Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Declaim   Listen
verb
Declaim  v. i.  (past & past part. declaimed; pres. part. declaiming)  
1.
To speak rhetorically; to make a formal speech or oration; to harangue; specifically, to recite a speech, poem, etc., in public as a rhetorical exercise; to practice public speaking; as, the students declaim twice a week.
2.
To speak for rhetorical display; to speak pompously, noisily, or theatrically; to make an empty speech; to rehearse trite arguments in debate; to rant. "Grenville seized the opportunity to declaim on the repeal of the stamp act."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Declaim" Quotes from Famous Books



... volume I would often declaim for her benefit what has always been to me the most beautiful poem in the world, possibly because it was the first I read for myself, or else because it is so intimately associated with those happy days. Under an engraving of a wild ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al

... generated that domestic government which sways public opinion, and uses the national passions as the instruments of its will. It would be utterly impossible, if there were no exasperating distinctions amongst us, to create any artificial causes of discontent. Let men declaim for a century, and if they have no real grievance their harangues will be empty sound and idle air. But when what they tell the people is true—when they are sustained by substantial facts, effects are produced of which what has taken place at this election is only ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin

... indulgently, "don't try to flatter your old father. You are just like your dear mother. Run along now, I must take up this new work. What a relief not to have to declaim my lines! I shall only move my lips, and who knows but, in time, my ...
— The Moving Picture Girls - First Appearances in Photo Dramas • Laura Lee Hope

... it was followed by Patrick Smyth, Member for Tipperary, and by Joseph Cowen, Member for Newcastle. Both were real rhetoricians. Both could compose long discourses, couched in the most flowery English, interlarded with anecdotes and decorated with quotations; and both could declaim these compositions with grace and vigour. But the effect was very droll. They would work, say, all Tuesday and Wednesday at a point which had been exhausted by discussion on Monday, and then on Thursday they would burst into the debate just whenever they could catch the Speaker's ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell

... Meadowbank, who wearying of the dry statement of a case made by Mr. Thomas W. Blair, broke in with the remark: "Declaim, sir! why don't you declaim? Speak to me as if I ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton

... describes to you, in the liveliest manner, and with all the appearance of unfeigned sympathy, the miseries and devastations occasioned by his countrymen among the unoffending inhabitants of foreign states, proceeds, in the same breath, to declaim with enthusiastic admiration on the untarnished honour of the French arms, and the great mind of the Emperor. A Parisian tradesman, who goes to the theatre that he may see the representation of integrity of conduct, conjugal affection, and domestic happiness, and applauds with ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison

... with the exception of seventeen in my pocket. Afterwards I dined with the Rais, and he persuaded me to return to The Mountains, en route for Fezzan. It is reported, the Touaricks have gone out to meet the Shânbah. I tell the Governor, as well as the people, whenever they begin to exaggerate or declaim upon the dangers of travelling in The Desert "Rubbee, mout wahad (God! death is but once)." This has usually the effect of stopping their mouths. Were I not to adopt this Moslemite style of address and reply, I should be ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... decadence we must regret. The orchestra has greatly developed, choral singing is common in all countries, and the spirit of the times has changed. So analytical, so refined is our age, that singing sometimes becomes a sort of musical declamation, but, unfortunately, without that power to declaim possessed by the actors and often the opera-singers of a former period. A singer often attempts now to make up by an expressive reading of a song, for technical defects. We must all commend every evidence of intellectuality in music, ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills

... like a great wrong or passion of the instant. And with these in their minds, and with a museum there, having a chamber full of such frightful instruments of torture as the devil in a brain fever could scarcely invent, there are hundreds of parrots, who will declaim to you in speech and print, by the hour together, on the degeneracy of the times in which a railroad is building across the water at Venice; instead of going down on their knees, the drivellers, and thanking Heaven that they live ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens

... nothing is stronger than the ties of childhood taken up again at a riper age. Joseph Mouradour bantered the wife and the husband, calling them "my amiable snails," and sometimes he would solemnly declaim against people who were behind the times, against old ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... his literary style may be gathered from the letter which follows:(1) 'I heard Polemo declaim the other day, to say something of things sublunary. If you ask what I thought of him, listen. He seems to me an industrious farmer, endowed with the greatest skill, who has cultivated a large estate for corn ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius

... of many heads to extol the days of their forefathers, and declaim against the wickedness of times present. Which notwithstanding they cannot handsomely do, without the borrowed help and satire of times past; condemning the vices of their own times, by the expressions of vices in times which they commend, which cannot ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... She did determine. Yet, even while making so terrible a resolve, a singular calm seemed to overspread her soul. She complained of nothing—wished for nothing—sought for nothing—trembled at nothing. A dreadful lethargy, which made the old mother declaim as against a singular proof of hardihood, possessed her spirit. Little did the still-idolizing mother conjecture how ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms

... thought, shut Raleigh's mouth with regard to this one great difficulty, he continued to declaim against 'those traitors,' obstinately persisting in mixing up Raleigh's 'Main' with the 'Bye,' in spite of the distinction which he himself had drawn. Raleigh appealed against this once or twice, and at last showed signs of impatience. Coke then suddenly ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse

... Both Mill and Macaulay influenced the younger writers. If Mill taught some of them to reason, Macaulay tempted many more of them to declaim. ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever

... manufactured articles used by them — cloths, swords, spears — are obtained by barter from the other peoples. Unlike all the other peoples, they have no form of sepulture, but simply leave the corpse of a comrade in the rude shelter in which he died. They sing and declaim rude melancholy songs or dirges with peculiar skill and striking effect. Their language is distinctive, but is apparently allied to the Kenyah ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... ridiculous, Meschines, as you were thirty or fifty years ago," said the general, tranquilly. "You declaim for the sake of hearing your own voice. Besides, what you say is un-American. Grace Parsloe, as I was saying, got a place as shop-girl in one of the great New York stores. I don't say she mightn't have done worse: what I say is, I doubt whether she could have done better. ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne

... the fearless pursuit of truth may here see a real example of a life given to it—an example all the more solemn and impressive if they think that the pursuit was in vain. It is easy to declaim about it, and to be eloquent about lies and sophistries; but it is shallow to forget that truth has its difficulties. To hear some people talk, it might be thought that truth was a thing to be made out and expressed at will, under any circumstances, at any time, amid ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church

... what he could not understand; and therefore, a great deal met with his disapproval. His reading had evidently brought him down only to about the middle sixties; and affairs at that date were to him still burning questions. Thus he would declaim ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White

... for men like Jasmin to recite their poems in public. Those who possessed his works might recite them for their own pleasure. But no one could declaim them better than he could, and his personal ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles

... teacher is judged from the way he has or has not of getting at the children under him as individuals. All this is a move in the right direction; and yet the subject is still so vague that many of the very critics who declaim against the similar treatment which diverse pupils get at school have no clear idea of what is needed; they merely make demands that the treatment shall suit the child. How each child is to be suited, and the inquiry still back of that, what peculiarity it is in this child or that which ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin

... not many boys in our time who have not declaimed parts of Webster's great speeches; and it will interest them to know that the boy who afterwards made those speeches could never declaim at all while he was at school. He learned his pieces well, and practised them in his own room, but he could not speak them before people to ...
— Strange Stories from History for Young People • George Cary Eggleston

... in the college. He joined a secret literary society, of which he wrote to his father: "I have derived more benefit from that, than any one of my collegiate studies. We meet together in a nice room, read compositions, declaim, and debate ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims

... Mary earnestly declaim in her song against princes, Luke 1, 51-53: "He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their heart. He hath put down princes from their thrones, and hath exalted them of low degree. The hungry he hath filled with good things; and the rich he ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther

... her Greek dress. No word for a charade would occur to her either waking or dreaming that suited her purpose of getting a statuesque pose in this favorite costume. To choose a motive from Racine was of no use, since Rex and the others could not declaim French verse, and improvised speeches would turn the scene into burlesque. Besides, Mr. Gascoigne prohibited the acting of scenes from plays: he usually protested against the notion that an amusement which ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... Keppoch arrived in the afternoon with his regiment consisting of about three hundred. In less than an hour after the whole were drawn up, and the Royal Standart display'd by the D. of A[thole] when the Chevalier made them a short but very pathetick speech. Importing that it would be no purpose to declaim upon the justice of his father's title to the throne to people who, had they not been convinced of it, would not have appeared in his behalf, but that he esteemed it as much his duty to endeavour to procure ...
— The Jacobite Rebellions (1689-1746) - (Bell's Scottish History Source Books.) • James Pringle Thomson

... is the reason why we prefer the logic of those men who, declaiming against the invasion of exotic merchandise, have, at least, the courage to declaim as well against the excess of production due to the inventive ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat

... empty cylinder was passing uselessly and wasted no time in discussion, but began to declaim some verses of Horace. ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye

... so dearly to "declaim;" and another poem by this last author, which we all liked to read, partly from a childish love of the tragic, and partly for its graphic description of an ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom

... Those people who declaim on the inequalities of sex, the disabilities and limitations of one as against the other, show themselves as ignorant of the first principles of life as would that philosopher who should undertake to show ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... companions. She had by nature the same habit and power of excitement that is described in the spinning dervishes of the East. Like them she would spin until all around her were giddy, while her own brain, instead of being disturbed, was excited to great action. Pausing, she would declaim, verses of others, or her own, or act many parts, with strange catchwords and burdens, that seemed to act with mystical power on her own fancy, sometimes stimulating her to convulse the hearers with laughter, sometimes to melt them to tears. When her power began to languish, ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... is always far more amenable to fashion than is an art with which the public is but vicariously concerned. Those standards to which artists have gradually accustomed it the public will not see lightly set at naught. Very rigid, for example, are the traditions of the theatre. If my brother were to declaim his lines at the Haymarket in the florotund manner of Macready, what a row there would be in the gallery! It is only by the impalpable process of evolution that change comes to the theatre. Likewise in the ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm

... themselves of their property by colonization; and if the slaves belong of right to them,—are on a par with goods and chattels,—how idle, how supremely ridiculous it is to mourn over their wretched condition, to sigh for their emancipation, to declaim against the evil and wickedness of slavery, or even to denounce the slave trade! But the unfortunate blacks are not now, and never can be, the property of the planters; consequently the claims of their ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison

... forever he had sallied from his home, like a knight in search of his mistress the world over in olden days. And he found her—such as this girl must be! Stay! He did not know all yet. Perhaps she had been forced into a bond she hated. He knew that happened. Did not stories tell of it, and moralists declaim against it? This man—this creature, Calder Wentworth—was buying her with his money, forcing himself on her, brutally capturing her. Of course! How could he have doubted her? Charlie dropped Calder's arm as though it had been made ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope

... goes on. It is all mood-music, conceived with no necessary relationship to the drama, but providing an atmosphere which is really refreshing after the sup of horrors provided by the preceding act. Therefore, it must be accepted gratefully like the dance tune over which Scarpia and his associates declaim before the dreadful business of the second act begins, and the piteous appeal to the Virgin which Tosca makes before she conceives the idea of the butchery which she ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... on muttering.—And, poor fool that I am, I had pictured to myself how they would read it. I saw the publisher himself glancing at a line of it by chance, and then rushing on. I saw him declaiming it with excited eyes—as I used to declaim it! Poor fool! ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair

... the theatre or the piece to be played, he had not the slightest interest in either. The building was very pretty, no doubt; but it was only, in effect, a superior sort of booth; and as for the trivial amusement of watching a number of people strut across a stage and declaim—or perhaps make fools of themselves to raise a laugh—that was not at all to his liking. It would have been different had he been able to talk to the girl who had shown such a strange interest in the gloomy stories of the Northern seas; perhaps, though he would scarcely have admitted this ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black

... at sacred things, one who, as it were, administers the treasures of the kingdom of God, can fittingly touch this subject. It would be easy for me to be a cheap wit, to rake up the old scandal of Mother Eve, to even declaim with windy volubility that a woman betrayed the capital, that a woman lost Mark Anthony the world and left old Troy in ashes. But far be it from me! Rather would I assume a loftier mood; rather would I strike a loftier note, ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins

... readiness of Christians to suffer, and, like the former persecution, give it a new impulse forwards. They seek occasions of controversy and conversation with the Pagans at public places, at their labor, and in the streets. The preachers assume a bolder, louder tone, and declaim with ten times more vehemence than ever against the enormities and abominations of the popular religions. Often at the market-places, and at the corners of the streets, are those to be seen, not authorized preachers perhaps, but believers and overflowing with zeal, who, at the risk of ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware

... one which you have charged on all. Reason determines, and it must be done; 'Mongst men, or past, or present, name me one. Hogarth,—I take thee, Candour, at thy word, Accept thy proffer'd terms, and will be heard; 310 Thee have I heard with virulence declaim, Nothing retain'd of Candour but the name; By thee have I been charged in angry strains With that mean falsehood which my soul disdains— Hogarth, stand forth;—Nay, hang not thus aloof— Now, Candour, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... 'em. He follow'd David's lesson just; In princes never put thy trust: And would you make him truly sour, Provoke him with a slave in power. The Irish senate if you named, With what impatience he declaim'd! Fair LIBERTY was all his cry, For her he stood prepared to die; For her he boldly stood alone; For her he oft exposed his own. Two kingdoms,[26] just as faction led, Had set a price upon his head; But not a traitor ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... take notice of this sentence, where Holyday says, "a perpetual grin, like that of Horace, rather angers than amends a man." I cannot give him up the manner of Horace in low satire so easily. Let the chastisements of Juvenal be never so necessary for his new kind of satire, let him declaim as wittily and sharply as he pleases, yet still the nicest and most delicate touches of satire consist in fine raillery. This, my lord, is your particular talent, to which even Juvenal could not arrive. It is not reading, it is not imitation of, an author which can produce this fineness; ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden

... bottom was a large pavilion, finely illuminated, in which were groups of people regaling themselves with lemonade, and ices. Upon this spot, in the early part of the revolution, the celebrated Camille Desmoulins used to declaim against the abuses of the old government, to all the idle and disaffected of Paris. It is said that the liveries of the duc d'Orleans gave birth to the republican colours, which used to be displayed in the hats of his auditors, who in point ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr

... one's tongue, have at the tip of one's tongue. break silence; open one's lips, open one's mouth; lift one's voice, raise one's voice; give the tongue, wag the tongue; talk, outspeak^; put in a word or two, hold forth; make a speech, deliver a speech &c n.; speechify, harangue, declaim, stump, flourish, recite, lecture, sermonize, discourse, be on one's legs; have one's say, say one's say; spout, rant, rave, vent one's fury, vent one's rage; expatiate &c (speak at length) 573; speak one's mind, go on the stump, take the stump [U.S.]. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... we didn't know it!" bawled Bud. "Listen here at what the witless wight's been a-writin'!" Then, seated upon the top rail and with his hat set far back on his head, Bud Norris began to declaim inexorably the first two verses, until the indignant author came over and interfered with voice and a vicious yank at Bud's foot, which brought that young ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower

... declaim about "expatriation" and to declare such a movement forced and unnatural. The whole course of history reveals men leaving their homes under pressure of one cause or another, and striking out into new fields. ...
— History of Liberia - Johns Hopkins University Studies In Historical And Political Science • J.H.T. McPherson

... for the English seems to have been felt by the Cape Dutch very early. This dislike later hostilities must have heightened; but as far back as 1816 we learn that even shrewd and sensible farmers were heard to declaim against our methods of scientific agriculture, and resist all efforts at its introduction into their work. One of them, when informed of the saving of time and labour that certain implements would effect, answered with characteristic ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke

... crowd follows jeering or applauding them. There is entire liberty; prince or artizan, all are equal; each may apostrophize a mask. Pyramids of men form "pictures of strength" on the public squares; harlequins in the open air perform parades. Seven theaters are open. Improvizators declaim and comedians improvize amusing scenes. "There is no city where license ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various

... of Paris every evening. A mechanic, or artisan, will devote two thirds of his daily gains to the participation of this pleasure. His dinner will consist of the most meagre fare—at the lowest possible price—provided, in the evening, he can hear Talma declaim, or Albert warble, or see Pol leap, or Bigotini entrance a wondering audience by the grace of her movements, and the pathos of her ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... generations of the public men of Kentucky. His memory was a marvel to all who knew him. He could repeat till the dawn, extracts from famous speeches he had heard from the lips of Clay, Grundy, Marshall, and Menifee. More than once, I have heard him declaim the wonderful speech of Sargent S. Prentiss delivered almost a half-century before, in the old Harrodsburg Court-house, in defence of Wilkinson for killing three men at ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson

... instances? What do you know of "Mrs. A.," whom you still persistently cite as an example of morbid recurrent hallucinations? Name the German servant girl who, in a fever, talked several learned languages, which she had heard her former master, a scholar, declaim! Where did she live? Who vouches for her, who heard her, who understood her? There is, you know, no evidence at all; the anecdote is told by Coleridge: the phenomena are said by him to have been observed "in a Roman Catholic town in Germany, a year or two before my arrival ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang

... usurpation of all their former rights by this new parent whom their boys are bound to serve,—this anything but Alma Mater,—the war school of the nation. As for Miss Nan, though she made it a point to declaim vigorously at the fates that prevented her seeing more of her brother, it was wonderful how well she looked and in what blithe spirits she spent her days. Regularly as the sun came around, before guard-mount in the morning ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King

... Girolamo's preaching will spoil you, and make you take life by the wrong handle. Trust me, your cornices will lose half their beauty if you begin to mingle bitterness with them; that is the maniera Tedesca which you used to declaim against when you came from Rome. The next palace you build we shall see you trying to put the Frate's doctrine ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... perfectly at rest, especially since thou hast a large property indeed, though thou art not so rich as Pallas or Seneca. For seest thou, with us at present it is well to write verses, to sing to a lute, to declaim, and to compete in the Circus; but better, and especially safer, not to write verses, not to play, not to sing, and not to compete in the Circus. Best of all, is it to know how to admire when Bronzebeard admires. Thou art a comely ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... statute, a student incurs ... no penalty by declaiming or attempting to declaim without having his piece previously approbated.—MS. Note to Laws of ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... Bavarians, again, must have in them a good deal of the persistent Celtic element which they inherited from the Boievari who at one time left Bohemia for Bavaria. The amusing thing is that those who most loudly declaim on the subject of Deutschland ueber Alles are the most thoroughly mixed of the lot. It is idle to speculate on what would have become of German imperial conceits if the German race and its admixtures, like that of our islands, had been isolated from ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker

... to rise above the tone of conversation, the majority of preachers withdraw too far from it. They swell their delivery, and declaim instead of speaking. Now, when bombast comes in, ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker

... terminal altar, unseen Sibyl hails him Caesar; he, astonished at the airy voice so coincident with his own feelings, thinks it ideal, chides his babbling thoughts, and so forth: then enter to him suddenly chance-met noble citizens, burnt out of house and home, who declaim furiously against Nero. Sibyl, still unseen from behind the altar, again hails Galba as future Caesar; who, no longer doubting his ears, and all present taking the omen, they conspire at the altar with drawn swords, and as the Sibyl suddenly presides—tableau—and ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... brown, and frizzled hair curled and sleek, and skins that riot with luscious color and deep, burning blood. Humanity is packed dense in high piles of close-knit homes that lie in layers above gray shops of food and clothes and drink, with here and there a moving-picture show. Orators declaim on the corners, lovers lark in the streets, gamblers glide by the saloons, workers lounge wearily home. Children scream and run and frolic, and all is good and human and beautiful and ugly and evil, even as Life ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois

... have pointed out that it is utterly beside the mark to declaim against these conclusions on the ground of their asserted tendency to deprive mankind of the consolations of the Christian faith, and to destroy the foundations of morality; still less to brand them with the question-begging vituperative ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... genius, refused to sing "Il pleut, il pleut, Bergere," but condescended to declaim "La Cigalle ayant chante tout l'ete," and did it as he alone can do it. When he came to the end of the fable, "Eh bien, dansez maintenant," he gave such a tragic shake to his head that the voluminous folds of his cravat became loosened and ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone

... proselytism. When the cross became the "foolishness" of the cross, it took possession of the masses. And in our own day, those who wish to get rid of the supernatural, to enlighten religion, to economize faith, find themselves deserted, like poets who should declaim against poetry, or women who should decry love. Faith consists in the acceptance of the incomprehensible, and even in the pursuit of the impossible, and is self-intoxicated with its own sacrifices, its ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... the country, and some of them carried off multitudes; but as a rule these never suggested sanitary improvement; they were called "visitations," attributed to Divine wrath against human sin, and the work of the authorities was to announce the particular sin concerned and to declaim against it. Amazing theories were thus propounded—theories which led to spasms of severity; and, in some of these, offences generally punished much less severely were visited with death. Every pulpit interpreted the ways of God to man ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... into his the slender purse of money which she had saved to release him from the drudgery of an occupation he loathed, and to enable him to become a great lawyer in Paris. How well he remembered her delight in listening to him declaim the speeches of Thiers and Guizot from the pages of the National, which she had taught him to read when but a mere baby, and from which he imbibed his first lessons in republicanism,—lessons ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden

... declaim against the ignorant peasantry of Ireland, and mince the matter when these American taskmasters are in question? Shall we cry shame on the brutality of those who hamstring cattle: and spare the lights of Freedom upon ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens

... man who fought with Marius, and helped to beat those northern giants, the Cimbri and Teutones, a right to his opinion? The times are evil—evil! No justice in the courts. No patriotism in the Senate. Rascality in every consul and praetor. And the 'Roman People' orators declaim about are only a mob! Vah! We need an end to this game of ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... rather than diminished when she found that her intended prey had escaped her, she began to declaim at the top of her voice, and to shriek hysterically; and the policeman, regarding it as a simple case of "drunk and disorderly," took her off to the station, where ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... There are some who declaim against the use of any and all kinds of meat for food, and advocate a purely vegetable diet. There is much that can be said in its favor, and it ought, with fruits, to form at least two of the three daily meals. The system would ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill

... ingenuous arts which should soften his manners, and not permit him to be brutal. And, when they together entered upon the romantic page of Virgil (which was the extent of her classical reading), nothing would delight her more than to declaim their sonorous Arma-virumque-cano lines, where the intrinsic qualities of the verse surpassed the quantities ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... Central Station. Everyone knows that.' He was silent for a while. 'He is a prodigy,' he said at last. 'He is an emissary of pity, and science, and progress, and devil knows what else. We want,' he began to declaim suddenly, 'for the guidance of the cause intrusted to us by Europe, so to speak, higher intelligence, wide sympathies, a singleness of purpose.' 'Who says that?' I asked. 'Lots of them,' he replied. 'Some even write that; and so he comes here, a special being, as you ought to know.' ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad

... her declaim, at the time of her earliest celebrity in Paris, he said: "Here is a woman of whom I can still learn. One turn of her beautiful head, one glance of her eye, one light motion of her hand, is, with her, sufficient to express a passion. She ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris

... exclamation of disgust would be heard from some officer, more excited or less philosophic than his comrades, as with his head half-buried in some broad, ill-printed, vilely-smelling sheet, he would declaim from its columns, for the edification of the mess, paragraph after paragraph of abuse of the vessel and her officers, and withering denunciations of the barbarity with which their unfortunate prisoners were treated while on board. Among those who thus ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes

... declaim as pompously as he chooses upon the subject, it will be found to rest upon no better foundation than either his interest, his pride, his ease, or some such little and changeable passion as will give us but small dependence ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne

... "it is well known why, and of what he died." At this remark, the fat monk turned rusty, maintained he had died a natural death, and began to declaim against the stories which he said had been spread abroad about him. I smiled, saying, I admitted it was not true that his veins had been opened. This observation completed the irritation of the monk, who began to babble ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... dictates of prudence; a heart benevolent, generous, unconscious alike of boasting or of fear. It is this salubrious air of rustic, unpretending honesty that forms the great beauty in Tell's character: all is native, all is genuine; he does not declaim: he dislikes to talk of noble conduct, he exhibits it. He speaks little of his freedom, because he has always enjoyed it, and feels that he can always defend it. His reasons for destroying Gessler are not drawn from ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle

... revolutionist, yet Anaxagoras, Democritus, and Metrodorus, philosophers of the highest position, protest against the truth of sense knowledge, and deny the possibility of knowledge altogether (72, 73). Empedocles, Xenophanes, and Parmenides all declaim against sense knowledge. You said that Socrates and Plato must not be classed with these. Why? Socrates said he knew nothing but his own ignorance, while Plato pursued the same theme in all his works (74). Now do you see that I do not merely name, but take for my models famous men? Even ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... the high-school, the library, nor the newspapers—did they know of Balmont or Blok, but Olya loved to declaim by rote from ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak

... himself into a state of indignation over Adams's story; as a matter of fact he knew the whole thing well; but he was too polite to discount his visitor's grievance, besides it gave him an opportunity to declaim—and of course the fact that a king was at the bottom of it all, added keenness to ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... would rather have liked it. Indeed, the chief trouble of poor Leonora in those days was to keep Florence from making, before me, theatrical displays, on one line or another, of that very fact. She wanted, in one mood, to come rushing to me, to cast herself on her knees at my feet and to declaim a carefully arranged, frightfully emotional, outpouring as to her passion. That was to show that she was like one of the great erotic women of whom history tells us. In another mood she would desire to come to me disdainfully and to tell me ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford

... like Goethe, ignores the mystic side of Hafid, and infuses into his Ghaselen a thoroughly bacchanalian spirit, taking frequent occasion to declaim against hypocrisy, fanaticism and the precepts of the Quran. The credo of these poems is the opening gazal in Spiegel des Hafis (64), where the line "Wir schwoeren ew'gen Leichtsinn und ew'ge Trunkenheit" may be taken to reflect the sentiment of the revelling Persian ...
— The Influence of India and Persia on the Poetry of Germany • Arthur F. J. Remy

... Maurice was inclined to declaim in that vigorous vocabulary which is taboo. He had been tricked. He was no longer needed at the Red Chateau. Four millions in a gun barrel; hoax was written all over the face of it, and yet he had been as unsuspicious as a Highland gillie. Madame had tricked him; the countess had tricked him, ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath

... when the blue spring skies were beginning to glow, Abraham went out to play with his companions. It was one of his favorite amusements to declaim from a stump. He would sometimes in this way recite long selections from the school Reader ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth

... she saw the man against whom she had sworn a deadly hatred, her mobile countenance assumed a most threatening aspect. She turned pale, her voice grew hoarse, the line she had begun to declaim died on her lips. But soon, taking up her ballata afresh, she ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee

... humanity, or religion, which absolutely lifts him, by its own inherent force and inspiration, to a region above that in which his mind habitually lives and moves. At the same time it will be observed that these thrilling passages, which the boys of two generations have ever been delighted to declaim in their shrillest tones, are strictly illustrative of the main purpose of the speech in which they appear. They are not mere purple patches of rhetoric, loosely stitched on the homespun gray of the reasoning, but they seem to ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... The comportment, the countenance; the voice, the robe, the place, will set off some things that of themselves would appear no better than prating. Messalla complains in Tacitus of the straitness of some garments in his time, and of the fashion of the benches where the orators were to declaim, that were a disadvantage to ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... and you, clergymen, who monopolise education! either tell boys the truth about love, or do not put into their hands, without note or comment, the foul devil's lies about it, which make up the mass of the Latin poets—and then go, fresh from teaching Juvenal and Ovid, to declaim at Exeter Hall against poor Peter Dens's well-meaning prurience! Had we not better take the beam out of our own eye before we meddle with the mote in ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley

... subsistence by serving the public. It pleased him to speak of members of the Cabinet as "the drudges of the departments," and to hold gentlemen in the diplomatic service up to contempt as forming "the tail of the corps diplomatique in Europe." He liked to declaim upon the enormous impossibility of his ever exchanging a seat in Congress for "the shabby splendors" of an office in Washington, or in a foreign mission "to dance attendance abroad instead of at home." When it was first buzzed about in ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton

... me there is a great deal of unmerited odium laid upon the innocent shoulders of German metaphysics. People declaim against the science of metaphysics, as if it were the disease itself; whereas it is the remedy. Metaphysics do not originate the trouble; their very existence proves the priority of the disease which ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans

... rapid river. The approach to it is over a bridge of rocks; and there is a natural grotto under the rocks, which gives them the appearance of a rustic bridge. Into this grotto the sun's rays never penetrate. I am confident that it much resembles the place where Cicero sometimes went to declaim. It invites to study. Hither I retreat during noontide hours; my mornings are engaged upon the hills, or in the garden sacred to Apollo. Here I would most willingly spend my days, were I not too near Avignon, and too far from Italy. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard

... have next to deal with that long oration, austere as any censor's, which Pudens delivered on the subject of my mirror. He nearly exploded, so violently did he declaim against the horrid nature of my offence. 'The philosopher owns a mirror, the philosopher actually possesses a mirror.' Grant that I possess it: if I denied it, you might really think that your accusation had gone home: still it is by no means a ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius

... rusty since Adam first made it to Eve." She eyed him in silence for a second time, deriding his sighs with a smile: then "There is a rhyme in my mind," she cried, "about moons and lovers," and she began to declaim, half muse, half minx, some lines that had pleased her, to tease ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... were from the experience of violent methods, they had not forgotten their old art of manipulating Presidents. They adapted themselves with marvellous flexibility to the changed condition of things, in order to become masters of the situation, and began to declaim in favor of the Union, even while their curses against it were yet echoing in the air. They wheedled the President into pardoning, in the place of hanging them; they made themselves serviceable agents in carrying out his plan of reconstruction; they gave up what it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... admission into the Freshman class are, a good moral character, a good acquaintance with Virgil, Cicero's Select Orations, the Greek Testament, knowledge to translate English into Latin, and an acquaintance with the fundamental rules of Arithmetic. The members of the classes, in rotation, declaim before the officers in the chapel every Wednesday, at ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith

... Rome in the first century A.D., hardly any training could be more mischievous. Puffed up with presumed merits and the applause of the lecture-room and the salon, he became a shallow rhetorician, devoted to phrase-making and tinsel ornament, and ready to write and declaim on any subject in verse or prose at the shortest notice.' —Heitland. Silenced by Nero, in an enforced retirement—probably in the stately gardens spoken of by Juvenal vii. 79-80 contentus fama iaceat Lucanus in hortis Marmoreis—Lucan may repose in his park adorned with statues and find ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce

... by that law it is certain that the way to promote, so far as we can, a spirit and tone of true worship in our people is to possess—and to show—that spirit ourselves, as we lead, and also join, their worship. Never declaim the prayers, but always pray them, from the soul ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule

... are not as fortunate as themselves in this particular. In their longings for pre-eminence, they turn to other states (Leaphigh, more especially, which is the beau ideal of all nations and people who wish to set up a caste in opposition to despotism) for rules of thought, and declaim against that very mass which is at the bottom of all their prosperity, by obstinately refusing to allow of any essential innovation on the common rights. In addition to these social pretenders, we have ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper

... graver audacity of hypocrisy than falls to the share of most men to declaim against Burns's sensibility to the tangible cares and toils of his earthly condition; there are more who venture on broad denunciations of his sympathy with the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... excellent practise, both for memory and delivery, to commit the specimen speeches found in this volume and declaim them, with all attention to the principles we have put before you. William Ellery Channing, himself a distinguished speaker, years ago had this to say of ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... does not run astray, he discovers a noble disposition." In a third letter, he says, "Let me die, my dear Livia, if I am not astonished, that the declamation of your grandson, Tiberius, should please me; for how he who talks so ill, should be able to declaim so clearly and properly, I cannot imagine." There is no doubt but Augustus, after this, came to a resolution upon the subject, and, accordingly, left him invested with no other honour than that of the Augural priesthood; naming ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... so, I'le teach her to declaim against my pities, why is she not gone out o'th' town, but gives occasion for men ...
— Wit Without Money - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher • Francis Beaumont

... Pantomime—that is, a good Pantomime, such as is usually produced at Covent Garden. We know there are a set of solemn pompous mortals about town, who express much dignified horror at the absurdities of these things, and declaim very fluently, in good set terms, upon the necessity of their abolition. Such fellows as these are ever your dullest of blockheads. Conscious of their lack of ideas, they think to earn the reputation of men of sterling sense, ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent

... and debating in public, thinking that political philosophy, like a great city, should maintain for its security the military and warlike element. But he would never recite his exercises before company, nor was he ever heard to declaim. And to one that told him, men blamed his silence, "But I hope not my life," he replied, "I will begin to speak, when I have that to say which had not better ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... is far worse than ignorance. The learned teach, but what they teach, not do, And standing still themselves, make others go. In vain on study time away we throw, When we forbear to act the things we know. The soldier that philosopher well blamed, Who long and loudly in the schools declaim'd; 110 'Tell' (said the soldier) 'venerable Sir, Why all these words, this clamour, and this stir? Why do disputes in wrangling spend the day, Whilst one says only yea, and t'other nay?' 'Oh,' said the doctor, 'we for wisdom ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham

... agency, and transfigured the individuality of his mind; and that, which he 'might have been', was compered into that, which he 'was to be'. From his early childhood it was his father's custom to make him stand up on a chair, and declaim before a large company; by which exercise, practised so frequently, and continued for so many years, he acquired a premature and unnatural dexterity in the combination of words, which must of necessity have diverted his attention from present objects, obscured ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman

... demanded ability to discuss all sorts of social, political, economic, and scientific or metaphysical questions; to argue in public in the marketplace or in the law courts; to declaim in a formal manner on almost any topic; to amuse or even instruct the populace upon topics of interest or questions of the day; to take part in the many diplomatic embassies and political missions of the times—the ability, in fact, to shine in a democratic society ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... declaim at Rome, I at Praeneste have perused over again the writer of the Trojan war; who teaches more clearly, and better than Chrysippus and Crantor, what is honorable, what shameful, what profitable, what not so. If nothing hinders you, hear why I have ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace

... coadjutors should be allowed. But the Bishop was not the only clergyman of the Church of Rome in the province, and the See of Rome has its instruments in every ecclesiastical grade. The priests, as a body were very much annoyed at the Union Bill. They did not fail to declaim against it. Nor were they to be blamed. The French Canadians were indeed, to a man, opposed to the union. The English population were, of course, in favor of the scheme. Horrified at popery, an Englishman honestly believed that popery had no rights ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger

... witches, to amuse themselves with giving the history of all these mad-headed people boast of, of the circumstances in which they have taken a part, and the way in which they happened. It is in vain then to declaim against them, for you may be assured that people are not wanting who suffer themselves to be dazzled by these pretended miracles, who become smitten with these effects, so extraordinary and so wonderful, and try by every means to succeed in them by the very method which has just been taught ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... Mary Quince declaim, and at last she did impress me a little, and I began to think that I had, perhaps, been making too much of Madame's visit. But still imagination, that instrument and mirror of prophecy, showed her formidable image always on its surface, with a ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu

... musician in terms of tone-feeling, and a poet in terms of tone-feeling plus thought. Each one of them finds something for himself, selects his own "subject," from the material presented by the quiet sea, and whatever he may find belongs to him. We declaim against the confusion of the genres, the attempt to render in the terms of one art what belongs, as we had supposed, to another art, and we are often right in our protest. Yet artists have always been jumping each other's claims, and the sole test of the lawfulness of ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry

... to tell you, that they had carried the secret committee-but it is put off till next Tuesday. To-day we had nothing but the giving up the Heydon election, when Mr. Ppultney had an opportunity (as Mr. Chute and Mr. Robinson would not take the trouble to defend a cause which they could not carry) to declaim upon corruption: had it come to a trial, there were eighteen witnesses ready to swear positive bribery against Mr. Pultney. I would write to Mr. Chute, and thank him for his letter which you sent me, but I am so out of humour at his brother's losing his seat, that I cannot ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... used to declaim, their Yankee hearts throbbing under their round-aborts? 'Happy, proud America!' Somehow in that way. 'Cursed, abased America!' better if they had said. Look at her, in the warm vigour of her youth, most vigorous in decay! Look at the germs and dregs of nations, creeds, religions, fermenting ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis

... that when a pupil at Phillips Exeter Academy he never could declaim before the school. He said he committed piece after piece and rehearsed them in his room, but when he heard his name called in the academy and all eyes turned towards him the room became dark and everything he ever knew fled from his brain; but he became ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... sell, and what to you were the worn-down frames and broken hearts of the infatuated purchasers? The public believed the plausible statements you made with such earnestness, and men of all grades rushed to hear your hired orators declaim upon the blessings to be obtained by the ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... friend had lectioned The prophets in high declaim, That my soul's ear the same Full tones should catch as aforetime; But silenced by gear of the Present Was the ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy

... How could it be otherwise when I acted Babes in the Wood with you and Daisy before you could speak, and taught Josie to declaim Mother Goose in her cradle. Ah, me! the tastes of the mother come out in her children, and she must atone for them by letting them have their own way, I suppose.' And Mrs Meg laughed, even while she shook her head over the ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott

... loser. He was made Groom of the Bedchamber to the Prince of Wales, and continued to declaim against the ministers with unabated violence and with increasing ability. The question of maritime right, then agitated between Spain and England, called forth all his powers. He clamoured for war with a vehemence which it is not easy to reconcile with reason or humanity, but which appears ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... serious. If I were to declaim Leporello's list, you might justly consider it an exaggeration; but if, instead of replying to you, I should urge you to read what I have written on the subject, or if I should present your daughter Emily to you, after three or four years, as a superior performer, you ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck

... gay, supercilious way, when she spoke of this purpose, or lightly patted her grand head and declared her to be a wilful, unpractical enthusiast,—too much a child of Nature to attempt an art of any kind,—born to live and be poetry, not to declaim it,—to inspire genius, not to embody it,—a Muse, not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various

... epic. At the very least it has enriched the thought of humanity with some imperishable lines. But it is true, what the great critic said of it: the Pharsalia partakes more of the nature of oratory than of poetry. It means that Lucan, in choosing history, chose something which he had to declaim about, something which, at best, he could imaginatively realize; but not something which he could imaginatively re-create. It is quite different with poems like the Song of Roland. They are composed in, or are drawn immediately out of, an heroic age; ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie

... with fear and trembling—for it is a delicate, dangerous avowal—that, as a rule, I do not sympathize with the ladies who declaim on the subject of Woman's Rights. I do not mean to say I lack sympathy with the subject—I should like everybody to have their rights, and especially women—but they are sometimes asserted in such a sledge-hammer fashion, and the ladies who give them utterance are so prone to ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... Jefferson, Valley Forge, with a plain understanding of such a business matter as charging tolls for the use of a waterway? To get the full effect of this piece of "stupendous folly"—to quote the speaker's own words—the student should declaim it aloud with as much attempt at oratorical effect as its author expended ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton

... Sophonisba, a subject previously chosen by Marston (1606), and by Lee (1676), was acted at Drury Lane. The play was dedicated to the queen, and on the opening night the house was crowded, but the success of the piece was slight. Thomson's genius was not dramatic, and while his characters declaim, they do not act. His next play, Agamemnon (1738), was not lost for want of labour or of friends. Pope appeared in the theatre on the first night, and was greeted with applause. The Prince and Princess of Wales were present on another occasion, but the play did not live long. His third attempt, ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis

... America of ours. It is as little understood, I was on the point of saying, at home as it is abroad, and almost as much misrepresented. Certainly its possessors are a good deal addicted to valuing themselves on distinctive advantages that, in reality, they do not enjoy, while their enemies declaim about vices and evils from which they are comparatively free. Facts are made to suit theories, and thus it is that we see well-intentioned, and otherwise respectable writers, constantly running into extravagances, in order to adapt the circumstances to the supposed logical or moral inference. ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper

... 2) debated is whether the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae, seeing themselves deserted by the army, shall remain or flee. The different rhetors declaim as follows, ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... beautifully. He will have often shot big game in India with an accuracy that increases in proportion to the number of miles that separate him from the scene of his exploits. After all, the ability to "brown" a herd of elephants does not guarantee rights and lefts at partridges. Apt to declaim tersely and forcibly about the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 5, 1892 • Various

... to face. A plaintive, tremulous voice began to recite in monotone some stanzas which told how very sad and mournful the whole scene was. Tio Grancha, an aged velvet-spinner, came down from Valencia every year to declaim those couplets, and his art was one of the attractions of the festival! What a voice! How it went to your heart! And that is why a riot almost started when some gamblers in the "Side-of-Bacon" began to laugh at a turn in their ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... being so far misled as to think that if they only contributed this money to the building of St. Peter's at Rome they would be exempt from all penalty for sins, paying little heed to the other conditions, such as sorrow for sin, and purpose of amendment. Hence, many were led to declaim against the procedure of the zealous friar. These protests were the near mutterings of a storm that had long been gathering, and that was soon to shake all Europe from the Baltic to ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... owing to the circumstance that I had solaced the many lonely hours of my bachelorhood in acquiring by memory and rehearsing many scraps of poetry. Mr. Bell's favorite method of passing the evening was in teaching his children to read and declaim poetry with dramatic expression, and in this delightful occupation I was an acceptable assistant. Many were the domestic dramas which we produced,—pieces of our own invention,—in addition to ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... a cigarette, while I revelled in the memory of his rich, great voice. It was of the sort made to declaim against the sea or the rush of rivers or, as here, the fall of waters and the thunder—full, from the chest, with the caressing throat vibration that gives colour to the most ordinary statements. After ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White

... "Paradise Lost" the chief favourite of all. The birds must often have felt startled, when from the small swinging form perching on a branch, came out in childish tones the "Thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers," of Milton's stately and sonorous verse. I liked to personify Satan, and to declaim the grand speeches of the hero-rebel, and many a happy hour did I pass in Milton's heaven and hell, with for companions Satan and "the Son," Gabriel and Abdiel. Then there was a terrace running by the side of the churchyard, always dry in the wettest weather, and bordered by ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant

... Paris has long been conceded to be the first in the world. In France the player is not only born—he must be made. Before the embryo performer achieves the honors of a public debut he has been trained in the classes of the Conservatoire to declaim the verse of Racine and to lend due point and piquancy to the prose of Moliere. He is taught to tread in the well-beaten path of French dramatic art, fenced in and hedged around with sacred traditions. If he attempts to embody any one of the characters of the classic drama, every tone, every gesture, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various

... on looking at these flowers. I would I had known you in happier days, when I should have been able to enjoy your genius and admire your art. You must be a great actor, for you have a wonderfully sonorous and pliable voice. I should like to hear you declaim, even though you should recite ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach

... SPEAKER; one could hear him declaim just as Big Ben tolled four o'clock this afternoon. House crowded in every part, throbbing with excitement; crowds everywhere. In Centre Hall some vainly hoping for impossible places; others content to see the men go by whose names they read in the papers. Outside Palace Yard multitude ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 11, 1893 • Various

... we all consider ourselves to be sufficiently impressed with the importance of ventilation. If I should stop here to declaim against foul exhalations, or to dwell upon the virtues of fresh air, you might feel inclined to interrupt me by saying, "Oh, we know all about that! If you have anything practical to advance, come to the point." Gentlemen, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various

... and so is everybody here, so charmed with Mme. Rachel;[50] she is perfect, et puis, such a nice modest girl; she is going to declaim at Windsor Castle ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria

... broad salvoes, In favor of smuggling of all sorts, in foreign countries (at home he never dreamed of such a thing), custom-house oaths, and legal trickery; and this is just the class of men apt to declaim the loudest against the roguery of the rest of mankind. Had there been a law giving half to the informer, he might not have hesitated to betray the lugger, and all she contained, more especially in the way of regular business; but he had long before determined that every Italian ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... rather say, why talk of men who profess to be rulers, and declare that they are devoted to the improvement of the city, and nevertheless upon occasion declaim against the utter vileness of the city:—do you think that there is any difference between one and the other? My good friend, the sophist and the rhetorician, as I was saying to Polus, are the same, or nearly the same; but you ignorantly fancy that rhetoric ...
— Gorgias • Plato

... exactly as I had seen it before; but to me it was a novelty to hear Punch, and all the other interlocutors in the piece, discourse in the language in which Dante had sung, and in which I had heard, just before leaving Scotland, Gavazzi declaim. In all lands Punch is an astute scoundrel; but, strange to say, in all lands the popular feeling is on his side. His imperturbable coolness and truculent villany procured him plaudits among the Milanese, as I had seen them do elsewhere. ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie

... further—Japhet,[218] 'tis agreed, Writ not, and Chartres scarce could write or read, In all the courts of Pindus guiltless quite; But pens can forge, my friend, that cannot write; And must no egg in Japhet's face be thrown, Because the deed he forged was not my own? 190 Must never patriot then declaim at gin, Unless, good man! he has been fairly in? No zealous pastor blame a failing spouse, Without a staring reason on his brows? And each blasphemer quite escape the rod, Because the insult's not on man, ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al

... Hamilcar, who accompanied it with a throat-sound like the song of a kettle on the fire. But as my voice waxed louder, Hamilcar notified me by lowering his ears and by wrinkling the striped skin of his brow that it was bad taste on my part so to declaim. ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France

... must have followed his own will very freely. He refused to declaim, and no power could make him do so, and for this reason he was denied the honor of a Commencement part, which he had won, being number eighteen by rank in his class; he was nervously shy about declaiming, owing, it is ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry

... market to Bullhampton does exist; and that at one period in its history the market existed also,—for a year or two; but the three bakers and two butchers are opposed to change; and the patriots of the place, though they declaim on the matter over their evening pipes and gin-and-water, have not enough of matutinal zeal to carry out their purpose. Bullhampton is situated on a little river, which meanders through the chalky ground, and has a quiet, slow, dreamy prettiness of its own. A mile above ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope

... glasses and toasts were given. Several guests of distinction spoke first, then followed the hosts and their children,—frolicsome little things. Finally Monjardin arose and unfolded a manuscript, asking permission to declaim the verses which he had composed in honor of Maria-Jose, the central figure of the occasion. The guests greeted his remarks with noisy and ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

... friend Webster, adorned with a black eye, he never ceased, during the remainder of the voyage, to declaim against Chubb's foolhardiness and uphold his own proceedings on the eventful night. For his own discomfiture he sought consolation in rum, protesting that it was a miracle that any of us had survived to taste another drop ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan

... city in the world to receive his doctrines,—that city of grammarians, of pedants, of gymnasts, of fencing masters, of play-goers, and babblers about words. "As well might a humanitarian socialist declaim against English prejudices to the proud and exclusive fellows of Oxford ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord

... foreign calumniated country. And truly it was refreshing for Susanna to hear Sweden defended with as much intelligence as zeal; truly it was a joy to her to hear the assertions of the coarser voice repelled by the other less noisy, but more powerful voice, and at length to hear it declaim, as master of the field, the following lines, which were addressed to his native land on the occasion of the death of Gustavus ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer

... high—twenty paces from home you let it sink, and fold your hands behind your back. You look and evidently see nothing before nor beside you. At last you begin moving your lips and talking to yourself, and sometimes you wave one hand and declaim, and at last stand still in the middle of the road. That's not at all the thing. Someone may be watching you besides me, and it won't do you any good. It's nothing really to do with me and I can't cure you, but, of course, ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... socialists take a retrograde step in this respect, in as much as they consider only manual labor productive. Fourier's school particularly, declaim passionately against the unproductiveness of commerce and of most personal services. Compare V. Considerant, ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... and to condemn it, and yet so partial are they in judging themselves,—self-love so purblinds them in this reflection, that they cannot discern that in themselves, which others cannot but discern! How often do men declaim against pride, and covetousness, and self-seeking, and other evils of that kind? They will pour out a flood of eloquence and zeal against them, and yet it is strange they do not advert, that they are accusing themselves, and impannelling themselves in such discourses, though others, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... was uninhabitable. The very owners could not live in it; and yet—so in imagination we heard Serjeant Playfire declaim—"The lady from whom the TRUTH had that day been reluctantly wrung had the audacity to insist that delicate women and tender children should continue to inhabit a dwelling over which a CURSE seemed brooding—a dwelling where the dead ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell

... thought of all the misery of life for multitudes would, as Rossetti puts it, "make a goblin of the sun." You used to be very eloquent against good men who lived only for their own pleasure; are not you yourself living in the same way? I have heard you declaim against the gross selfishness of Goethe's aim in life—"to build the pyramid of his own intellectual culture"; are not you, in your own way, pursuing the same ideal? I have heard you say that nothing so belittled Goethe in your judgment ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson

... man,' said Wilder. 'I took a fancy to declaim a favourite little bit of Euripides in Endell Street, and a uniformed ass came along and ran me in. And being penniless as ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray



Words linked to "Declaim" :   utter, inveigh, verbalise, recite, speak, talk, protest, scan, perorate, verbalize, declamation, elocute, mouth, execute, do



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com