rescript, of Stead, of general disarmament arbitration in cases of international disputes, of the signs of the times, of the new humanity and the new gospel of life which would make it the business of the community to secure ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... silent thought, looking at the plan with his steel-colored eyes, in which at times there flashed sparks of ideas coming from the brain-ideas which, after a while, he presented to the trained architect. He spoke in a voice low and fluent; he spoke connectedly and very clearly. The architect answered with respect, and, like, the jurist who had preceded, not without a certain astonishment. Great God! this man knows everything; he moves as ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... hardware supplies, and then I tackled the chuck with the same weapons. It ain't much trouble to travel with the high-flyers after you find out their gait. I got along fine. I was feeling cool and agreeable, and pretty soon I was talking away fluent as you please, all about the ranch and the West, and telling 'em how the Indians eat grasshopper stew and snakes, and you never saw people ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... this period a Greek myth and a Christian legend were all one. Both afforded the occasion for displaying technical skill in fluent forms, devoid of any but voluptuous feeling; while both might be subordinated to rich effects of decoration.[116] To this point the intellectual culture of the fifteenth century had brought the plastic arts of Italy, by a process similar to that ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... Louis, which I accepted from Corcelle, is to me my duty, and I will sustain it in the best way in my power.... Ah! that ancient France, how one feels her grandeur here, and what a part she is known to have had in Christianity! It is that chord which I should like to have heard vibrate in a fluent writer like you, and not eternally those paradoxes, those sophisms. But what matters it to you who date from yesterday and who boast of it," he added, almost sadly, "that in the most insignificant corners of this city centuries of history abound? Does your heart blush at the sight of the ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... slaveholding, Formed two other grave discussions In the great divine's career. Dr. Rice is still devoting His enfeebled voice and gesture To the Gospel proclamation; Furrowed brow and locks of silver Give the glory of religion, In a portrait true and tender, Speaking fluent words and holy, Telling still the "old, old story." Every prominent position, In the gift of flock or pastor, Has been his to grace and honor, In the field ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... patriot above party, master of prose and verse highly developed and finished, and at times of a lofty strain owing to his moral enthusiasm; Whittier was a Quaker priest, vigorous in a great cause of humanity, with fluent power to express in poetry the life of the farm, the roadside and the legends that were like folklore in the memory of the settlement; Holmes was a town wit and master of occasional verse, with notes here and there of a higher strain ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... and to happiness in private, life." He was tall, well-proportioned, graceful; his features were clean-cut and expressive of both intelligence and amiability; his manner was cordial and unaffected; his mind was vigorous and his industry unremitting. Furthermore, he was an able lawyer, a fluent orator, a persuasive debater, an adroit parliamentarian. Upon entering the Senate at the early age of thirty-two, he had won prompt recognition by a powerful speech in opposition to the tariff of 1824; and by 1828, when he was reelected, he was known ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... orator of great power,—fluent and elegant in diction, bright and sparkling in thought, keen and ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... dwelt many savage tribes. Some of the natives were by no means without political capacity. On the contrary, they were long clever enough to pit English against French to their own advantage as the real sovereigns in North America. One of them, whose fluent oratory had won for him the name of Big Mouth, told the Governor of Canada, in 1688, that his people held their lands from the Great Spirit, that they yielded no lordship to either the English ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... obsolete words I could not make sense of so much as a single line. Yet when, being forced into inglorious surrender, I carried the manuscripts to the Museo, and appealed to Don Rafael for assistance, he read to me in fluent Spanish all that I had found so utterly incomprehensible. "It is only a knack," he explained. "A little time and patience are required at first, but then all comes easily." But Don Rafael did here injustice to his own scholarship. More than a little time and patience have I ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... manner, and an erect and graceful carriage. His eyes were bluish-gray, and, though not dark, yet at times were sparkling and expressive. His hair was dressed and powdered, and being lightly combed up from his forehead, added to the loftiness of his aspect. He was fluent in discourse, but his conversation had the quiet tone of polished society, without any of those bold flights of thought, and picturings of fancy, which ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... and his friends were saying, and who speedily would have scorned it could they have understood, for at five o'clock another speaker took the stand, a man of the people he called himself, a foreigner long on our shores, yet fluent in the language of the Slavs, and in ten minutes the torrent was turned. With terror in his eyes, a man who had long worked with Nolan, a foreigner, too, came running to the silent, anxious little group of ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... principles to the service of Rome—and of himself. It is not necessary to regard him as wholly disinterested in his conduct; it is unjust and absurd to regard him as a glorified Tartuffe.[152] Such a supposition is adequately refuted by his writings. It is easy for a writer at once so fluent and so brilliant to give the impression of insincerity; but the philosophical works of Seneca ring surprisingly true. We cannot doubt his faith, though his life may at times have belied it. He reveals a warmth of human feeling, a richness of imagination, ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... little American lady (married to an Italian count) plied him with numerous questions in fluent French, spoken with an atrocious accent. Finally, she wished to hear the Abbe's views upon Melchisedech! In the midst of other questions and answers, the kindly little man managed to turn round to her with a cheery "Ah, Madame la Comtesse! pour le Melchisedech—nous ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... went the music the soft air along, While fluent Greek a vowel'd undersong 200 Kept up among the guests, discoursing low At first, for scarcely was the wine at flow; But when the happy vintage touch'd their brains, Louder they talk, and louder come the strains Of powerful instruments:—the gorgeous ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... been so near one of her wild screams of terror that now, in spite of her instant absorbed interest in the reins, she gave a queer little yelp. She was all ready with the explanation, her conversations with Aunt Frances having made her very fluent in explanations of her own emotions. She would tell Uncle Henry about how scared she had been, and how she had just been about to scream and couldn't keep back that one little ... But Uncle Henry seemed not to have ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield
... was about fifteen, seemed older than he was, not only from his height, but from the darkness of his complexion, and a certain proud, nay, imperious, expression upon features that, without having the soft and fluent graces of childhood, were yet regular and striking. His dark-green shooting-dress, with the belt and pouch, the cap, with its gold tassel set upon his luxuriant curls, which had the purple gloss of the raven's plume, blended perhaps something prematurely manly in his ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... hairs, which he seemed to prize as a natural mark of royalty, or chieftainship. Indeed, there was a popular legend afloat that he was of true royal blood—a stray Bourbon, or something of the sort. His speech was singularly fluent and elegant. The Emperor was one of the celebrities that no visitor failed to see. It is said that his mind was unhinged by a sudden loss of fortune in the early days, by the treachery of a partner in trade. The ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... sleeping and waking, that I sometimes argue with myself that I know I cannot be awake, for, if I were, I should not be half so ready. The readiness is not imaginary, because I often recall long strings of the verses, and many turns of the fluent speech, after ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... forty-one years of age he met Annie Besant. This was in Eighteen Hundred Seventy-four, and a friendship grew up between them that was of great benefit to both. Mrs. Besant was a woman of much power, a clear, logical thinker, and a fluent and eloquent public speaker. Her influence upon Bradlaugh was marked. After meeting her, much of the storm and stress seemed to leave his nature, and he acquired a poise and peace ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... cried in fluent English. "Going now? Going, you say? Never! never! You will never go away any more. No, not without something stolen! The dead have summoned you here! Their white bony fingers have dragged you across the deep! Did you not hear their voices, cold and ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... {C}, {C}, {LISP}, and {Perl}. Nearly every hacker knows one of C or LISP, and most good ones are fluent in both. C, despite some serious drawbacks, is generally preferred to other object-oriented languages (though in 1996 it looks as though Java may soon displace it in the affections of hackers, if not everywhere). Since around 1990 Perl has rapidly been gaining favor, ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... is still at table. I take away her dish. Naught remains of the Locust but his skin, hardly altered in shape, but utterly drained and perforated in several places. The method, therefore, was changed during the night. To extract the non-fluent residue, the viscera and muscles, the stiff cuticle had to be tapped here, there and elsewhere, after which the tattered husk, placed bodily in the press of the mandibles, would have been chewed, re-chewed and finally reduced ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... the man before, or whether the face only seemed familiar because it was the type of a class of faces all more or less alike, all intensely respectable and not without refinement, expressing a grave reticence that did not agree with the fluent speech, and a polite reserve at odds with the inquisitive nature ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... Image-sculpture, which yesterday you began to learn; and I am as one of your own people, and of your house, for your grandfather' (and she named my mother's father) 'was a stone-cutter; and both your uncles had good name through me: and if you will keep yourself well clear of the sillinesses and fluent follies that come from this creature,' (and she pointed to the other woman,) 'and will follow me, and live with me, first of all, you shall be brought up as a man should be, and have strong shoulders; and, besides that, you shall be kept well quit of all restless desires, ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... better against Judy's pushing, and partly because he realised the companionship of both children as very dear just then. He had a great deal to say, and wanted to say it all at once, but words never came to him too easily; he had missed many an opportunity in life for the want of fluent and spontaneous address. He stammered and halted somewhat in his delivery. A new language with but a single word in it ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... (for such, I dare answer for the Author, His Modesty misguides him to think it).——No Applause therefore can be too high, for such Merit. And, let me abominate the contemptible Reserves of mean-spirited Men, who while they but hesitate their Esteem, with Restraint, can be fluent and uncheck'd in their Envy.——In an Age so deficient in Goodness, Every such Virtue, as That of this Author, is a salutary Angel, in Sodom. And One who cou'd stoop to conceal, a Delight he receives from the Worthy, wou'd be equally capable of submitting to an Approbation ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson
... social progress, and economic development of the people which his class are studying. He is aware that the pupil should experience something more than a kaleidoscopic view of isolated facts. He recognizes the folly of requiring four years of high school English for the purpose of cultivating clear, fluent, and accurate expression, only to relax the effort when the student comes into the history class. He knows that the precision, logic, and habit of definite thinking exacted by the pursuit of the scientific subjects should not be laid aside ...
— The Teaching of History • Ernest C. Hartwell
... Bowring! man of many tongues, (All over tongues, like rumor) This tributary verse belongs To paint his learned humor. All kinds of gab he knows, I wis, From Latin down to Scottish— As fluent as a parrot is, But far more Polly-glottish. No grammar too abstruse he meets, However dark and verby; He gossips Greek about the streets And often Russ—in urbe. Strange tongues—whate'er you do them call; In short, the man is able To tell you ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... north end so that they were very close to us and frequently came over with their dog in the evenings to have a yarn. The majority of them were men who had "knocked about" the world and had known many rough, adventurous years. One of them in particular was rather fluent, and we were often entertained from his ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... temerarious anticipators have written of the mighty buildings that might someday be, the illustrator has blended with the poor ineffectual splutter of the author's words, his powerful suggestion that it amounted simply to something bulbous, florid and fluent in the vein of the onion, and L'Art Nouveau. But here, it may be, the illustrator will ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... confident rapidity in the stranger's movements, a vigorous manliness and self-dependence in his bearing, strikingly dissimilar to the deportment which usually characterizes young Parisians at the same age. Though he spoke the French language with fluent correctness, a slightly foreign accent betrayed to M. de Bois that he was ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... vulgar tumult; and, unlike all mob orators, raised the taste of the populace to him, instead of lowering his own to theirs. His colleague, Mr. Hobhouse, seemed to me ill qualified for a demagogue, though he spoke with power. He is rather too elaborate, and a little heavy, but fluent, and never weak. His thoughtful and highly-cultivated mind maintains him under all circumstances; and his breeding never deserts him. Sound sense comes recommended from his lips by the language of a scholar and the ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... for him, Chino," Rennie called. Herrera brought over a tin cup from the fire now blazing. As the Mexican took it awkwardly with his left hand, still watching Rennie glassily over the brim, the latter used fluent Spanish, only a word or ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... Nor is the Englishman deliberately hypocritical; but his tenacity, combined with his powerlessness to express his feelings, often gives him the appearance of a hypocrite. He is inarticulate, has not the clear and fluent cynicism of expansive natures wherewith to confess exactly how he stands. It is the habit of men of all nations to want to have things both ways; the Englishman is unfortunately so unable to express himself, even to himself, that he has never realized ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... spoke English out of deference to the big man, and only dropped into their own language or into fluent French when necessity compelled them, or they thought ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... with great ease of manner was a striking and agreeable-looking young man, about eight and twenty, whom Miss Belvoir introduced as Mr. Bevan Fairfield. He was fair and good-looking, very dandified in dress, and with a rather humorously turned-up nose and an excessively fluent way of speaking. ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... has not deceived you—he has a respirator, also blue spectacles, and a red nose. He apologises with fluent humility for intruding upon you without the honour of a previous acquaintance, and takes a chair, after which he shifts his respirator to his chin, sheds a pair of immense woollen gloves into his hat, and produces a bundle of papers, over which he intreats you ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 100. Feb. 28, 1891 • Various
... in spite of his foreign accent, was considered fluent, and his writing very good. To the questions put to him he answered in a way to obtain the approbation of the Doctor, and he was forthwith sent to take his place in the lower school. Ernst found that each class contained sixteen boys. The one who was at the head ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... in Tuscumbia, and to good purpose, for by spring Helen had learned to write idiomatic English. After May, 1889, I find almost no inaccuracies, except some evident slips of the pencil. She uses words precisely and makes easy, fluent sentences. ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... services—which were, according to the custom of the missionaries at that period, religious service morning and evening, and school for three or four hours during the day—the heart of the youthful missionary was much cheered by noticing the regular attendance of the chief. Although not a fluent reader, the New Testament became his constant companion, and a change passed over him apparent to all. The lion at whose name many trembled became a lamb, and the love of Jesus Christ filled his heart. He who was formerly like a fire-brand, spreading discord, enmity, and war among the neighbouring ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane
... Even this fluent discharge of Italian did not bring the soap at once, but there was a good reason for it. There was not such an article about the establishment. It is my belief that there never had been. They had to send far up town, and to several ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... 'Copious indeed, Drances, and fluent is ever thy speech at the moment war calls for action; and when the fathers are summoned thou art there the first. But we need no words to fill our senate-house, safely as thou wingest them while the mounded walls keep ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... brain. For it must frankly be confessed that in the brief May-day of her existence she had not time to master our language as Blanco White did, or as Chamisso mastered German. To the end of her days, fluent and graceful as she was, she was not entirely conversant with English, especially with the colloquial turns of modern speech. Often a very fine thought is spoiled for hypercritical ears by the queer turn of expression ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... you deracinate, Whirl and bewilder and flutter and fascinate! Faith, it's so killing you are, you assassinate— Murder's the word for you, Barney McGee! Bold when they're sunny, and smooth when they're showery— Oh, but the style of you, fluent and flowery! Chesterfield's way, with a touch of the Bowery! How, would they silence you, Barney machree? Naught can your gab allay, Learned as Rabelais (You in his abbey lay Once on the spree). Here's to the smile of you, (Oh, but the guile of you!) ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... considered by Miss Mary C. Francis (O.) from the standpoint of a practical newspaper woman. Mrs. Chapman Catt, chairman of the national organization committee, made the last address, taking for a subject Eternal Justice. The Constitution said: "As a rapid, logical and fluent speaker it is doubtful if America ever has produced one more gifted, and the suffrage movement is fortunate in having so brilliant a woman ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... were it still intact, I have done well on the Stock Exchange, and should more likely add to it than otherwise, and my errand to-day is simplicity itself. I seek a Christmas-present for a lady," he continued, waxing more fluent as he struck into the speech he had prepared; "and certainly I owe you every excuse for thus disturbing you upon so small a matter. But the thing was neglected yesterday; I must produce my little compliment at dinner; and, as you very well know, a ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... could not make out the first words. The prosecuting attorney's voice was fluent, thick; it sped on unevenly, now a bit slower, now a bit faster. His words stretched out in a thin line, like a gray seam; suddenly they burst out quickly and whirled like a flock of black flies around a piece of sugar. But she did not find anything horrible in them, ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... absorb him. Honore de Balzac was already a fluent writer, full of clamorous ideas and schemes that each day were born anew. Between two speeches of his play, he would sketch a brief romance of the old-fashioned type, draft the rhymes of a comic opera, which he would ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... Paris," he said in his fluent English to the clerk who had taken the message, and showed his card. "On official business I wish to inspect the last telegram which ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... gifts of no mean order. After imbibing the rather narrow education of a devout Moslem, he formed some acquaintance with western thought, and from it his facile mind selected a stock of ideas which found ready expression in conversation. His soft dreamy eyes and fluent speech rarely failed to captivate men of all classes[360]. His popularity endowed the discontented camarilla with new vigour, enabling it to focus all the discontented elements, and to become a movement of almost national import. Yet Arabi was its spokesman, ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... woman of exceptional beauty, both of form and feature, a fluent speaker and a fearless enthusiast in her devotion to her art. She would allow herself to be repeatedly bitten by rattle-snakes and received no harm excepting the ordinary pain of the wound. After ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... reason, the fluent may talk, But they ne'er can compute what we owe to the chalk. From the embryo mind of the infant of four, To the graduate, wise in collegiate lore; From the old district school-house to Harvard's proud hall, The chalk rules with absolute sway ...
— 1001 Questions and Answers on Orthography and Reading • B. A. Hathaway
... obviously an inveterate adherent of serfdom and a devoted agriculturist, who had lived all his life in the country. Levin saw proofs of this in his dress, in the old-fashioned threadbare coat, obviously not his everyday attire, in his shrewd, deep-set eyes, in his idiomatic, fluent Russian, in the imperious tone that had become habitual from long use, and in the resolute gestures of his large, red, sunburnt hands, with an old betrothal ring ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... story, just what the Lord had done for him. That is all. That is what a witness ought to do—tell what he knows, not what he does not know. He did not try to make a long speech. It is not the most flippant and fluent witness who has the most influence ...
— Men of the Bible • Dwight Moody
... indeed he—regarded them with pitiless eyes. His English was slower and not as fluent as that of Zoro, and his words harder ...
— The Heads of Apex • Francis Flagg
... very glad to see the noble Athenian in his own city. His fame for eloquence and prudence is already in Tyre and Babylon," spoke the stranger, never taking his steel-blue eyes from the orator's face. The accent was Oriental, but the Greek was fluent. The prince—for prince he was, whatever his nation—pressed his hand closer. Almost involuntarily Democrates's hand responded. They clasped tightly; then, as if Lycon feared a word too much, the unknown released his hold, bowed with inimitable though silent ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... a demonstrative girl naturally; not ready with her tears, not liberal with her caresses, not fluent in her talk, Eunice was affected by my proposal in a manner wonderful to see. She suddenly developed into an excitable person—I declare she kissed me. "Oh," she burst out, "how clever you are! The very thing to write about; I'll do ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... impeached for his turbulent and seditious conduct, he did not choose to stand the event of a trial, but escaped the judgement of the senate by a voluntary death. His life was spent in forensic causes. Men of sense, who heard him have reported, that he was a fluent, animated, and harmonious speaker; at times pathetic, always pleasing, and abounding with wit. Carbo, quoad vita suppeditavit, est in multis judiciis causisque cognitus. Hunc qui audierant prudentes homines, canorum oratorem, et volubilem, et satis ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... in a loud and unmitigated tone of voice, sometimes almost approaching to a scream. He is fluent, rapid, vehement, full of his subject, with evidently a great deal to say, and very regardless of the manner of saying it. As a lawyer, he has not hitherto been remarkably successful. He is not profound in cases and reports, nor does he take much interest in the peculiar ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 496 - Vol. 17, No. 496, June 27, 1831 • Various
... emotional content is not marked. The piece is for the fashionable salon or the concert hall. One catches at its close the overtones of bustling plaudits and the clapping of gloved palms. Ductility, an aristocratic ease, a delicate touch and fluent technique will carry off this study with good effect. Technically it is useful; one must speak of the usefulness of Chopin, even in these imprisoned, iridescent soap bubbles of his. On the fourth line and in the first bar of the Kullak version, there is a chord ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... ideas, making room for thoughts to follow, and the dull elf, whose mouth is a mill-dam, finds his fancies and thoughts accumulate on his brain, till that organ is dull and sodden as is his facial aspect. Why is it that some can only be fluent from the point of a pen, while others can only address their fellows effectively by word of mouth? Of course there are conversational monsters as well as other violations of nature's creative processes. And the more thought that talk holds in solution, the more grateful the offering. But I have ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... from fluent lips, and mirth distract the breast, Through midnight hours that yield no more their former hope of rest; 'Tis but as ivy-leaves around the ruin'd turret wreathe, All green and wildly fresh without, but worn and ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... sweet song. He became so deeply interested, too, in the subject about which he happened to be speaking, that his auditors could not help becoming interested also. He had no powers of eloquence, neither was he gifted with an unusually bright fancy. But he was fluent in speech, and his words, though not chosen, were usually appropriate. The captain had no powers of invention whatever. He used to say, when asked to tell a story, that he "might as well try to play the fiddle with a handspike." ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... speech in the same resonant but firm voice in which men who are still very young answer at examinations on questions for which they are well prepared.... He was indignant; he was angry.... And that wrath had loosed his tongue which was not very fluent ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... authority says, that this was attended with rather an awkward result. 'Leading the public life they did, in which they were exposed to every sort of society, the natural morality of the birds was so far lost, that they had become fluent in every term of reproach and indecency; and thunders of applause were elicited among the crowd of passengers by the aptness of their repartees.' In India, the taste is the same, but the habits different; ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... the two brothers rejoiced that they should see the mill without hearing him talk the whole time. Simon, having nothing to do all day long but to talk, was an indefatigable gossip. When the lands of Rosanna were in question, or when his pride was touched, he was terribly fluent. ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... occur in extemporaneous speaking. Whereas those preachers and hearers, whose education and habits of mind have been different, know nothing of this taste, and are insensible to these blemishes; and, if there be only a fluent outpouring of words, accompanied by a manner which evinces earnestness and sincerity, are pleased ...
— Hints on Extemporaneous Preaching • Henry Ware
... time after his election, he began to take part in the debates. He was not a fluent speaker; indeed he was hesitating, and sometimes his sentences were much involved; but, as he never spoke except upon topics with which he was perfectly familiar, he was listened to with the respect and attention which ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... no wit, that cannot, from the rising of the lark to the lodging of the lamb, vary deserved praise on my palfrey; it is a theme as fluent as the sea; turn the sands into eloquent tongues, and my horse is argument for them all; 'tis a subject for a sovereign to reason on, and for a sovereign's sovereign to ride on; and for the world (familiar to us and unknown), to lay apart their particular functions ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... he remained the whole day for the purpose of extorting money from the passengers, which he regularly spent every night in the wine-shops of Badajoz. To those who gave him money he returned blessings, and to those who refused, curses; being equally skilled and fluent in ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... amid her nodding bows, Under the sombre branches, and between The green and mossy garden-ways she goes, With little mincing airs one keeps to pet A darling and provoking perroquet. Her long-trained robe is blue, the fan she holds With fluent fingers girt with heavy rings, So vaguely hints of vague erotic things That her eye smiles, musing among its folds. —Blonde too, a tiny nose, a rosy mouth, Artful as that sly patch that makes more ...
— Silhouettes • Arthur Symons
... intelligence, but, like all Poles he was a drunkard, and unlike the soldiers of that nation, he was as timid as a hare. Lorentz, however, as well as his native language, spoke passable French and fluent German and Russian, and for this reason he was most valuable to me in my travelling and campaigning in the north. I was nearing the Rhenish provinces, when on leaving Kaiserslauten at night, the postilion tipped my barouche into ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... might have life.' The king is a tall, graceful person; in the pulpit he was dressed in a black coat, and his manner was solemn and earnest. He held in his hand a small bound manuscript book, in which his sermon was written, but he seldom looked at it. His action was dignified, his delivery fluent and graceful, and not without majesty. His hearers hung upon his lips with earnest and increasing interest. Much of what he said was put interrogatively, a mode of address which is very acceptable among the Tongans. It was affecting to see this dignified man stretching out his ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... strange opening, amazement fell upon all. For myself, the wild incongruity of this foreign tongue from lips which I had heard utter such fluent and flute-like English swallowed up ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... into Venetia's grasp; and stood, irresolute and ashamed, her fluent tongue stricken dumb, her intent to wound, and sting, and outrage with every vile, coarse jest she knew, rendered impossible to execute. The purity and the dignity of her opponent's presence had their irresistible influence, an influence too strong for even ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee] |
