"Extemporary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... scarcely ever hear a short memory given as a reason for a man's failure in any undertaking. But in ancient times, when no man could make a figure without the talent of speaking, and when the audience were too delicate to bear such crude, undigested harangues as our extemporary orators offer to public assemblies; the faculty of memory was then of the utmost consequence, and was accordingly much more valued than at present. Scarce any great genius is mentioned in antiquity, who is not celebrated for this talent; and Cicero enumerates it among the other ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... wife. "I never could write. I know what ought to be said, and I could say it to any one; but my ideas freeze in the pen, cramp in my fingers, and make my brain seem like heavy bread. I was born for extemporary speaking. Besides, I think the best things on all subjects in this world of ours are said not by the practical workers, but by the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... Edinburgh, but only those prayers which the ministers had been accustomed to make before and after their sermons.[161] Thus the bishops themselves were the unwitting instruments of first setting aside a partially liturgic, and introducing instead a wholly extemporary, form of worship into Scotland. There is no reason, however, for maintaining that the Book of Common Order, while it continued in authority, was regarded as more than a guide or model, at least to the ordained ministers, ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... as Winstanley of the duties of Parliaments and of the function of Law. In chapter ix. (part ii.) he says: "The legislative or supreme power of any Commonwealth, is bound to govern by established standing laws, promulgated and known to the people, and not by extemporary decrees; by indifferent [impartial] and upright judges, who are to decide controversies by those laws; and to employ the force of the community at home, only in the execution of such laws, or abroad, to prevent or redress foreign injuries, and secure the community ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... The extemporary character of their contrivance and expedients, is sufficiently apparent. Nothing was expected: nothing was dreaded: no checks were opposed to abuses. Thus acts of tyranny were perpetrated beyond the ordinary excesses of arbitrary governments, and all classes were confounded in one regimen ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... company, where every one sang a little song or stanza, of which the burden was, "Bannissons la melancolie;" when it came to his turn to sing, after the performance of a young lady that sat next him, he produced these extemporary lines: ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... With this extemporary adaptation of a popular ballad to the distressing circumstances of his own case, Mr Swiveller folded up the parcel again, beat it very flat between the palms of his hands, thrust it into his breast, buttoned his coat over it, and folded ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... been who in some thankful oration has set out the praises of Folly; when yet there has not wanted them whose elaborate endeavors have extolled tyrants, agues, flies, baldness, and such other pests of nature, to their own loss of both time and sleep. And now you shall hear from me a plain extemporary speech, but so much the truer. Nor would I have you think it like the rest of orators, made for the ostentation of wit; for these, as you know, when they have been beating their heads some thirty years about an oration and at last perhaps produce somewhat that was never their own, shall ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... King, who happened at that time to be in that district, was highly displeased, and, assembling a council, declared Rolf Ganger an outlaw. His mother, Hilda, a dame of high lineage, in vain interceded for him, and closed her entreaty with a warning in the wild extemporary poetry of ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... They are naturally gay, and fond of all kinds of diversion. They have likewise a strong taste for music, and even compose verses, which, though rude and inelegant, possess much pleasing native simplicity, often more interesting than the laboured compositions of cultivated poets. Extemporary rhymers are common among them, like the improvisatori of Italy, and are called Palladores, who are held in great estimation, and devote themselves entirely to that occupation. In the Spanish ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... offer itself to his immature judgment. Gleemen had sung, harpers had harped, but the excitement culminated when Siward, a Northumbrian noble, who was a great musician, and skilful in improvisation, did not disdain, like the royal Alfred, to take the harp and pour forth an extemporary ode of great beauty, whereupon the whole multitude rose to their feet and waved their wine cups in the air, in ardent appreciation of the patriotic sentiments he had uttered, and the beauty ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... Italians, the dramatic is by no means pre-eminent, and this defect they seem to have inherited from the Romans, in the same manner as their great talent for mimicry and buffoonery goes back to the most ancient times. The extemporary compositions called Fabulae Atellanae, the only original and national form of the Roman drama, in respect of plan, were not perhaps more perfect than the so-called Commedia dell' Arte, in which, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... religion, of education, of divorce, or of civil government, the error is always the same, a confidence too absolute in the capacity and integrity of the reasonable soul of man. A liturgy, for example, is intolerable, because it is a slur upon the extemporary effusions of ministers of the Gospel. "Well may men of eminent gifts set forth as many forms and helps to prayer as they please; but to impose them on ministers lawfully called and sufficiently tried ... is a supercilious tyranny, impropriating the Spirit ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... burial. Four men had died of their wounds during the day, and in darkness it had to be done, for the cemetery is within reach of the enemy's guns, and we feared to show a light, lest it should "draw fire." So I recited as much of the Burial Service as I could remember, and offered an extemporary prayer. It was a strange experience thus to bury our comrades by stealth; but, alas! during these latter days it has ceased to seem strange, because ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... hope he will, because I never saw an ape so clever and ingenious, and so quick of apprehension, I declare that I will adopt him as my son." Perceiving that no one opposed my design, I took the pen, and wrote six sorts of hands used among the Arabians, and each specimen contained an extemporary distich or quatrain in praise of the sultan. My writing not only excelled that of the merchants, but was such as they had not before seen in that country. When I had done, the officers took the roll, and carried ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... that I knew not a single prayer—at least perfectly. I was well aware that other boys did, though many neglected them. To supply this my deficiency, I henceforth never failed to offer up, each morning and evening, extemporary ones, and which, though puerilely adapted to little impressions or wants, yet flowed the more truly from the heart, and cherished an affectionate, and therefore, truly religious feeling, towards ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... the surface of the plateau was covered in the open, like the partridge does amongst the turnips in England. Fritz shot a couple of the little things, and the brothers plucked and roasted them over an extemporary fire which Eric lit with the box of matches he invariably "carried in his pocket—as a sort of badge of his culinary office," Fritz said. The birds were found to be very palatable for lunch, along with the biscuit and cheese which the brothers ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... stay a moment," asked Phoebus, "and hear me turn the pretty and touching story of Proserpina into extemporary verses?" ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... essence from the angels. Having, therefore, no certain knowledge of their nature, 'tis no bad method of the schools, whatsoever perfection we find obscurely in our- selves, in a more complete and absolute way to ascribe unto them. I believe they have an extemporary know- ledge, and, upon the first motion of their reason, do what we cannot without study or deliberation: that they know things by their forms, and define, by speci- fical difference what we describe by accidents and pro- perties: and therefore probabilities to us ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... that she made an extemporary reply in Greek to the university of Cambridge, who had addressed her in that language. It is certain that she answered in Latin without premeditation, and in a very spirited manner, to the Polish ambassador, who had been wanting in respect to her. When she had finished, she turned about ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... early drama the Clown was a personage of no mean importance and whose duty was to preserve the stage from vacancy by amusing the audience with extemporary buffoonery, and also at the end of the performance. And, as Heywood, in his "History of Women" (1624), says "By his mimic gestures to breed in the less capable mirth and laughter." On these occasions, it was usual to descant, in a humourous style, on various ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... about the vessels and drove them on shore. The Fury was so much damaged that though four pumps were constantly at work she could hardly be kept afloat, and Parry was trying to get her repaired under shelter of a huge block of ice when a tempest came on, broke in pieces the extemporary dock and flung the vessel again upon the shore, where she had to be abandoned. Her crew were received on the Hecla, which, after such an accident as this, was of course obliged to return ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne |
