"Fluency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as labour in vain, and shed tears of helpless despondency on the blank unfinished paper. I can write fast enough now. Am I better than I was then? Oh no! One truth discovered, one pang of regret at not being able to express it, is better than all the fluency and flippancy in the world. Would that I could go back to what I then was! Why can we not revive past times as we can revisit old places? If I had the quaint Muse of Sir Philip Sidney to assist me, I would write a Sonnet to the Road between Wem and Shrewsbury, and immortalize ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... good-natured enough, and met him more than half-way, their talk lapsed, and lapsed, and lapsed. The breaks became more numerous and lasted longer. Condy began to wonder if he was boring her. No sooner had the suspicion entered his head than it hardened into a certainty, and at once what little fluency and freshness he yet retained forsook him on the spot. What made matters worse was his recollection of other evenings that of late he had failed in precisely the same manner. Even while he struggled to save the situation Condy was wondering if they two were talked out—if they had lost ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... year of her speech at Kennett Square, on an evening in late February, she spoke in Concert Hall, Philadelphia, before an audience of about eight hundred persons. For two hours she spoke, without notes and with easy fluency. There were many well-known men and women there, who were delighted with what they were pleased to call a young girl's notable performance. But Anna herself was far from pleased with her speech. Afterward, on reaching ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... protesting against its extremes: above all, he was a literary Artist. Various opinions will continue to be held as to the value of his sermons; the excellence of his best workmanship is universally acknowledged. He was endowed with few of the qualities which secure a quick success—fluency, finish of style, the art of giving graceful utterance to current thought; he had in full measure the stronger if slower powers—sound knowledge, infinite industry, and the sympathetic insight of penetrative imagination—that ultimately hold the fastnesses of ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... would not see a physician at the worst, but have quacked as boldly as quacks treat others. I laughed at your idea of quality receipts, it came so apropos. There is not a man or woman here that is not a perfect old nurse, and who does not talk gruel and anatomy with equal fluency and ignorance. One instance shall serve: Madame de Bouzols, Marshal Berwick's daughter, assured me there was nothing so good for the gout, as to preserve the parings of my nails in a bottle close stopped. When I try any illustrious nostrum, I shall ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... on the slightest relevancy. The two modes interfere with each other's development; we cannot be great in both; while, for original force, the second is worth the most: it extracts and resets gems to tesselate our future structures; it constitutes depth as against fluency. ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... and trader life, but little trace of the simple young Canadian habitant was left in Pierre La Marche. He spoke mountain English and French patois with equal fluency. There was a decision of character about him that commanded the respect of his comrades. When the other trappers went to St. Louis, they used to drink and gamble away their hard-won dollars, few of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... whom it is difficult to avoid superlatives. He is not so conscious of is powers and so ambitious of effect as the white-eyed flycatcher, yet you will not be less astonished and delighted on hearing him. He possesses the fluency and copiousness for which the wrens are noted, and besides these qualities, and what is rarely found conjoined with them, a wild, sweet, rhythmical cadence that holds you entranced. I shall not soon forget that perfect June day, when, loitering ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... modestly in the background while the elder men were speaking, but when Mr. Harcourt appealed to him he took his part in the conversation quite readily, and expressed himself with the greatest ease and fluency; indeed, he not only ventured to contradict Mr. Harcourt, but he brought quite a respectable array of authorities to ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... perceptions to the immediate surface of life presented before her eyes. She spoke with animation of the country she had left, of Gerty's gayeties, of the wonderful brightness of the weather; but when by a more serious question he sought to penetrate below this fluency of words, he was repelled again by the impression of a mere hollow amiability in her manner. After a few casual remarks he left her with the most hopeless feeling he had known for months, and when, as the days went on, he endeavored ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... busy scene, and of objects and feelings succeeding each other with rapidity. We sometimes imagine ourselves earnestly speaking: and the topics we treat, and the words we employ, are supplied to us with extraordinary fluency. But the sort of vacancy and inoccupation of which I here treat, has a greater resemblance to the state of mind, without distinct and clearly unfolded ideas, which we experience before we sink into sleep. The mind is in reality in a condition, more properly ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... the hill-side, Willie Ferrars was holding the hand of the chestnut-curled, black-eyed fairy, 'little Awk,' who was impressing him by her fluency in two languages at once, according as she chattered to him in English, or in French to a picturesque peasant, her great ally, who was mowing his flowery crop of hay, glancing like an illumination, with an under-current of brilliant ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and to write a little. He taught us, too, the English Grammar. I was too young to profit much by his lessons in grammar, but Robert made some proficiency in it—a circumstance of considerable weight in the unfolding of his genius and character, as he soon became remarkable for the fluency and correctness of his expression, and read the few books that came in his way with much pleasure and improvement; for even then he was a reader when he ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... presence as if constantly expecting a blow; and this cowering was so evident in my bride's demeanour, that, after trying for a couple of hours to coax her into confidence and unreserved feminine fluency, I began to feel almost impatient. It was fortunate that, just as my tone involuntarily betrayed to her quick and watchful ear some shade of annoyance, just as I caught a furtive upward glance that seemed to ask what error she had committed and ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... I regard the truth as something sacred, to be handled with delicacy and discretion," began Kenny with bitter fluency. "I'm an unsuccessful parent with an over-supply of hair and teeth, afflicted with hairbrained, unquenchable youth. I'd be a perennial in the Land of the Young and could hobnob indefinitely with his Flighty Highness, the King of Youth. I'm forty-four years young and highly temperamentalized. I've ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... article in the Revue Rouge, who was talking to a compatriot in one of the tall windows. She seemed to accept the saturnine-looking men, the political women, who all spoke a language not their own, with an accent and a fluency, and a dangerous far-away smile and a display of questionable teeth all their own. She seemed to class the political with the pious, the obvious adventurer with the seeming fanatic. It was amazing to me to see her there, standing with her county family self-possession ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... richness; he could scarce have extracted all the honey out of 'Cherry Ripe'; he did not fear—he even ostentatiously displayed and seemed to revel in he shrillness of the instrument; but in fire, speed, precision, evenness, and fluency; in linked agility of jimmy—a technical expression, by your leave, answering to warblers on the bagpipe; and perhaps, above all, in that inspiring side-glance of the eye, with which he followed the effect and (as by a human appeal) eked out ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... an impediment to fluency of conversation, but after a moment Tommy mastered it and went on. "I say, Bicky, what's gone wrong ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... daughter of the Reverend James McVean, who was born near Johnstown, New York, in 1796. He was a graduate of Union College in 1813, and of Princeton in 1819. It was said that he spoke seven languages with fluency and that the chair of Greek at Princeton was always open to him. He came to Georgetown about 1820 and married Jane Maffitt Whann in 1828. For twenty years he was the principal of a classical seminary for boys in Georgetown, the same one founded by Dr. David Wiley. There a large number of young men ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... last, Haley appeared, booted and spurred, he was saluted with the bad tidings on every hand. The young imps on the verandah were not disappointed in their hope of hearing him "swar," which he did with a fluency and fervency which delighted them all amazingly, as they ducked and dodged hither and thither, to be out of the reach of his riding-whip; and, all whooping off together, they tumbled, in a pile of immeasurable giggle, on the withered turf under the verandah, where they ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Artemus Ward. The appropriator of the tale had a wide reputation in the West, and was exceedingly popular. Deservedly so, I think. He wrote some of the breeziest and funniest things I have ever read, and did his work with distinguished ease and fluency. His name has passed out of ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... the first day of her life; a pretty little babe even then, and by the time she reached two years of age, with her fair complexion, light curling hair, and bright expression, a prettier child was seldom seen. At that age she spoke with perfect distinctness, and with greater fluency and variety of language than is usual in so young a child. She comprehended and enjoyed any little stories that were told her. I remember her animated look of attention when the Rev. J. East told her about a little Mary who loved the Lord Jesus. We were all taught to read early ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... the beggars who haunt the sanctuary of their patron had gathered about us, and from playing Greek chorus now began to give us advice: "Yes, we would do well to go: the only carriage in Assisi, and excellent, admirable!" The numbers of these vagrants, their officiousness, their fluency, were bewildering. "But what are we to do?" asked my anxious companion. "Why, if it comes to the worst, walk down to the station and take the night-train back." He walked away whistling, and I composed myself to a visage of stone and turned my eyes to the sculptures ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... you received my note and last poem. I hope still more earnestly that you won't think I am putting my spite against your chastening hand into a presumptuous and troublesome fluency. ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... necessary, on such occasions, to confine him in irons. He was also represented as being extremely reserved, and refusing to answer any questions respecting himself, whether addressed to him by officers or seamen; that he spoke with fluency all European languages, on which account, he was extremely useful as an interpreter, both on the coast of Peru and Chili, and on that of Brazil; that he was a first rate swordsman, either with the small-sword or sabre, and a dead shot with ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... Lord Chesterfield's personal appearance by Lord Hervey, his portraits represent a handsome, though hard countenance, well-marked features, and his figure and air appear to have been elegant. With his commanding talents, his wonderful brilliancy and fluency of conversation, he would perhaps sometimes have been even tedious, had it not been for his invariable cheerfulness. He was always, as Lord Hervey says, 'present' in his company. Amongst the few friends ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... and amusing scenes of that day rose up like stars in his fancy; and against his lips, like water against a dam, rushed vigorous sentences from the great deeps opened in his soul by grief and change, and then leaped over in a beautiful, glittering flood. He wondered vaguely at his vehemence and fluency, at the silence in the hall, that these great people should listen to him at all. They heard him with astonishment, the leaders with interest, the Senator with tears; and Monsignor looked once towards ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... vivid sentiment that is natural to me has been variously handled by variety of forms, not so much higher or lower (for they were ever the highest of every kind), as differing in colour. First, a gay and sprightly fluency; afterwards, a lofty and penetrating subtlety; and lastly, a mature and constant vigour. Their names will better express them: Ovid, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... dramatic situation, that recurrent crescendo that Rossini brought into vogue, are now an integral part of every composition; those vocal fireworks result in a sort of babbling, chattering, vaporous mucic, of which the sole merit depends on the greater or less fluency of the singer ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... harmony of Spanish boleros and dances, shrieking out at intervals snatches of songs in time to the music, or twirling the instruments around their heads in a frenzy of excitement. At the tables, too, were more of the excited band, vociferating with almost superhuman fluency in various languages their exploits, pausing occasionally amid the hubbub to clink their glasses together, and then chattering and yelling on as before. In the centre of the apartment were some half dozen of the same ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... see the wondrous beast has flowed into the stable; and wine has flowed into Kakunai. For Kage there has been soft rice paste (mochi) and dumpling (dango) in unstinted quantities. The pastry cook has been overworked. Kage, now seize the opportunity. Speak with fluency and argument. Ah! If you had but the taste of this Kakunai! Wine would be an inspiration."—"Just try me!" chimed in the brute's voice. "Follow up the wine with rice cakes in syrup (shiruko). Otherwise Kage opens not his mouth, ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... had transformed the olive-skinned, dreamy-eyed child into a pale, long-legged girl who, although she had not lost her soft Southern voice, used the colloquialisms of street and playground with unpleasing fluency. True, she wore her shabby clothes with an air of grace, but contact with other children had developed her into a sharp, somewhat pert gamine, who was reputed quick at her lessons, but equally, and less meritoriously, quick with ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... symmetrical figure, and rather dark complexion. His conversation and deportment denoted the cultivation, delicacy, and graceful poise of an accomplished gentleman; and he delivered his English with a correctness and fluency very noticeably free from the peculiar spasmodic effort that marked his royal brother's exploits ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... vigorous health, so essential to himself and to the world, was corroborated by temperance and exercise. In his familiar discourse he was grave and modest; and if he was ignorant of the Arabic language, he spoke with fluency and elegance the Persian and Turkish idioms. It was his delight to converse with the learned on topics of history and science; and the amusement of his leisure hours was the game of chess, which he improved or ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... penetration and firmness, his manner rather abrupt, his gait quick, his look and general demeanour indicative of energy and decision. He wrote or dictated rapidly, and was fond of writing, was well read in military history, spoke French and Italian with fluency, was warm and steady in his friendships, and popular both with the inhabitants of the isle and the troops. His portrait, prefixed to Mr. Forsyth's ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... yet not unintelligent countenance. He read my note, asked me whether I had ever been in Paris, from which he had just returned; uttered a sentence or two in the worst possible French, congratulated me on the fluency of my answer, rang his bell, and handed me a small packet, endorsed—most secret and confidential. He then made the most awkward of bows; and our interview was at an end. I saw this man ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... acquired fluency and freedom in their language, and could make such application of its more nervous idioms as suited their case, the elder and more intelligent girls began rather to like me in their way: I noticed that ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... comprehend the grave, sweet wisdom of my father's suggested lessons,—tended to feed a passion for revery, in which all my faculties strained and struggled, as in the dreams that come when sleep is nearest waking. I had learned to read with ease, and to write with some fluency, and I already began to imitate, to reproduce. Strange tales akin to those I had gleaned from fairy-land, rude songs modelled from such verse-books as fell into my hands, began to mar the contents of marble-covered pages designed ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and they were the issues of familiar studies and long reflection. No such criticism, at once abundant in knowledge and in sympathetic insight, and distinguished by breadth of view, as well as by fluency, grace, and power of style, had been heard in America. They were listened to by large and enthusiastic audiences, and they did much to establish Lowell's position as the ablest of living critics of poetry, and, in many respects, as the foremost of ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... bow like water from the rock when Moses touched it. Tune followed tune with endless fluency and variety—polkas, galops, reels, jigs, quadrilles; fragments of airs from many lands—"The Fisher's Hornpipe," "Charlie is my Darling," "Marianne s'en va-t-au Moulin," "Petit Jean," "Jordan is a Hard Road to Trabbel," woven together ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... born December 9, 1594. He was the son of King Charles IX. of Sweden, and the grandson of the renowned Gustavus Vasa. He was a precocious child, and it is told (though it appears rather incredible) that at the age of twelve he spoke Latin, French, German, Dutch, and Italian with great fluency, besides having a superficial acquaintance with Polish and Russian. There can be no doubt, however, that he was well taught, and that he possessed a remarkable facility in acquiring languages. For all that, he was far from being a bookish boy. In riding, fencing, and all ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... then followed, all of whom spoke with great ease and fluency, and some in the most impassioned strains, working themselves and their audience up to the highest pitch of excitement, now shouting with frenzied violence till their eyes glared from their sockets, and the veins of their foreheads swelled almost to bursting as they spoke of war ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... discovery of America; a discussion about a tariff or a turnpike, summons from their remotest caves the adverse blasts of windy rhetoric; and on those great Serbonian bogs, known in political geography as constitutional questions, our ambitious fluency often begins with the general deluge, and ends with its own. It is thus that even the good sense and reason of some become wearisome, while the undisciplined fancy of others wanders into all the extravagances and the gaudy phraseology which distinguish our western orientalism.' A specimen of this ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... on a fine summer day two months after, the C—— let go her anchor in Gibraltar Harbour to await her orders. A tall, fine-looking man came aboard to solicit business of a legitimate character. He spoke English with fluency and an almost correct accent. The captain knew he had some business connection with the syndicate, but did not give him any reason to suppose he had this knowledge. He was cognisant of the characteristics of these people, and determined that his safety ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... two of our party understanding the dead language, but ignorant of the living, framed with great difficulty ponderous but by no means Ciceronian sentences, which they launched at our host, who replied with great fluency, showing that for conversational purposes, at least, his command of the language was much better than theirs. Being anxious to attend the early mass in the morning, and tired from our ride, we were soon shown to our rooms. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... of her best works. Want of means alone prevented her from executing her productions in marble. She was also familiar with the literature, not only of her own nation, but of the Latin, Spanish, Italian, and English languages, which she spoke with fluency and correctness, a rare accomplishment for a French woman. During the Empire and the Restoration she was intimate with Madame Recamier and Madame de Stael, and for penetration and readiness of mind and charm of manners was not unworthy to be named ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... a tender mother's care Wish better, to her favourite heir, Than wit, and fame, and lucky hours, A stock of health, and golden showers, 20 And graceful fluency of speech, Precepts ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... up?" At a staff meeting one morning he told the incident of an organization that had requested him to address them, and when he asked on what subject, the reply was "Oh! just talk!" He passed this off as a sort of reflection on his fluency of words. ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick
... I am an Englishman, Bimba improves the occasion to air all the Anglo-Saxon in his vocabulary for the edification of his friends, who marvel much at Bimba's fluency in a foreign tongue. But whether it is that my residence among Spanish-speaking people has demoralised my native lingo, or whether it is that Bimba's English has grown rusty—it is evident that at least three-fourths of his rapidly spoken words are as incomprehensible to me as they are to the ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... they do and say breathes the utmost frankness and sincerity. One circumstance which I cannot help remarking is, that after living so many years in this sequestered retreat, they speak French with equal fluency and purity. I was likewise much struck with the little resemblance there is between them. Lady Eleanor has a charming face, embellished with the glow of health; her whole appearance and manner announce vivacity and the most unaffected gaiety. Miss Ponsonby has a fine countenance, ...
— The "Ladies of Llangollen" • John Hicklin
... administers—in which it is necessary to know the Tagal, Pampanga, Ylocan, and Bisayan tongues, which are all different languages—each of those religious was a minister. [They were also asked to name] those who had sufficient fluency in the language to preach the gospel and declare the mysteries of the faith to the Indians; and whether there were any religious of their faction who were qualified to be preachers in this convent of Manila and in other ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... the balustrade which divided his sanctum from the main office, and listen with an astute expression, and just the glimmer of a smile, to the talk of the incipient millionaires, who bragged with such ease and fluency of this or that Bonanza. When all declared with one accord that "if Lame Gulch panned out as it was dead sure to do, Springtown would be the biggest little town in all creation," Hillerton's smile became slightly ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... inscrutable air of a man well-to-do in his affairs. I conceived he had been some while observing me from a distance, for a sparrow sat betwixt us quite unalarmed on the breech of a piece of cannon. So soon as our eyes met, he drew near and addressed me in the French language, which he spoke with a good fluency ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... musical structure of "Hansel und Gretel" in the Wagnerian manner, but has done it with so much fluency and deftness that a musical layman might listen to it from beginning to end without suspecting the fact, save from the occasional employment of what may be called Wagnerian idioms. The little work is replete with melodies which, though original, bear a strong ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... growth of metrical laws, and bud from them as unerringly and loosely as lilacs and roses on a bush, and take shapes as compact as the shapes of chestnuts and oranges, and melons and pears, and shed the perfume impalpable to form. The fluency and ornaments of the finest poems or music or orations or recitations, are not independent but dependent. All beauty comes from beautiful blood and a beautiful brain. If the greatnesses are in ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... sensation of furtive dislike within Artois increased, and he consciously determined not to yield to the charm of this younger man who was going to interfere in his life. Artois did not speak much English, but fortunately Delarey talked French fairly well, not with great fluency like Hermione, but enough to take a modest share in conversation, which was apparently all the share that he desired. Artois believed that he was no great talker. His eyes were more eager than was his tongue, and seemed to betoken a vivacity ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... usual kindness, prefaced the special matter of her application to Tom by making various inquiries about his mother and his own temporary change of situation. Thus far Tom was able to meet her questions with tolerable fluency, and no more embarrassment than was inseparable from the novelty of his situation. But, when she proceeded to question him about his knowledge of Captain Edward Nicholas, Tom faultered and betrayed the greatest confusion. The truth was that he knew him well, and was devotedly ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... Logan, the parson, not long after called to see him, and Burnside drew him into discussion on Theology. He was a great student of Bishop Butler's "Analogy," and was familiar with the writings of other theologians. The parson was amazed at the plain man's strong logical instincts, the keen fluency of his talk, and the fulness of his knowledge, and so enjoyed the conversation that he asked if he might hope to have a further opportunity of having another discussion. "Come any day you like except Sundays," said the unconventional old ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... consciousness. "We have no right whatever to speak of really unconscious Nature, but only of uncommunicative Nature, or of Nature whose mental processes go on at such different time-rates from ours that we cannot adjust ourselves to a live appreciation of their inward fluency, although our consciousness does make us aware of their presence. . . . Nature is thus a vast conscious process, whose relation to time varies vastly, but whose general characteristics are throughout the same. From this point of ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... Clare thought his fluency developed very quickly when he spoke to her mother. As he leaned forward she could not help seeing his face, and she looked at him closely, for the first time, and with some curiosity. He was handsome, and had a wonderfully frank and good-humoured ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... and restricted measures. The very metropolis of this lyric realm was Mitylene of Lesbos, where, amid the myrtle groves and temples, the sunlit silver of the fountains, the hyacinth gardens by a soft blue sea, Beauty and Love in their young warmth could fuse the most rigid forms to fluency. Here Sappho was the acknowledged queen of song—revered, studied, imitated, served, adored by a little court of attendants and disciples, loved and hymned by Alcaeus, and acclaimed by her fellow craftsmen throughout Greece as the wonder of her age. That all the tributes of her ...
— Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics • Bliss Carman
... was at the same time ambitious of appearing eminently godly; and used to frequent the beds of sick persons, to assist them with his prayers. On such occasions, he put to his mouth a long staff, which he usually carried, and expressed himself with uncommon energy and fluency, of which he was utterly incapable when the inspiring rod was withdrawn. This circumstance, the result, probably, of a trick or habit, appearing suspicious to the judges, the staff of the sorcerer ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... commended her liberal spirit, and she thought it high time to turn from this subject to the immediate one in hand. He had wished to discuss the plan with her, he said, before drawing it up, and in effect she had cogitated so much upon it that her ideas came forth with more than her usual fluency and sententiousness. The scheme was that an asylum should be opened under the superintendence of Mr. Mauleverer himself, in which young girls might be placed to learn handicrafts that might secure their livelihood, in especial, perhaps, wood engraving and printing. It might even be possible, ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... at his father's side. What need to describe the sacred joy of those first few minutes, even if it were possible? But unrestrained tenderness between man and man, rare as it is, and, as it were, unaccustomed to itself, has no passionate fluency, no metaphor or poetry, such as man pours out to woman, and woman again to man. All its language lies in the tones, the looks, the little half-concealed gestures, hints which pass themselves off modestly in jest; ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... us shelter?" said Kennedy, who spoke German with tolerable fluency. "We have lost our way, and cannot stay out ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... which he was distinguished in an eminent degree; not learning, which amazed his auditors; not sarcasm, of which he was a master; not wit, with which he brought down the house; not passion, which overwhelmed even such a man as Hastings; not fluency, with every word in the language at his command; not criticism, so searching that no sophistry could escape him; not philosophy, musical as Apollo's lyre,—but insight into great principles, the moral force of truth clearly stated ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... perceptions—was perfectly consistent with the best breeding. Indeed it was almost a proof of standards and touchstones other than the vulgar: he must be so sure the vulgar would be first on the ground. He wasn't a man of easy assurance, who chatted and gossiped with the fluency of a superficial nature; he was critical of himself as well as of others, and, exacting a good deal of others, to think them agreeable, probably took a rather ironical view of what he himself offered: a ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... these love-declarations and the fluency of their vows show them to be 'false as dicers' oaths,' mere verses of the moment, made to please a facile mistress. One long poem, which cannot be styled a Rispetto, but is rather a Canzone of the legitimate type, stands out ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... literal translation was less cultivated than at present. If something like the general sense could be decorated with the easy gracefulness of a practised poet; if the charms of metrical cadence and a pleasing fluency could be made consistent with a fair interpretation of the poet's meaning, his words were less jealously sought for, and those who could read so good a poem as Pope's Iliad had ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... her distractedly fond of the French operas, "Rose et Colas," "Annette et Lubin," etc., and she told us the story quite through of several I never heard of, always singing the sujet when she came to the airs, and comically changing parts in the duets. She speaks French with the same fluency as English, and every now and then, addressing herself to the S. S.—"Que je vous adore!"—"Ah, permettez que je me mette 'a vos pieds!" etc., with a dying languor that was equally laughable ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... laborious rules, but introduced him at once to words and phrases, while gradually he developed the grammatical structure of the language. The vigorous mind of Henry, grasping eagerly at intellectual culture, made rapid progress, and he was soon able to read and write both Latin and Greek with fluency, and ever retained the power of quoting, with great facility and appositeness, from the classical writers of Athens and of Rome. Even in these early days he seized upon the Greek phrase [Greek: "e nikan e apothanein"], to conquer or to die, ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... temperament, they are incapable of getting their thoughts and emotions under way; with the best will in the world, genuine warmth of feeling, minds stocked with information on all subjects, they are never fluent. The man with no ear must not hope to be a musician, nor the man with no fluency a letter-writer. Yet this is not all. You will find some at perfect ease in conversation who, touching pen to paper, exhibit the affected primness commonly ascribed to the maiden aunt. They have not learned that this is a place where words must speak for themselves without comment of ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... dedicated "To him to whom I owe all that in me is of worth,—Charles Liversage Spence." It was an attempt, as she explained to me, to return to the rational style and improving tone of Jane Austen, whose novels were sound educators as well as sources of amusement. From Miss Kingsley's natural fluency and sprightliness I expected something "racy," to quote Paul Barr, and I was disappointed to find "Moderation" dull and didactic. It was however heralded and published with a great flourish of trumpets; and Mr. Spence wrote a review ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... beautifully and his eyes helped so wonderfully, also the moon, which was half out and half in, that I stayed a little longer at the gate than I should, perhaps, and let him say things he shouldn't, but his fluency was so enjoyable I couldn't get away. After a while, however, when he had run down a little, I told him I didn't think it would be respectful to what might have been if I engaged myself to him, and that sixteen was too young to be engaged, ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher
... have a right to presume that Cleopatra, when she first appeared upon the stage of history as a girl of fourteen, was simply a very beautiful and accomplished Greek princess, who could speak several languages with fluency, as precocious as Elizabeth of England, skilled in music, conversant with history, and surrounded with eminent masters. She was only twenty-one when she was an object of attraction to Caesar, then in the midst of his triumphs. How remarkable must have been ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... it to account in the career of public service to which he devoted himself, and in which he has remained pure and unblemished in the midst of a corrupt class. From the first he was destined to the European legations, on account of his fluency in speaking and writing both English and French; and he is one of the few who have employed their time usefully in the capitals of the Old World. Flexible by nature, honourable by education, and expeditious in business, his services have been perfect, and above all, loyal ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... Las Cases ever let you know he could speak English; but this I can assure you, that he speaks it very near as well as Madame Bertrand, and can hold a conversation, or maintain an argument in it, with as much fluency as she can." ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland
... habit of appearing in the salon in a dinner-jacket, with a large flower in his button-hole and two or three fat diamonds on his chest. He would come along dragging his feet, would bow, make a joke, stand mournful; and this fluency of expression, and these gesticulations, gave him a manner halfway between woman ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... spoke French with remarkable fluency and a calm disregard of accent and inflections, was well pleased to entertain the French gentleman, and at her house I had the happiness to make his acquaintance, greatly, as it proved, to my future advantage. He ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... remember him, but it was especially the animal, the giver very dimly. I alluded to our excursion—her eyes sparkled, all the details, even the most minute incidents came back to her, and she related with the utmost fluency, in a rapture of delight, a picnic with breakfast in a hut built of branches and an extravagant quantity of wine—which ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... a cabinetmaker dressed in a decent brown suit, spoke with fluency, and at the same time with that accent of moderation and savoir faire which some Englishmen in all classes have obviously inherited from centuries of government by discussion. Lady Charlotte, whose Liberalism ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... medals, senior wranglerships, and double firsts, who have nightly sat down amid tumultuous cheering in debating societies, and can harangue with unruffled foreheads and unfaltering voice, from one end of a dinner-table to the other, who, on all occasions, have something to say, and can speak with fluency on what they know nothing about, no sooner rise in the House than their spells desert them. All their effrontery vanishes. Commonplace ideas are rendered even more uninteresting by monotonous delivery; and keenly alive as even boobies are ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... in the deck seams, and every one was drowsy, excepting Nelly, Marion, Tom, Fred, and myself. We were plotting mischief in the shadow of the Ariadne's anchors, right in the eyes of the ship. I forget the immediate cause of this piece of foolhardiness, but I remember Fred's hated fluency about 'dolphin-strikers,' 'martingales,' and what not; and, finally, my own assertion that I would touch the ship's forefoot, where we saw it gleaming below the glassy surface of the water, and Fred's mocking reply that I jolly well dared do no such a thing. Nelly's provocative ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... he expressed himself with more fluency and self-possession than are usually found in the first attempts of a public speaker, was not effective in addressing an unlettered crowd; for a crowd of this kind is all heart—and we know that Randal Leslie's heart was as small as heart ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... preached, rather than conversed. Few subjects were untouched by his eloquence; he spoke with equal ease on a difficult point in theology, and on the conformation of the sun. He lectured on politics, astronomy, chemistry, and anatomy with great fluency and equal incorrectness. In describing the circulation of the blood, he said, "It's a purely metaphysical subject;" and the answering remark, "It is the most purely physical," made him vehemently angry. He spoke of the sun by saying, ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... printed at Toledo in 1527, in the black letter, double columned, in folio? Enough to madden even our poet-laureat—for life! I should add, that these books are not thus carefully kept together for the sake of shew: for their owner is a fair good linguist, and can read the Spanish with tolerable fluency. Long may she ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... of the voice. The tongue, which many have supposed to be the most important organ in speaking, is not essential to sound. In several instances it has been removed, and the persons thus mutilated could speak with fluency. ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... scheva, the French eu, and e mute, are varieties of this easily-flowing, unmodulated, unstable, unsatisfactory sound. Like the o (aw), this sound u (uh) has a vacant, unfinished, and inorganic character as a sound, while yet, from its great fluency, its frequent occurrence tends, more than that of any other sound, to give to Language that conversational fluency, rapidity and ease which are especially characteristic of the French Tongue. From this same easy laxity of its nature all the other Vowel Sounds tend, in English ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... and was therefore an authority, said that he wouldn't come if there were any more. Pudge, as his nickname suggests, was plump. He was a round-faced, jovial youngster who learned everything with consummate ease, wrote with great fluency and sometimes real beauty, peered through his horn-rimmed spectacles amusedly at the world, and read every "smut" book that he could lay his hands on. His library of erotica was already famous throughout the college, ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... compliments the other bade him hold his tongue, and keep his noise to himself, and laid upon him many similar injunctions, with great fluency of ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... effect upon this serious gathering. Its verbose platitudes and pretentious inanities continue to be repeated, furnishing almost as good an antithesis to science and philosophy as Mrs. Eddy and her disciples. There is no lack of fluency and ingenuity in the use of language, and occasionally there are glimmering and flashes of common sense, but to wander through the first report of the present session, in pursuit of a correct philosophic idea, is as unprofitable ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... that every one can write on, just as it is stimulating to have a universal appetite like eating, or a universal accomplishment like walking. How many other subjects besides Woman have we on which the schoolboy and the sage can write with equal confidence, fluency, and approach to the truth? Possibly even women will regret that they are no longer the subject of universal comment. Who knows? A woman will forgive ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... to her, yet every one was joking her, making fun of her, but she was always equal to the occasion, giving back as bright replies as possible; you had not the least sense that she was aged. She quoted French in her stories with perfect ease and fluency, and had all the time such a kindly, lovely way. When she entered the room, before dinner, Mr. James, who was then talking with me, shook hands with her and said, "Good evening, you wonderful lady." After she had passed... he said, "She is the youngest person in London. She has the youngest ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... his ordinary acquaintance, and his dread of anything approaching to meanness or servility rendered his manner somewhat decided and hard. Nothing perhaps was more remarkable among his various attainments than the fluency, and precision, and originality of his language, when he spoke in company; more particularly as he aimed at purity in his turn of expression, and avoided, more successfully than most Scotchmen, the peculiarities ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... wedding-guests and outsiders, occupants of the houses and passers-by, for three or four hours in the day, as we shall see. The theme is always the same, but it is treated in an infinite variety of ways, and therein we see the instinct of mimicry, the abundance of grotesque ideas, the fluency, the quickness at repartee, and even the natural ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... with me into the country of the Blackfeet. At Edmonton only one man spoke the Blackfoot tongue, and the offer of high wages failed to induce him to attempt the journey. He was a splendid specimen of a half-breed; he had married a Blackfoot squaw, and spoke the difficult language with fluency; but he had lost nearly all his relations in the fatal plague, and his answer was full of quiet thought when asked ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... manners commended him; and, as soon as he could speak it to any degree, he began to read the Church Service every Sunday to the garrison, with a printed sermon from an English divine, until he had obtained sufficient fluency to preach extempore. At first, the place of meeting was a large room in an old building, but he afterwards persuaded them to build themselves a church capable of holding from 1,500 to 2,000. His facility ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... of the head, as if he had just collected further evidence in support of a theory which chronically surprised him. Then he turned away and looked down over the vast untrodden tract of Africa that lay beneath them. He kept his eyes fixed there, after the manner of a man who has no fluency ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... word, my Lords, the paragraphs are delightful. Observe, in this translation from the Persian there is all the fluency of an English paragraph well preserved. All I can say is, that these people of Benares feel their joy, comfort, and satisfaction in swearing to the falseness of Mr. Hastings's representation against himself. In spite of his own testimony, they say, "He secured happiness and joy to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... say something which they were certain would not expose them to the sword of Goliath; such was their anxiety for their fame when in the presence of Johnson. He was this evening in remarkable vigour of mind, and eager to exert himself in conversation, which he did with great readiness and fluency; but I am sorry to find that I have preserved but a small ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... not that 'Rhetoric made a Greek of me,' we should wish heartily that he had never been a rhetorician. It is the practice of talking on unreal cases, doubtless habitual with him up to forty, that must be responsible for the self- satisfied fluency, the too great length, and the perverse ingenuity, that sometimes excite our impatience. Naturally, it is in the pieces of inferior subject or design that this taint is most perceptible; and it must be forgiven in consideration of the fact that without ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... pray!" said he, in a loud but broken voice; and holding fast to the back of the chair, he poured out his soul and theirs before the Lord with all the fervour and the fluency of real feeling. There was no stumbling over misapplied texts now, no awkward objections in his throat, but only glowing Bible words of thankfulness and praise and joy. And every heart was uplifted and calm as they joined ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... was telling, according to all the changes of their fortune. This man was one of those who are called Improvisatori—persons who, in Italian towns, go about reciting verses or telling stories, which they are supposed to invent as they go on speaking. Some of these people speak with great fluency, and collect crowds round them in the public streets. When an Improvisatore sees the attention of his audience fixed, and when he comes to some very interesting part of his narrative, he dexterously ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... itself was, in regard to its composition, nothing more than an olla podrida of journalized letters. But he wrote "Lavengro," as it were, with his life's blood. It cost him the same agony that parts of "David Copperfield" cost Dickens, while he had none of Dickens's trained fluency or descriptive power. His lack of ease in writing often gives a wrong impression of insincerity or artificiality. Most of his apostrophes, even the most strained, are expressions of genuine feeling, which he was simply incapable of assimilating to the prevailing ...
— George Borrow - Times Literary Supplement, 10th July 1903 • Thomas Seccombe
... his business, which he seemed to think unworthy of his genius. He was a kind-hearted man, fond of company and frolics, in which he indulged himself freely, and much given to speeches and harangues, in which he had a good deal of fluency. In religion he professed to be a Universalist, holding to doctrines and opinions very different from those which my mother had instilled into me. He ridiculed those opinions, and argued against them, but without converting me to his way of thinking; ...
— Personal Memoir Of Daniel Drayton - For Four Years And Four Months A Prisoner (For Charity's Sake) In Washington Jail • Daniel Drayton
... them to be superlatively excellent: but never failed to give them such an air as should suit the project he had conceived; and allow of such an interpretation, in future, as would exculpate my opponents and criminate myself. But he effected this with such fluency, and so glossed over and coloured his intention that, like profound darkness, it was every where present, but neither could ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... in Nareda a young adventurer named De Boer. A handsome, swaggering fellow in his late twenties. He was a good talker; he spoke many languages; he could orate with fluency and skilful guile. His smile, his colorful personality, and his gift for oratory, made it easy for him to stir up dissatisfaction among ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... in a chair and buried his face in his hands. James began to talk, and as he talked his fluency came ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... came in almost immediately, was charming, speaking English with fluency, although he has never ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... rage, the Jewess kept her eyes steadily fixed upon Burrell, and held her hand within the bosom of her vest. When he paused, she addressed him at first in broken English, and then finding that she could not proceed with the eagerness and fluency her case required, ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... alike formidable to all his enemies (for he has no friends), and his vote can be only valuable when accompanied by his Silence. A disappointed man with a bad temper, he is endowed with considerable but not first-rate abilities, and has blundered on through life, remarkable only for a fluency, in which he has many rivals at the bar and in the Senate, and an eloquence in which he has several Superiors. 'Willing to wound and not afraid to strike, until he receives a blow in return, he has not yet betrayed any illegal ardour, or Irish alacrity, in accepting the defiances, and resenting ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... people depend entirety on other men for the sentiments and opinions by which, at any given moment, they shall be guided. Such people were sufficiently numerous at Rome and the other cities and provinces of Italy. Demagogues, therefore, who were not without ability and possessed fluency of speech, found it no very difficult task to fashion as they had a mind, for these classes of citizens, any amount of political principles and programmes. Those even who were fairly imbued with constitutional ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... however, or some other cause, seems to have drawn upon it such a degree of neglect as certainly cannot be praised. The students in those schools are often distinguished by their compositions in the learned languages, before they can speak or write their own with correctness, elegance, or fluency. A classical scholar too often has his English style to form, when he should communicate his acquisitions to the world. In some instances it is never formed with success; and the defects of his expression either deter ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... was no match for this sort of battle. She lost her control, and expressed herself of things in general, and the female in particular, with a fluency which quite astonished me, and I did my little best to back her up. In the midst of our joint address a gentleman appeared on the scene, whom I correctly divined to be Mr ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... a rich nation? For if not, and the ideas of a certain mode of distribution or operation in the riches, and of a certain degree of freedom in the people, enter into our idea of riches as attributed to a people, we shall have to define the degree of fluency, or circulative character which is essential to the nature of common wealth; and the degree of independence of action required in its possessors. Questions which look as if they would take time ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... for example, that I did wrong in joining in your plot against the innocent and most unfortunate Lelio. I told you so, you will remember, in the chapter which has just been concluded and though I do not know whether you perceived the ardour and fluency with which I expressed myself, I am still confident in my own heart that I spoke at that moment not only with the warm approval, but under the direct inspiration, of the author of the tale. I know, Spada, I tell you I know, that he loved me as I uttered these ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... members of the foreign colony—on account, probably, of his linguistic attainments. A foreigner with an imperfect knowledge of English naturally prefers a doctor to whom he can speak in his own tongue. Therefore, as Weirmarsh spoke French, Italian and Spanish with equal fluency, it was not surprising that he had formed quite a large ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... related with an air of remarkable frankness and truth. Although not justified in believing him, I nevertheless was astonished at his knowledge of the most minute facts connected with the revolution. He spoke with much natural fluency, and his conversation abounded with a variety of curious anecdotes. There was something also of the soldier in his expression, without showing any want of that sort of elegance resulting from an intercourse with the ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... or larkspur, or cornflower—aye, and even so blue art thou, my scriven, to think how far the written page falls short of the bright ecstasy of thy dream! In the bottle, what magnificence of unpenned stuff lies cool and liquid: what fluency of essay, what fonts of song. As the bottle glints, blue as a squill or a hyacinth, blue as the meadows of Elysium or the eyes of girls loved by young poets, meseems the racing pen might almost gain upon the thoughts that ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... its series of pictures in tempera by the brothers Giulio Cesare and Camillo Procaccini, men who, had they lived before the days of academics, might have done as well as any, except the few whom no academy can mould, but who, as it was, were carried away by fluency and facility. It is useless, however, to specify. There is not one of the many villages which can be seen from any rising ground in the neighbourhood, but what contains something that is picturesque and interesting, while the coup d'oeil, as a whole, is always equally striking, ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... archipelago, in an ocean of heather, sat a boy and a girl, the girl knitting, or, as she would have called it, weaving a stocking, and the boy, his eyes fixed on her face, talking with an animation that amounted almost to excitement. He had great fluency, and could have talked just as fast in good English as in the dialect in which he was now pouring out his ambitions—the broad ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... Boston. The name of this individual was John Peters.[349] He kept a grocery in Court Street, and was a man of handsome person. He wore a wig, carried a cane, and quite acted out 'the gentleman.' In an evil hour, he was accepted; and, though he was a man of talents and information,—writing with fluency and propriety, and, at one period, reading law,—he proved utterly unworthy of the distinguished woman who ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... or stands in the way of it, is a crime," said Miss Tewksbury, pressing her thin lips together firmly. She had once been on the platform in some of the little country towns of New England, and had made quite a reputation for pith and fluency. ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... that I have missed you, how I have longed for you," he went on, not speaking with the fluency for which some of his men friends envied him, but brokenly, as if the words were all inadequate to express his meaning. "All the way up to London I thought of you—I could not help thinking of you. All the time I was there, whether I was alone or in the midst of a mob ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... modesty to admit besides that I may be wrong and he, right, all through. But ... 'more intense than Sappho'!—more intense than intensity itself!—to think of that!—Also the word 'poetry' has a clear meaning to me, and all the fluency and facility and quick ear-catching of a tune which one can find in the world, do not answer ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... afraid, he became conscious that something in this young girl had silenced within him any inclination to gay effrontery, any talent for casual gallantry. Her lifted eyes, with their clear, half shy regard, had killed all fluency of tongue in him—slain utterly that light good-humour with which ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... sigh. It was at moments like these that she sometimes thought, with a slight reaction, of Romer. Romer was never capricious, never irritable, never trying. It was true that he rarely answered her except in monosyllables, but yet she knew that he delighted in and tacitly encouraged her fluency. He did not respond to every idea she expressed as Harry did (when Harry was in a good temper), but she knew she had no better audience. His extreme quietness might be admitted, occasionally, to cast a slight gloom, but ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... hundreds of titles produced by William McLeod Raine, Dane Coolidge, Eugene Cunningham,. B. M. Bower, the late Ernest Haycox, and other manufacturers of range novels who have known their West at firsthand, he would find, spottedly, a surprising amount of truth about land and men, a fluency in genuine cowboy lingo, and a respect for the code of conduct. Yet even these novels have added to the difficulty that serious writing in the Western field has in getting a hearing on literary, ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... that they were naturally unequal to it. I took the contrary side, perhaps a little for dispute's sake. He was naturally more eloquent, had a ready plenty of words; and sometimes, as I thought, bore me down more by his fluency than by the strength of his reasons. As we parted without settling the point, and were not to see one another again for some time, I sat down to put my arguments in writing, which I copied fair and ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... and scholarly, rough and independent in manner, who deserted the drawing-rooms of the great for saloons where he could move at his ease. There, also, Diderot would often delight his circle of admirers by the fluency and richness of his conversation, his friends extolling his disinterestedness and honesty, his enemies whispering about his cunning and selfishness. The novelist Duclos, with his keen power of penetrating human character, would move leisurely through the throng, picking ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... translation of the libretto. The German version, in which the opera had its first hearing in Munich six years before, is in a vastly different case—neither uncouth nor halting, even though it lacks the characteristic fluency essential to Italian opera buffa; yet no more than did the speech of most of the singers at the Metropolitan performance. The ripple and rattle of the Italian parlando seem to be possible ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel |
