"Monologue" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... out of his embarrassment by an occasional 'Ay, mun,' interjected into his apologetic and cordial monologue; and so we reached the hut, where, after directing me to a seat, he filled a billy with some of the water he had brought, and hung ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... inspired, and you thrilled, melted, and soared, under the touches of this Western Coleridge. He came to my room at the Golden Eagle, in Sacramento City, one night, and left at two o'clock in the morning. He walked the floor and talked, and it was the grandest monologue I ever listened to. One part of it I could not forget. It was with reference to preachers who turn aside from their holy calling to engage in ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... an effect of weird world-forgetfulness. I listened puzzled, and at that time not understanding many things that afterwards became plain to me. It is only in recent years that I have discovered the pathos of that monologue; how friendless my father was and uncompanioned in his thoughts and feelings, and what a hunger he may have felt for the sympathy of the undeveloped youngster ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... nuptials, King James invited to the wedding banquet three thousand of the most noted men and women of the world and informed his guests that at the conclusion of the feast the most wonderful dramatic artist of the age—William Shakspere, would recite in monologue from his own plays rare bits of ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... prevailed, but himself. There was an embarrassment about him which he could not quite conceal. I thought it proper to state in the outset that I wished simply to know whatever he was free to tell me in regard to his own willingness or unwillingness to accept a renomination. The reply was a monologue of an hour's duration, and one that wholly absorbed me, as it seemed to absorb himself. He remained seated nearly all the time. He was restless, often changing position, and occasionally, in some intense moment, wheeling his body around in his chair and ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... steps to thrust back an injured countenance at the door. "I guess I am able to converse as well as monologue, can't I?" she ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... did not catch Dr. Blake unawares. He laughed a laugh which rang as true as Mrs. Markham's. He even ventured on a humorous monologue in which he accused his sex of every possible failing, ending with a triumphant eulogy of the other half of creation. But Mrs. Markham, though she listened with outward civility, appeared to take all his jibes ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... the previous night had distressed him dreadfully, and ever and again before his retreat he had been breaking into passionate monologue. The ruin of a life-work, it was, no less. Surely she had known that Chaffery was a cheat. Had she not known? Silence. ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... book—'Monologues of the Dead'—established his claim to scholarship. Some critics called them vulgar, and they certainly were frivolous. But they proved two things—that Mr Steevens had a lively sense of humour, and that he had read the classics to some purpose. The monologue of Xanthippe—in which she gave her candid opinion of Socrates—was, in its way, and within its limits, ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... either instance would bear the like aspect of familiarity or of incongruity, in contrast to or in association with, the characters represented at the moment before actual contemporaries. These later performances partake, of course, in some sense of the nature of a monologue. Besides which, they involve the display of a desk and a book instead of the almost ludicrous exhibition of a board inscribed, as the case might be, "Syracuse" or "Verona." Apart from this, however, a modern ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... more ladies came in, but only two or three men. They all remained in the farther room talking, or rather listening, to M. Thiers. He was already a very old man, and when he began to talk no one interrupted him; it was almost a monologue. I went back several times to the Place St. Georges, but took good care to go later, so that the ladies should have their nap over. One of the young diplomat's wives had the same experience, rather worse, for when ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... that it was he and not Madame Barenna who was upset. The lady consented, and proceeded to what she took to be a consultation, which in reality was a monologue. During this she imparted a vast deal of information, and received none in return, which is the habit of voluble people, and renders them exceedingly dangerous to themselves and useful ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... noticing his reticence, laid it only to the exhaustion of a hideously rainy day, and talked on steadily. What Reed did not know till later was that her steady monologue was designed to cover up her real intention for just a little while, that she might gain time to stiffen to the resolution she had taken. The resolution had been growing up in her for weeks; it had come to its climax, only that very morning, ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... looking round, I perceive Can Grande, who has come up to explain to me the philosophy of the sailor's dances, and to unfold his theory of amusements, as far as the narrow area of one little brain (mine, not his) will permit. His monologue, and its interruptions, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... workman more baselessly accused of metrical carelessness than the poet who designedly varies his complicated verse-effects to suit every inner impulse belonging to his dramatic subject. A golden finish being in place in this statuesque, "Hyperion"-like monologue of Artemis, behold here it is, and none the less perfect because not merely the outcome of the desire to produce a polished piece ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... boy experienced merely the pleasure of repeating attitudes and intonations which had so forcibly excited his interest. The numerous parodies of Hamlet's soliloquy were never made in derision of that solemn monologue, any more than the travesties of Virgil by Scarron and Cotton; their authors were never so gaily mad as that. We have parodies on the Psalms by Luther; Dodsley parodied the book of Chronicles, and the scripture style was parodied by Franklin in his beautiful ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... present edition:—"The subject of this piece is the summoning of man out of the world by death; and its moral, that nothing will then avail him but a well-spent life and the comforts of religion. This subject and moral are opened in a monologue spoken by the Messenger (for that was the name generally given by our ancestors to the prologue on their rude stage). Then God is represented, who, after some general complaints on the degeneracy of mankind, calls for Death, and orders him to bring before his tribunal ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... faces at the boarding house table, hearing the same stale jokes or caustic remarks about Mrs. Atterson's food from Fred Crackit and the young men boarders of his class, or the grumbling of Mr. Peebles, the dyspeptic invalid, or the inane monologue of Old ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... it seemed, or at least she desired an audience for a monologue, for she recognized no antiphonal obligations on the part of her listeners. The doctors were not doing her a speck of good, and she was just squandering money in a miserable boarding-house, when she might be enjoying poor health in her own home; and she did n't believe her hens ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... brought to those he associated with all the fruits that faring forth in strange lands could give to a mind singularly alert for education and experience under any and all conditions. His fondness for monologue frequently exposed him to raillery, like the above, in the column where Field daily held a ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... called so? And going off to her bedroom with her dinner, no one downstairs being good enough to eat with her. I must say it isn't what I'm used to, and me lived with the first families. Quite the first." Mrs. Atkins ceased her weary monologue and gazed on the family with conscious virtue. She was dressed in dull black silk, ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... episodes elsewhere: and though there is a certain amount of fighting, the staple is quite decorous but exceedingly dull love-making, conducted partly in the endless dialogue (or rather automatic monologue) already referred to, and partly in letters more "handsome" even than Mr. Frank Churchill's, and probably a good deal more sincere in their conventional way, but pretty certainly less amusing. The ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... out the banjo player, a young fellow with deep-set black eyes and the unmistakable look of an artist in embryo, swung into a monologue accompanied by the banjo, part talk, part song, describing a fox hunt which was most fascinating ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... this Ode as it stands, without attempting to decide whether it is dialogue or monologue. Perhaps the opinion which supposes it to be spoken by Horace in his own person, as if he had actually perished in the shipwreck alluded to in Book III, Ode 4, v. 27, "Me... non exstinxit... Sicula Palinurus unda," deserves more ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... apparent from the listless hang of his hands and the distant light in his eyes that he had even become unconscious of her presence in the room. Observing the cause of her impatience, Fraser interrupted his interminable monologue to say, ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... by its obligation, because it knew the people would stand by it next term. That, by the way, was the year you railway men had most urgent need of its aid,—'77. But," said Forrest, suddenly starting to his feet, "here I have been inflicting a half-hour's monologue, and—I had hoped to ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... of the Labour Battalion, was another visitor who called one afternoon, and I got permission for him to come up. He was one of the local comedians and quite as good as any professional. I would have gone miles to hear him. His famous monologue with his imaginary friend "Linchpin" invariably brought the house down. He was broad Lancashire and I had had a great idea of taking him off at one of the FANTASTIK Concerts some time, but unfortunately, it was not to be. He came tiptoeing in. "I thought ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... to the festivals in honour of the god Dionysus; being originally a chorus sung in his honour, to which were successively superadded: First, an iambic monologue; next, a dialogue with two actors; lastly, a regular plot with three actors, and a chorus itself interwoven into the scene. Its subjects were from the beginning, and always continued to be, persons either ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... spoken in a purely conversational tone, with numerous changes of pitch. Practise it until your delivery would cause a stranger in the next room to think you were discussing an actual incident with a friend, instead of delivering a memorized monologue. If you are in doubt about the effect you have secured, repeat it to a friend and ask him if it sounds like memorized words. If it does, ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... head of a woman as she was sleeping peacefully by the side of her husband." Or: "In Copenhagen a former actress, now ninety years old, mounted a huge vegetable basket on the market place, and recited Lady Macbeth's monologue. Her unconventional behaviour attracted such a large crowd of passersby that several people were crushed ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... strike them to attitudes of paralyzed fear. Once we overtook a party in a trap, jogging pleasantly homeward, and we left them holding for their lives and the horse rearing with terror. I was holding on for my own dear life, for that matter. My brother lay back in his seat and carried on a loud monologue directed at me. He said he had to go to Southampton that night on urgent business, but must dine first. Was going to motor. This was a Stromboli, hundred horse-power racing machine. He was agent for Stromboli's. Had sold a lot of cars at twelve hundred guineas each. Had been up in Scotland staying ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... tragedy had been essentially lyrical. It arose from the dithyrambic chorus that was sung at the festivals of Dionysus. Thespis had introduced the first actor, who, in the pauses of the choral song, related in monologue the adventures of the god or engaged in dialogue with the leader of the chorus. To Aeschylus is due the invention of the second actor. This essentially changed the character of the performance. The dialogue could now be carried on by the two ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... dramatic entertainments to the attractive concerts given by Mr. MOLLENHAUER. Two great actors, Mr. JEFFERSON and Mr. BOOTH, have at different times appeared at this house, and in Rip Van Winkle and Hamlet have given us the most perfect specimens of dramatic monologue. Lately, there was an attempt made to present Macbeth during the intermissions in the performance of the orchestra. Had an actor been engaged who was capable of playing Macbeth, and had a company been engaged ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... spared myself the jest; he gave it no attention, but seated himself in the chair that he had left and resumed the interrupted monologue ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... said Steve soothingly. "I know just how you feel, and I guess talking's not going to do any harm. Act as if I wasn't here. Look on it as a monologue. I ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... play of 'The Patron.' Lord Melcombe was an aristocratic Dombey: stultified by his own self-complacency, he dared to exhibit his peculiarities before the English Aristophanes. It was an act of imprudence, for Foote had long before (in 1747) opened the little theatre of the Haymarket with a sort of monologue play, 'The Diversions of the Morning,' in which he convulsed his audience with the perfection of a mimicry never beheld before, and so wonderful, that even the persons of his models seemed to stand before ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... Cheerful One among the passengers inquires thus because he cares a whit. He only wishes to emphasise his own immunity from mal de mer, and blow the smoke of his disgusting pipe into your face. Neither his stomach nor his intellect is sensitive. He has a monologue on sea-sickness: it is all nonsense, imagination. It denotes weakness, not so much of the stomach as of the mentality, the will, the character. And besides, you don't call this rough, do you? You ought to have crossed with him in the old Nausia in 'eighty-nine. ...
— Ship-Bored • Julian Street
... reached the stage of being apparently all lost in their own thoughts, and the conversation had been practically reduced to a disjointed monologue on music by Lady Everard, when the lights began to be lowered, ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... are intensely dramatic, full of passion, striking in situation, and showing a rather rare accomplishment—that of conducting a dialogue which shall be equally brilliant on both sides without resembling a monologue. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... She had been talking long and vehemently. She and Derek were sitting in Freddie Rooke's apartment at the Albany, and the subject of her monologue was Jill. Derek had been expecting the attack, and had wondered why it had not come before. All through supper on the previous night, even after the discovery that Jill was supping at a near-by table with a man who was a stranger ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... beginning to his sway. Ears and mouths opened toward him the liege. Upon the magnet of his voice hung the eager atoms. There was a filmy, distant look in the eyes of the listeners, as of men rapt with the mystic utterances of a seer. My entrance unheralded broke up the monologue, whatever it was. But seeing the true sacrificial look on my brow, all at once, from chief to sutler, confessed a brother. To me then turning, Duespeptos, king of men, spoke ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... of the little boy—petted him, sent in for special cakes to tempt him with, showered a host of questions on him about school and games and hobbies. Sir Francis exchanged views on weather, politics, and the coming cricket season with his guest. The latter subject mostly resolved itself into a monologue on the part of the baronet, since cricket held no more interest for Larssen than ninepins; but he listened with polite attention while Sir Francis expounded the chances of the Australian Team (he had been to Lord's that morning to watch them at preliminary practice), and his own pet theory of how ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... Here his monologue was disturbed by little Jay's running up to Arthur very joyously. 'I told Edith we should meet you. I knew we should. And how is Robert and your funny servant? ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... monologue the machine-agent was silent, a dark frown of indecision on his face. As for his wife, she looked as if she had bartered her child's birthright for something that had disagreed with her mental digestion. Jason Wrinkle, however, reflections on the cost of his ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... equal anywhere? How could a thinker of his power of brain cover leagues of letter-paper with windy nonsense and mawkish insincerity? And finally, of what quality was the talk of one whose social life was entirely monologue? To the first of these questions Wordsworth perhaps helps with an analogy, but not very far; for it is certain that Wordsworth's opinion of the importance of his own verses was inflexible, whereas Coleridge, having another medium of expression, ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... transforming each axle of its wheels into sunshine. "To come so far to get a reception like that! A celebrity of the time to be treated thus by that Bohemian! One may try indeed to do good!" Jenkins gave vent to his anger in a long monologue of this character, then suddenly rousing himself, exclaimed, "Ah, bah!" and what anxiety there was remaining on his brow quickly vanished on the pavement of the Place Vendome. Noon was striking everywhere in the sunshine. Issued ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... more whisky and helped the two men in a liberal manner. He abused the teetotal sect with ferocity, as he handed the seltzer, and pouring out a glass of water for himself, was about to resume his monologue, when Cotgrave ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... bass Narrator, the words of Jesus himself, however, being used invariably in the first person, and sung by the baritone voice, as when he says, "If my Deeds have been evil," immediately following the bass recitative. After another monologue by the Narrator, ensues the march to the cross,—an instrumental number which is brilliant in its color effects and somewhat barbaric in tone. Without any break, the sopranos enter with the words, "Forth the Royal Banners go," set to a melody from the Roman Catholic liturgy; after ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... unpardonable insolence. His charm was acquired and systematised, a mask which he wore only when it pleased him, while the charm of Stevenson belonged to him like the colour of his hair. If Stevenson's talk became monologue we did not know it, because our one object was to show by our attention that he need never leave off. If thought failed him we would not combat what he had said, or start some new theme, but would encourage him with a question; and one felt that ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... the small gossip of the film world, and a judiciously expurgated sketch of his life since he had last seen her. Marie answered him whenever his monologue required answer, but she was unresponsive, uninterested—bored. Joe twisted his mustache, eyed her aslant and ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... back row of the dress circle a late-comer, after a cursory glance at the programme, had settled down into a comfortable narrative, which was evidently the resumed thread of an unfinished taxi-drive monologue. ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... his paper, Madame her fancy work, and Edith, attempting to play solitaire, hopelessly fumbled her cards. Madame made a valiant effort to carry on a conversation alone, but at length the monologue wearied her, and she slipped ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... the subject unexpectedly goes cross-lots, by a flash of short-cut, to a conclusion so suddenly revealed that it has the effect of wit. It needs the highest culture and the finest breeding to prevent the conversation from running into mere persiflage on the one hand—its common fate—or monologue on the other. Our conversation is largely chaff. I am not sure but the former generation preached a good deal, but it had great practice in fireside talk, and must have talked well. There were narrators in those days who could charm a circle ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... elastic root that half supported, half encompassed them. The girl's capricious, fitful manner succumbed as before to the near contact of her companion. Looking into her eyes, Low fell into a sweet, selfish lover's monologue, descriptive of his past and present feelings towards her, which she accepted with a heightened color, a slight exchange of sentiment, and a strange curiosity. The sun had painted their half-embraced silhouettes against the slanting tree-trunk, and began to decline unnoticed; the ripple of the ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... a powerful mind endowed with strong poetical sensitiveness. His work is even more poetical than musical. The suppression of the lyrical element, and therefore of melody, is with him a systematic parti pris. No more duos or trios; monologue and the aria are alike done away with. There remains only declamation, the recitative, and the choruses. In order to avoid the conventional in singing, Wagner falls into another convention,—that of not singing at all. He subordinates the voice to articulate speech, and for fear ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... great crosses was the belief that her husband was in love with the brilliant Lady Ashburton. Her jealousy was absurd, as this great lady invited Carlyle to her dinners because he was the most brilliant talker in all England, and he accepted because the opportunity to indulge in monologue to appreciative hearers was a keener pleasure to him than to write eloquent warnings to his day and generation. Froude's unhappy book, with a small library of commentary that it called forth, is practically forgotten, but Carlyle's fame and his books endure ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... to survey the slow continuities of actual events from the standpoint of a given moment, under the conditions of perspective and illusion which it imposed. Both these conditions were less well satisfied by drama, which directly "imitates action," than by the dramatic speech or monologue, which imitates action as focussed in a particular mind. And Browning's dramatic genius found its most natural and effective outlet in the wealth of implicit drama which he concentrated in these salient moments tense with memory and hope. The insuppressible alertness and enterprise ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... When he dragged himself out from under his deceased horse the scenery was undisturbed save for a small cloud of dust hovering over a distant rise to the north of him. After delivering a short and bitter monologue he struck out for the ranch and arrived in a very hot and wrathful condition. It was contagious, that condition, and before long the entire outfit was in the saddle and pounding north, Pete overjoyed because his wound was so slight as not to bar him from the ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... his chair, took his tea-cup as though it were a fresh addition to his responsibilities, and began to talk. He talked apparently without even breathing. He began on the weather, drifted on to art and music, and was just beginning a monologue on The Novel, when William rose and crept from the room like a guilty spirit. He found Mr. Blank under the library table, having heard a noise in the kitchen and fearing a visitor. A cigar and a silver snuffer had fallen ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... mercifully strikes up, and the big drum drums the garrulous monologue of the veteran theatrical observer. We have another act of the opera, sung far better than any opera has been sung at the Academy for years. Pretty ROSE HERSEE—when have we had a voice as pure, or a manner as charming as hers?—sings in this act, and her ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 34, November 19, 1870 • Various
... Suddenly the woman's shrill monologue was intensified by hysteria. She pointed wildly, as if she saw again the awful sight which she had seen through ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... disease," replied Sampson, as cool as a cucumber. "She has got angina pictoris or brist-pang, a disorder that admirably eximplifies the pretinsions of midicine t' seeince." And with this he dashed into monologue. ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... herself, began to read. At first she read a scene in which a footman and a house maid, tidying up a sumptuous drawing-room, talked at length about their young lady, Anna Sergyevna, who was building a school and a hospital in the village. When the footman had left the room, the maidservant pronounced a monologue to the effect that education is light and ignorance is darkness; then Mme. Murashkin brought the footman back into the drawing-room and set him uttering a long monologue concerning his master, the General, who disliked his daughter's views, intended to marry ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the play. This is like that of a typical Greek tragedy with one exception. It opens, as is customary with Euripides, with a monologue, which explains the plot and the position of affairs, spoken by one of the characters, Apollo. Otherwise, it is like a regular tragedy, presenting two sorts of action, that of a chorus consisting of men or women whose functions were to ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... behind me. I permitted it in silence. He thanked me with easy politeness for the trifling service; praised my horse; and thence took occasion to extol the happiness and power of the rich, and let himself, I know not how, fall into a kind of monologue, in which he had me now merely ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... approached. Suddenly two figures loomed up before him in the night. He came near and made out a barelegged boy, riding without a saddle and driving a cow before him. He was a very angry herdsman, this boy. He kept up a continual monologue directed at the cow and his horse, and so he did not hear the approach of Riley Sinclair until the outlaw was close upon him. Then he hitched himself around, with his hand on the hip of his old horse, swaying violently ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... absorbed in this monologue that when Mr. Hooker swung around on me in his revolving chair I was startled, feeling that I had been caught eavesdropping. I thought he was going to rebuke me, but he only said, "What can ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... none of them found themselves able afterward to quote the most pathetic passages seemed rather to add to the enthusiasm with which they described the address. The first result was a shower of invitations to tea, occasions when Laura was easily led into monologue. Miss Filbert became a cult of evangelistic drawing-rooms, and the same kind of forbearance was extended to her little traces of earlier social experiences as is offered, in salons of another sort, to the eccentricities of persons of genius. Very soon other applications had to ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... other occasions, less momentous, in which one may make more of himself than under ordinary circumstances he would think it proper to do; when he may talk about himself, and tell his own experiences, in fact, indulge in a more or less egotistic monologue without fear or reproach. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... PHRYNICHUS, the disciple of Thespis, was a poet; he saw, though perhaps dimly and imperfectly, the new career opened to the art, and he may be said to have breathed the immortal spirit into the mere mechanical forms, when he introduced poetry into the bursts of the chorus and the monologue of the actor. Whatever else Phrynichus effected is uncertain. The developed plot—the introduction of regular dialogue through the medium of a second actor —the pomp and circumstance—the symmetry and climax of the ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... vein of it, though the monologue ran on much longer. But at last he swung impatiently around and addressed Hilda. "I'm ready to throw up my hands. I think I'll go back to Minneapolis and tell MacBride I've had enough. He can come down here and finish ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin
... last century. Wordsworth takes pains to refer to himself as "a simple, water-drinking bard," [Footnote: See The Waggoner.] and in lines To the Sons of Burns he delivers a very fine prohibition lecture. Tennyson offers us Will Waterproof's Lyrical Monologue, a reductio ad absurdum of the claims of the bibulous bard. Then, lest the temperance cause lack the support of great names, Longfellow causes the title character of Michael Angelo to inform us that he "loves ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... story of character, in the form of dramatic monologue. There is only one speaker, but we know by his words that another is present and can infer his part in the conversation. This story has the additional values of humor ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... very gentle and apathetic. Accustomed to playing Othello with stock companies, he had few suggestions to make about the stage-management. The part was to him more or less of a monologue. ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... Pierce waited till the intruder had done speaking, and then quietly, but firmly would remark: "Relative to the subject we were discussing a moment ago—" If any one ventured to speak, even sotto voce, before Mr. Pierce had finished all he had to say, he would at once cease his monologue, wait till the interloper had finished, and then resume his lecture just where he had been interrupted. Only once had Mr. Pierce found this method to fail in quelling even the sturdiest of rivals. The recollection ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... fell into short sentences. The dialogue became a monologue. I entered upon my declaration. With the assistance of Bettina, who supplied her mistress with cologne, I kept her attention alive through the incipient circumstances. Symptoms were soon told. I came to the avowal. Her hand lay reposing on the arm of the sofa, half buried ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... the many expressions appropriated to his dramatic character might be moulded into one permanent and unchanging expression, is favourable only to a partial and inharmonious effect; it is fit for nothing but a monologue, where all the attention may be directed to some great master of ideal mimicry. The modern practice of blending comedy with tragedy, though liable to great abuse in point of practice, is undoubtedly an extension ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... That frolic ended, Madeline called upon a quiet little girl who had hardly been seen to open her mouth since she reached Harding, to make a speech. To every one's surprise she rose demurely, without a word of objection or the least appearance of embarrassment, and delivered an original monologue supposed to be spoken by a freshman newly arrived and airing her impressions of the college. It hit everybody with its absurd humor, which no one enjoyed better, apparently, than the ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... mutterings; at first like persons in conversation, but gradually resolving themselves into varieties of one voice. It was an endless monologue, like that we sometimes hear from inanimate nature in deep secret places where water flows, or where ivy leaves flap against stones; but by degrees she was convinced that the voice was Winterborne's. Yet who could be his listener, so mute and patient; for though he argued ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... It would be worth a man's while to try the experiment; to-morrow I will renew my observations. She knows that I watch her: how calm she is under scrutiny! it seems rather to gratify than annoy her." Here a strain of music stole in upon my monologue, and suspended it; it was a bugle, very skilfully played, in the neighbourhood of the park, I thought, or on the Place Royale. So sweet were the tones, so subduing their effect at that hour, in the midst of silence and under the quiet reign of moonlight, I ceased to think, that I ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... and where he died on the 23rd May, 1860. As novelist, dramatist, and lecturer, he had achieved considerable reputation; and his unexpected death, at the early age of forty-four, brought to a sudden close the most popular monologue entertainment of this, or of any, time. Mr. Smith was an amusing writer and a most genial companion, and was ever ready to assist a professional brother in the hour of need. Against the brick wall, close to the gate of North End Lodge, is a slab with the inscription "From Hyde ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... by James L. Crowley's poem entitled "April," a brief lyric of marked merit, highly expressive of the season. "Writing Poetry," an essay by Dora M. Hepner, is a clear and tasteful analysis of the poet's art and inspiration. "The Norwegian Recruit," a dialect monologue by Maurice W. Moe, is the leading feature of this issue. This exquisite bit of humor, recited by Mr. Moe at the United's 1913 convention, is a sketch of rare quality. "The Amateur Press," now firmly established as a column of contributed ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... continued his demonstrations, without, however, obtaining any more manifest marks of attention. But M. de Gesvres's return interrupted his monologue. The comte brought two letters. One was to tell him that Holmlock Shears would arrive ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... a drama, not a monologue," pursued my father. "'Drama' is derived from a Greek verb signifying 'to do.' Every actor in the drama has something to do, which helps on the progress of the whole: that is the object for which the author ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Solomon understood the exact meaning of all the words, but he did thoroughly understand that trust and affection formed the bulk of the sentiments expressed. And these things being the basis of Solomon's character rendered him a sympathetic and grateful listener. The monologue, address, oration, confidence—or whatever—was delivered in a low tone, accompanied by strokings of the listener's head, taps, friendly pinches, and wandering of ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... Alas! The monologue was an account of how a farmer got the best of a bunco steerer in New York City, and was delivered in the esoteric dialect of the Bowery. It was not long before willing smiles gave place to long-drawn faces of comic bewilderment, and, although Copernicus set his ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... life I need say little. He grew steadily in favour and was always busy; he met Michelangelo and admired him, and Michelangelo warned Raphael in Rome of a little fellow in Florence who would "make him sweat". Browning, in his monologue, makes this remark of Michelangelo's, and the comparison between Andrea and Raphael that follows, ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... rapidity. The street which they had now entered, from the far end of the piazza, was narrow. It was encumbered by a string of laden mules, by a stream of foot passengers. Interruption of his monologue, short of raising her voice to screaming pitch, was impossible to Madame de Vallorbes. But when he ceased she addressed him, and her lips were drawn away from her pretty ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... His early lilting poems were without significance or individuality. But with The Old Huntsman (1917) Sassoon found his own idiom, and became one of the leading younger poets upon the appearance of this striking volume. The first poem, a long monologue evidently inspired by Masefield, gave little evidence of what was to come. Immediately following it, however, came a series of war poems, undisguised in their tragedy and bitterness. Every line ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... stairs" on our way thither had given the guest an appetite, and the host as well; and these appetites had to be appeased by something less transcendental than a feast of reason. Scarcely interrupting his engaging monologue, Mr. Burroughs went about his preparations for dinner, doing things deftly and quietly, all unconscious that there was anything peculiar in this sight to the spectator. Potatoes and onions were brought in with the earth still on them, their bed was made ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... Alison," said he. "Remember this is a play, not a background for you. And with a play it's much as with matrimony: if either turns out to be a monologue it's bound to be ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... dinner, and became, as often, a monologue by Madame. While they were finishing their coffee, they heard Allison's ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... I know dogs the more amazin' marvellous they are to me," Dag Daughtry, after he had compassed his fourth bottle, confided in monologue to the Shortlands planter that night just before bedtime. "Take Killeny Boy. He don't do things for me mechanically, just because he's learned to do 'm. There's more to it. He does 'm because he likes me. I can't give you the hang of it, but I feel it, ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... to be inscribed on the statute-book of hell, is impotent. The small glimpse of earth, sea, and sky a convict can command, a spider crawling upon the wall, the very corners of his cell, will serve, by a strong effort, for occupation for his thoughts. Read the following tea-pot-graven monologue, written by some mentally-suffering convict, ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... ere he daubs his thigh With pollen from a hollyhock near by, Declares he never heard in terms so just The labor problem thoughtfully discussed! The browsing ass looks up and clears his whistle To say: "A monologue upon the thistle!" Meanwhile the lark, descending, folds his wing And innocently ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... in her bed, and continued her monologue—which we will spare the reader—till the morning. Scarcely had the first rays of light filtered through the interlacing branches of jasmine and wavered into the room, when Nisida dressed herself hurriedly, and went as usual ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... could make no pretensions. To have approximated it to the Holy Books of the nation would have injured the dignity of the Jewish Canon, and brought suspicion on the genuine works of Solomon, while it would have exposed to a charge of forgery a composition which was in itself only an innocent dramatic monologue. N. B. This hypothesis possesses all the advantages, and involves none of the absurdity of that which would attribute the 'Ecclesiasticus' to the infamous Jason, the High Priest. More than one ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... on more masterly action. He kept a careful watch, and one afternoon followed her and Tinker and Elsie on one of their walks. They went briskly, and at the end of a mile he was maintaining a continuous, passionate monologue in tones charged with heartfelt emotion on the subject of ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... invalid's knees, Brandes took his cue; and the conversation developed into a monologue on the present condition of foreign missions—skilfully inspired by the respectful attention and the brief and ingenious ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... printed 'Bothwell,' a poetic monologue on Mary Stuart's lover. Of Aytoun's humorous sketches, the most humorous are 'My First Spec in the Biggleswades,' and 'How We Got Up the Glen Mutchkin Railway'; tales written during the railway mania of 1845, which treat of the folly and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... And was he, Glaucon, son of Conon the Alcmaeonid, sitting there in the skiff alone with Sicinnus, to have a part therein, in a battle the fame whereof should ring through the ages? Bump, bump—still the monologue of the oars. A fish near by leaped from the water, splashing loudly. Then for an instant the clouds broke. Selene uncovered her face. The silvery flash quickly come, more quickly flying, showed him the headlands of that Attica ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... records. He was a short barrel of a man, with small eyes set close together, and he made a figure of fun perched high up in the saddle. But he permitted no difficulties of travel to interfere with his monologue. ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... Mrs. Newton away when she came to help them at dinner. They locked their doors, and shut themselves in from the world, as mourners do with death. Adeline's monologue went on, with the brief responses which she extorted from Suzette, and at last it ceased, as if her heart had worn itself out in the futile ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... was a colored man, standing before his log-house in the evening of a day in June. His wife was the only listener to the monologue. He had been examining a paper which was sealed and stamped with official formality, and which had started him upon the train of thought he had pursued. The question he was trying in vain to answer was only the simplest and easiest of the thousand ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... immeasurable when calculated by the rapidity of her impressions, the poor woman had the supernatural power of emitting more ideas and bringing to the surface more recollections than, under any ordinary use of her faculties, she could put forth in the course of a whole day. The poignant tale of her monologue may be abridged into a few absurd sentences, as contradictory and bare of meaning ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... this man doesn't please you." The saint's whisper to me was unheard by the egotist, spellbound by his own monologue. "I have spoken to Divine Mother about it; She realizes our sad predicament. As soon as we get to yonder red house, She has promised to remind him ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... this mean-spirited monologue. The boots were not the high-lows at present in vogue, which an unobservant man may be allowed to disregard up to a certain point. They were the unmistakable, uncompromising hessians then prescribed by fashion, a pair of extremely elegant betasseled boots, which shone in glistening ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... came down, and found Maxwell in a dreary muse over his manuscript. He looked up at her with a lack-lustre eye, and said, "Godolphin is jealous of Salome now. What he really wants is a five-act monologue that will keep him on the stage all the time. He thinks that as it is, she will take all the attention ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... traveling throughout Ohio, Indiana and Illinois; both end- and middle-man with one, two or three different minstrel companies of repute; the editor or originator and author of a "funny column" in a Western small city paper; the author of the songs mentioned and a hundred others; a black-face monologue artist; a white-face ditto, at Tony Pastor's, Miner's and Niblo's of the old days; a comic lead; co-star and star in such melodramas and farces as "The Danger Signal," "The Two Johns," "A Tin Soldier," "The Midnight ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... turning her back on Hippy and addressing Tom Gray. Whereupon Hippy raised his voice in a loud monologue that entirely drowned Tom's and ...
— Grace Harlowe's Third Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... studies his book and is always ready to look the department in the eye, without flinching, he has to mind his own business and mind the other fellow's, too," said Captain Wass, continuing his monologue of grouch. "Dodging here and there, keeping out of the way, two days behind schedule, meat three times a day or else you can't keep a crew, and everybody hearty at meal-time! My owners have never told me to let the law go to hoot and ram her for all she's worth! ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... the audience was invited to a saloon down stairs, where they could proceed still farther in the liquid burning out of their bodies. On the same stage of this same vaudeville theatre, John L. Sullivan, the retired prize fighter, had, only a week before, appeared "in monologue," and had sometimes been so drunk that he could not go through with ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... My monologue was rather disjointed that evening, for my mind was occupied with other things, or, more strictly speaking, another thing. I felt quite sure, however, that Walkirk did not notice my preoccupation, for he gave the ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... adjacent tables might have noticed the young man continually addressing the empty chair and carrying on a monologue with it throughout his ...
— Fifty-One Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... tongue, dialect; patois; discourse, oration, address, plea, declamation, dissertation, epilogue, allocution, exhortation, disquisition, effusion, descant; harangue, diatribe, tirade, screed, rhapsody, philippic, invective, rant; soliloquy, monologue; dialogue; colloquy; trialogue; interlocution; improvisation; toast; equivocation, prevarication, quibbling; ambages, pseudology, amphibology, amphiboly, dilogy. Associated Words: extempore, extemporaneous, extemporize, extemporization, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... thumping and kneading him on the slab, Tanno went on talking a cheerful monologue of frothy gossip. I ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... This is what cultured people are like. In order to be cultured and not to stand below the level of your surroundings it is not enough to have read "The Pickwick Papers" and learnt a monologue ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... way of forestalling starvation and repentance. Every day I stopped once or twice at a travelers' bungalow, or rest-house; and I managed, notwithstanding that my stock of Urdu was scanty, to make my wants understood. That a great part of the copious monologue which my purveyors expended, as we settled the details of breakfast or dinner, was lost on me, did not seem, in the final result, to matter in the least. What I needed I asked for, and then listened attentively for the barbaric representative ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... you held your temper and your tongue!" said one man to another, as a self-satisfied acquaintance strutted away from the pair after a monologue of ten minutes upon a matter of which both of his companions knew infinitely more than he. "I hadn't patience to listen to him, much less answer him good-humoredly—he is ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... doubtless engaging in a monologue, which translated into my language would be comprised in ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... this monologue, Dick Penryn lit his pipe, took up the book he had been reading, and was soon deep in the pages of Theophile Gautier's Voyage ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... mind, had bred in him the habit of audible soliloquy, and having flung a shout for the janitor down the seven flights dividing the studio from the basement, he turned back, picking up the thread of his monologue. "Exactly like Boheme, really—that crack in the wall is much more like a stage-crack than a real one—just the sort of crack Mungold would paint if he ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... asks Cypriano, who, as well as Ludwig, has been listening with some surprise to the singular monologue. "What harm can the sun do us now more ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... back to his master with a doleful face, to say that Mr. Audley, from Figtree Court, was evidently out of spirits. Robert ate his dinner, and drank a pint of Moselle; but he had poor appreciation of the excellence of the viands or the delicate fragrance of the wine. The mental monologue still went on, and the young philosopher of the modern school was arguing the favorite modern question of the nothingness of everything, and the folly of taking too much trouble to walk upon a road that went nowhere, or to compass a work ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... forms of literature, whether in Verse or prose, the dramatic monologue seemed to me the aptest for the exposition of character and habits of mind. It is the creation—or recreation—of Robert Browning, the most illuminating interpreter of the workings of the human mind that England has produced since Shakespeare died. My first ...
— Songs of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... composer. Sulamith's epithalamium, Assad's narrative, the choral greeting to the Queen, the fateful recognition—all these things are made for music of the inspiring, swelling, passionate kind. In the second act, the Queen's monologue, her duet with Assad, and, most striking of all, the unaccompanied bit of singing with which Astaroth lures Assad into the presence of the Queen, who is hiding in the shadow of broad-leaved palms behind a running fountain—a melodic phrase saturated ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... established. The solemnity of Prospero, the adroitness of the lovers and the contrasting natures of the volatile Ariel and the sprawling Caliban, make up a cast of characters in the development of which music is peculiarly competent. The stertorous monologue of Caliban and his hobbling dance, and the taunting and pinching torment he is submitted ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... Cunningham, Mill, Thackeray, Forster, Stirling, Landor, and Macready. Here the conversation was of the best, Carlyle always coming out strong, and all the rest content to listen. However, Carlyle, unlike many great conversers, never monopolized the conversation. It was always dialogue and not monologue with Carlyle in any mixed company, though he would discourse at length to one or two visitors. Tennyson, like many men of letters, loves to talk about his own work, and is very fond of reading his poems to his friends. This is, of course, ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... negro, who appears to have been altogether omitted in the carpenter's calculations, has to speak his speech behind the top drop. He speaks it trippingly too; for in the middle of a most exciting monologue, he upsets the whole paraphernalia and himself into the bargain. The entertainment, including refreshments, has lasted some fifteen minutes, when the itinerant troupe (who derive no benefit from their labours save what honour ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... During this monologue Louvois was so absorbed that he was within an ace of driving them all into the water, and would have done so, had they not seized the reins, and cried out that he was going to drown them. At their cries and movement, Louvois awoke as from a deep sleep, drew ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... were so common that, before a given evening two of them sprang up, only he, a stranger in this very fungiferous place, knew a fungus when he saw something like a fungus—if we disregard its quick liquefaction, for instance. It was only a monologue, however: now we have an all-star cast: and they're not only Irish; ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... wit. He was younger than Calvin, but older than Wilmer Deakon, and a little fat. He had a small mustache cut above his lip, and closely shaved ruddy cheeks with a tinge of purple about his ears. Drawing out his monologue entertainingly he gazed repeatedly at Lucy. Calvin lost the sense of most that the other said; he was immersed in the past that had been made the present and then denied to him—it was all before him in the presence ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... It was the erratic behavior of this tiny ball, its mysterious comings and goings, that had summoned Mr. Broad's audience and now held its observant interest. This audience, composed of roughly dressed men, listened attentively to the seductive monologue which accompanied the dealer's deft manipulations, and was greatly entertained thereby. "Three tiny tepees in a row and a little black medicine-man inside." The speaker's voice was high-pitched and it carried like a "thirtythirty." "You ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... His dramatic experiments, like Queen Mary, are not, on the whole, successful, though it would be unjust to deny dramatic power to the poet who has written, upon one hand, Guinevere and the Passing of Arthur, and upon the other the homely, dialectic monologue of the Northern Farmer. ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... meantime I have resorted to three art forms that are to provide resting-places for the public and the actors, without letting the public escape from the illusion induced. All these forms are subsidiary to the drama. They are the monologue, the pantomime, and the dance, all of them belonging originally to the tragedy of classical antiquity. For the monologue has sprung from the monody, and the chorus has developed ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... The Wild Common Study Discord in Childhood Virgin Youth Monologue of a Mother In a Boat Week-night Service Irony Dreams Old Dreams Nascent A Winter's Tale Epilogue A Baby Running Barefoot Discipline Scent of Irises The Prophet Last Words to Miriam Mystery Patience ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... reminded of his "Christopher Columnibus." I recently ran across a postcard a college mate sent Carl from Italy years ago, with a picture of a statue of Columbus on it. On the reverse side the friend had written, quoting from Carl's monologue: "'Boom Joe!' says the king; which is being interpreted, 'I see you first.' 'Wheat cakes,' says Chris, which is the Egyptian for 'Boom Joe'"). He loved football, track,—he won three gold medals broad-jumping,—canoeing, swimming, billiards,—he won a loving cup ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... laid aside his cutty-pipe and emptied his fourth tumbler of toddy; then, throwing back his head in the dreamy fashion of the great Coleridge when he indulged in a monologue, he thus began, speaking somewhat ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of Westmoreland House, Miss Carew lived a monotonous but anxious life. For days together she hardly saw Molly, and then perhaps she would be called into the big bed-room for a long talk, or rather, to listen to a long monologue in which Molly gave vent to views and feelings on ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... particularly, no isolated thoughts.' He adds: 'It is written in prose, which gives it a strong realistic colouring. I have paid particular attention to form, and, among other things, I have accomplished the feat of doing without a single monologue, in fact without a single "aside." 'The play is hardly more than a good farce; the form is no more than the slightest of advances towards probability on the strict lines of the Scribe tradition; the 'common order of things' is there, in subject, language, and in everything but the satirical ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... of Hicks' monologue, had effectively terminated it by leaning from the window, grasping his unsuspecting comrade by the scruff of the neck, and dragging him over the window-ledge, into the grub-shack, and the presence of Coach Corridan and Deacon Radford. Strenuous objection was registered, ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... audience, and who may have been right in his last philosophical remark, took the sort of coldness which now overspread the surrounding faces of a symptom of provincial ignorance; but seeing that Modeste understood him, he was content, being wholly unaware that monologue is particularly disagreeable to country-folk, whose principal desire it is to exhibit the manner of life and the wit and wisdom of ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... outwards, as if to shield herself from a blow, and then without another word stooped down and tied the satin sandals on Isabel's restless feet. She was muttering prayers during the whole action, for Isabel had been quick to perceive her advantage, and was following it up by a defiant little monologue of rebellious speeches. ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... of demonstrating her superiority, for she picks her subjects with the care a general selects his battlefield; F., who is a born pedagogue and seeks to instruct whoever listens to him, whose conversation is a lecture and a monologue; R. O., the reticent, says little but that pertinent and relevant, cynical and shrewd; and R. V., who says little and that with timidity and error. So there are specialists in caution and "common sense," self-controlled, never rash, calculating, cool and egotistic, narrow and successful. ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... face was of a depth and a radiance impossible to describe. He spoke for a while upon the pleasant smell of hay passing through a city, and, remarking upon the enviable thirst of hay-makers, he swept gradually to the following weighty monologue— ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... was a regular lad; several years ago I wrote a monologue for Marshall P. Wilder, and during this trip this driver told me the whole monologue. And then he had some ...
— Continuous Vaudeville • Will M. Cressy
... intercourse between the worshipper and a Person other than himself, who is the object of his worship. It is not a soliloquy—what the Germans expressively call a Selbstgespraech, or "self-talk"; it is not a monologue, but a dialogue; it is not a mere contemplation, but addressed to Someone who is thought of as willing to listen and able to answer. As Sabatier has well said, "Prayer is religion in act; that is, prayer is real religion." Wherever men believe ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... in their armour and roaring for battle. They care for no one. They stormed Convention yesterday and looted the cellar of Good-Manners, who died of fear without a wound; so they drank his wine and are to-day as strong as lions and as careless (saving only their Captain, Monologue, who is lantern-jawed). ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... to him. Sometimes her eyes were raised to his—eyes whose color seemed more beautiful because of the tears in them. Sometimes her head was almost buried in her hands. But she talked all the time—an odd, disconnected sort of monologue, half confession, half appeal. There was little in it which seemed of any great moment, and yet to Rochester it was as though he were face to face with a tragedy. This woman ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... present and of the past; and we must not conclude, because sometimes, and indeed often, we find ourselves face to face with the unknown or the badly known, that when we believe we are engaged in a dialogue, we are always speaking a monologue; nor that we are unable even to repeat the monologue which, in the ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... the second canto, it opens with a monologue of the minstrel, and Harold is forgotten until the sixteenth stanza. Then only does the melancholy hero appear, to disappear and reappear again for a few moments. But he rather seems to annoy the minstrel, who finishes at the seventy-third ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... poem would be better in the third person. "St. Simeon Stylites" is a dramatic monologue more upon Browning's model, i.e., a piece of apologetics and self-analysis. But in this province ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... chiefly monologue. Mrs. Labadie certainly slept, perhaps the Queen did so too, and Anne became conscious that she must have slumbered likewise, for she found every one gazing at her in the pale morning dawn and asking why ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Bruce, in telling of it afterward. Be that as it may, it is certain that after urging McLean to take a good rest where he was and to come again and "sun himself" on their piazza, and being unaccountably cordial in his monologue (for the younger officer hardly knew how to express himself under the circumstances), the doctor finally vanished. Jeannie Bruce was so utterly "taken aback" by it all that for some minutes she totally forgot her part in the little drama. Then, suddenly recalling the role ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... doing, not a mere saying or existing. It would be possible, no doubt, to place Don Quixote, or Falstaff, or Peer Gynt, on the stage, and let him develop his character in mere conversation, or even monologue, without ever moving from his chair. But it is a truism that deeds, not words, are the demonstration and test of character; wherefore, from time immemorial, it has been the recognized business of the ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... why is it so difficult to achieve? Most people seem to think of communication as getting a message across to another person. "You tell him what you want him to know." This concept produces a one-way verbal flow for which the term "monologue" is descriptive. Much of the church's so-called communication is monological, with preachers and teachers telling their hearers, both adults and children, the message they think they should know. The difficulty with monological activity is that it renders the hearer passive. It assumes ...
— Herein is Love • Reuel L. Howe
... from her were brief "yeps" and "nopes." It was not unlike a "spirit reading," or a ouija-board seance. He told himself, in terms of the oil fields, that here was a dry well—that the girl was a "duster." Having exhausted the usual commonplace topics in the course of a monologue that induced no reaction whatever, he voiced a perfectly natural remark about the wonder of sudden riches. He was, in a way, thinking aloud of the changes wrought in drab lives like the Briskows' by the discovery of oil. He was surprised when ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... alley which led to the woodshed the Wildcat spoke aloud in the darkness. "Konk'rin' Hero! Him ridin' de mule an' us boys ridin' ouah feet. Huh! I's de Supreem Gran' Walkin' Arrangeh, is I? Well, tomorrow I starts arrangin'." His monologue was suddenly interrupted by an explosive braying which burst from the woodshed adjoining the one in which rested Lily. The Wildcat surrendered to his racing legs and galloped a panic jazz to the exit of the alley before his common-sense reacted. "Sho! Me a Konk'rin' ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... Edward Eggleston, whose residence was a small brick house just back of the Congressional Library. Eggleston, humorous, ready of speech, was usually surrounded by an attentive circle of delighted listeners and I often drew near to share his monologue. He was a handsome man, tall and shapely with abundant gray hair and a full beard, and was especially learned in American early history. "Edward loves to monologue," his friends smilingly said as if in criticism, but to me ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland |
