"Extemporaneous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... before us. We were seldom able to copy our own compositions, and have employed an amanuensis for the last six years. Every work that we have had published has been extemporaneously written; and out of fifty lectures and sermons that we have delivered the last year, forty-four have been extemporaneous. We have distributed many of our unpublished manuscripts; loaned to one of our youngest students, R. K————y, between three and four hundred pages, of which we were sole author—giving him liberty to copy but not to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and the sonnet itself was excellent and spirited. Excellent I mean in its general effect, as an improvvisazione:—how it would stand the test of cool criticism I cannot tell; nor is that any thing to the purpose: these extemporaneous effusions ought to be judged merely as what they are,—not as finished or correct poems, but as wonderful exercises of tenacious memory, ready wit, and that quickness of imagination which ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... of the speeches were written out beforehand in the study, the manuscripts served as a means of further publicity afterwards. The great extemporaneous speakers, on the other hand, were attended by shorthand writers. We must further remember that not all the orations which have come down to us were intended to be actually delivered. The panegyric, for example, of the elder Beroaldus on Lodovico il Moro was presented to him in manuscript. ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... manly person and clear, musical voice gives to an orator. He spoke but rarely and never without great preparation. He was by no means a ready debater, and prized too much his reputation to hazard anything in an impromptu, extemporaneous address. He listened, for weeks, to King, Otis, and others who debated the question, and came at last prepared in one great effort to answer and demolish the arguments of these men. Those who listened to that wonderful effort of forensic power will never forget his reply to King, when he charged ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... short, made so fearful a picture, that Marianne gave up the child's life at once, and has taken to her bed. I have endeavored all I could to quiet her, by telling her that the scarlet-fever story was probably an extemporaneous work of fiction, got up to gratify the Hibernian anger at Ann, and that it wasn't in the least worth while to believe one thing more than another from the fact that any of the tribe said it. But she refuses to be comforted, and is so Utopian ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... us indulge his fastidious taste by calling it an autoschediastic combat, to which, surely, there can be no such objection. And as the manner of the combat is autoschediastic or extemporaneous, and to meet a hurried occasion, so is the reader to understand that the object of our disputation is not the learned, but the unlearned student; and our purpose, not so much to discontent the one with his painful acquisitions, as to console the other under what, upon ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... man, with a button nose, and a double chin that ran all the way round and lapped over at the back. But, though his appearance was deceiving, anybody could tell with half an eye that he excelled in extemporaneous conversation. Right off he began shadow-boxing and sparring about, waiting for an opening. In a minute he ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... intervals, and playing upon each string. The little light which has been thrown on the condition of instrumental music at the time renders it doubtful whether any bowed instrument was used, other than for the purpose of rendering a rude extemporaneous accompaniment to ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... set down for them. Indeed, Shakespeare himself cannot be absolved from the imputation of making mere caricatures of his merry Andrews, unless we suppose, what is very probable, that his compositions have been much interpolated with the extemporaneous jokes of the players. To this folly, allusions are made in a clever satire, entitled, "Pasquils Mad-cappe, throwne at the Corruptions ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... principal speaker of the day. Perhaps few men possess such power over an audience. The manuscript part of his address is herewith given. But the most enthusiastic parts of his speech and the most effective with the audience were his extemporaneous effusions ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... refining influence, a stronger faith, and a brighter realization of heavenly truths. And there are mediums, too, from whose lips distil a lofty eloquence and a remarkable wisdom upon any or all subjects proposed, with a flow of extemporaneous poetry or of heavenly music which has never been equaled under such ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various
... excerpt, excommunicate, excoriate, excruciate, execrable, exegesis, exemplary, exhalation, exhilarate, exigency, exodus, exonerate, exorbitant, exotic, expectorate, expeditious, explicable, explicit, expunge, extant, extemporaneous, extrinsic. ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... question would be proposed. Usually the topics for debate and the principal disputants were selected a week in advance. Much time was given to preparation, to the complete neglect of our studies. The debates were extemporaneous, and after the preliminary speeches, the question was open to all. The topics of debate were generally on the social and political issues of the time; anti-slavery, temperance, women's rights; these questions often led into religious and theological controversies. Not who was ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... them scurried like children let out of school, around behind the set of screens that made an extemporaneous dressing-room, and began changing in a mad scramble, hoping to get away and to get their dinners eaten soon enough to enable them to see the whole bill at a movie show before ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... heard Mr. Clay deliver his celebrated reply to Josiah Quincy—a venerable statesman who still survives;—and he ever spoke of it as admirable in its way. In the same spirit he spoke of Col. Benton's extemporaneous reply to Mr. Webster in the debate on the bank veto, delivered late at night in the Senate, as surpassing any thing of the kind that he had ever heard, or that the speaker ever reached before or after. He said he thought a speech of Webster's delivered during the ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... speech that I did not notice the flight of Ascyltos, and while I was pacing the gardens, engulfed in this flood-tide of rhetoric, a large crowd of students came out upon the portico, having, it would seem, just listened to an extemporaneous declamation, of I know not whom, the speaker of which had taken exceptions to the speech of Agamemnon. While, therefore, the young men were making fun of the sentiments of this last speaker, and criticizing the arrangement of the whole speech, I seized the ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... had her dedicatory poem. Some years later, when, it seems, she wanted to go to Harrogate, and hoped in vain for the escort of a Mr. Best, Jane presented her with a copy of doggerel—and probably almost extemporaneous—verses:— ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... the truths offered to him. It would be a useful exercise for the instructor, he thought, to elucidate obscure phenomena and complicated structures by words only, assisting himself, perhaps, occasionally, by extemporaneous drawings. Such a course would inspire the scholar with deference for his teacher, and confidence in his own ability to acquire a similar grasp of the subject. While there is certainly some truth in this opinion, it would not be difficult, perhaps, to invalidate its general force. Why ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... audience—those he had mastered long ago—but his manuscript, studying it in the sense in which actors use the word, learning it, that is, by heart laboriously, that the words might come from his lips as much like an extemporaneous utterance as possible, consistently with not being mistaken for one, which, were it true as the Bible, would have no merit in the ears of those who counted themselves judges of the craft. The kind of thing suited Fergus, whose highest idea of life ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... devotional services. It was on this very account that the friends of strong government did like it. They wished to curtail this liberty, which, however, they called license, and which they thought made mischief. In extemporaneous prayers, it is often easy to see that the speaker is aiming much more directly at producing a salutary effect on the minds of his hearers than at simply presenting petitions to the Supreme Being. ...
— Charles I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... songs the Etruscans probably furnished the spectacle, all that which addresses itself to the eye, while the habits of Italian rural life supplied the sarcastic humor and ready extemporaneous gibe, which are the essence of the true comic. The next advance in point of art must be attributed to the Oscans, whose entertainments were most popular among the Italian nations. They represented in broad caricature national peculiarities. ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... this place nearly a mile broad, to Castro Pol, the first town in the Asturias. I now mounted the factious mare, whilst Antonio followed on my own horse. Martin led the way, exchanging jests with every person whom he met on the road, and occasionally enlivening the way with an extemporaneous song. ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... picturesque allusions and eloquent phrases. He {254} could, when the subject called for it, break suddenly into thrilling invective. [Sidenote: 1725—Pulteney] But he had some of the defects of the extemporaneous orator. His eloquence, his wit, his epigrams often carried him away from his better judgment. He frequently committed himself to some opinion which was not really his, and was led far from his proper position in the pursuit of some paradox or by the charm of some fantastic ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... shifting, slippery; spasmodic; instantaneous, momentaneous[obs3]. temporal, temporary; provisional, provisory; deciduous; perishable, mortal, precarious, unstable, insecure; impermanent. brief, quick, brisk, extemporaneous, summary; pressed for time &c. (haste) 684; sudden, momentary &c. (instantaneous) 113. Adv. temporarily &c. adj.; pro tempore[Lat]; for the moment, for a time; awhile, en passant[Fr], in transitu[Lat]; in a short time; soon &c. (early) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... minutes of singing, the preaching occupied the whole time. There were two clergymen, Ernest and Charles, alternately incumbent and curate. The chief duty of the curate for the time being was to lend his aid to the rescue of his incumbent from any difficulty in which the extemporaneous character of his discourse might ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... Delivery of Sermons. By HENRY. J. RIPLEY, Professor in Newton Theological Institution, Including Professor Ware's Hints on Extemporaneous Preaching. ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... the hymns were being sung, I felt I must try to do something more, although the language seemed to defy me. I never experienced such an inward burning to speak before, and therefore I determined to try an extemporaneous address in Tsimshean. The Lord helped me: a great stillness prevailed, and, I think, a great deal was understood of what I said. I told them of our condition, the pity and love of God, the death of the Son of God on our ...
— Metlakahtla and the North Pacific Mission • Eugene Stock
... corduroy road, and furnish a camp-mess in the minimum of time out of material that was perhaps but a moment before sniffing or pecking at its rim. A very little blaze sets the piece of cold fat swimming, and the black cavity soon glows and splutters with extemporaneous content. But what dreams howl about the camp-fires, what hideous scalping-humor creeps from the leathery supper into the limbs and blood of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... Revolution—such as "that people," "that loyal and respectable people," "this enlightened and spirited people," etc., etc. The speakers who made use of this colloquial phraseology concerning the inhabitants of a distant continent, in the freedom of extemporaneous debate, were not framing their ideas with the exactitude of a didactic treatise, and could little have foreseen the extraordinary use to be made of their expressions nearly a century afterward, in sustaining a theory contradictory to history as well as to ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... Oh, no; it doesn't hurt. I've been composing extemporaneous verse like that for fifteen years. Philosophy and rhyme are my forte. I've had some narrow escapes to be sure, but I've never been deserted by the muses. Now, as to my Sunday evening call. It seemed to be somewhat of a necessity, as I understand that the evidence will be closed in the Burnham ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... a good chance. Look squarely at the person whose name you wish to recall, avoiding doubt as to your ability to recall it; for doubt is itself a distraction. Put yourself back into the time when you formerly used this person's name. In extemporaneous speaking, go ahead confidently, avoid worry and self-consciousness, and, full of your subject, trust to your ideas to recall the words as needed. Once carried away with his subject, a speaker may surprise himself by his ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... Duche, unexpectedly to everybody, struck out into an extemporaneous prayer, which filled the bosom of every man present. I never heard a better prayer, or one so well pronounced. Dr. Cooper himself never prayed with such fervor, ardor, earnestness, and pathos, and in language so eloquent and sublime, for America, ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... sung as solos. They are all extemporaneous and for the most part legendary. The language is archaic and difficult for an outsider to understand. The singing is a kind of declamation, with long slurs, frequent staccatos, and abrupt endings. Of course, there are war songs that demand ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... inhabitants of Canada in respect to it, than in the words of an address which he delivered to the York Pioneers at Queenston, in July, 1875, on the occasion of the anniversary celebration of the battle of Lundy's Lane. The address (which was entirely extemporaneous in the delivery) is here reproduced, as reported in the newspapers at ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... plan of the sermon, and then began to choose his illustrations and fill in. On Sunday he would rise in his pulpit, a man six feet two and a half inches, and in a rich, clear, deliberate voice commence an extemporaneous discourse. His presence was majestic. With a massive head, much like that of John Adams, a strong brown eye that flashed as he moved on in his discourse, a voice sweet and well modulated, but at times rising to tones of thunder, graceful, ornate, forcible, and dramatic, ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... of them can take almost any idea you suggest off hand, and on the instant sing you a song that plays up that idea. These persons are the modern incarnations of the old time minstrels who wandered over the land and sang extemporaneous ditties in praise of their host for their dinners. But, remarkable as the gift is, many of these modern minstrels cannot for the life of them put into their songs that something which makes their hearers whistle it long after they leave. The whistle maker is the one who can rhyme ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page |
