"Peroration" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is a complete economy. There is not a note in the Ninth Sonata, for instance, that is not necessary, and does not seem to have great significance. Here everything is speech. The work actually develops out of the quavering first few bars. The vast resonant peroration only gathers into a single, furious, tragic pronouncement the material deployed in the body of the work. Scarcely ever has the binary form, the combat between two contradictory themes, been more essentialized. Scarcely ever has the prelude-form been reduced ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... Brougham and Canning; nay, ever since the day of Bright, Gladstone, Disraeli. Burke, as everyone knows, once brought down a Brummagem dagger and cast it on the floor of the House. Lord Chancellor Brougham in a peroration once knelt to the assembled peers, 'Here the noble lord inclined his knee to the Woolsack' is, if I remember, the stage direction in Hansard. Gentlemen, though in the course of destiny one or another of you may be called upon to speak daggers to the Treasury ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... peroration annoyed Thompson; the cheers that followed it annoyed him still more, and the subsequent shower of congratulations and vigorous slaps on the back threatened to move him to reply in a speech which might have been unintelligible ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 153, November 7, 1917 • Various
... that the address "was perfect and was closed by a peroration which brought his audience to their feet. We are not extravagant in the remark, that a political speech of greater power has rarely if ever been uttered in the Capital of New Hampshire. At its conclusion nine roof-raising cheers were given; ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... were evidently ready-made, and there was a patch on the side of his boot near the toe. And as he talked or listened to the others, he glanced now and again towards the lecture theatre door. They were discussing the depressing peroration of the lecture they had just heard, the last lecture it was in the introductory course in zoology. "From ovum to ovum is the goal of the higher vertebrata," the lecturer had said in his melancholy tones, and ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... not content with giving a very elaborate and interesting account of how the story of Tuna arose (i. 5-7). He keeps Tuna in hand, and, at the peroration of his vast work (ii. 831), warns us that, before we compare myths in unrelated languages, we need 'a very accurate knowledge of their dialects . . . to prevent accidents like that of Tuna mentioned in the beginning.' What accident? That I explained ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... kindly libel, that which represents us as a nation of orators. To the primitive Tory the Nationalist "agitator" appears in the guise of a stormy and intractable fiend, with futility in his soul, and a College Green peroration on his lips. The sources of this superstition are easily traced. The English have created the noblest literature in the world, and are candidly ashamed of the fact. In their view anybody who succeeds in words must necessarily fail in business. ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... dados. Really, the general ignorance that prevails among the working classes as to the clearest principles of political economy is something absolutely appalling, absolutely appalling.' And his Grace scribbled a note in his memorandum-book of Hilda's ready-made peroration, for fear he should forget its precise wording before he began to give the House the benefit of his views that night upon the political economy ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... carefully prepared his speech. He recited all the good things that the administration had done, hoped to do, tried to do, or wanted to do, and showed what a very respectable array it was. He counseled moderation and conservatism, and his peroration was a flowery panegyric of the "noble man whose hand is on the helm, guiding the grand old ship of state ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... half-melancholy dignity in the midst of the noisy fraternization. Even Padre Felipe, in a brief speech or exhortation proposing the health of their host, lent himself in his own tongue to this polite congeniality. "We have had also, my friends and brothers," he said in peroration, "a pleasing example of the compliment of imitation shown by our beloved Don Jose. No one who has known him during his friendly sojourn in this community but will be struck with the conviction that he has acquired that most marvelous faculty of your great American nation, the exhibition ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... metaphors and monsters, with so savage a virility that Jacob Kent was paralyzed. He shrank back, his arms lifted as though to ward off physical violence. So utterly unnerved was he that the other paused in the mid-swing of a gorgeous peroration and burst into ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... conclusion. While he is still in the midst of his proof, his allotment of time expires, and he is forced to sit down, leaving his speech hanging in the air. Such an experience is both awkward and disastrous; a skillful debater never allows it to happen. The peroration is the most important part of an argument, and on it the debater should lavish his greatest care. To omit it is almost the same as to have made no speech at all. As soon as the debater perceives that he ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... name and fame of Daniel Webster, and, to a less degree, with the career of Henry Clay. In the stress of the debate over slavery, many a Northerner with abolitionist convictions, like the majority of Southerners with slave-holding convictions, forgot the splendid peroration of Webster's "Reply to Hayne" and were willing to "let the Union go." But in the four tragic and heroic years that followed the firing upon the American flag at Fort Sumter the sentiment of Union was made sacred by such ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... variations. It was not a connection of domination on the one side and subordination on the other, where every concomitant circumstance might tempt the one to overbearing arrogance, while the other could not escape a feeling of humiliation. It was rather—to quote the eloquent peroration of Pitt, when, in the preceding year, he first introduced the subject to the consideration of the House of Commons—"a free and voluntary association of two great countries, joining for their common benefit in one empire, where each retained its proportionate weight ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... the work be of God, it will stand. Then he reminded the Council that outside of the Church no one can be saved, and as though he had not talked enough, he came back once more to ceremonies. At last he concluded with a neat peroration and rose up to ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... garb held the next group together. He was in some trouble, owing to a pig-headed and quarrelsome Scotchman in the front rank, who objected to each statement that fell from his lips, thus interfering seriously with the effect of his peroration. If the Irishman had been more convincing, I suppose the crowd would have silenced the scoffer, for these little matters of discipline are always attended to by the audience; but the Scotchman's points were too well taken; he was so trenchant, in fact, ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... diggin' of 'em in with a will, and with conwictions respectin' the futur' keepin' of 'em safe. That, Mr. Lorry," said Mr. Cruncher, wiping his forehead with his arm, as an announcement that he had arrived at the peroration of his discourse, "is wot I would respectfully offer to you, sir. A man don't see all this here a goin' on dreadful round him, in the way of Subjects without heads, dear me, plentiful enough fur to bring the price down to porterage and hardly that, without havin' ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... splendid—a large orchestra, the magnificent organ, eight harps, and eight trumpets sounding their flourishes in the organ loft, and a large chorus for the peroration of such splendor that it was compared to the set pieces at the close of a display of fireworks. The reception and ovation which the crowd gave the great poet, who rarely appeared in public, was beyond description. The honeyed incense of the organ, harps ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... to the Indian camp, and were guided to the principal lodge by Pee-eye-em. Here a great council was held, and the proposed attempt at negotiations for peace with their ancient enemies fully discussed. While they were thus engaged, and just as Pee-eye-em had, in the energy of an enthusiastic peroration, burst the blue surtout almost up to the collar, a distant rushing sound was heard, which caused every man to spring to his feet, run out of the tent, ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... and taken with them the fire of Mr. Lloyd George's passion. The laboured peroration about the hills of his ancestors, repeated to the point of the ridiculous, is all now left of that fervid period. He has ceased to be a prophet. Surrounded by second-rate people, and choosing for his intimate friends mainly the new rich, and now thoroughly liking the game of politics ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... peroration runs thus:—"Wherever we are taught to know and understand the real nature of the world in which our lot is cast, there is a testimony, however humble, to the name of the Father; wherever we are taught to know and admire the highest and best of ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... a number of times to escape the cameras, and a red-haired youth was expatiating upon the glories of American scientific achievement, concluding with a peroration that called forth an exclamation from ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... wave their hats, and dance in astonishment at their own perseverance and success. So it is with Pope in his peroration to the Dunciad, and in many other of the serious and really eloquent passages of his works. They ARE eloquent, brilliant, in composition faultless; but the intense self-consciousness of their author, and their visible ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... another characteristic peroration. She did not listen, but stood with warning hand up, a small but plucky-looking traffic policeman, till he ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... been content to appear as ordinary human beings, or animals, or even in fancy costume. The Swiss divine Bullinger, after a lengthy and elaborately learned argument as to the particular day in the week of creation upon which it was most probable that God called the angels into being, says, by way of peroration, "Let us lead a holy and angel-like life in the sight of God's holy angels. Let us watch, lest he that transfigureth and turneth himself into an angel of light under a good show and likeness deceive us."[1] They even went so far, according to Cranmer,[2] as to appear ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... Have I done what Christ would have me do?" The light that went up in her was a light by which her deeds looked doubtful. If she had failed in this, in charity? She pondered the problem, while the Canon approached, gloriously, his peroration. ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... our fathers, who respected him for the sake of his: but he had the misfortune to be stopped in his career. For being tried by the Mamilian law, as a party concerned in the conspiracy to support Jugurtha, though he exerted all his abilities to defend himself, he was unhappily cast. His peroration, or, as it is often called, his epilogue, is still extant; and was so much in repute, when we were school-boys, that we used to learn it by heart: he was the first member of the Sacerdotal College, since the building of Rome, who was publicly tried and condemned. ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... old pewter communion service imported from England in 1769, she supposed? And it was so important, in a wealthy materialistic age, to set the example of reverting to the old ideals, the family and the homestead, and so on. This peroration usually carried her half-way back across the hall, leaving the girls to return ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... in this formidable arsenal, and that your vigorous metaphysics falls not into the hands of some sophist of the market-place, who might discuss the question in the presence of a starving audience: we should have pillage for conclusion and peroration. ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... was light, I amused myself pretty well, by strolling along the banks of the river, and enunciating a splendid speech for the pannel in an imaginary case of murder. However, before I reached the peroration, (which was to consist of a vivid picture of the deathbed of a despairing jury-man, conscience-stricken by the recollection of an erroneous verdict,) the shades of evening began to close in; the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... home a little after twelve, ate his dinner, and fell to work on his manuscript. By half-past three he had finished all but the peroration. Gilbart prided himself on his perorations; and knowing from experience that it helped him to ideas and phrases he caught up his hat and went ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... "diuturnity in monuments," and false ambition. Our old friends of humanistic learning—Cyrus, Alexander, Caesar—meet us in these frothy paragraphs. Cambyses, Xerxes, Artaxerxes, Darius, are thrown in to make the gruel of rhetoric "thick and slab." The whole epistle ends in a long-drawn peroration of invective against "that excrement in human shape," who had had the ill-luck, by pretence to scholarship, by big gains from the Papal treasury, by something in his manners alien from the easy-going customs of the Roman Court, to rouse ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... his fourth cup (they were small cups, the set we use for company), and he was entirely soothed and moderated in his opinions about everything, and actually clapped his hands at Dr. Butterfield's peroration. Even Miss Stinger was in a glow, for she had drank large quantities of the fragrant beverage while piping hot, and in her delight she took Givemfits' arm, and asked him if he ever meant to get married. ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... in the provinces, and it would be difficult for the advocates of Coercion to find a more appropriate or a more characteristic peroration for ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... and after his peroration on woman's rights he said: "When they take our girls, as they threaten, away from the coeducational colleges, what will follow? What ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... religious, they say, and charitable, but his early education unfortunately was neglected. His sermons never hang well together; he frequently omits the exordium, and often winds them up without the peroration at all. Then he mispronounces shockingly, and is full of false quantities. It was only on last Sunday that he laid the accent on i in Dalilah. Such a man's sermons, I am sorry to say, can do any educated man little good. Her's a note, my love, from Mrs. Fletcher. I met the servant ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... turned and gazed boldly into the carriage of the president. His arm remained extended aloft as if to sustain his peroration. The president was listening, aghast, at this remarkable address of welcome. He was sunk back upon his seat, trembling with rage and dumb surprise, his dark hands ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... Henry Irving's position seemed to be confirmed and ratified by all that took place before his departure. The dinners he had to eat, the speeches he had to make and to listen to, were really terrific! One speech at the Rabelais Club had, it was said, the longest peroration on record. It was this kind of thing: "Where is our friend Irving going? He is not going like Nares to face the perils of the far North. He is not going like A—— to face something else. He is not going to China," etc.—and so on. After about the hundredth ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... danger, or the feelings of humanity. [28] On the first news of the murder of Pertinax, he assembled his troops, painted in the most lively colors the crime, the insolence, and the weakness of the Praetorian guards, and animated the legions to arms and to revenge. He concluded (and the peroration was thought extremely eloquent) with promising every soldier about four hundred pounds; an honorable donative, double in value to the infamous bribe with which Julian had purchased the empire. [29] The acclamations ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... not," he said, a little put out, for his speech had been carefully studied, though he had forgotten the peroration, "that His Majesty is Will Jackson. I mean, Will Jackson was His ...
— The Gold that Glitters - The Mistakes of Jenny Lavender • Emily Sarah Holt
... body; and the Federal forces being closely pressed at the time, he was left to die on the field in Confederate hands. As the event became known through the country, thousands of generous hearts, in the South as well as in the North, recalled the peroration of his father's reply to Hayne, and bitterly regretted that, when his eyes were turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, it had been his unhappy lot to "see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union, ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. I, No. 3, March, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... good of educating these people? Stuffing their heads with a lot of useless nonsense. And then talking about land nationalisation. The two don't go together, sir. If you educate a man he's not going to go and sit down on a bare field and look for worms. . . ." He paused in his peroration as he caught ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... attorney fidgeted, puffed out his cheeks, blew out his breath, twirled his thumbs as I twirled his figures, and grated his teeth as he looked at me sideways, while I concluded a little peroration I had got up for him, which was merely to this effect, that if railway companies yielded to such extortionate demands as were made by this attorney on behalf of the poulterers' company, they would not leave their shareholders a feather ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... Boys got back to the room the orator was winding up his speech. He finished with an eloquent peroration, and his hearers broke into applause as the last word ...
— Army Boys on German Soil • Homer Randall
... Bishop Horsley once produced an effect which would hardly be possible except under circumstances of great public excitement. When he preached in Westminster Abbey, before the House of Lords, on January 30, 1793, the whole assembly, stirred by his peroration, rose with one impulse, and remained standing till ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... then detailed the circumstances of the assault I had made upon his character, forgetting to mention, however, the provocation he had given by the fraudulent charge for greasing. Having finished his peroration, he proceeded to call witnesses to the fact of the abuse, and cited Hans Felder, our postilion, to be first examined. Hans, who had heard every syllable that passed, was not, however, so manageable a subject as the plaintiff expected to find him. Whether, like Toby Allspice in the play, he 'made ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... sentence by dwelling on a single syllable—of striking a balance in a top-heavy period by lengthening out a word into a melancholy quaver. Withal, they never cease to hope. Even at last, even when they have exhausted all their ideas, even after the would-be peroration has finally refused to perorate, they remain upon their feet with their mouths open, waiting for some further inspiration, like Chaucer's widow's son in the ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... inexpedient to begin a book with the peroration. Children are spared the physic of the moral till they have sucked in the sweetness of the tale. Adults may draw from a book what of good there is in it, and close it before reaching the chapter usually devoted to fine writing. But the case of Haydn is extraordinary. ...
— Haydn • John F. Runciman
... to the twenty-five paintings exhibited by Vernet, in 1765, that Diderot penned the foregoing lines, which formed the peroration to an eloquent and lengthy eulogium, such as it rarely falls to a painter to be the subject of. Among other things, the great critic there says: "There is hardly a single one of his compositions which any ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... period in the proceedings, if the Learned Judge slumbered only fitfully during Mr. Dreadful's final peroration, it might have been owing to the spasmodic explosions of that Counsel's voice; but there could be no doubt that the Learned Judge slept peacefully during the earlier portions of Mr. Gentle Gammon's final effort ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... conclusions. So to-day she closed her little Oxford Bible and laid it on the richly inlaid table before her, deliberately depositing her handkerchief upon it and looking about before she made her peroration, which was in something like the following words, delivered with impressive solemnity in ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... probably kept this peroration and this threat for the last stroke. I was firmer before these threats ...
— Camille (La Dame aux Camilias) • Alexandre Dumas, fils
... security, and the still unanimating repose of public prosperity. The preacher found them all in the French Revolution. This inspires a juvenile warmth through his whole frame. His enthusiasm kindles as he advances; and when he arrives at his peroration, it is in a full blaze. Then viewing, from the Pisgah of his pulpit, the free, moral, happy, flourishing, and glorious state of France, as in a bird-eye landscape of a promised land, he breaks out into the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... worried my father more than electoral anxieties. Jorian wrote, 'My best wishes to you. Be careful of your heads. The habit of the Anglo-Saxon is to conclude his burlesques with a play of cudgels. It is his notion of freedom, and at once the exordium and peroration of his eloquence. Spare me the Sussex accent on ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... him: and most strangely have those words of his peroration planted themselves in my brain, when, rising to a passion of prophecy, he shouted: 'And as in the one case, transgression was followed by catastrophe swift and universal, so, in the other, I warn the entire race to look out thenceforth for nothing from ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... This peroration evoked loud applause. "I love her, and shall, and will," shouted each man. And again they honoured in wine her image. Sir John Marraby uttered a cry familiar in the hunting-field. The MacQuern contributed a few bars ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... pathetic peroration of M, de Seze was read to the King, the evening before it was delivered to the Assembly, "I have to request of you," he said, "to make a painful sacrifice; strike out of your pleading the peroration. It is enough for me to appear before such judges, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Address of Governor Everett before me. To insert the whole of it would be inconvenient; but I do most unequivocally deny this, as I must, I am afraid, to many of Miss Martineau's assertions. To prove, in this one instance alone, the very contrary to what she states, I will merely quote the peroration of ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... string. The lawyer gave him his permission very readily, and informed him in confidence that sometimes he set Scaramouch (that was the doll's name) dancing while he was studying his briefs, and that, only the night before, he had modulated on Scaramouch's movements the peroration of his speech in defence of a woman falsely accused of poisoning her husband. The Pere Magitot seized the string with trembling fingers and saw Scaramouch throw his limbs wildly about under his ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... Jemmy Three had ever made, and the peroration surprised himself as much as it did Judith. He put up his hand and cleared something away from his eyes—it couldn't have been scales, for he left the ...
— Judith Lynn - A Story of the Sea • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... entomology or horticulture, or in the writings of the already isolated systematists (This isolation of the systematists is the one most melancholy sequela of Darwinism. It seems an irony that we should read in the peroration to the "Origin" that when the Darwinian view is accepted "Systematists will be able to pursue their labours as at present; but they will not be incessantly haunted by the shadowy doubt whether this or ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... This isolation of the systematists is the one most melancholy sequela of Darwinism. It seems an irony that we should read in the peroration to the Origin that when the Darwinian view is accepted "Systematists will be able to pursue their labours as at present; but they will not be incessantly haunted by the shadowy doubt whether this or that form be a true species. This, I feel sure, and I speak ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... music grew louder and the orchestra approached the peroration of the preface of the coming solo, the violinist raised his head slowly. Suddenly his eyes met the gaze of the solitary occupant of the second proscenium box. His face flushed. He looked inquiringly, almost appealingly, at her. She sat ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... peroration the Prime Minister warned his hearers that a nation was known by its soul and not by its ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 18th, 1920 • Various
... "that no subject should speak so audaciously to his prince:" he "commended" Henry's intended marriage, "thereby to establish his seed in his seat for ever;" and having won, as he supposed, his facile victory, he proceeded with his peroration, addressing his absent antagonist. "I speak to thee, Peto," he exclaimed, "to thee, Peto, which makest thyself Micaiah, that thou mayest speak evil of kings; but now art not to be found, being fled for fear and shame, as unable to answer my argument." In the royal chapel at Greenwich ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... Sabbath of January, 1681, but no attempt was made to detain the unruly member, and the door of grace was left open to the very last, quite remarkable leniency when it is remembered that 1680 was the year of the Sanquhar Declaration and Airds Moss, and that the peroration of Mr Spence's protest would have done credit to Cuddy Headrigg's mother. "For these reasons specially, and many others I need not mention now, I, the said William Spence, protest against the sentence aforesaid, ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... Francisco. The speech of the occasion was that of Colonel Baker, the orator who went to Oregon, and in a single campaign magnetized the Oregonians so completely by his splendid eloquence that, passing by all their old party leaders, they sent him to the United States Senate. No one who heard Baker's peroration that night will ever forget it. His dark eyes blazed, his form dilated, and his voice was like ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... before had anything so wonderful as these results of skill, patience, and prolonged research been exhibited, even in that great and historic home of science. As Professor Lowell remarked in a fine peroration: "They exhibited something of the advance recently achieved in our knowledge of solar science; on the other hand, they constituted in themselves the beginning of a set of records in which the future of the planet might be confronted with its achieved ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... concert is that all the movements were too long, and that, no matter how clever the development may be, it spoils even the most pleasing and interesting subject if there is too much of it. Handel knew when to stop and, when he meant stopping, he stopped much as a horse stops, with little, if any, peroration. Who can doubt that he kept his movements short because he knew that the worst music within a reasonable compass is better than the best which is made tiresome by being spun out unduly? I only know one concerted piece of Handel's which I think too long, I mean the overture to Saul, but I have ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... a half were passed. The peroration was upon the speaker's tongue, closing with an exhortation to old men and old women, young men and maidens, each in his kind and degree, to come as the waves come when navies are stranded—to come ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... said, "their zeal for the interests of the College has for some time past chiefly manifested itself in their efforts and schemes for dislodging me from Burnside and in their proceedings they seem to have adopted the favourite peroration of Cicero which may be freely translated thus, 'and Bethune must be ousted.'" He added: "I can afford to forgive the Board for any hard constructions they put upon my proceedings; they may be necessary for their own justification." To ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... Dr. Bushnell, in August, 1852, delivered an address upon "Religious Music" before the Beethoven Society of Yale College at the opening of their new organ. In the peroration of this address, after remarking upon the great assistance which Christian feeling receives in the praise of God from "things without life giving sound," he goes on to say,—"Let me suggest, also, in this connection, the very great importance ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... speaker sits down, you feel that you have been listening to a real man, and not to an actor; his sentiments have a wholesome earth-smell in them, though, very likely, this apparent naturalness is as much an art as what we expend in rounding a sentence or elaborating a peroration. ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... into the commission of the second crime, liver-complaint, which material laws condemn as 433:24 homicide. For this crime Mortal Man is sentenced to be tortured until he is dead. "May God have mercy on your soul," is the Judge's solemn peroration. ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... unsatisfactorily through it, and, intent on his improvement, Edna climbed upon a stump and delivered his speech for him, gesticulating and emphasizing just as she wished him to do. As the last words of the peroration passed her lips, and while she stood on the stump, a sudden clapping of hands startled her, and Gordon Leigh's cheerful ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... minute, Mr. Carpenter," I cried as he neared the end of his peroration and was, I fancied, about to slam up the receiver. "Don't you remember me? I was at Leland with you and used to work in your laboratory in ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... its intrinsic heroism over the ramparts of tongue-tied shyness. That was what he had essayed this morning, aided and abetted by the tuneful fragrance of June in Virginia. The stage had been set—his courage had mounted—and before he had reached his magnificent peroration, she had laughed at him. Ye Gods! She had affronted the erstwhile Confederate States of America ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... into the causes of this strange repetition, 'he shall not pass his hours in vulgar speculations.' We, however, must decline the task, and will content ourselves with a few characteristic phrases from his peroration. 'The quincunx of heaven,' he says, referring to the Hyades, 'runs low, and 'tis time to close the five parts of knowledge. We are unwilling to spin out our awaking thoughts into the phantasms of sleep, which often continueth ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... meritorious to utter such eloquent denunciations as for a century past had not been heard at the bar of the criminal court of Orleans. Oh, if you had been there to see how they were moved, those poor gentlemen of the jury!—moved almost to tears, when, in a fine and most sonorous peroration, he set before them the fearful picture of society shaken to its foundations—the whole community about to enter upon dissolution, immediately upon the acquittal of Peter Leroux! If you had only heard the courteous ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456 - Volume 18, New Series, September 25, 1852 • Various
... the implacable legitimist this time fought openly, contrary to his custom, and hurled against the infidels, in the form of a peroration, ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... hard" he said in his peroration, "no circumstances are so difficult, no duties so conflicting, no temptations so mighty, as not to be the means to lead us to God if we ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... the ladies' committee a general idea of it. Just see, Maggie, if I know the peroration. 'In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, these are the reasonable demands of every intelligent Englishwoman'— I had better say British woman—'and I am proud to nail them to ...
— What Every Woman Knows • James M. Barrie
... considered the conclusion of Bodin's book, De Republica, the accumulative grandeur of which is even heightened in Knolles's admirable English translation, as the finest peroration to be found in any work on government. Those who are fortunate enough to possess a copy of his interdicted Examination of Religions, the title of which is, "Colloquium heptaplomeres de abditis sublimium rerum arcanis, libris 6 digestum," ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... your peroration!' she said, repressing a yawn; the wish that she might never see me again was ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... been to find out what was choking the life out of Hunston. His open countenance, democratic manners, and pungent speech produced a most favorable impression, and it was undeniable that, for the moment at least, he had the house with him when he swung into his peroration. ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... speaker carried his thread of luminous speech, without ever losing his audience for an instant. At every point he addressed himself to the smoothing of difficulties, to the propitiation of fears; and when, after the long and masterly handling of detail, he came to his peroration, to the bantering of capitalist terrors, to the vindication of the workman's claim to fix the conditions of his labour, and to the vision lightly and simply touched of the regenerate working home of the future, inhabited by free men, dedicated to something beyond the first brutal necessities ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... relatives, or friends, read prohibited or dangerous books; if she orders masses to be said for the souls of the dead; and other things of a similar kind. Then follows an exhortation to show the turpitude of the sins confessed and the necessity of repentance, and the priest concludes this peroration by the imposition of penance or other expiatory act. Here the confessor has an open field before him, in which he shows the fecundity of his imagination,—prayers, paying for masses, fasting, alms, ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... did not suspect herself of being a fool. On the contrary, she felt highly satisfied with her speech, and may be said to have hugged its peroration. Her son flushed slightly and bit his lip, giving the old lady time for a corollary in a subdued ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... utterly incapable of uttering a single word. Her head rested on her brother's shoulder, and she clasped one of his hands tightly between her own. Orso, though secretly somewhat annoyed by her peroration, was too much alarmed to reprove her, even in the mildest fashion. He was silently waiting till the nervous attack from which she seemed to be suffering should have passed, when there was a knock at the door, and Saveria, ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... governor's proclamation in that way. He praised their fortitude in the struggle, and after the editor had interpreted stiffs by te tamaiti aroha e, which means poor children, and scabs by iore, which means rats, and had ended with a peroration that brought many cries of "Maitai! Good!" Kelly took up his accordion, and began to play the sacred ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... had expressed his obligations to him on the subject, he did not doubt that if the matter came before the House of Lords, he would bestow the degree of attention on it which his lordship bestowed on all matters of importance. Working himself us as he drew near his peroration, he broke out into a blaze of eloquence which put the Lord Mayor into some fear on account of the Thames, of which he is official conservator. "The thing cannot last!" he exclaimed; "and if you don't, in less than two years from this time, say ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... said I. "Good night, dearest; think of—" The slam of the street door in my face spoiled the peroration, and I turned ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... a statement of the "six dangers" to which the country is exposed, an appeal to the Assembly to act more reasonably and competently, and then the following peroration: ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... at the tavern, and they opened the door to him; a workman who was speaking delayed his peroration, and they waited until Caesar had reached the table and got seated. The atmosphere was suffocating. Everything was closed so that the Civil Guards would not see the light through the windows and suspect that there was a meeting being held there. The workmen were, for the most part, masons, ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... leaven of the Pharisees. In his discourse he showed that fermented liquor and leaven had much in common, that beer was at the present day "put away" during Passover by the strict Jews; and in a moving peroration he urged his dear brethren, "and more especially those amongst us who are poor in this world's goods," to beware indeed of that evil leaven which was sapping the manhood of our nation. Mrs. Dixon ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... as upon finance and military tactics, not to speak of social intercourse and sport. And yet his early youth and late age are hidden from us. Like the models of Greek eloquence, which begin with tame obviousness, rise into dignity, fire, pathos, and then close softly, without sounding peroration, so Xenophon comes upon us, an educated young man, looking out for something to do; we lose him in the autumn of his life, when he was driven from the fair retreat which the old man had hoped would be ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... this peroration was inconceivable. Here was the first word of hope publicly uttered since the debacle! People in the galleries who had seen Cavour usually silenced by clamour and howls heard the applause with astonishment, and then joined ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... dinner to run a conversation like a Sunday-school excursion, with stops to pick flowers; but in the office your sentences should be the shortest distance possible between periods. Cut out the introduction and the peroration, and stop before you get to secondly. You've got to preach short sermons to catch sinners; and deacons won't believe they need long ones themselves. Give fools the first and women the last word. The meat's always in the ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... They explain this passage of Paul only concerning the Law of Moses, and they add that the monks observe all things for Christ's sake, and endeavor to live the nearer the Gospel in order to merit eternal life. And they add a horrible peroration in these words: Wherefore those things are wicked that are here alleged against monasticism. O Christ, how long wilt Thou bear these reproaches with which our enemies treat Thy Gospel? We have said in the Confession that the remission of sins is received freely for Christ's ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... his peroration he repeated his demand, using always—that they might see he was acquainted with their local argot—using always, I say, the word which the Inspector had given him in England long ago—the short, adhesive word which, by itself, surprises even ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... and prayer. This will prepare the young editor for the surprise and consequent temptation to profanity which in a few years he may experience when he finds that the name of the Deity in his double-leaded editorial is spelled with a little "g," and the peroration of the article is locked up between a death notice and the advertisement of a patent moustache coaxer, which is to follow pure reading matter every day in the week and occupy the top ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... coincide more fully with the older view that use and disuse were the main purveyors of variations, or conflict more fatally with his own subsequent distinctive feature. Moreover, as I showed in my last work on evolution, {22} in the peroration to his "Origin of Species," he discarded his accidental variations altogether, and fell back on the older theory, so that the body of the "Origin of Species" supports one theory, and the peroration another that differs from it toto coelo. ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... rapidity I skip about from place to place, And still unwearied with the race; But you—how lazily you creep, And stop to breathe at every step! Whenever I your bulk survey, I pity—" What he meant to say, Or with what kind of peroration He'd have concluded his oration, I cannot tell; for, all at once, There pounced upon the learned dunce An ambushed Cat; who, very soon, Experimentally made known, That between Mice and Elephants There is ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... reputation. It must have been both pregnant and copious; declamatory in form, but fresh and substantial in matter; excursive in arrangement, but forcible and pointed in intention. No doubt, if he was a sage, he was sometimes a sage in a frenzy. He would wind up a peroration by dashing his nightcap passionately against the wall, by way of clencher to the argument. Yet this impetuosity, this turn for declamation, did not hinder his talk from being directly instructive. Younger men of the ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... Sultan in his discourse to fall upon the audacious infidel and smite him hip and thigh. He reminded the Padishah that, in the dungeons of the Knights, true believers were languishing; that on the rowers' benches of the galleys of "the Religion" Moslems were being flogged like dogs. In a furious peroration he concluded: "It is only thy invincible sword which can shatter the chains of these unfortunates, whose cries are rising to heaven and afflicting the ears of the Prophet of God: the son is demanding his father, the wife her husband and her children. All, therefore, wait upon thee, ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... those discords of narration,[hk] Which may be names at Moscow, into rhyme; Yet there were several worth commemoration, As e'er was virgin of a nuptial chime; Soft words, too, fitted for the peroration Of Londonderry drawling against time, Ending in "ischskin," "ousckin," "iffskchy," "ouski," Of whom ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... youngster coldly, gravely told of his surgical work, and it seemed as if he were drawing an inexorable steel edge across the nerves of his terrified hearers. He watched the impression spread, and then sprang at his peroration with lightning-footed tact. "We English are like barbarians who have been transferred from a chilly land to a kind of hot-house existence. We are too secure; no predatory creature can harm us, ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... whether it was the one that made the original Hyena laugh I have not been able to ascertain. It is a joke that has appeared in modified form many times since. Even that illustrious pundit, Senator Chauncey M. DeMagog uses it as his most effective peroration at this season's public banquets. I heard him myself get it off at The Egyptian Society Dinner last month, as well as at the Annual Banquet of The Sons and Daughters of the Pre-Adamite Evolution, the month before, changing the answer, however, to "when it's a jar"—which I personally do not ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... The fervid peroration overbalanced the audience, and from all sides except the platform applause warmed the poet's ears. He resumed his seat, and as he did so he automatically drew out a match and a cigar, and lit the one with the other. Instantly the applause dwindled, ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... enjoyment of sixty years' security, and the still unanimating repose of public prosperity. The preacher found them all in the French revolution. This inspires a juvenile warmth through his whole frame. His enthusiasm kindles as he advances; and when he arrives at his peroration it is in a full blaze. Then viewing, from the Pisgah of his pulpit, the free, moral, happy, flourishing, and glorious state of France, as in a bird-eye landscape of a promised land, ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... evening of the day on which he left the city. The dread of the fever was descanted on with copious and rude eloquence. I supposed her eloquence on this theme to be designed to apologize to me for her refusing entrance to the sick man. The peroration, however, was different. Wallace was admitted, and suitable ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... the murderous Syrians?" continued Jasher, with yet fiercer action; "who but Abishai, the brave, the faithful, he who had denounced the viper, and had sought, but in vain, to crush it—it was he who fell at last a victim to its treacherous sting!" Jasher ended his peroration with a hissing sound from between his clinched teeth, and the caldron of human feelings around him began, as it were, to seethe and boil. Fanaticism stops not to weigh evidence, or to listen to reason. Joab could hardly make his voice heard amidst the ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... itself at last free." At the moment of the declaration of war Wilson was still the man of peace, and the war upon which the nation was embarking was, in his mind, a war to ensure peace. To such a task of peace and liberation, he concluded in a peroration reminiscent of Lincoln and Luther, "we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... are "above average" I have tried to say what I thought ought to be said in the volume itself, and there is no need of a "peroration with much circumstance" about them. It is a long way—a perfect maze of long ways leading through the most different countries of thought and feeling—from Atala dying in the wilderness to Chiffon doing exquisitely balanced justice to herself and the Jesuit, by allowing that ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... which by design did not touch on the smallpox scare, was received with respect, if not with enthusiasm. I ended it, however, with an eloquent peroration, wherein I begged the people of Dunchester to stand fast by those great principles of individual freedom, which for twenty years it had been my pride and privilege to inculcate; and on the morrow, in spite of all arguments that might be used to dissuade them, fearlessly to give their suffrages ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... himself the recital, in which, as we may suppose, the populace played a great part and Monsieur's people none, and in his peroration he said: ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Mr. Congreve, in a peroration which seems especially intended to catch the attention of his readers, indignantly challenges me to admire M. Comte's life, "to deny that it has a marked character of grandeur about it;" and he uses some very strong language because ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... become very gloomy during this peroration. He made no attempt at reply, but gathered up his papers, and, gnawing his fringe of moustache, walked out of the room, while Eustace provoked me by volunteering explanations that Prometesky was no friend of his, only of Harold's. ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... orators. One moment he could be as debonair as Beau Brummel, the next as forbidding and repellent as a modern Caesar. He was consistently the best-dressed public man in Canada. A misfitting coat to him was as grievous as a misplaced verb in a peroration. He superficially loved many things. Life was to him, even apart from politics, a gracious delight. He knew how to pose, to feign affability and to be sincere. With more culture Laurier would have been the most exquisite dilettante of his age. But he ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... first degree, and this has led him into the commission of the second crime, liver-complaint, which material laws condemn as 433:24 homicide. For this crime Mortal Man is sentenced to be tortured until he is dead. "May God have mercy on your soul," is the Judge's solemn peroration. ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... speech from that Cabinet minister, that he was put out, and had much to "hum" and to "ha," before he could recover the thread of his speech. Then he went on, with unbroken but lethargic fluency; read long extracts from the public papers, inflicted a whole page from the blue-book, wound up with a peroration of respectable platitudes, glanced at the clock, saw that he had completed the hour which a Cabinet minister who does not profess to be oratorical is expected to speak, but not to ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... not venture to put himself in competition with him. This bringing him into notice, he collected an audience of his own, and it was his custom to open the question proposed for debate, sitting; but as he warmed with the subject, he stood up, and made his peroration in that posture. His declamations were of different kinds; sometimes brilliant and polished, at others, that they might not be thought to savour too much of the schools, he curtailed them of all ornament, and used only familiar ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... pathetically the timid and shrinking class of women for whom he pleaded, insisted that the legislature never had refused women anything they asked, declared the suffrage advocates represented only an "insignificant minority,"[98] and closed with the eloquent peroration: "I vote, not because I am intelligent, not because I am moral, but solely and simply because I am a man." Rev. Clarence A. Walworth, Hon. Matthew Hale and J. Newton Fiero were the other speakers. The first individual did not believe in universal manhood suffrage and could not favor ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... orations were always of course the most eagerly welcomed, such, for example, as the learned Serjeant's final allusion to Pickwick's coming before the court that day with "his heartless tomato-sauce and warming-pans," and the sonorous close of the impassioned peroration with the plaintiff's appeal to "an enlightened, a high-minded, a right-feeling, a conscientious, a dispassionate, a sympathising, a contemplative jury of her civilised countrymen." It was after this, however, that the true fun of the Reading began with the examination and cross-examination ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... friend Dodge," returned the master, observing that the other paused to note the effect of his peroration, and using a familiarity in his address that the acquaintance of the former passage had taught him was not misapplied; "if not, friend Dodge, you have made a capital mistake in getting on board of her, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... Fourth and Seventh symphonies; and, in modern literature, those of the first movements of Brahms's First Symphony and of Tchaikowsky's Fifth. It also became customary to prolong the end of the movement by what is termed a Coda; the same tendency being operative that is found in the peroration to a speech or in the spire of a cathedral, i.e., the human instinct to end whatever we attempt as impressively and completely as possible. This Coda, which, in Haydn and Mozart, was often a mere iteration of trite chords—a ceasing to go—was so expanded by Beethoven that it was the real glory ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... illustrations in giving my own experience, but I do assure you that both in courts and Parliament, and even to mobs, I have never made so much play (to use a very modern phrase) as when I was almost translating from the Greek. I composed the peroration of my speech for the Queen, in the Lords, after reading and repeating Demosthenes for three or ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... pages with the very marrow of his thought. But in weighing out a lecture he was as punctilious as Portia about the pound of flesh. His utterance was deliberate and spaced with not infrequent slight delays. Exactly at the end of the hour the lecture stopped. Suddenly, abruptly, but quietly, without peroration of any sort, always with "a gentle shock of mild surprise" to the unprepared listener. He had weighed out the full measure to ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... day held their generation steady and pointed the way to duty and victory. As he read his face became alight, his dark eyes glowed, his voice thrilled under the noble passion of the words he read. Then he came to this stately peroration: ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... rather disappointing. He handled the preliminary topics of horrors of slavery and colonial obstinacy and misconduct with all the vigour and success that might have been expected, but when he came to his measure he failed to show how it was to be put in operation and to work. The peroration and eulogy on Wilberforce were very brilliant. Howick had previously announced his intention of opposing Stanley, and accordingly he did so in a speech of considerable vehemence which lasted two hours. He ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... with his Austrians is waiting an opportunity to give battle to our king. Thus, as I said, I can safely exhort the good citizens of Berlin to defend themselves heroically against the infamous spoiler. How beautifully this peroration sounds: 'People of Berlin! rather let yourselves be buried under the ruins of your burning city than submit to an incendiary enemy!'—Incendiary," repeated he thoughtfully, "that is rather a strong expression, ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... before had been put into words. She spoke on that day for all the women of the world, for the wives of the present and future generations. The audience sat breathless and, at the close of the following peroration, burst into ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper |
