"Demosthenes" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... they became an artifice of politics. Themistocles, with a design of engaging the Athenians to quit Athens, in order to be in a better condition to resist Xerxes, made the Pythoness deliver an oracle, commanding them to take refuge in wooden walls. Demosthenes said, that the Pythoness philippised, to signify that she was gained over ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... consideration. Thus it was not merely at hazard that he selected the statues of great men to adorn the gallery of the Tuileries. Among the Greeks he made choice of Demosthenes and Alesander, thus rendering homage at once to the genius of eloquence and the genius of victory. The statue of Hannibal was intended to recall the memory of Rome's most formidable enemy; and Rome herself was represented in the Consular Palace by the statues of Scipio, Cicero, Cato, ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... of Demosthenes's confession that he had taken great pleasure in hearing of a Tanker-woman say as he passed, "This is that Demosthenes," is wonderful ridiculous from so solid an orator. I myself have often met with that temptation to vanity (if it were any), but am so far from ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... am for the present a sort of lion. My speech has set me in the front rank, if I can keep there; and it has not been my luck hitherto to lose ground when I have once got it. Sheil and I are on very civil terms. He talks largely concerning Demosthenes and Burke. He made, I must say, an excellent speech; too florid ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... person called George Neville, who died Archbishop of York in 1476. It is evident, though not, I think, from anything that he wrote, that he was interested in Greek learning, and not only theological learning. A MS. of some orations of Demosthenes now at Leyden contains a statement by the scribe that he wrote it for Archbishop Neville in 1472. This is our starting-point. Now, the scribe in question—Emmanuel of Constantinople—generally writes a hand (ugly enough) which no one who has once seen it can fail to recognize. This hand appears ...
— The Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts - Helps for Students of History, No. 17. • M. R. James
... a certain Emmanuel of Constantinople seems to have been employed in England as a copyist. For Archbishop Neville he produced a Greek manuscript containing some sermones judiciales of Demosthenes, and letters of Aeschines, Plato, and Chion (1468).[1] Dr. Montague James has shown that this manuscript of Emmanuel is by the same hand as the manuscripts known as the "Ferrar group," which comprises "a Plato and Aristotle now at Durham, two psalters in ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... of pre-eminence between the Ancients and Moderns is reducible to another. Were trees in ancient times greater than to-day? If they were, then Homer, Plato, and Demosthenes cannot be equalled in modern times; if they ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... and, after confessing his own principal share in Lenny's escape, drew a moving picture of the boy's shame and honest mortification. "Let us march against Philip!" cried the Athenians when they heard Demosthenes— ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... is that of poor Charles Vanderpoop. He was a bright young lad, and showed some promise of rising to heights as a slacker. He fell in this fashion. One Easter term his form had half-finished a speech of Demosthenes, and the form-master gave them to understand that they would absorb the rest during the forthcoming term. Charles, being naturally anxious to do as little work as possible during the summer months, spent his Easter holidays carefully ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... certain forms of purification which one does not know whether to describe as ablutions or anointings. Thus Demosthenes in his speech "On the crown', accused Aeschines of having "purified the initiated and wiped them clean with (not from) mud and pitch.'' Smearing with gypsum (titanos. titanos) had a similar purifying effect, and it has been suggested i that the Titans ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Greek and the Latin, and certainly as representatives of the great mass of graduates we can now talk more of Greek and Latin as a common accomplishment than the greatest genius and orators of ancient times, Demosthenes or Cicero, could ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... mature life he was "on the side of his masters" and grateful to them "that my persistent efforts not to learn Latin were frustrated; and that I was not entirely successful even in escaping the contamination of the language of Aristotle and Demosthenes," he still contrasts childhood as a time when one "wants to know nearly everything" with "the period of what is commonly called education; that is, the period during which I was being instructed by somebody I did not know about something I did not ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... it happen that Athens, after having recovered an equality with Sparta, should be forced to submit to the dominion of Macedon when she had two such great men as Phocion and Demosthenes at the head of ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... arguing, because much of the effect of their powers of reasoning, and of their wit, when they grow up, will depend upon the gentleness and good humour with which they conduct themselves. A woman, who should attempt to thunder like Demosthenes, would not find her eloquence increase her domestic happiness. We by no means wish that women should yield their better judgment to their fathers or husbands; but, without using any of that debasing cunning which ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... olive-tree of Pallas-Athene was there, and her colossal statue. On the plain below were the temples of Theseus and Jupiter Olympus, and innumerable others. He stood where Socrates had stood four hundred years before, defending himself against the charge of atheism; where Demosthenes had pleaded in immortal strains of eloquence in behalf of Hellenic freedom; where the most solemn and venerable court of justice known among men was wont to assemble. There he made the memorable discourse, a few fragments only of which have ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... OF TWEDDEL.] We next visited what is called Demosthenes's Lantern, situated close to a ruined house, formerly the Franciscan convent. Mr. Finlay and some others have cleared away the rubbish and masses of fallen masonry from about the Lantern: they have also dug a ditch around it, to prevent the ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... great writers and orators have been diligent students of words. Demosthenes and Cicero were indefatigable in their study of language. Shakespeare, "infinite in faculty," took infinite pains to embody his thought in words of crystal clearness. Coleridge once said of him that one might as well try to dislodge a brick from a building with one's forefinger ...
— Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases • Grenville Kleiser
... beloved Cambridge alone could afford him. 'I do wel perceyve,' he says, 'their is no soch quietnesse in England, nor pleasur in strange contres, as even in S. Jons Colledg, to kepe company with the Bible, Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, and Tullie.' And he goes on to say, 'Thus I, first by myn own natur, . . . lastly caulled by quietnesse, thought it good to couche myself in ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... claiming merit for his system. He says, "And a better and nearer example herein may be our most noble Queen Elizabeth, who never took yet Greek nor Latin grammar in her hand after the first declining of a noun and a verb; but only by this double translating of Demosthenes and Isocrates daily, without missing, every forenoon, and likewise some part of Tully every afternoon, for the space of a year or two, hath attained to such a perfect understanding in both tongues, and to such a ready utterance of the Latin, and that with such a judgment ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... four ages of woman, considered after Demosthenes in her three-fold character, prostitute for pleasure, concubine for service and wife ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... remarkable than his dexterity in presenting his case. James Mill used to point out to his son among other skilful arts of Demosthenes, these two: first, that he said everything important to his purpose at the exact moment when he had brought the minds of his hearers into the state most fitted to receive it; second, that he insinuated gradually and ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... philosophers, and orators, had crowned their community with immortal fame. Every spot connected with their city was classic ground. Here it was that Socrates had discoursed so sagely; and that Plato had illustrated, with so much felicity and genius, the precepts of his great master; and that Demosthenes, by addresses of unrivalled eloquence, had roused and agitated the assemblies of his countrymen. As the stranger passed through Athens, artistic productions of superior excellence everywhere met his eye. Its statues, its public monuments, and its temples, were models alike ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... Lamp.—Can you or one of your learned correspondents, tell me the origin or first user of the literary "smelling of the lamp?" I know that it is commonly attributed to Demosthenes? but if it is his, I want ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.03.23 • Various
... patronage of the Medicis, a crowd of scholars who brought with them their manuscripts of Homer and the dramatists, of Thucydides and Herodotus, and most momentous perhaps for the age to come, of Plato and Demosthenes and of the New Testament in its original Greek. The quick and vivid intellect of Italy, which had been torpid in the decadence of mediaevalism and its mysticism and piety, seized with avidity the revelation of the classical ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... bulk of General Fyfe surrounded by his satellite colonels and other aides, and muttered to his lieutenant, "If Old Brassbottom came down here to observe the exercise, then why the devil doesn't he go over to the hill and observe instead of hanging around here like a sword of Demosthenes?" ...
— I Was a Teen-Age Secret Weapon • Richard Sabia
... 1806, John Quincy Adams was appointed Professor of Rhetoric and gave a course of lectures which moulded the taste of that school of orators to which Edward Everett belonged—a school of oratory which found its models in Demosthenes and Cicero. Everett became Professor of Greek in 1815; and George Ticknor, Professor of Belles-Lettres in 1816. Prescott graduated in 1814, Palfrey in 1815, and George Bancroft in 1817,—all three to add to American historiography works of enduring excellence. In ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... held by M. le Surveillant in The Enormous Room after the promenade. I shall not enter in detail into the nature of the charges pressed in certain cases, but confine myself to quoting the close of a peroration which would have done Demosthenes credit: ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... the East. I was conducted by the lady Principal through every department. In one room an Arabic Professor was engaged at the black-board, instructing a class in studies pursued in that language. In another part of the same room, young ladies were reading to a lady-teacher an oration of Demosthenes in classic Greek. Another class was reading critically a portion of Milton's "Paradise Lost," and yet another was engaged in preparing a French lesson. With all these classes the lady sister spoke in the language under study or recitation, ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... passages as he might need them for whatever subject he was discussing. Greville, writing of him in 1836, says that he displayed feats of memory unequaled by any other human being, and that he could repeat all Milton and all Demosthenes and a great part of the Bible. "But his great forte," Greville adds, "is history, especially English history. Here his superhuman memory, which appears to have the faculty of digesting and arranging, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... Demosthenes and Jesus Christ, and likewise Cicero and Julius Caesar. Everybody overstates his case, particularly when he is anxious to do something which he considers useful. I regard it as a real grievance, Eames, not to be allowed to assist you financially. Having never done a stroke of work in ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... says Easy Aaron to me, for he's that happy an' enthoosiastic he's got to open up on some gent; "these cases is bound to fix my fame as the modern Demosthenes. You knows how eloquent I am about Shoestring? That won't be a marker to the oration I'll frame up for these miscreants in the calaboose. For why? Shoestring's time I ain't organised; also, I'm more or less shook ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... Columbus, and the Discovery of America, Speech of Romulus after founding Rome, Speech of Quinctius Capitolinus, Caius Marius to the Romans, Demosthenes to the Athenians, The perfect Speaker, On the Duties of School-Boys, from the pious and judicious Rollin, Columbia.—A Poem, The Choice of a Rural Life.—A Poem, Hymns and Prayers, Character of Man, Winter, Douglas's ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... said Olive, looking at her sketch, which was a copy of a magnificent head of Demosthenes, cast in bas-relief against black velvet. "Don't you think she will ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... William O'Brien should wear prison clothes, sleep on a plank bed, and be subjected to other indignities, but Mr. Mahaffy goes far beyond such mild measures as these, and begins his history by frankly expressing his regret that Demosthenes was not summarily put to death for his attempt to keep the spirit of patriotism alive among the citizens of Athens! Indeed, he has no patience with what he calls 'the foolish and senseless opposition to Macedonia'; ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... transform you into a beautiful young girl, or a wrinkled old Jew, or an Artful Dodger, or anything else you had a fancy for. Music, again—think of the effect of that slow music in the first act. There was pathos for you, if you like. Oratory—talk of Demosthenes or Cicero, Mr Gladstone or John Bright! Why, they're nowhere, my dear young friend, literally nowhere. Didn't my description of the dream just fetch you? Be honest now; by George, Sir, it thrilled the house. Look here, young man"—and Sardanapalus began to speak very ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... young lady of remarkable intellect, and some other students, he formed a Translation society, which occupied itself with the Book of Romans, of course in the Greek version. During the succeeding winter he read the whole of "Demosthenes ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... (to pluralize his ancestors would be a grave historical error), and Joseph II. reigns in his stead, exercising, I doubt not, over his factory-people the same ingenuity of torture which in old times nearly drove the fags to rebellion. He is a Demosthenes, they say, at vestries, and a Draco at the Board of Guardians; but in the centre of his broad face, marring the platitude of its smooth-shaven respectability, still burns angrily a dark red scar—Guy's sign-manual—which he will carry to ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... excited assembly, without being apprised of new opportunity for painting in fire human thought, and being agitated to agitate. How many orators sit mute there below! They come to get justice done to that ear and intuition which no Chatham and no Demosthenes has ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... senate met, and Antonius absented himself, but Cicero came down and delivered the following speech, which is the first of that celebrated series of fourteen speeches made in opposition to Antonius and his measures, and called Philippics from the orations of Demosthenes against Philip, to which the Romans were in ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... often made a substitute for wit. 2. Alfred was a brave, pious, and patriotic prince. 3. The throne of Philip trembles while Demosthenes speaks. 4. That the whole is equal to the sum of its parts is an axiom. 5. The lion belongs to the cat tribe, but he cannot climb a tree. 6. Pride is a flower that grows in the devil's garden. 7. Of all forms of habitation, the simplest is the burrow. 8. When the righteous ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... plan of the black levies into execution, while there remains the smallest hope of success. The House of Representatives will be convened in a few days. I intend to qualify, and make a final effort. Oh! that I were a Demosthenes! The Athenians never deserved a more bitter ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... was entirely distasteful. Whatever the voice was, he had at some time hated it. Why it was continuing on that lifted note he could not guess. With a little twitch of the lips, the sign of a grim amusement, he thought this might even be an orator, some wardroom Demosthenes, practising against the lonely curtain ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... is assuredly a great, a very great work. Homer is not more decidedly the first of heroic poets, Shakespeare is not more decidedly the first of dramatists, Demosthenes is not more decidedly the first of orators, than Boswell is the first of biographers. He has no second. He has distanced all his competitors so decidedly that it is not worth while to place them. Eclipse is first, ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... poverty with you; but as the world is, and will be, 'tis a sort of duty to be rich, that it may be in one's power to do good; riches being another word for power, towards the obtaining of which the first necessary qualification is impudence, and (as Demosthenes said of pronunciation in oratory) the second is impudence, and the third, still, impudence. No modest man ever did or ever will make his fortune. Your friend Lord H[alifa]x, R. W[alpo]le, and all other remarkable instances of quick advancement, have been remarkably impudent. The Ministry ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... of any" of the deputies were the gentlemen from Virginia, among whom were Mr. Henry and Mr. R. H. Lee, said to be the Demosthenes and the Cicero of America. The latter, Mr. Adams liked much, a "masterly man" who was very strong for the most vigorous measures. But it seemed that even Mr. Lee was strong for vigorous measures only because he was "absolutely certain that the same ship ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... of lease-holders of both sexes and all ages, from the puny babe in arms to the decrepit crone and hoary grand-sire, listening to the flowing tongue of a rustic speech-maker. This forum of the people was shaded by a sextette of well-grown elms. The platform of the local Demosthenes stood in ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... of Demosthenes. ... English'd from the Greek by several hands. London, for Jacob Tonson, ...
— The Library of William Congreve • John C. Hodges
... disposition. Specimens of native eloquence have been introduced into school books, and declaimed by many an aspiring young Cicero. Most of them are, doubtless, as fictitious as Logan's celebrated speech, which was exalted by the great Jefferson almost to a level with the outbursts of Demosthenes, to be reduced again to very small proportions by the ...
— Aboriginal American Authors • Daniel G. Brinton
... knight, equally distinguished in letters and in arms, and called the Demosthenes of Germany, was a zealous friend of reform. He had been in Rome, and sharpened his darts from what he there saw to hurl them with effect. All the powers of satire and ridicule he brought to bear upon the pillars of the Papacy. He helped to shake the ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... ignorant class of oculists in Rome in the time of Nero, but at Marseilles Demosthenes Philalethes was deservedly celebrated, and his book on diseases of the eye was in use for several centuries. The eye doctors of Rome employed ointments almost entirely, and about two hundred seals have been discovered which had been attached to pots of eye salves, ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... UP TO THE PEACE OF NICIAS (421 B.C.).—Soon after the affair at Mytilene and the destruction of Plataea, an enterprising general of the Athenians, named Demosthenes, seized and fortified a point of land (Pylos) on the coast of Messenia. The Spartans made every effort to dislodge the enemy. In the course of the siege, four hundred Spartans under Brasidas, having landed upon a little island (Sphacteria), were so unfortunate as to be cut off from the ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... at first somewhat of a disappointment. You do not often find the youthful Demosthenes chewing his pebbles in the same room with you; or, even if you do, you will probably think the performance little to be admired. As a general rule, the members speak shamefully ill. The subjects of debate are heavy; and so are the fines. The Ballot Question—oldest of dialectic ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... elocution that in less than four hours I had filled eight pages of paper; two of which at least were Greek and Latin quotations, from Aristotle, Demosthenes, and Cicero. I meant to astonish mankind with my erudition! All shall acknowledge, said I, that a writer of wit, energy, and genius is at last sprung up; one who is profoundly skilled too in classical learning. ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... these ugly social facts continuously, led me to this belief. It came very slowly as did also the opinion that the missionary himself or the pastor, be he as wise as Solomon, as eloquent as Demosthenes, as virtuous as St. Francis, has no social standing whatever among the people whose alms support the institutions, religious and philanthropic, of which these men are the executive heads. The fellowship of the saints is a pure fiction, has absolutely no ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... single word. The form of the monument corresponds to that which we are told was given to the revolving wooden pillars on which the laws of Solon were painted. That the writing of Solon's laws, which was boustrofedon, was also vertical is rendered probable by the phrase o katothen nomos in Demosthenes' speech Against Aristocrates, sec. 28, for which Harpocration is unable to supply a satisfactory ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Burke has read Cicero much?' JOHNSON. 'I don't believe it, sir. Burke has great knowledge, great fluency of words, and great promptness of ideas, so that he can speak with great illustration on any subject that comes before him. He is neither like Cicero, nor like Demosthenes, nor like any one else, but speaks as well as ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... must think of all times coming; and how, whenever there should be any restlessness against the tyranny of materialism and dogma, a cry should go up for Plato.—So let Isocrates, the 'old man eloquent,'—let a many-worded not unpeculant patriotic Demosthenes who knew nothing of the God-world—attend to an Athens wherein the Gods were no longer greatly interested;—the great Star Plato should rise up into mid-heaven, and shine not in, but high over Athens and ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... l'Eglogue and a Digression sur les Anciens et les Modernes, widened the field of debate. Were trees in ancient days taller than those in our own fields? If not, why may not modern men equal Homer, Plato, and Demosthenes? "Nothing checks the progress of things, nothing confines the intelligence so much as admiration of the ancients." Genius is bestowed by Nature on every age, but knowledge grows from generation to generation. In his dialogues entitled ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... to me a seat in the House of Commons. A member of Parliament might rise to anything, and Lord Rainsforth had sufficient influence to effect my return. Dazzling prospect this to a young scholar fresh from Thucydides, and with Demosthenes fresh at his tongue's end! My dear boy, I was not then, you see, quite what I am now: in a word, I loved Ellinor Compton, and therefore I was ambitious. You know how ambitious she is still. But I could not mould my ambition to hers. I could ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... had decided on giving up the Aeschylus, it became more imperative to make sure of the Tacitus and Demosthenes, and he therefore went to Mr Grayson's rooms to get a library order which should entitle him to take from the Saint Werner's library any books that would be most likely to give him ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... Bouffon Le Grand—another extraordinary personage in his way. He grew deranged through love, and fancied himself possessed of two heads. One of these he maintained to be the head of Cicero; the other he imagined a composite one, being Demosthenes' from the top of the forehead to the mouth, and Lord Brougham's from the mouth to the chin. It is not impossible that he was wrong; but he would have convinced you of his being in the right; for he was a man of great eloquence. He had an absolute passion ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... an old house to run up a tent, but his advice is completely ignored. New laws are made for every change in the weather, for every little daily incident in politics. We are getting used to this hand-to-mouth legislation. Like the barbarian warrior, of whom Demosthenes tells us, who always protected that portion of his person which had just received a blow, holding his shield up to his shoulder, when his shoulder had been struck, down again to his thigh when the blow fell there, the ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... Federalist; of Monroe, the asserter of the international doctrine of the independence of this continent; of John Quincy Adams, the pioneer of abolitionism in his radical condemnation of slavery; of Clay, the warm defender of the South American colonies in their struggle for emancipation; of Webster, the Demosthenes of the Union and of American liberty; of Seward, the rival for election of Lincoln, but who, being defeated by the latter, was invited by him to form part of his Cabinet; of Forsyth, Calhoun, Everett, Marcy, Evarts, Blaine, Bayard, and Hay. It is a path of stars, at the termination of which the ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... House of Commons; he had delivered his maiden speech with some effect; and had been heard favorably on various subsequent occasions; on one of which it was that, to the extreme surprise of the house, he terminated his speech with a passage from Demosthenes—not presented in English, but in sounding Attic Greek. Latin is a privileged dialect in parliament. But Greek! It would not have been at all more startling to the usages of the house, had his lordship quoted Persic or Telinga. ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... But the man with talent which must be carefully cherished and increased if he would attain distinction by its help—that man is the true self-helper to whom our hearts go out in sympathy. Every schoolboy knows that Demosthenes practised declamation on the seashore, with his mouth full of pebbles. This description of the unlovely old Athenian with the compelling tongue is Plutarch's contribution to ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... pass their days in a sort of sleepy submission to the idea of the gradual passing away of their lives, awoke and went into Main Street in the evening to argue with skeptical farmers. Beside Ed Hall, who had become a Demosthenes on the subject of progress and the duty of the town to awake and stick to Steve Hunter and the machine, a dozen other men held forth on the street corners. Oratorical ability awoke in the most unexpected places. Rumors flew from lip to lip. It was said that within a year Bidwell ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... are speakers there, lots of them that can talk two or three hours at a stretch, but the old war horse could beat them all. They say that when John Henry Bagshaw got well started, say after a couple of hours of talk, he could speak as Pericles or Demosthenes or Cicero ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... die. Cradle and grave are brought close together; there is nothing between them. There have been hundreds who could have rivaled the patriotism of a Washington, or the humanity of a Howard, or the eloquence of a Demosthenes, and who have left behind them no one memorial of their existence, because of lack of lofty courage, sublime moral heroism, and ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... Socrates without grace does not amuse us by making his adversary fall into the long entanglement of a captious dialogue, but he rudely seizes and often finishes him with two blows. It is like the eloquence of Phocion, which Demosthenes compares to an axe ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... AEgina to see the ruined temple on one of its hights—almost to count its columns—then coasted along the rugged shores of Argolis, which we eagerly studied with the aid of a map. Here was the peninsula Methana, and half hiding it, the island Calauria, where Demosthenes put an end to his life, once the seat of a famous Amphictyony. Then the bold promontory which shuts in the fertile valley of Troezer, then the territory of Hermione, stretching between the mountains and the sea. We touched at Hydhra, famed in the history of the Greek Revolution, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... to contest his unquestionable supremacy. But it is in no sense necessary to Burke's fame that the fame of others should be in any way impugned or depreciated. It is sufficient praise to say that Burke is one of the greatest orators the world has ever held. To argue that he is superior to Demosthenes on the {101} one hand, or to Cicero on the other, is to maintain an argument very much on a par with that which it amused Burke himself to maintain when he contended for the superiority of the "Aeneid" over the "Iliad." It is quite enough to be ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... all the imagination, fire, and judgment of Pitt, could have produced those orations that have made the senate of England in these our times a rival in eloquence to Greece and Rome, if he had not been so well read in the writings of Demosthenes and Cicero, as to have transferred their whole spirit into his speeches and, with their spirit, their ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... on Greek grammar maintain that they could teach Plato and Demosthenes useful lessons concerning Greek moods and tenses, even as the ancient Athenians, according to the fable of Phaedrus, contended that they understood squealing better than a pig. However this may be, any one of us to-day, thanks to the Concordance of Mrs. Clarke and the Lexicon of Alexander ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... Britain rests, in no small degree, on the refined taste and classical education of her politicians; and the portion of her oratory acknowledged to be the most energetic, bears the greatest resemblance to the spirit of Demosthenes.—North ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 357 - Vol. XIII, No. 357., Saturday, February 21, 1829 • Various
... might judge him, that the future world would mistake him. "Aliquis fui inter vivos," he writes to Gondomar, "neque omnino intermoriar apud posteros." Even in his time he did not give up the hope of being restored to honour and power. He compared himself to Demosthenes, to Cicero, to Seneca, to Marcus Livius, who had been condemned for corrupt dealings as he had been, and had all recovered favour and position. Lookers-on were puzzled and shocked. "He has," writes Chamberlain, "no manner of feeling of his fall, ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... thoughtfulness, full of devotion, has herein left his legacy to his country. It is not rhetoric or any vulgar excitement of eloquence that charms so many readers to the book, so many hearers to this preacher's feet. It is not with the action of a Demosthenes, with outstretched arms and countenance of flame, that he presses his gospel upon his audience. On the contrary, when we read those calm and lofty utterances, this preacher seems seated, like his Master, with the multitude palpitating round, but no agitation ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... two books of the original, comprising the apophthegms of Socrates, Aristippus, Diogenes, Philippus, Alexander, Antigonus, Augustus Caesar, Julius Caesar, Pompey, Phocion, Cicero, and Demosthenes. ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.19 • Various
... of having added those hideous belfries which now rise above each end of the vestibule—as wanton and unprovoked an offense against good taste as ever was committed. A cocked hat upon the statue of Demosthenes in the Vatican would not be a more discordant addition. The artist should have gone to the stake, before giving his hand to such a ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... venom as he instructed business men, bankers, smart young officers, lorgnetted dowagers and sweet-faced girls, in the duty of hating with the whole heart and the whole mind. I soon felt that if Lissauer is the Horace of Hate, Sombart is its Demosthenes. ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... which Longinus gives to a great writer:—"Whenever you have a mind to elevate your mind, to raise it to its highest pitch, and even to exceed yourself, upon any subject, think how Homer would have described it, how Plato would have imagined it, and how Demosthenes would have expressed it; and when you have so done, you will then, no doubt, have a standard which will raise you up to the dignity of anything that human genius can aspire to." Mr. Hastings was calling upon himself, and raising his mind to the dignity of what tyranny could do, what unrighteous ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Thucydides that, when a boy, he burst into tears on hearing Herodotus read his History, and the impression made upon his mind was such as to determine the bent of his own genius. And Demosthenes was so fired on one occasion by the eloquence of Callistratus, that the ambition was roused within him of becoming an orator himself. Yet Demosthenes was physically weak, had a feeble voice, indistinct articulation, and shortness of breath—defects which ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... the meanness of their body by the glory of their virtue? You see; the wisest man of his day actually went so far as to use the mirror as an instrument of moral discipline. Again, who is ignorant of the fact that Demosthenes, the greatest master of the art of speaking, always practised pleading before a mirror as though before a professor of rhetoric? When that supreme orator had drained deep draughts of eloquence in the study of Plato ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... in a waistcoat which was the admiration of all who beheld it, proposed the health of the bride; and proved indubitably that the best of oratory has its origin in the heart and not in the mind,—for Tom had never been regarded by his friends as a Demosthenes. He was interrupted from time to time by shouts of laughter; certain episodes in the early career of Mr. Austen Vane (in which, if Tom was to be believed, he was an unwilling participant) were particularly appreciated. And shortly after that, amidst a shower of miscellaneous ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... in admiring their beauty therein, were admonished that handsome is who handsome does; and the more the ugly stared at themselves, the more they became naturally anxious to hide the disgrace of their features in the loveliness of their merits. Was not Demosthenes always at his speculum? Did he not rehearse his causes before it as before a master in the art? He learned his eloquence from Plato, his dialectics from Eubulides; but as for his delivery—there, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... and other writers of all nations whom I conceive to be superior to Hawthorne, may be found in the following list: Homer, Aschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Pindar, Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Theocritus, Plutarch; Horace, Virgil, Cicero, Tacitus; Dante, Tasso, Petrarch; Cervantes, Calderon, Camoens; Moliere, Racine, Descartes, Voltaire; Lessing, Goethe, Schiller, Kant; Swedenborg; Chaucer, Shakespeare, ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... Camb., and held various high positions under Queen Elizabeth. He was the author of The Rule of Reason containing the Arte of Logique (1551), and The Arte of Rhetorique (1553), and made translations from Demosthenes. He endeavoured to maintain the purity of the language against ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... in the Senate dreaded no one so much as Antonius, and put their hope in young Octavianus. Cicero made a set of speeches against Antonius, which are called Philippics, because they denounce him as Demosthenes used to denounce Philip of Macedon, and like them, too, they were the last flashes of spirit in a sinking state; and Cicero, in those days, was the foremost and best man who was trying at his own risk to save the old institutions of his country. But it was all in vain; they were too ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... after, a certain man was once praising the speeches of Lord Chesterfield and was led on to make explanations. He did so, naming two speeches, one of which he zealously declared had the style of Cicero; the other that of Demosthenes. Johnson becalmed the speaker by agreeing with him as to the excellence of the speeches, and then adding, "I ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... flags of itself. Genius in the midst of society is a pain, an internal fever which would require to be treated as a real disease, if the records of glory did not soften the sufferings it produces."—"Athenians! what troubles have you not cost me," exclaimed DEMOSTHENES, "that I may be ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... where his Majesty could not be. Therefore, it was out of the question for Don John to leave the provinces. The greatest tact was necessary, urged Perez, in dealing with the King. If he should once "suspect that we have a private purpose, we are lost, and no Demosthenes or Cicero would be able to influence him afterwards." Perez begged that his ardent attachment to Don John might be represented in the strongest colors to that high personage, who was to be assured that every effort would be made to place him at ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... all, what are you scolding about?" cried Lavretsky in his turn. "To work, to do. You had better say what one should do, instead of scolding, O Demosthenes ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... I read Locke, Say's Political Economy, Smith's Wealth of Nations, Plutarch, Josephus, Herodotus, Lingard, Hume and Smollett, Cicero, Demosthenes, Homer, Pope, Byron, Shakespeare, Boswell's Johnson, Junius, The Tattler, The Rambler, the English Reviews, French from text-books without a teacher and Rhetoric (Blair's full edition). Much of Blair's Rhetoric I studied carefully and with ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... the reference in the Republic (ii, 364 f.) to the mendicant prophets with their formulas for expiation of sin and salvation from future punishment, and Demosthenes's derisive description of AEschines as mystagogue ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... consequently get them by reading certain of his pieces, and making the natural deductions from them. Those that contain biographical matter are, in the order corresponding to the periods of his life on which they throw light, The Vision, Demosthenes, Nigrinus, The Portrait-study and Defence (in which Lucian is Lycinus), The Way to write History, The double ndictment (in which he is The Syrian), The Fisher (Parrhesiades), Swans and Amber, Alexander, Hermotimus ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... Celarent or Cesare, so some Dilemmas are most simply stated with negative major premises—e.g., The example of a Simple Constructive Dilemma above given would run more naturally thus: If the Tories win, the Government will not innovate; and if the Whigs, the Lords will not let them: and similarly Demosthenes' Dilemma—If AEschines joined, he is not consistent; and if he did not, he is not patriotic. Moreover, the propriety of recognising Dilemmas with negative major premises, follows from the above analysis of the Dilemma into a combination of Conditional Syllogisms, even if (as in Sec. 1 ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... after all—his is the best modern history of Greece in any language." But this was penned before Thirlwall's and Grote's histories were published. Lord Macaulay says of Mitford: "Whenever this historian mentions Demosthenes he violates all the laws of candor and even of decency: he weighs no authorities, he makes no allowances, he forgets the best authenticated facts in the history of the times, and the most generally recognized principles of human nature." ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... Parliament who gie us any credible portraiture of the facts." He looked up at the portrait of Oliver Cromwell behind him, and exclaimed with great vehemence: "I ha' gone doon to the verra bottom of Oliver's speeches, and naething in Demosthenes or in any other mon will compare wi' Cromwell in penetrating into the veritable core of the fact. Noo, Parliament, as they ca' it, is joost everlasting babblement and lies." We led him to discuss the labor question and the condition of the working classes. He said that the turmoil about labor ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... and we know that such were frequented by men not a whit less barbarous and bigoted than their modern representatives—nothing is a greater mistake than to suppose that the crowds of old Rome and Athens were more refined than our own ("Demosthenes, sir, was talking to an assembly of brutes"). For thirty centuries then, let us say, a deity has attracted the faithful to his shrine—Sant' Angelo has become a vacuum, as it were, which must be periodically filled up from the surrounding country. These pilgrimages ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... of liberty was the ruin of genuine oratory. Demosthenes flourished under a free government. The original goes on from this place to the end of ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... quite as well as if copyright had existed in ancient times. Of all the plays of Sophocles, the one to which the plan of my noble friend would have given the most scanty recompense would have been that wonderful masterpiece, the Oedipus at Colonos. Who would class together the Speech of Demosthenes against his Guardians, and the Speech for the Crown? My noble friend, indeed, would not class them together. For to the Speech against the Guardians he would give a copyright of near seventy years, and to the incomparable Speech for the Crown a copyright of less than half that length. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... applied himself in old age to the study of Greek literature, with which in youth he had no acquaintance, although he was not ignorant of the Greek language. Himself an historian and orator, the excellences of Demosthenes and Thucydides made a deep impression upon his kindred mind. But throughout life his conduct was guided by prejudices against classes and nations whose influence he deemed to be hostile to the simplicity of the old Roman character. ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... considered speech preserves its due proportions. It is recorded by tradition that Pericles, when called on by the people for a speech, frequently refused on the plea that he was unprepared. Similarly Demosthenes, his state-rival, when the Athenians called upon him for his advice, refused to give it, saying, "I am not prepared." But this you will say, perhaps, is mere tradition without authority. But in his ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... very fine voice out of a very poor one, no one, with an average voice, need be afraid of the platform, for time and training will greatly increase its range and resonance. It is said that the great Greek orator, Demosthenes, developed his magnificent voice by shouting above the roar of the sea near which he lived, but it is probable that he had a better voice to begin with than the tradition represents. In the absence ...
— The Art of Lecturing - Revised Edition • Arthur M. (Arthur Morrow) Lewis
... place so favourable to them as Athens. They were allowed a greater liberty of speech;[018] they had their convivial meetings, their amours, their hours of relaxation, pleasantry, and mirth; they were treated, in short, with so much humanity in general, as to occasion that observation of Demosthenes, in his second Philippick, "that the condition of a slave, at Athens, was preferable to that of a free citizen, in many other countries." But if any exception happened (which was sometimes the case) from the general treatment ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... city is natural to men, in all times, if they live or have lived in a metropolis noted for dignity or prowess. Caesar boasted of his native Rome; Lycurgus of Sparta; Virgil of Andes; Demosthenes of Athens; Archimedes of Syracuse; and Paul of Tarsus. I should suspect a man of base-heartedness who carried about with him no feeling of complacency in regard to the place of his residence; who gloried not in its arts, or arms, or behavior; who looked with ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... ancient geography, and Palm, editor of the same Greek Dictionary which, in the hands of Dr. Liddell, has reached its highest perfection. Then there was Funkhaenel, known beyond Germany by his edition of the Orations of Demosthenes, and his studies on Greek orators. We were indeed well off for masters, and most of them seemed to enjoy their work and to be fond of the boys. Our head master was very popular. He was a man of the old German type, powerfully built, with ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... given us a higher conception of Mr. Whittier's powers. We already valued as they deserved his force of faith, his earnestness, the glow and hurry of his thought, and the (if every third stump-speaker among us were not a Demosthenes, we should have said Demosthenean) eloquence of his verse; but here we meet him in a softer and more meditative mood. He seems a Berserker turned Carthusian. The half-mystic tone of "The Shadow and the Light" contrasts strangely, ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... glowing sentences as these: "Think of the many elements of thought a boy comes in contact with when he reads Caesar and Tacitus in succession, Herodotus and Homer, Thucydides and Aristotle". "See what is implied in having read Homer intelligently through, or Thucydides or Demosthenes; what light will have been shed on the essence and laws of human existence, on political society, on the relations of man to man, on human nature itself." There are various conceivable ways of counter-arguing these assertions, ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... all good to have him near you when you read his book. You may take an unfair advantage of him, and reject his book, because you find the writer personally antipathetic. Or he may take an unfair advantage of you, and control you by his personal fascination. You remember the critic of Demosthenes, who remarked to him of a certain oration, "When I first read your speech, I was convinced, just as the Athenians were; but when I read it again, I saw through its fallacies." "Yes," rejoined Demosthenes, "but the Athenians heard it only once." A book you read more than once: ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... typical man of that generation, both the victim and the hero of his time—a man who is almost a Titan in word and a pigmy in deed. He is eloquent as a young Demosthenes. An irresistible debater, he carries everything before him the moment he appears. But he fails ignominiously when put to the hard test of action. Yet he is not an impostor. His enthusiasm is contagious because it is sincere, and his eloquence is convincing ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... the murmur stilled, And sobs or laughter answered as it willed. Then did I know what spells of infinite choice, To rouse or lull, hath the sweet human voice; Then did I seem to seize the sudden clue To that grand troublous Life Antique—to view, Under the rockstand of Demosthenes, Mutable Athens ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... "Demosthenes was the son of a cutler," it began. "Horace was the son of a shopkeeper. Virgil's father was a porter. Cardinal Wolsey was the son of a butcher. Shakespeare the son of a wool-stapler." Followed the obscure parentage of such well-known persons as Milton, Napoleon, ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... out of the bag, and putting it on the table) A dish that's worthy of Demosthenes: ...
— La Boheme • Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica
... utter of the past It hath no tongue; and yet Demosthenes, Or Roman Tully, never stirred the breasts Of gaping citizens with subtler speech, Than shall this pile of stones the wayfarers. Who pass ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... was a most worthy and estimable squire, who resided in the neighbourhood. It was, of course, my business to prove that he was a despicable knave and a drivelling idiot. This I was engaged in doing at a public meeting in the town-hall. The Philippics of Demosthenes were milk and water in comparison with my denunciations—when just at the critical moment—as I was carrying conviction into the breasts of the stolid Britons who were listening to me, the gas flickered and went out. Three candles were brought in. I recommenced my thunder; but ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... in rational conduct, govern themselves by different principles, and tend towards a different result. It is as reasonable for a woman to concern herself respecting her personal attractions as it was for Demosthenes to cultivate his voice ...
— The First Essay on the Political Rights of Women • Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat Condorcet
... orators, Cicero and Demosthenes, and the Doctors of the Church, Saints Augustine, John Chrysostom, &c.—these all wrote, polished and elaborated—we come to the four names that have flung a deathless glory around the French pulpit, that created a ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... correctness, still without surmounting the zone of plant life; which in the Arts, sir, must extend higher than geographers concede. And yet I evoked laughter; from which I may conclude that my efforts amused. The great Demosthenes, sir, practised declamation with his mouth full of pebbles—for retaliatory ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... defeats sustained by the Athenians at that time, as in Thrace they were defeated by the Greeks of Chalkidike, but on that occasion Kalliades and Xenophon were acting as generals, while the defeat in AEtolia took place when Demosthenes was in command, and at Delium, where a thousand men were slain, they were led by Hippokrates. For the pestilence Perikles was chiefly blamed, because he shut up the country people in the city, where the change of habits and unusual diet produced disease among them. In all these disasters Nikias alone ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... Demosthenes (385-322 B.C.), especially famous for his Philippics, a series of twelve orations directed against Philip of Macedon, the tirano macedonio here alluded to. All these classical allusions seem to show that ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... speech I ever made in my life, and all that I can say is, that it was wonderfully successful. Demosthenes, and Cicero, and the Earl of Chatham, and Burke, and Mirabeau, all rolled into one, couldn't have been more successful. The mob rolled back. They looked ashamed. It was a word of sense spoken in a forcible manner. And that I take it is the essence ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... He knew that from the beginning of oratory the orator's spontaneity was for the silence and solitude of the closet where he mused his words to an imagined audience; that this was the use of orators from Demosthenes and Cicero up and down. He studied every word and syllable, and memorized them by a system of mnemonics peculiar to himself, consisting of an arbitrary arrangement of things on a table—knives, forks, salt-cellars; inkstands, pens, boxes, or whatever ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... members of the Lower House, the box in which the managers stood contained an array of speakers such as perhaps had not appeared together since the great age of Athenian eloquence. There were Fox and Sheridan, the English Demosthenes and the English Hyperides. There was Burke, ignorant, indeed, or negligent of the art of adapting his reasonings and his style to the capacity and taste of his hearers, but in amplitude of comprehension and richness of imagination superior to every ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... Demosthenes and Cicero Are doubtless stately names to hear, But that of good Amphitryon Sounds far more ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... oration which his predecessor pronounced on resigning office last autumn. * * * Mr. Carlyle is as simple and practical as his predecessor was dazzling and rhetorical. An ounce of mother wit, quotes the new Lord Rector, is worth a pound of clergy, and while he admires Demosthenes, he prefers the eloquence of Phocion. A little later he repeats his old doctrine on the virtue of silence, laments the fact that 'the finest nations in the world—the English and the American—are going all away into wind and tongue,' and protests that a man is not to ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... and monopolizes the term as light monopolizes the gem. This change is radical and astonishing, but discloses a change which has revolutionized the world. The old hero was conscienceless—a characteristic apparent in Greek civilization. What Greek patriot, whether Themistocles or Demosthenes, applied conscience to patriotism? They were as devoid of practical conscience as a Metope of the Parthenon was devoid of life. Patriotism was a transient sentiment. Demosthenes could become dumb in the presence of Philip's gold; and in a fit of pique over mistreatment at the ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... "Stutterin' Demosthenes! I didn't think there were enough horses in the world to move the thing! Madam, I have swiftly reached the conclusion that I am not a jerkline skinner. ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... in the Time of George the Third;" in 1845-6, "Lives of Men of Letters and Science who flourished in the Time of George the Third;" and he has since given to the world works on "The French Revolution," on "Instinct," "Demosthenes' Oration on the Crown," &c., &c. Collections of his Speeches and Forensic Arguments, and of his Critical Essays, as well as the other works above referred to, have been republished in Philadelphia, ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... Francis's Translation of Select Speeches from Demosthenes, which Lord Brougham naturally used a little in his own labors on that theme, there may be traced several peculiarities of diction that startle us in Junius. Sir P. had them from his father. And Lord Brougham ought not to have overlooked ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... afterwards that it was you I was laughing at.' As that failed of specific effect, 'You really are a little ridiculous,' he said again, with the edge in his voice, 'hanging on the lips of that Backfisch as if she were Demosthenes.' ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... period between the battle of Marathon and the battle of Chaeronea, and has left its monuments in such plays as the Persae and Eumeuides of AEschylus, the Antigone of Sophocles, the Clouds of Aristophanes, the History of Thucydides and the Orations of Demosthenes, its last embodiment being perhaps the famous oath of that orator on the souls of those who risked their lives at Marathon."—History of English ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch |
