"Declamation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were not extraordinary, and of word painting he has not left a single striking example,—not one passage that can be used for recitation or declamation in the schools. His cause was too pressing, his manner of life was too serious, for any indulgences in speech. In every speech he had an object in view; and even when he was without hope for Hungary in the near future, he yet announced and advocated doctrines and truths on which ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... their zeal led them to many breaches of good manners. They would enter churches, and after the service, when the quiet folks were thinking of gratifying their bodies with a substantial dinner, they were arrested by the violent declamation of a man or woman, frequently denouncing the priest as being the blind leading the blind. This naturally led to a scene of riot and confusion, in which the Quakers were in many cases handled with great barbarity. among these disturbers were mingled persons of bad ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... illustrious writers of Great Britain. I begin, therefore, with Gildas; because, though he did not compile a regular history of the island, he has left us, amidst a cumbrous mass of pompous rhapsody and querulous declamation some curious descriptions of the character and manners of the inhabitants; not only the Britons and Saxons, but the Picts and Scots (6). There are also some parts of his work, almost literally transcribed ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... the way, I think, to restore my equanimity. I believe I shall feel quite easy after a little declamation. Here, Lucius, regale thyself upon these grapes. These are from the isles of the Grecian Archipelago, and for sweetness are not equalled by any of our own. Gallus, Gallus, go not so near to the edge of the pond; it is deep, as I have warned you. ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... must not say of conversation, on the part of Lady Scatcherd, but rather of declamation, had hitherto been the beauty and manly attributes of Frank Gresham. She had hardly ceased to talk to Mary of the infinite good qualities of the young squire, and especially of his prowess in the matter of Mr Moffat. Mary had listened to all this ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... had defended, in Hindostani, the thesis that the Sanskrit is the parent language in India, and Swinton, in Persian, that the poems of Hafiz are to be understood in a figurative or mystical sense, there came a Bengali declamation by Tod senior on the position that the translations of the best works extant in the Sanskrit with the popular languages of India would promote the extension of science and civilisation, opposed by Hayes; then Carey, as moderator, made ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... occasion. Reginald Heber,—a graceful, fine-looking, rather pale young man of twenty,—with his younger brother Thomas beside him as prompter, stood in the rostrum, and commenced in a clear, beautiful, melancholy voice, with perfect declamation, which overcame all the stir and tumultuous restlessness of the audience by the power and ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the barren and erroneous method of teaching from books alone, Rousseau, constantly carried away by the passionate ardor of his nature, rushes into an opposite extreme, and exclaims, "I hate books; they only teach us to talk about what we do not understand." Then, checked in the full tide of this declamation by his own good sense, ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... possessed this mixed voice; in him, it seemed to start from the heart, and brought tears to eyes which had never known them. The power of that tone—allied to the perfection of shading, diction and lyric declamation—caused every listening soul to vibrate with latent emotion which might never have been waked to life save ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... of Eden; nor is it specially alluring to him to mention, as the acme of glory, that he may distinguish himself so much as to gain "thanks from both Houses of Parliament." Such weak and watery declamation won't do for a country that has had thirty-eight years of compulsory education. If our War Office wishes to rouse patriotic feeling, it should cease to contrast "the dull labour of the fields" with "the soft calm of Malta": ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... and declamation teach economy in words; show the pupils by illustration and example how much better they look when their ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... been manifested by that body to distinguish the President of the United States by a title,[43] gave considerable umbrage, and were represented as evincing inclinations in that branch of the legislature, unfriendly to republicanism. The exorbitance of salaries was also a subject of some declamation, and the equality of commercial privileges with which foreign bottoms entered American ports, was not free from objection. But the apprehensions of danger to liberty from the new system, which had been impressed on the minds of well meaning men, were visibly wearing off; the popularity ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... injure than to serve the sacred cause of freedom." This judgment is undoubtedly severe; but, though exaggerated in its condemnation, it, like all Shelley's criticisms on his own works, expresses the truth. We cannot include "Queen Mab", in spite of its sonorous rhetoric and fervid declamation, in the canon of his masterpieces. It had a succes de scandale on its first appearance, and fatally injured Shelley's reputation. As a work of art it lacks maturity and ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... experience, (he has been in the House of Commons and House of Lords for nearly fifty years,) his habit of frequent speaking, and the commanding ability of many of his public efforts, his name as an orator is perhaps more widely known, and his peculiar style of declamation more correctly appreciated, than those of any other man now living. It would therefore seem unnecessary to give any sketch of his oratory, or of his manner in debate. Very few educated men in this country ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... written. It has in the mean while a richness of melody, and a picturesqueness of action, that enables it to delude, and that even draws tears from the eyes of, persons who can be won over by the eye and the ear, with almost no participation of the understanding. And this unmeaning rant and senseless declamation sufficed for the time to throw into shade those exquisite delineations of character, those transcendent bursts of passion, and that perfect anatomy of the human heart, which render the master-pieces of Shakespear a property for all nations and ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... all is repaired. Time will enable people to distinguish what we thought from what we have said." ... "It is certain," he says in another place, "that several of our workers have put in worthless things, and sometimes declamation; but it is still more certain that I have not had it in my power to alter this state of things. I flatter myself that the same judgment will not be passed on what several of our authors and I myself have furnished for this work, which apparently will go down to posterity as ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... Fothergil says. If you know Fothergil you are aware that when he declaims his Virile verses he becomes excited; he swells physically; sometimes he looks quite five feet tall in his moments of expansion; all this is very bad for him. More than once the declamation of his poem, "Myself and the Cosmic Urge," has sent him shaking to the ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... greedily assimilated all that was best in their productions, only rejecting the narrow conventions in which so many of them had contentedly acquiesced. His music is the logical development of that of Gluck and Weber, purified by a closer study of the principles of declamation, and enriched by a command of orchestral resource of ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... was at this time joint manager of the Opera with Mrs. Brook. In November 1773, she spoke a Poetical exordium, by which it appeared that she intended mixing plays with operas, and entertaining the public with singing and declamation alternately; but permission could not be obtained from the Lord Chamberlain to put this ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... successfully; from the political song of the day, thrown off in the playful overflow of honest joy and patriotic exultation, to the wild ballad; from epistolary ease and graceful narrative, to austere and impetuous moral declamation; from the pastoral charms and wild streaming lights of the Thalaba, in which sentiment and imagery have given permanence even to the excitement of curiosity; and from the full blaze of the Kehama,—(a gallery of finished pictures in one splendid fancy piece, in which, notwithstanding, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... exercises with prayer, and another, at the close, to invoke the Divine blessing; there was no especial relevancy in this, but it pleased. He kept himself, from the beginning, pretty constantly in the popular eye. He was a speaker at all public meetings, where his declamation was admired; and at private parties, where the congealed particles of village society were united in a frozen mass, he was the first to break the ice, and set the angular fragments grating ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... he is a very good man.' The actor was disgusted; and though Boswell interfered, declined to be reconciled. On one occasion he even rushed from a house at which he was to dine, when he heard that the great Samuel had been invited. The Doctor had little opinion of Sheridan's declamation. 'Besides, sir,' said he, 'what influence can Mr. Sheridan have upon the language of this great country by his narrow exertions. Sir, it is burning a farthing candle at Dover to show light at Calais.' Still, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... the Earth-spirit vanished when, with a timid knock, there enters Faust's famulus, or assistant, Wagner. He has heard Faust's voice and from its excited tones has concluded that he is practising declamation—reciting perhaps a Greek play. The poor amiable dryasdust literary and scientific worm-grubber, whose maxim of life is Zwar weiss ich viel, doch moecht' ich Alles wissen (I know indeed a good deal, but I ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... in charge of Oliver Optic, gives every other week a selection for Declamation, marked for delivery according to the most approved rules of elocution; 26 ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... on which there has been more declamation, for and against its properties and effects, than those of teas imported into this country by the companies trading from the different maritime nations of Europe to China and India. Nor has there been a controversy in which the health of the community has been so materially concerned, ...
— A Treatise on Foreign Teas - Abstracted From An Ingenious Work, Lately Published, - Entitled An Essay On the Nerves • Hugh Smith
... rambling and disconnected, with which he prefaced this story of the day, was vaguely familiar to her. He sketched now for her in summary, and with the sonorous voice of one deeply impressed with the dramatic values of his declamation, the chronicle of his wanderings in strange lands—and these he had frequently told her about before. Soon she perceived, however, that he was stringing them together on a new thread. One after another, ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... of suspense in all who had friends on the field, till the ordinary channels of intelligence brought the names of the suflferers. No Sicilian tyrant had invented such an engine of cruelty. This declamation against a supposed triumph of modern science, which was listened to with some surprise by the physician, and with great respect by his other auditors, having somewhat soothed his troubled spirit, in conjunction with the physician's assurance, he propitiated his Genius by copious libations of claret, ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... of M. Silvain (who, besides being an actor, is Professor of Declamation at the Conservatoire) is the method of the elocutionist, but of the elocutionist at his best. He has a large, round, vibrating voice, over which he has perfect command. "M. Silvain," says M. Catulle Mendes, "est ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... to devote itself to declamation and utopia and in mingling with political and religious intrigues, has betrayed its mission and misunderstood the character of the century. The revolution of 1830 demoralized us; socialism is making us effeminate. Like political economy, ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... of particular interest to schools, Exercises in Declamation are selected, and marked for delivery, illustrated by engraved figures. This is an original feature, not to be found in any other Magazine, ...
— Dotty Dimple At Home • Sophie May
... walk. The earliest mention of 'plucking' at Oxford is Hearne's bitter entry (May, 1713) about his enemy, the then Vice-Chancellor, Dr. Lancaster of Queen's—'Dr. Lancaster, when Bachelor of Arts, was plucked for his declamation.' But it is most unlikely that so good a Tory as Hearne would have used a slang phrase, unless it had become well established by long usage. 'Pluck', in the sense of causing to fail, is not unfrequently ...
— The Oxford Degree Ceremony • Joseph Wells
... Hastings. This he did in an able manner, although a well-known story describes him as listening to Sheridan, on the Oude case, with intense interest, and exclaiming, after the first hour, 'This is mere declamation without proof'—after the next two, 'This is a man of extraordinary powers'—and ere the close of the matchless oration, 'Of all the monsters in history, Warren Hastings is the vilest.' Logan died in the year 1788, in his lodgings, Marlborough Street. ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... most logical head with a most fertile imagination, which gave him an extraordinary advantage in arguing; for he could reason close or wide, as he saw best for the moment. He could, when he chose it, be the greatest sophist that ever wielded a weapon in the schools of declamation; but he indulged this only in conversation; for he owned he sometimes talked for victory; he was too conscientious to make errour permanent and pernicious, by deliberately writing it. He was conscious of his superiority. He loved ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... limine that none who had not valid arguments to bring forward on one side or the other, would be allowed to address the meeting: a caution that proved necessary, for no fewer than four combatants had their utterances burked by him, because of their indulgence in vague declamation. ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... 18th December, Lebrun had sent to the Convention a report on the negotiations, which was not adapted to soften the passions of the time, being merely a piece of parliamentary declamation; but, as declamation rather than reason held sway at Paris, some of its phrases must be quoted. After citing with approval passages from the recent speech of Fox, Lebrun referred to the eager interest taken ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... commandments carrying no internal evidence of divinity with them. They contain some good moral precepts such as any man qualified to be a lawgiver or a legislator could produce himself, without having recourse to supernatural intervention. [NOTE: It is, however, necessary to except the declamation which says that God 'visits the sins of the fathers upon the children'. This is contrary to every principle ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... 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 lest the muse should take flight he clips her wings. So that his ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the King?" He spoke harshly, even aggressively, and as if combating some undeveloped argument of La Mothe's. A burst of temper may not convince a man's own conscience, or quiet its uneasiness, but it silences its voice for a time as declamation can always silence pleading. "Who are we to question his justice or deny its right to strike? And it is as his arm of justice that you are here ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... to relinquish many of the forces of superior knowledge or graver eloquence, which with less lively antagonists he could have brought into the field, for the witty sarcasm of Savarin would have turned them aside as pedantry or declamation. But though Graham was neither dry nor diffuse, and the happiness at his heart brought out the gayety of humour which had been his early characteristic, and yet rendered his familiar intercourse genial and playful, still there was this distinction between his humour and Savarin's wit,—that ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Richard are anticipated here, as quaint, as terse, and as sagacious in the ancient Jew as in the modern American. Our scientific teachers would replace eloquent declamation concerning vices, such as drunkenness and debauchery, by illustrated lectures upon the physiological effects of violations of nature's laws. They would teach men that the laws of health are found in the laws of temperance and purity. The Hebrew sages had this vision of ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... differences of capacity and of duty are numberless and immense. The statement is enough: argument would be ridiculous. The words of an audacious French preacher are yet more shocking than those of the English nobleman. It is hard to believe they could be uttered in good faith. Says Massillon, in his famous declamation on immortality, "If we wholly perish with the body, the maxims of charity, patience, justice, honor, gratitude, and friendship, are but empty words. Our own passions shall ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... individuals have often been the means of destroying or reforming the most powerful tyrannies; reason has been convinced by argument, and passion appealed to by declamation in vain—when some unvarnished tale, or simple exposure of facts, has at once rouzed the feelings, and conquered the supineness ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... positive convictions sometimes took the shape of a proud and obstinate dogmatism; he who could so well appeal to the judgment and the reason of his readers too often only roused their passions by invective and vehement declamation. Moderate men were startled and pained by the fierce energy of his language; and he not unfrequently made implacable enemies of opponents whom he might have conciliated and won over by mild expostulation ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... melody eventually by Rousseau, to whose songs it is printed; it has properly no melodious movement, and is a sort of medium between the canto fermo and the canto figurato; it approaches to the former by recitativical declamation, and to the latter by passages and course, by which one syllable is detained ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... method of instrumentation. The broken cadenzas which give such force to Robert's scene, the cavatina in the fourth act, the finale of the first, all hold me in the grip of a supernatural power. No, not even Gluck's declamation ever produced so prodigious an effect, and I am amazed by such ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... to your school days and Friday afternoon declamation," put in Shelby, "and Lasca was down by ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... been shown to a genius, like him, "broken-hearted." He'd " no doubt but his friends in Parnassus must know How his fine declamation was laugh'd at below; And how Keate, like a blockhead ungifted with brains, Had neglected to grant him a prize for his pains. He was sure, if such conduct continued much longer, The school must grow weaker, and indolence stronger; ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... they suppose unavoidably flow from the real principles of Calvinists, and then, most unjustly, represent these consequences as a part of the system itself, as held by its advocates." Again: "How many an eloquent page of anti-Calvinistic declamation would be instantly seen by every reader to be either calumny or nonsense, if it had been preceded by an honest statement of what the system, as held by Calvinists, really is." ...
— The Calvinistic Doctrine of Predestination Examined and Refuted • Francis Hodgson
... "You're a lucky beggar. One by one we turn traitor to our native land. A Britisher! I never should have believed it of you, of the man whose class declamation was on the fiery subject of patriotism. But is it all ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... young men, in rude villages, early learned to make speeches in social and political meetings. Every village had its favorite stump orator, who knew all the affairs of the nation, and a little more, and who, with windy declamation, amused and delighted his rustic hearers. Lincoln was one of these. There was never a time, even in his early career, when he could not make a speech in which there was more wit than knowledge; although as he increased in knowledge he also grew in wisdom, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... shall not occupy much of the time of the Conference. All the speeches that have been made, and all the declamation that has been uttered on this floor, have not made a single convert. Last of all would I wish to follow the gentleman who has just taken his seat. He proposes to postpone action, asserts that we are acting without consideration, in ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... written from the very heart of an able man, who had been strongly affected himself, and was well practised in feeling in pen and ink. Every word rang home to the soul, and all the more because there was no defence nor declamation against the justice of the verdict, which was acknowledged to be unavoidable; it was merely a pathetic delineation of a terrible mystery, with a little meditative philosophy upon it, the moral of which was, ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... such a king, or, for that is the material point, can we expect a lineal series of such kings? Every one has heard the reply of the Emperor Alexander to Madame de Stael, who favoured him with a declamation in praise of beneficent despotism. "Yes, Madame, but it is only a happy accident." He well knew that the great abilities and the good intentions necessary to make an efficient and good despot never were continuously combined in any line of ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... the theater.... The play was "Francis I.," for the first time. The house was very fine; I acted abominably, but that was not much to be wondered at. However, I always have acted this part of my own vilely; the language is not natural—mere stilted declamation from first to last, most fatiguing to the chest, and impossible for me to do anything with, as it excites no emotion ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... something has been said in connection with his satires) I find myself somewhat unable to agree with the generality of critics, who seem to me to have been rather taken in by his blood-and-thunder work, his transpontine declamation against tyrants, and his affectation of a gloomy or furious scorn against mankind. The uncouthness, as well as the suspicion of insincerity, which we noted in his satirical work, extend, as it seems to me, also to ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... from the declamation and the impracticable designs of this impassioned literature to the vast scheme of co-operation that had been suggested rather than described to him, there seemed more hope. If all these various forces that were at work could be directed into one channel, what might they ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... in his introductions, spoken of "my brethren, the Smiths," a phrase then cryptic and only to be explained by revealing his sworn brotherhood with Ambrose Smith, the Jasper Petulengro of later books? He had said, moreover, in a perfectly genuine tone, with no trace of missionary declamation: ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... and flexibility which left little for Shakspere to do but to take it as he found it. Tamburlaine was a crude, violent piece, full of exaggeration and bombast, but with passages here and there of splendid {105} declamation, justifying Ben Jonson's phrase, "Marlowe's mighty line." Jonson, however, ridiculed, in his Discoveries, the "scenical strutting and furious vociferation" of Marlowe's hero; and Shakspere put a ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... than Marston, and infinitely above him in genius. Without the poetic nature of Marlowe, or Chapman's somewhat unwieldy vigor of thought, he had that inflammability of mind which, untempered by a solid understanding, made his plays a strange mixture of vivid expression, incoherent declamation, dramatic intensity, and extravagant conception of character. He was not, in the highest sense of the word, a great dramatist. Shakspeare is the only one of that age. Marlowe had a rare imagination, a delicacy of sense that made him the teacher of Shakspeare and Milton in versification, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... internally needed for the unfolding of the unified action. Wherever two plots are given to us, we receive less by far than if we had only one plot. We leave the sphere of valuable art entirely when a unified action is ruined by mixing it with declamation, and propaganda which is not organically interwoven with the action itself. It may be still fresh in memory what an esthetically intolerable helter-skelter performance was offered to the public in "The Battlecry of Peace." Nothing can be more injurious ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... customary tone of dry gravity, but it failed him often, though for a word only. At such times he would pause and cough behind his wasted hand, and these frequent breaks in the narrative made its quiet tones more touching to the hearer than any declamation or any profession of profound regret, however eloquently expressed, ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... plunged, publishing, in December 1747, [2] a shilling pamphlet entitled A Proper Answer to a Late Scurrilous Libel,... By the Author of the Jacobites Journal. This little pamphlet, copies of which may be seen in the British Museum, is merely a further vigorous declamation for civil liberty and the Protestant religion, as under King George, and contains hardly any reference either to Winnington or to the author. It was retorted on in two further pamphlets. In one of these a Lady Fanny and her friend, enjoying ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... with the courtiers; or whether it is of later growth, and derived from professional dances upon the stage. The former is the general opinion, but the court entertainments of Italy and France were masques or masks which included declamation and song, like those of Ben Jonson with Inigo Jones for ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... carried before the parliament, which was then sitting, Loudon, the chancellor, in a violent declamation, reproached him with the breach of the national covenant, which he had subscribed; his rebellion against God, the king, and the kingdom; and the many horrible murders, treasons, and impieties for which he was now to be brought to condign punishment. Montrose, in his answer, maintained the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... AND DECLAIM A course of instruction in reading and declamation which will develop graceful carriage, correct standing, and accurate enunciation; and will furnish abundant exercise in the use of the best examples of prose and poetry. Cloth, $1.50, net; ...
— Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases • Grenville Kleiser
... speeches were drawn up by rhetoricians so distinguished as Numenius and Libanius. Accomplished men of letters, such as Julius Vestinus and Aelius Dionysius, selected from his writings choice passages for declamation or perusal, of which fragments are incorporated in the miscellany of Photius and the lexicons of Harpocration, Pollux and Suidas. It might have been anticipated that the purity of a text so widely read and so renowned would, from the earliest times, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... containing the best collection extant, of Pieces for Declamation, New Dialogues, &c. Illustrated with excellent likenesses of Charbam, Mirabeau, Webster, Demosthenes, Cicero, Grattan, Patrick Henry, Curran, Sheridan, Madame Roland, Victor Hugo, Calhoun, Hayne, Everett, Tennyson, Longfellow. ...
— The Nursery, No. 165. September, 1880, Vol. 28 - A Monthly Magazine For Youngest Readers • Various
... my lord, by way of declamation against the abolition of lanthorns. Your lordship however does not imagine I shall say any thing upon affairs so common as the glass lanthorn, the horn lanthorn, and the perforated tin lanthorn. This last indeed is most to my purpose, ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... their operation, that everyone comes in contact with them during life, and that everyone is liable to suffer, even before he is aware, perhaps hopelessly and forever, from the results of that contact. Vague declamation about immorality and vaguer warnings against it have no effect and possess no meaning, while rhetorical exaggeration is unnecessary. A very simple and concise statement of the actual facts concerning the evils that beset life is ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the considerate care and protection they have, as a general rule, given to the interests of women. In no country, whether of ancient or modern times, have women had less to complain of in their treatment by man than in America. This is no rhetorical declamation; it is the simple statement of an undeniable fact. It is a matter of social history. Since the days of early colonial life to the present hour—or, in other words, during the last two hundred and fifty years—such has been the general course of ...
— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... Roscius had been, from their excellence in declamation, the delight and admiration of Rome. But on their leaving no successors to their degree of merit; the taste for dramatic poetry which was no longer supported by actors equal to them, began to decline; and the theatrical dances under such great masters as Pilades and Bathillus, either ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... be of course mistaken, but the internal evidence seems wonderfully strong. The Rev. Mr. Cumming, though emphatically powerful in declamation, has never practised argument,—a mean and undignified art, which he leaves to men such as Mr. Cunningham, just as the genteel leave the art of boxing to the commonalty; and in grappling lately with a ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... job tutoring for the summer. The rhetoric teacher got it for me. It's the son of an Episcopal vicar. He is a boy of twelve and they want him taught English and declamation. Lord! If they knew all about me! But the kid is safe in my hands. I know how kids of twelve feel. At least, the Minetta Lane variety. So I'll be at the sea shore all summer. Going ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... probablement qu'a attenuer la presence de l'homme et a soulager le symbole. Aux epoques ou le theatre eut une vie veritable, il la dut peut-etre uniquement a quelque circonstance ou a quelque artifice qui venait en aide du poeme dans sa lutte contre l'homme. Ainsi, sous Elisabeth, par exemple, la declamation etait une sorte de melopee, le jeu etait conventionnel, et la scene aussi. Il en etait a peu pres de meme sous Louis XIV. Le poeme se retire a mesure que l'homme s'avance. Le poeme veut nous arracher du pouvoir de nos sens et faire predominer ...
— Pelleas and Melisande • Maurice Maeterlinck
... fellow-utensil, the kettle; and the "wisdom of ages" might, in the present instance, be very reasonably adduced to moderate the excessive moral susceptibilities of the aforesaid writers and declaimers, and to restrain the feeble flood of words—the dirty torrent of shallow declamation, so incessantly poured forth against Russia on the subject of Poland. "Judge not, that ye be not judged!" is an excellent precept for the guidance of nations as well as of individuals; and, we think, a Russian, wearied by the tiresome repetition ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... pompous declamation in silent sorrow and indignation. She made another effort to interest the Abate in favor of Julia, but he preserved his stern inflexibility, and repeating that he would deliberate upon the matter, and acquaint her with the result, he arose with ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... Waterloo and Trafalgar? Yet, mutatis mutandis, this is not so very unlike what the young Emperor did, and not for a year or two, but for several years after his accession. To an Englishman such addresses would appear rather ill-timed academic declamation. ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... and in most of our popular histories. Keightley says, "The overtures of France for peace were readily listened to; and both parties being in earnest, the preliminaries were readily settled at Fontainebleau (Nov. 3rd). In spite of the declamation of Mr. Pitt and his party, they were approved of by large majorities in both Houses of Parliament, and a treaty was finally signed in Paris, Feb. 18, 1763." The napkins were probably a gift, on the occasion, to some public functionary. For the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 219, January 7, 1854 • Various
... prove sufficiently, that it owed not its success to reason and reflection. The art of printing and the revival of learning forwarded its progress in another manner. By means of that art, the books of Luther and his sectaries full of vehemence, declamation, and a rude eloquence, were propagated more quickly, and in greater numbers. The minds of men, somewhat awakened from a profound sleep of so many centuries, were prepared for every novelty, and scrupled less to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... boxes. The actor is described as short in stature, rather inclined to fat, with a large face and a thick neck; his eyes are bluish, and have a peculiar cast in them at times. He said to Irving that he thought the French character much changed—graver; the day of the classic drama, mere declamation and fine language, had gone by; the Revolution had taught them to demand real life, incident, passion, character. Irving's life in Paris was gay enough, and seriously interfered with his literary projects. He had the fortunes of his brother Peter ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... day." You imagine that the orator will lose self and party in his country. Nothing of all this follows, however. You have some common-places, perhaps common truisms, some undefined, mean-all-or-nothing, declamation about "constitution" and "principles," by way of exordium; for the rest, Rome is sunk as if it existed not, down to the peroration it is all about Cato himself, and his little Whig ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... affianced lover, Don Ottavio, whom she had called to the help of her father. She finds the Commandant dead, and breaks into agonizing cries and tears. Only an accompanied recitative, but every ejaculation a cry of nature! Gounod is wrought up to an ecstasy by Mozart's declamation and harmonies. He suspends his ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... and written The Pleasures of Hope, Rogers enriched our literature with The Pleasures of Memory, a poem of exquisite versification, more finished and unified than its pendent picture; containing neither passion nor declamation, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... Ossa of elocutionary correctness, still without surmounting the zone of plant life; which in the Arts, sir, must extend higher than geographers concede. And yet I evoked laughter; from which I may conclude that my efforts amused. The great Demosthenes, sir, practised declamation with his mouth full of pebbles—for retaliatory purposes, I have ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... violent declamation against the adorning of our temples!" cried the cardinal. "This young priest is most dangerous. Continue, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... sojourned in the Old World, shine forth from every page of the Oration. And in the honest ardor of his defence of the natural and political rights of man, as they were taught by Turgot, by Montesquieu, by Jefferson, not content with declamation or rhetoric, he ploughs deep into the reasoning by which they were demonstrated or defended, and ranges wide over the fields of learning by which they were illustrated. Careful for nothing but for the truth itself, he refutes the errors of a French writer who had charged practical ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... often have I thought of the proposal since then, and how many thousand bloated and puffing lines have I read, that, by this process, would have tripped over the tongue excellently. Likewise, I remember that he told me on the same occasion—'Coleridge! the connections of a Declamation are not the transitions of Poetry—bad, however, as they are, they are better than "Apostrophes" and "O thou's", for at the worst they are something like common sense. The others are the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... free from that declamation with which some of the French poets of the same age, and representing a portion of the same movement, blow out their cheeks. An angel of reasonableness seems to watch over him, even when he comes most dangerously near to an extravagance. He is equally free from a strained antithesis, which would ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley
... sudden tremour of her frame; as it were through his touch. To the rest of the letter her judgement stood opposed, save when a sentence here and there reminded her of Captain Baskelett's insolent sing-song declamation of it: and that would have ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... would often hear him: sometimes he sang in the morning and now and then after supper. This bird—it is the red-eyed vireo—has an oddly persistent, pragmatic note, which can hardly be called singing, being more like declamation and somewhat disconnected and disjoint, as if the "preacher" were laying down certain truths and facts and seeking by constant iteration to impress them upon dullards. Betwixt every one of these short sentences, there is a little pause, as if the preacher were waiting for the ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... Shakespeare. To which I replied by repeating all the songs in the "Tempest." One of these, referring to the loves of certain sailors, is not very decent, but I had not the remotest conception of its impropriety, and so proceeded to repeat it. A saint of virtue must have laughed at such a declamation. ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... nor historical sources tell us of any further development of British Christianity till the latter days of the 2nd century. Then, however, it had become sufficiently widespread to furnish a common-place for ecclesiastical declamation on the all-conquering influence of the Gospel. Both Tertullian and Origen[406] thus use it. The former numbers in his catalogue of believing countries even the districts of Britain beyond the Roman pale, Britannorum inaccessa Romanis loca, Christo ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... worn out with anxiety; he has come all the way from the city, prepared with the very best kind of a southern-rights speech, to relieve his friend, General Vardant, who is not accustomed to public declamation. The General is a cunning fellow, fears the stump accomplishments of his antagonist, and has secured the valuable services of philosopher Scranton. Mr. S. will tell the constituency, in very logical phraseology,—making the language suit the sentiments ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... not less to protestant than to catholic churches, he will find that instead of that 'parole morale et consolante' which is so soothing to think of, the pulpit is now the home of fervid controversy and often exacerbated declamation in favour of ancient dogma against modern science. We do not say whether this is or is not the wisest line for the clergy to follow. We only press the fact against those who wish us to believe that dogma counts for nothing in the popular faith, and that therefore we ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... years a great deal has been said about the centralizing tendency of recent events in our history. The increasing power of the government at Washington has been a favorite theme for Democratic declamation. But where, since the foundation of the government, has a proposition been seriously entertained which would confer such monstrous and dangerous powers on the general government as this inflation scheme of the Ohio Democracy? During the war for the Union, ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... favorite avenue upon which fond parents would thus set the feet of their offspring; the law, they thought, would enable him better to "make his mark"—that is, to parade up and down before the public eye and fill the public ear with declamation. Even yet that profession has clientless members, miserable in their hearts over their self-consciousness that they are not lawyers and never can be lawyers, who would have been useful, prosperous, and happy if they could have been permitted ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... least likely to secure popular praise. The extreme conclusions, peppery rhetoric, and passionate declamation of the leaders on both sides, who aim at sensation and victory, are surest to awaken the enthusiasm of the extremists, who always direct the admiring gaze of heir parasites to the favorite representatives of their ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... suffered from hunger this winter. All signs of this are kept out of sight in Paris. A pamphlet called "The Voice of Famine," stating facts, though in a tone of vulgar and exaggerated declamation, was suppressed as soon as published. While Louis Philippe lives, the gases may not burst up to flame, but the need of radical measures of reform is strongly felt in France; and the time will come, before long, when such will be ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... instance, entitled "Vanity of Vanities," is full of the sense of vanity of human effort. And yet against the whole current of this tendency to despondency and despair, we have such an essay as "Are we Wealthy?" in which he declared the day of declamation has passed, but that all things are possible to organisation. "In many respects it is a good world, but it might be made better, nobler, finer in every quarter, if the poor would only recognise wise and silent leaders, and use the laws which men have made in order to repair the havoc which other ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... in a semicircle around Spontini, in order to have a look at that remarkable man, as he held forth with wonderful effect on the requirements of true theatrical art. Turning towards the dismal scene, I gently and respectfully pointed out to Spontini the uselessness of his declamation, and promised that everything should eventually be done ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... he was opposed to antagonists whose knowledge of the subject in dispute was far superior to his; but in this, as in his first controversy, he imposed on the multitude by bold assertion, by sarcasm, by declamation, and, above all, by his peculiar knack of exhibiting a little erudition in such a manner as to make it look like a great deal. Having passed himself off on the world as a greater master of classical ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... sadder than before, and he cursed the poets. "They did me great harm," he said, bitterly. "Without them I had spent days interwoven with gold and silk. My future was secure: it was they who gave me a distaste for my position. I believed in them; I was the dupe of their hollow declamation; they taught me thoughtless contempt, and they gave me the sickly ambition to play the silly part of a man of fine sentiments. I despised the ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... looked in upon me, generally late in the afternoon, when I could call the day's work done and could talk French for half an hour with him, in place of taking a walk. He was strongly dramatic, like Sorel, but in a different way. Sorel was intense; Carron was theatral. He was very fond of declamation; and seeing from the first my wish to learn French,—which Sorel would never very definitely recognize,—he often recited to me, for ear practice, and in an exceedingly effective way, passages from the Old Testament. He seemed to know the Psalms by heart. He ...
— In Madeira Place - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... in no small degree, by the cunning and pertinacity of juvenile offenders. A boy of thirteen is tried, say for picking the pocket of some subject of her Majesty, and the offence is about as clearly proved as an offence can be. He is called upon for his defence, and contents himself with a little declamation about the jurymen and his country—asserts that all the witnesses have committed perjury, and hints that the police force generally have entered into a conspiracy 'again' him. However probable this statement may be, it fails to convince the Court, and some such scene ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... as to the conclusion. There was no failure:—he came round to the close of his composition without discovering any impediment and irregularity on the whole. I questioned him, why he had altered his declamation? He declared he had made no alteration, and did not know, in speaking, that he had deviated from it one letter. I believed him; and from a knowledge of his temperament am convinced, that, fully impressed ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... mathematical illustrations are his most noticeable faults. But they are not found in his more elaborate performances. He has the supreme merit of perfect clearness, naturalness, and grace of expression. Though never eloquent, he sometimes rises to an earnest and dignified declamation. Not infrequently he has achieved the highest success, and clothed valuable thought in language so appropriate, that the phrases have passed into the national vocabulary and become popular catchwords. His first inaugural address ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... produce "the power of godliness." The popular commotions and social disorders which accompany modern revivals, render them highly suspicious, if they do not demonstrate them to be spurious. It is true, indeed, that passionate declamation, vociferous assertion of heresy, intensified by theatrical and violent gesticulation, may commove to a higher degree the active powers,—the passions of the sinner; but such appliances can generate only a temporary faith. Such converts, ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... oratorical glimpses never lift the spirit into new worlds. We are never conscious of those great pulses of strong emotion that shake and vibrate through the nobly-measured periods of Cicero or Bossuet or Burke. Robespierre could not rival the vivid and highly-coloured declamation of Vergniaud; his speeches were never heated with the ardent passion that poured like a torrent of fire through some of the orations of Isnard; nor, above all, had he any mastery of that dialect of the Titans, by which Danton ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... and carved bookcases filled with very ancient-looking books all round the sides. As soon as the party had all entered the room the guide turned round towards them, and, in a very formal and monotonous manner, like a schoolboy reciting a speech which he had committed to memory for a declamation, made the following statement:— ...
— Rollo in London • Jacob Abbott
... great antiquity. Cicero, in his Paradoxes, says that "if an actor lose the measure of a passage in the slightest degree, or make the line he utters a syllable too short or too long by his declamation, he is instantly hissed off the stage." Nor was hissing confined to the theatre, for in one of his letters Cicero refers to Hortensius as an orator who attained old age without once incurring the disgrace of being hissed. Pliny notes that some of the lawyers of his day had paid applauders ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... Edgar had Oswald in his mind when (III. iv. 87) he described the serving-man who 'served the lust of his mistress' heart, and did the act of darkness with her'; and still less that Lear can have had Goneril in his mind in the declamation against lechery ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... dislike. It must be confessed that the gentlemen who directed the Administration party were no match as tacticians for such file-leaders as Jefferson and Burr. Many of their pet measures were ill-judged, to say the least. The provisional army furnished a fertile theme for fierce declamation. The black cockade became the badge of the supporters of government, so that in the streets one could tell at a glance whether friend or foe was approaching. The Alien and Sedition Laws caused much bitter feeling and did great damage to the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... its enemies through lust of power, or something else, God knows what; when I see drunkenness holding high carnival in the nation's capitol, reeling in the seat of the President, and retailing its maudlin declamation before a sickened country from Washington to Chicago, I can only turn to God and the future. Our only hope is in the work of the Christian church through all its agencies, social, ecclesiastical and educational, moulding out of the glorious material so abundantly at its disposal, ...
— Amusement: A Force in Christian Training • Rev. Marvin R. Vincent.
... Speaker, Comprising elementary Rules and Exercises in Declamation, with a Selection of Pieces for Practice. 12mo, Muslin, 60 cents; half Bound, ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... adopt this proposal. Mr. Hunt, the radical member for Preston, and Lord Morpeth, strenuously supported the motion, and Sir Charles Wetherell most bitterly and vehemently denounced it. The baronet's speech was one of the most eccentric pieces of vituperative declamation ever delivered within the walls of parliament. He nicknamed the bill "Russell's purge!" which afforded much amusement to honourable and right honourable gentlemen on his side of the house, and was taken up out of doors, the party throughout the country using it as ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... no further heed to him, but the speaker mounted the steps of the meeting-house and harangued the natives in a strain of rude and passionate declamation, in which my host, the aristocrats, and the Secessionists came in for about equal shares of abuse. Seeing that the native (who, it appeared, was quite popular as a stump-speaker) was drawing away his audience, the Colonel descended from the driver's seat, and motioning for me to follow, entered ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... sport of Pope's "'Ercles vein," and the Confederates contrasted his noisy declamation with the modesty of Lee and Jackson. To the South the new commander was peculiarly obnoxious. He was the first of the Federal generals to order that the troops should subsist upon the country, and that the people should be held ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... of his contemporaries, "he has few equals. It is not declamation, but oratory, power of description. He watches the tide of discussion, and dashes into it at once with all the tact of the forum or the bar. He has art, argument, sarcasm, pathos,—all that first-rate men show in their ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... for acting; in the sweetness and variety of his tones, the irresistible magic of his eye, the fire and vivacity of his action, the elegance of attitude, and the whole pathos of expression. Quin excelled in dignity and declamation, as well as exhibiting some characters of humour, equally exquisite and peculiar. Mrs. Cibber breathed the whole soul of female tenderness and passion; and Mrs. Pritchard displayed all the dignity of distress. That Great Britain was not barren of poets at this period, appears ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... orators, he had to combat some natural deficiencies; he had inherited from his father a somewhat delicate constitution; his lungs were not powerful, and his voice required careful management; and the loud declamation and vehement action which he had adopted from his models—and which were necessary conditions of success in the large arena in which a Roman advocate had to plead—he found very hard work. He left Rome for a while, and retired for rest ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... the sentiment point more and more clearly to the arduous development which impended. In vain the action was accelerated, while the acting stood still. From the beginning, John had taken his stand,—had wound himself up to an even tenor of stately declamation, from which no exigence of dialogue or person could make him swerve for an instant. To dream of his rising with the scene (the common trick of tragedians) was preposterous; for from the onset he had planted himself, as upon a terrace, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... full benefit of imitation requires not only the influence of well-trained schoolmates, but systematic exercises in reading, singing, declamation, and deportment, the teaching being ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... child is much admired by the audience. Its pathos makes them weep; its tragedy thrills them; its declamation—as for instance when it takes the center of the stage and says it will kill the wicked man, and the police, and everybody who hurts its mar—stirs them like a trumpet note; and its light comedy is generally held to be the ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome
... ideas flowed too fast for the pen, and he thought more vividly when on his feet, and in the midst of a multitude, than when in the privacy of his chamber. His language was naturally ornate and eloquent, and the stream of thought which flowed on in declamation, brightened and grew, in its progress, to a mighty volume. This, with the fervor of intense feeling which distinguished his efforts, made them powerfully effective. In toning down these feelings, and repressing the ornate and beautiful to the cold, concise legal opinion, his delivery lost ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... are hard on all these people," said Charles; "it is all very much like declamation; you would destroy externals of every kind. You are like the man in one of Miss Edgeworth's novels, who shut his ears to the music that he might ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... Santuzza and Lucia, and to the mother of her betrayer the maiden tells the story of her wrongs. The romance which she sings is marked by the copious use of one of the distinguishing devices of the veritist composers—the melodic triplet, an efficient help for the pushing, pulsating declamation with which the dramatic dialogue of Mascagni, Leoncavallo, and their fellows is carried on. Lucia can do no more for the unfortunate than commend her to the care of the Virgin. She enters the church and Turiddu comes. He lies ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... domination—the great and lofty principle of liberty which inspired his whole life. A deep, uncompromising hatred of kings is seen in every drama, where invariably a tyrant figures as the villain. There is a constant declamation against tyranny and slavery. Liberty is portrayed as something dearer than life itself. The struggle for freedom forms the subjects of five of his plays,—'Virginia,' 'The Conspiracy of the Pazzi,' 'Timoleon,' the 'First Brutus,' ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... whole passage spoken by an orator; indeed it is difficult to resist the illusion that it was "declaimed" before it was written. We catch the oratorial tags and devices, the repeated phrase, the incessant antithesis, the alternate rise and fall of eloquent speech. It is declamation—fine declamation—but we miss the musical undertones, the subtle involutions, the unexpected bursts, and mysterious cadences of really great written prose. The term "the Republic of Venice" is repeated three times in three lines: the term "the Papacy" is repeated three times in two lines. Any ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... fallen upon him; the mighty ship was launched, and swept out to sea under full canvas. Old Kentucky was on her feet that night in San Jose. It was indescribable. Flashes of spiritual illumination, explosive bursts of eloquent declamation, sparkles of chastened wit, appeals of overwhelming intensity, followed like the thunder and lightning of a Southern storm. The church seemed literally to rock. "Amens" burst from the electrified Methodists of all sorts; these were followed by "hallelujahs" on all sides; and when ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... when the voices of his colleagues have become habitual in his ears—when the strangeness of the room is gone, and the table before him is known and trusted—he throws off his awe and dismay, and electrifies his brotherhood by the vehemence of his declamation and the violence of his thumping. So let us suppose it will be with Harold Smith, perhaps in the second or third season of his Cabinet practice. Alas! alas! that such pleasures should be so fleeting! And then, too, ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... morrow, when the bishop began in a fashion, which I will portray further on in the conduct of affairs before the Council. The whole speech was violent, threatening and haughty, although he carefully abstained from any personal allusions to myself and even avoided calling me by name. His declamation over, I stepped out, thinking it unbecoming and pusillanimous not to neutralize an address, that might do so much injury, especially because I could perceive by their smothered sighs, and read in the paleness of their faces the strong impression it ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger |
