"Actor" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... me a summary of the piece informing me, scene after scene, of what was about to happen; and when we came to any lines which he knew by heart, he recited them aloud before the actor could say them. It was in vain for me to resist; he continued his recitations, and towards the end rose a good while before the rest. For those fashionable fellows, in order to behave gallantly, especially avoid to listen ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... widower of forty with a family, he was silly enough to fall in love with a little miss of sixteen. He taught her Latin and Greek—which was all very well—and married her, which was distinctly unwise. She had one son—my grandfather—and then ran away with an actor from London. After that she made a certain sensation on the stage, but I suspect she was clever enough to see that her real successes were personal ones; at all events, she made a good marriage as soon as ever she got the chance. The Hammerton family naturally ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... meanwhile extricated Eliza from the cake of ice and started her on the concluding portion of her journey to safety. It was then that William, burning to distinguish himself, and having a vague notion that "Chuck" Epstein, who was in the audience, had once declared that the actor who could interpolate telling lines in his part was on a fair way to fame, advanced solemnly to the front, regardless of the dropping curtain which landed on his shoulders and flopped ungracefully around him, to declare in his ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks
... a pretended gulp of joy. But, truth to tell, he felt so ashamed of himself that he was a poor actor at this moment. Had the Crossleighs been more suspicious they would have detected something sham in Hoof's beginning grief and his swift change ...
— The Grammar School Boys of Gridley - or, Dick & Co. Start Things Moving • H. Irving Hancock
... another, however, they were wont to assume an elaborate artificiality of speech and manner in communion with their friends, that was designed with each to point the moral of a complete indifference and forgetfulness. But the girl was by far the better actor; and not only did she play her own part convincingly, but she generally managed to show up in her rival that sense of mortification that it was his fond hope ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... selfe. The gentleman steps out vpon the stage, and like a bad Clarke in scripture matters, cleauing more to the letter then the sense, pronounced those words aloud. Oh (sayes the fellowe softly in his eare) you marre all the play. And with this his passion, the Actor makes the audience in like sort acquainted. Hereon the prompter falles to flat rayling & cursing in the bitterest termes he could deuise: which the Gentleman with a set gesture and countenance still soberly related, vntill ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... tumultuous presence. It was good to hear them talk of George Frederic Cooke, of Kean, and the lesser stars of those earlier constellations. Better still to breakfast with old Samuel Rogers, as some of my readers have done more than once, and hear him answer to the question who was the best actor he remembered, "I think, on the ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... some unworthy interest, regarded the smooth, thick hair under her large poke-bonnet. Debby had an original fashion of coloring it; and this no one had suspected until her little grandson innocently revealed the secret. She rubbed it with a candle, in unconscious imitation of an actor's make-up, and then powdered it with soot from the kettle. "I believe to my soul she does!" said ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... had never heard a nightingale and it was his first pilgrimage to the shrine of the actor-manager whose productions Americans curiously couple with the Bible ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... queer mingling of enjoyment and repulsion. For as is the smell of ocean to the seafarer, of mother- earth to the peasant, of incense to the priest, so is the smell of the theatre to the player. Nature may revolt; but the spell holds. Once an actor always an actor. The mark of the calling is indelible. Even to the third and fourth generation there is ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... to his paillasse and lay down; in which position I caught him, a few minutes later, smiling and even chuckling ... very happy ... as only an actor is happy whose efforts have been greeted with ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... Colonie and I can imagine the disturbed feelings of the good Dutch burghers could they have known that their respected fellow citizen, Charles Sears, Esq., of the pier, was actually appearing on the stage as a play actor. ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... screwed in the smiling eye, and the hair, now sprinkled with grey, brushed back from the broad open forehead? The genial, pleasant manner, the entire ease of the man, and the utter absence of all that detestable putting on of "side" which is too often characteristic of the young actor of the present day, how all these things go towards the explanation of his universal popularity! A great sorrow has overshadowed the latter years of his life, a sorrow from which he will never shake himself free, ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... But another actor in the late adventures expressed his willingness to be of the party, and tore off at full speed one morning when, well provided with candles, matches and magnesium wire, they started off, following the edge of the cliff, till, about a mile west of ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... slight externals Donaldson, although not a large man, had good shoulders, a well-poised head, and walked with an Indian stride from the hips that made him noticeable among the flat-footed native New Yorkers. He might have been mistaken for an ambitious actor of the younger school; even for a forceful young cleric, save for the fact that he smoked his cigarette with ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... nothing is inwardly nothing in itself. Outwardly, indeed, it is something and appears to be much and to some everything while it lasts; but inwardly in itself it is not. It is like a surface with nothing beneath or like an actor in kingly robes when the play is over. But what remains to eternity is something in itself perpetually, thus everything, and it truly is, for it does ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... Monsieur Duchemin was erased by the razor of a New England barber, whose shears had likewise eradicated every trace of a Continental mode of hair-dressing. There remained about Lanyard little to remind of Andre Duchemin but his eyes; and the look of one's eyes, as every good actor knows, is something far more easy to ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... to this was made by a bow. I was sure of my command over my face; but perfect control of the voice is a rare power. Here and there, a great actor or a great criminal ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... the actor, we are each given a certain dramatic conception for the expression of which we have precisely the same artistic materials—namely, our own bodies, sometimes including heart and brains. One has often heard the complaint ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... Steingall entered his own sanctum. A small, slightly built man was bent over a table and scrutinizing a Rogues' Gallery of photographs in a large album. He turned as the door opened, straightened himself, and revealed a wizened face, somewhat of the actor type, its prominent features being an expressive mouth, a thin, hooked nose, and a pair of singularly ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... at her best in Nedda, and the dramatic power, specially of Signor DE LUCIA as Canio and of Mons. ANCONA as Tonio, would have carried the piece, as a piece, even without the musical setting. To-night De Lucia shows himself a great actor. There were encores in plenty. Ancona Tonio interrupts the overture in order to sing a prologue. This he does admirably, both vocally and histrionically. But cui bono? It is as pointless as is nowadays the prologue of CHRISTOPHER SLY to the Taming of the Shrew. It seems as if LEONCAVALLO ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 27, 1893 • Various
... seen the boat. Two figures flitted before him, but he lost sight of them, and in the silence and loneliness his choler began to cool. Could it really have been the devil? An owl hooted in the bush. He went away in haste. There was a rumor in after years that Beaurain was an actor in a company that went up and down the great river on a barge, and that a woman who resembled Louison was also in the troupe. But Gwen never told the story of his disappointment without ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... have the vaguest premonition that he had opened a door of escape from stifled older lands to a higher type of manhood and freedom than the most sanguine dreamer had ever hoped?[10] After an act has come to fruition, it is easy to read into the actor's mind fuller purpose than he could have intended. Columbus could not have realized to what the discovery of America would lead. Did Radisson realize what the discovery of ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... and caking the breathing. Open dressing-room doors that should have been closed. The smelling geometry of the make-up box. Curls. Corsets. Cosmetics. Men in undershirts, grease-painting. "Gawdalmighty, Tottie, them's my teddy bears you're puttin' on." Raw nerves. Raw emotions. Ego, the actor's overtone, abroad everywhere and full of strut. "Overture!" The wait in the wings. Dizziness at the pit of the stomach. Audiences with lean jaws etched into darkness. Jaws that can smile or crack your bones and eat you. Faces swimming in the stage ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... happiness is 261:9 seen in this: If one turns away from the body with such absorbed interest as to forget it, the body experiences no pain. Under the strong im- 261:12 pulse of a desire to perform his part, a noted actor was accustomed night after night to go upon the stage and sustain his appointed task, walking about as actively 261:15 as the youngest member of the company. This old man was so lame that he hobbled every day ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... of the trilogy, Prometheus was nailed to the rock, the spectators must have thought of the Crucified as the antitype, for the actor playing that part took that posture, extended his arms, and let his head sink on his breast. The common people became more attentive, and as they neither had learnt Greek nor were acquainted with mythology, they thought that the sufferings of Christ were being represented on ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... plays is not exhausted. Here is Weston's Amazon Queen, of 1667, written in pompous rhymed heroics; here is The Fortune Hunters, a comedy of 1689, the only play of that brave fellow, James Carlile, who, being brought up an actor, preferred "to be rather than to personate a hero," and died in gallant fight for William of Orange, at the battle of Aughrim; here is Mr. Anthony, a comedy written by the Right Honourable the Earl of Orrery, and printed in 1690, a piece never republished among ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... the scene, the skill of the principal actor, the rapid growth of the piles of coin and bills, the frantic desire of the people to be gulled, all served to obscure those elements which were calculated to appeal to the Quaker's conscience. He felt like one awakened from a dream. While he ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... descriptively at least, (for, being an honorary agent of the Shipwrecked Fishermen and Mariners' Society, and an actor in some of the scenes which I am about to describe, I cannot conveniently dismiss myself altogether); before dismissing myself, I say, it may be as well to explain that my strong-minded wife, in concert with a number of variously-minded ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... a marvel of mystic miraculous moonshine, These that we feel in the blood of our blushes that thicken and threaten with throbs through the throat? Thicken and thrill as a theatre thronged at appeal of an actor's appalled agitation, Fainter with fear of the fires of the future than pale with the promise of pride in the past; Flushed with the famishing fulness of fever that reddens with radiance of rathe recreation, Gaunt as the ghastliest of glimpses that gleam ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... consultations not in public, but in private, and withdrawn from the knowledge of the many; where when this one point was agreed on, that the accused must be rescued whether by just or unjust means, every proposition that was most desperate was most approved; nor was an actor wanted for any deed however daring. Accordingly on the day of trial, when the people stood in the forum in anxious expectation, they at first began to feel surprised that the tribune did not come down; then when the delay was now becoming more suspicious, they ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... Stars, and three separate endings had been filmed, of which the appropriate one would of course be used in the eight separate world premieres. One ending had the Platform fail due to sabotage, and the hero—played by an actor who had interrupted his seventh honeymoon to play the part—splendidly prepared to build it all over again. The second ending closed with the Platform headed for Alpha Centaurus—which was hardly the intention of anybody outside ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... Charles the Second. And throughout the 'Spectator' we may find a Christian under-tone in Addison's intolerance of infidelity, which is entirely wanting when the moralist is Eustace Budgell. Two or three persons in the comedy of the 'Drummer' give opportunity for good character-painting in the actor, and on a healthy stage, before an audience able to discriminate light touches of humour and to enjoy unstrained although well-marked expression of varieties of character, the 'Drummer' would not fail to ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... welcome his nephew. In the narrow world of the Endicotts the average mind had not strength enough to conceive of a personality which embraced in itself a prize-fighter and a state senator. The terms were contradictory. True, Nero had been actor and gladiator, and the inference was just that an American might achieve equal distinction; but the Endicott mind refused to consider such an inference. Arthur Dillon no longer found anything absurd or impossible. The surprises of his new position charmed him. Three months earlier and ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... landing he drew back to let two men pass down who looked like movie actors. They wore violet ties and tight-fitting jackets with trench belts and short trousers that should have been worn by their younger brothers. The actor on the next floor, unshaven and obviously just out of bed, was cooking breakfast in his cubby-hole. He wore the upper part of his pajamas and a pair of incredibly dirty flannel trousers. The marks of last night's grease paint were ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... been a richer man by this time - has been an inmate of my house these eight years past. He is my librarian, secretary, steward, and first minister; director of all my affairs, and inspector-general of my household. He is something of a musician, something of an author, something of an actor, something of a painter, very much of a carpenter, and an extraordinary gardener, having had all his life a wonderful aptitude for learning everything that was of no use to him. He is remarkably fond of children, and is the best and kindest nurse in sickness that ever drew the breath of ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... sacrificing her own liberty to their welfare, in taking a spouse. This advice was quite in harmony with the inclinations of the empress. Count Orlof, one of the most conspicuous nobles of the court, and the prime actor in the conspiracy which had overthrown and assassinated Peter III., was the recognized favorite of Catharine. But Count Orlof had assumed such haughty airs, regarding Catharine as indebted to him for her crown, that he had rendered himself extremely ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... exquisitely delicate; the result of which is, that they are affected by all mental emotions. Hence, the tones of the voice truly indicate the character of certain passions and feelings, for which reason, on the stage, the intonation given by the actor, whether it be the distressed cry of a Belvidera, or the pathetic singing of an Ophelia, will carry along the sympathies of the audience, albeit, the exact words may not be understood. A particular tone of voice causes, without reference ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... gesticulation which are universally observed are certainly the outcome of no convention; they are natural and original, a true language of nature, which may have been strengthened by imitation and custom. It is incumbent on an actor, as is well known, and on a public speaker, to a less extent, to make a careful study of gesture—a study which must principally consist in the observation and imitation of others, for the matter cannot very well be based on abstract rules; with the ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... Europe, to see where the place was, and then said with a sigh: "Roll up that map: it will not be wanted these ten years." One version assigns the incident to Shockerwick House, near Bath. Pitt is looking over the picture gallery, and is gazing at Gainsborough's portrait of the actor Quin. His retentive memory calls up the lines ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... rather the advantage of our pertinacious antagonist. So completely was our attention engaged by the "Vigilant," that it was not until that craft had hoisted her colours that we became aware of the fact that a new actor had appeared upon the scene, and was within seven miles of us. This was a brig, which when we first caught sight of her was running in for the land from the W.S.W., with every stitch of canvas set that would draw, including lower, topmast, and topgallant studding-sails ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... day Jimmy led a very happy life, for he loved music and enjoyed the daily drill with his mates, though it was long before he saw the inside of the theatre. Will knew a good deal about it, for an actor's family had boarded with her mother, and the little girl had been behind the scenes. But to Jimmy, who had only seen one fairy play, all was very strange when at last he went upon the stage; for the glittering world ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Vol. 5 - Jimmy's Cruise in the Pinafore, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... bridling your curiosity, and accustoming it to obey reason. Afterwards it will be well to extend the practice still further, and not to go to the theatre when some fine piece is performing, and if your friends invite you to see some dancer or actor to decline, and, if there is some shouting in the stadium and hippodrome, not even to turn your head to look what is up. For as Socrates advised people to abstain from food that made them eat when ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... Inquiring here and there, he learned that a son of the house was absent on the Mecca pilgrimage. Instantly he procured a sheet of parchment, folded it, and sealed it as usual with clay: he rolled his garments in the dust and bent his spine painfully over a long staff. Thus perfect in what an actor would call his reading, he sent word to the host that a messenger had arrived from his son. "You have seen him?" said the delighted Amphitryon, "and how did he bear his fatigues?" "He was in excellent health," answered the Tofailian very feebly. "Speak, speak!" cried the eager ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... du Maurier's work for Punch the actor gets his position in Society; and we see desolate gentlemen in other professions drifting about at the back of the room like ships that drag their anchor, while all the feminine blandishment of the place is concentrated on the actor. By following up his drawings we can see the whole surface of Victorian ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... last two words—which he rendered with more than an actor's effect—were fairly out of his mouth, the old woman by her shrieks had summoned the guard, and was released from the company of the madman. Shelley was often induced by his friends to show them ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... years he produced no less than thirty ballets. In these he himself took part with considerable success as dancer and comic actor. The success of Cambert and Perrin's operas of "Pomone" and "The Pains and Pleasures of Love" (1671) awakened in him the desire of supplanting them in the regard of the king. After intrigues creditable neither to himself nor to the powers influenced ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... too zealous a soldier to conform to the schism that the operations of war were akin to athletics or sport. Externally his predilections were for the drama. He was a competent actor and manager, and he rejoiced in Mafeking ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... the tone of Israel Kafka's voice nor the look in his face. Nor did the savage resolution seem altogether unnatural in a man of the Moravian's breeding. The Wanderer had no time and but little inclination to blame himself for the part he had played in disclosing to the principal actor the nature of the scene which had taken place in the cemetery, and the immediate consequences of that disclosure, though wholly unexpected, did not seem utterly illogical. Israel Kafka's nature was eastern, violently passionate and, at the same time, long-suffering in certain directions ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... now," concluded the Serjeant, like an actor carefully preparing his effect, "traced this friendly intimacy down to a point where it begins to be dangerous: I do not wish to aggravate the gravity of the charge in the slightest by any rhetoric or by an unconscious over-statement; you ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... that Garrick, though accustomed to face multitudes, when produced as a witness in Westminster Hall, was so disconcerted by a new mode of publick appearance, that he could not understand what was asked. It was a cause where an actor claimed a free benefit; that is to say, a benefit without paying the expence of the house; but the meaning of the term was disputed. Garrick was asked, 'Sir, have you a free benefit?' 'Yes.' 'Upon what terms have you it?' 'Upon...the terms...of ...a ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... hereditary rank. He built castles for himself and son and organized guards for their defence. His son Iruka became daijin after his father's death and conducted himself with even greater arrogance. At last his conduct became intolerable and he was assassinated A.D. 645. The chief actor in this plot was Nakatomi-no-Kamatari, who was at this time on intimate terms with the prince who ...
— Japan • David Murray
... Robert Grant Burns dictatorially, "the working-hours of an actor belong to the director he's working for. If I use you in pictures, your time will belong to me on the days when I use you. I'll expect you to be on hand when I ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... dancer must have some skill as an actor, and some acquaintance with mythology—the reason being that the dances at the festivals of the gods partook of the character of pantomime, and represented the most picturesque events and passages in the popular religion. Religious ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... "that he probably knows you are in town, that you are here watching him; but not once will he look this way, nor do a thing other than if you were miles away. My God, to be an actor like that!" ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... he pleased, could imitate Johnson very exactly[955]; for that great actor, with his distinguished powers of expression which were so universally admired, possessed also an admirable talent of mimickry. He was always jealous that Johnson spoke lightly of him[956]. I recollect his exhibiting him to me one day, as if saying, 'Davy ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... to leave his wife near the Duke of Anjou and Narcisse, and he offered himself to the King as an actor in the masque, much as he detested all he heard of its subject. The King nodded comprehension, and told him it was open to him either to be a demon in a tight suit of black cloth, with cloven-hoof shoes, a long tail, and a trident; or one of the Huguenots who were to be repulsed ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... some joke or some compliment to Clementina about the cap which grew momently heavier under the sovereigns and half sovereigns, half crowns and half dollars, shillings, quarters, greenbacks and every fraction of English and American silver; and the actor who had given the imitations, made bold, as he said, to ask his lordship if the audience might not hope, before they dispersed, for something more from Miss Claxon. He was sure she could do something more; he for one would be glad of anything; and Clementina turned from putting ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Phoebe a-walking about in the moonlight like a play-actor!" said Tozer, in consternation, drawing aside the curtain to look out. "I'll tell you what, old woman, the girl's in love; and that's what it is." He thought this was a capital joke, and followed his ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... an actor, who, after playing about in the provincial highways and bye-ways of the dramatic world, went to London, where he was engaged at Covent Garden in second and third rate parts. He was a man of dissipated habits, but ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... stage-name was Le Destin, that of his old comrade La Rancune, and that of the lady who was perched like a hen on the top of their baggage, La Caverne. This odd name made some of the company laugh; whereat the young actor added that it ought not to seem stranger to men with their wits about them than "La Montagne," "La Vallee," "La Rose," or "L'Epine." The talk was interrupted by certain sounds of blows and oaths which were heard from the front of the cart. It was the tennis-court attendant, who had struck the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... Mutilations or Additions made to them. Hence we derive many Chasms and Incoherences in the Sense and Matter. Scenes were frequently transposed, and shuffled out of their true Place, to humour the Caprice or suppos'd Convenience of some particular Actor. Hence much Confusion and Impropriety has attended, and embarras'd, the Business and Fable. For there ever have been, and ever will be in Playhouses, a Set of assuming Directors, who know better than the Poet himself the Connexion and Dependance ...
— Preface to the Works of Shakespeare (1734) • Lewis Theobald
... that time was ashamed to show himself, but—a man who was not ashamed to show himself, and who people said was a much better man than Kean—as I have no doubt he was—though whether he was a better actor I cannot say, for I ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... the afternoon the old lady pushed her foot against Caroline's, and the girl looked up quickly enough to see the new actor, whose regular advent would thenceforth lend variety to the scene. He was tall and thin, and wore black, a man of about forty, with a certain solemnity of demeanor; as his piercing hazel eye met the old woman's dull gaze, he made her quake, for she felt as though he had the ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... remained for six years. So brilliant was his success in the title-parts of several of Shakespeare's plays, that Iffland began to fear for his own reputation; yet that great artist was generous enough to recommend the young actor as his only possible successor. On Iffland's death Devrient was summoned to Berlin, where he was for fifteen years the popular idol. He died there on the 30th of December 1832. Ludwig Devrient was equally great in comedy and tragedy. Falstaff, Franz Moor, Shylock, King Lear ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... written by a person unknown to her, to describe his or her character. In this way, at what precise date is uncertain, she dictated the following description of Lewis Carroll: "Very clever head; a great deal of number; a great deal of imitation; he would make a good actor; diffident; rather shy in general society; comes out in the home circle; rather obstinate; very clever; a great deal of concentration; very affectionate; a great deal of wit and humour; not much eventuality ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... introduce the material from which was builded an actor. Lewis Paine, who brutally hacked at Secretary Seward while Booth was assassinating the President. He was one of the characters produced for the closing scene in ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith
... new enjoyments, different from and greater than those that they obtained without trouble through the efforts of the preceding generation. It is this little common drama, which we see re-enacted in every family and in which every one of us has been and will be an actor—to-day as a young radical who innovates customs, to-morrow as an old conservative, out-of-date and malcontent in the eyes of the young; a drama, petty and common, which no one longer regards, so frequent is ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... Wretched playactor, we will put him in the pillory for his success. Let him follow up his triumph with our hisses. Let him collect a crowd and create a solitude. Thus it is that the wealthy, termed the higher classes, have invented for the actor that form ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... "It's the play-actor!" cried he, slashing at my cudgel. He cut it clean in two; and, judging discretion better than death, I ducked my head and (I blush to tell it) scampered for my life. The devil was in Rupert Hentzau; ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... irradiating word. "But Shadwell never deviates into sense," for instance. Young Roscius, in his provincial barn, will repeat you the great soliloquy of Hamlet, and although every word may be given with tolerable correctness, you find it just as commonplace as himself; the great actor speaks it, and you "read Shakspeare as by a flash of lightning." And it is in Montaigne's style, in the strange freaks and turnings of his thought, his constant surprises, his curious alternations of humour ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... of qualities necessary to form a first-rate dramatic poet is thus rare, hardly less wonderful is the effort of genius to sustain the character of a great actor. The mind of the performer must be sympathetic with that of the author; it must be cast in the same mould with the original conceiver of the piece. To form an adequate and correct conception of the proper representation of the leading characters in the masterpieces ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... the Theatres Committee of the London County Council, the appeal of MR. HENRY IRVING (the well-known actor and manager) against the decision of the Sub-Committee to refuse a licence to the Lyceum Theatre, came ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... has got far beyond appearing to have learnt his songs diligently and to be delivering them correctly. I suspect, however, that he did not pass that way. He will soon have assimilated all that can be taught about singing, and for the rest he is naturally an actor, one of those few who are born with the strange power of appearing to experience inwardly what they express outwardly, a power that his life among the marionettes has strengthened and perfected. But as to predicting his future, ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... be considered—their vast variety and admirable workmanship. Of this we retain proof by the marble masks which represented them; but to this in the real mask we must add the thinness of the substance and the exquisite fitting on to the head of the actor; so that not only were the very eyes painted with a single opening left for the pupil of the actor's eye, but in some instances, even the iris itself was painted, when the colour was a known characteristic of the ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... attempt to blot the sun from the heavens at high noon as to eliminate from the book of Leviticus the one great and divinely-appointed personality, Moses, the lawgiver, the leader the actor, and under God the author ...
— The Testimony of the Bible Concerning the Assumptions of Destructive Criticism • S. E. Wishard
... fundamental principles of government was deeply implicated in these dissensions is evident from the immortal work of Grotius, upon the rights of war and peace, which undoubtedly originated from them. Grotius himself had been a most distinguished actor and sufferer in those important scenes of internal convulsion, and his work was first published very shortly after the departure of our forefathers from Leyden. It is well known that in the course of the contest Mr. Robinson more than once appeared, with credit to himself, as a public disputant ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... drunk, and the glee becomes general. Sparkling eyes are made more sparkling by strong drink; and, under the influence of multiplied potations, the coarse jest is now and then uttered. In this scene of gayety and mirth Charles Duran mingled,—a prominent actor. A young and inexperienced girl had accompanied him to the place. Round and round went the dance, and round and round went Charles's head. He was flush with money, and many a friend did he treat at the bar. Long ere the festivities closed he was unable to walk ...
— Charles Duran - Or, The Career of a Bad Boy • The Author of The Waldos
... published in aid of the funds of the Sanitary Commission, is one of the indications of the patriotism of the time. Mr. Murdoch, an eminent and estimable actor and elocutionist, has been engaged, ever since the war began, in doing his part towards rousing and sustaining the enthusiasm of the people, by scattering the burning words of patriotic poets in our Western camps and towns. The volume contains specimens of lyric poetry which have stood ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... Henry Lewes, a man of brilliant conversational powers, who had written a History of Philosophy, two novels, Ranthorpe, and Rose, Blanche, and Violet, and was a contributor to several reviews. Mr. Lewes was a witty and versatile man, a dramatic critic, an actor for a short time, unsuccessful as an editor of a newspaper, and unsuccessful in his ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... a tenor, an amateur actor, a shouting politician, a small landlord, a small investor, a drinker, a good fellow, a story-teller, somebody's secretary, something in a distillery, a tax-gatherer, a bankrupt and at present a praiser of his ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... nor cost, towards the perfection of their dances. The figures were exquisite. The least number of the figurers were forty or fifty. Their dresses were magnificent and in taste. Their decorations were sublime. A competent skill in the theatrical, or actor's art, and a great one in that of dancing, was necessary for being admitted into the number of figurers. In short, every thing was in the highest order, and very fit to prove the mistake of those who imagine that the dances are, in operas for example, no more than a kind of ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... those cases. The person I had in mind for this play wasn't a star, but a beginner, quite unknown. It was when I was in London putting on 'Fairy Gold' that I saw her; she had a small part in a pantomime, and pantomime is the severest test of an actor's powers, you know. A little later she appeared in 'Honourable Women,' a capital play that died early, but there again I felt her peculiar charm—it was just that. Her part was a minor one, but she wore it as she might wear a glove; she was exquisite! No one ever captured my imagination ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... See "Narrative of Captain John Stewart," an actor in the war.—Magazine of American History, Vol. ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... popular actor (totally unknown to our hero), said, "I believe you, my bo-oy!" Mr. Verdant Green began to feel quite proud of the abilities of their village tailor, and thought what two delightful companions he had met with. The rest ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... the better actor of the two. She went in as casually as though she had not put the only happiness of her life away from her. But Clayton Spencer stood on the pavement, watching her in, and all the tragedy of the empty years ahead was in ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of the ministry, and besides he had already celebrated the sacrament of the supper, which was not, by a new ordination to be made void.——So having made trial of the work, and found the blessing of God upon his labours, he accepted the charge, and was from that time forth principal actor in the affairs of the church, and a constant and strenuous maintainer of the ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... our hero, answering in the same jocular vein, "I confess I have 'the actor's high ambition.' It is astonishing how my heart beat when Richard cried out, 'Come bustle, bustle!' ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... head high, her eyes full upon his wrinkled, cynical face. "I swear, then..." she began, but he—consummate actor that he was and versed in tricks that impress an audience—interrupted her, raising one of his ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... the Universal Theatre enlisted Paul as an actor, and he assumed the double role of an unappreciated author and a sighing lover. In the first capacity he had in his desk ten short stories, a couple of novels, three dramas and a sheaf of doubtful verses. These failed to appeal to editor, manager or publisher, and their author ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... increased from L8,000 to L10,000 a year. However just the cause, or urgent the necessity, which induced this measure, it was undoubtedly a grievous and odious task to a Governor to be himself the principal actor in burning and destroying the best town ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... verse from the Orestes of Euripides.—Hegelochus was an actor who, in a recent representation, had spoken the line in such a manner as to lend it an absurd meaning; instead of saying, [Greek: galenen], which means calm, he had pronounced it [Greek: galen], ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... body. He is then closed with by another, who leaps across the prostrate foe, and with an adroit cut rips him open from snout to tail, and the tragedy is over, so far as the struggles and sufferings of the principal actor are concerned. There always follows, however, the most lively curiosity on the part of the sailors to learn what the shark has got stowed away in his inside; but they are often disappointed, for the stomach is generally empty. ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... 2—43. Not in 1st folio. [e-Text transcriber's note: This is the whole of the front matter, including cast and actor lists, with the exception of ...
— The Laws of Candy - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... was a dark-haired Irishman, who had originated in the County Limerick. He was a good mathematician, but in conversation was apt to be long-winded, and had a wonderful capacity for making a simple matter appear complex. He had been, by turns, a civil engineer and an actor, and had a fine singing voice. As an officer he was infinitely laborious and conscientious, but with a queer disconcerting streak of Irish unaccountability. One never quite knew what he would do, if left ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... afterwards Earl of Dorset, a witty and licentious man, falling in love with her, induced her to become his mistress, quit the theatre, and forsake the society of her lover, Charles Hart, a famous actor and great-nephew of William Shakespeare. And she complying with his desires in these matters, he made her an allowance of one hundred pounds a year, on which she returned her parts to the manager, and declared she ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... He was equally affable with artists. He talked daily with the painters in the Louvre; and having paid a visit to the great actor Le Kain, whom he had seen the night before in the character of a Roman emperor, he found him like Buffon ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... the ship's cook in reply, as he raised his eyes from the contemplation of his bubbling coppers, "take my word for it, that there babby what has just bin launched ain't agoin' to shovel off his mortal coil—as the play-actor said—without makin' ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... Amersham Place. Ruddy to a fault, illuminated with vintages, crowned with his curls like Bacchus, he now stood before me for an instant, the perfect master of himself, smiling with airs of conscious popularity and insufferable condescension. He reminded me at once of a royal duke, or an actor turned a little elderly, and of a blatant bagman who should have been the illegitimate son of a gentleman. A moment after he was gliding noiselessly on the ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... business—the skeletons—and this so dexterously and sympathetically, that the men were, it seemed, ready to turn over the living as well as the dead beasts for his service. I have seen a lot of human doing, much of it critically as actor or near observer, but this was in many ways the greatest. The supreme art of it was in the use of a perfectly spontaneous and most actually sympathetic motive to gain an end. With others, this state of mind would lead to affectation; with him, it in no wise diminished the quality of the emotion. ...
— Louis Agassiz as a Teacher • Lane Cooper
... ever"—these multitudes of living beings, angelic, diabolic, bestial, human, crowd the huge spaces of the chapel walls. What makes the impression of controlling doom the more appalling, is that we comprehend the drama in its several scenes, while the chief actor, the divine Judge, at whose bidding the cherubs sound their clarions, and the dead arise, and weal and woe are portioned to the saved and damned, is Himself unrepresented.[210] We breathe in the presence of embodied ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... was at this time that AEschylus, the father of tragedy, exhibited his dramas at Athens, B.C. 500. He added a second actor, and made the choral odes subordinate to the action. The actors now made use of masks, and wore lofty head-dresses and magnificent robes. Scenes were painted according to the rules of perspective, and an elaborate ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... his own vanity, or for the pleasure and entertainment of the public, but solely and purposely to prevent the truthful and matter-of-fact biographer of Liston from making the old player the subject of a biographical work. The veteran actor's vehement protests against being represented as a Presbyterian or Anabaptist, and his brief, but pungent comments on certain passages in the Liston biography, are delightful. Methinks ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... would be breath thrown away to attempt persuading the Indian to abandon his absurd and superstitious design; and to propose accompanying him, and becoming either actor or spectator in the pagan ceremony, would be equally ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... his song, and, as usual, demanding a theme, one of the guests, either facetiously or maliciously, called out, "Take Yates's big nose." (Yates, the actor, was one of the party.) To any one else such a subject would have been appalling: not so to Hook. He rose, glanced once or twice round the table, and chanted (so to speak) a series of verses perfect in rhythm and rhyme: the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... could not bring to Frieda—my walks, my dreams, my adventures of all sorts. And yet when I told her about them, I found that she partook of everything. For she had her talent for vicarious enjoyment, by means of which she entered as an actor into my adventures, was present as a witness at the frolic of my younger life. Or if I narrated things that were beyond her, on account of her narrower experience, she listened with an eager longing to understand that was better than some people's easy comprehension. ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... prodigal son, but he has not returned a penitent; he glories in his crime; he is proud of his shame. Here is a letter which I received from him to-day, in which he informs me that he has eloped with the daughter of my second murderer, this French Pelissier; and that he intends to become an actor, and thus drag through the dust the old and respectable name of his fathers. For this noble work he demands his mother's fortune. He shall have it—yes, he shall have it; it is five thousand dollars, but from me he receives ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... if my darling Aileen were but here! But Tom is the very model of an actor, and Terry is grand, if only we can keep him out of the high tragedy line. King Lear is the mildest ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... overheard whilst I was serving members with tripe and alcohol, it appeared that my revered master was a mysterious personage. About eight months before, he had entered the then unprosperous Club for the first time as a guest of the founder and proprietor, an old actor who was growing infirm. He talked vehemently. The next night he took the presidential chair which he since occupied, to the Club's greater glory. But whence he came, who and what he was, no one seemed ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... theatre.... I am an artist, an actor." He got to his feet and tried to twirl his ragged moustaches back into shape. Then he stuck out his chest, straightened his waistcoat so that the large watchchain clinked, and invited Telemachus to have a cup ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... favour from mere revulsion on her escape from the scaffold. The one thing is as likely as the other. Didn't the heavy man of the fit-up show, eighteen months after his conviction for rape (the lapse of time being occupied in paying the penalty), return as an actor to the scene of his delinquency to find himself, not, as he expected, pelted with dead cats and decaying vegetables, but cheered to the echo? So may it have been ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... true man, and so I found him, else I shouldn't a-followed of him all round the world, and out to Wild Cats' Gulch! But as for this other fellow! Lord! Why, from the minute he made up his mind to marry and rob me, he did nothing but make love! Lord, how he could do it! Like a play-actor! Why, honey, one time he fell on his knees before me and looked up in my face in such a way! And what on earth can an ordinary 'oman do when a man goes down on his marrow bones and rolls up his eyes like a dying duck? She has to sort o' give in to him whether ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... an actor and a playwright. The first mention of him is in a list of the Lord Admiral's players, March 8, 1597-8 (Henslowe's Diary, ed. Collier, p. 120). On the sixteenth of November, 1599, Rowley bound himself to play solely for Henslowe 'for a year and as much as ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... another moment, Harry knew that poor Brindle had ceased to suffer the effects of her gluttonous appetite. Creeping down into the stall, he saw at a glance that the cow was dead, and for a moment, alone there in the stillness and darkness of the spring night, he felt as if he were the principal actor in ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... or asleep at the hall lecture; never sported a pink, or drove a team; was not known to have been concerned in any of the remarkable larks which occurred in our times; was neither an agent in the Plague of Frogs, nor an actor in the private theatricals; was not a member of the Agricultural Society, which made the remarkable experiments with clover and ryegrass in the college quadrangle; had no talent for midnight howling, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... along like this, and first I don't see you," continued the actor. "Then I kind of get a notion sumpthing wrong's liable to happen, so I—No!" He interrupted himself abruptly. "No; that isn't it. You wouldn't notice that I had my good ole revolaver with me. You wouldn't think I had one, because it'd be under my coat like ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... these important data that they might be added to the pages of American history and form a reliable record, it was necessary that some brave, bold and determined man should become an actor on the scenes and among the races described. Such an actor has been, and yet is, Christopher Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains; and, it is the experience, as well as the acts, of his stirring life, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... the most marked and least satisfactory expressions of Mrs. Piozzi's character during her later years was a fancy that she took to Conway, a young and handsome actor, who appeared in Bath, where she was then living, in the year 1819. From the time of her first acquaintance with him, till her death, in 1821, she treated him with the most flattering regard,—with an affection, indeed, that might ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... Swiss people over their oppressors. The exposition is superb, there is rapidity of movement, variety, picturesqueness, the glamor of romance; and the feelings evoked are such as warm and keep warm the cockles of the heart. When the famous actor Iffland received the manuscript of the first act, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... glad to hear you say so," he declared. "At the same time I am afraid her position will be rather an awkward one. She will lose some money by the closing of the theatre, and I don't exactly see what London house is open for her just at present. These actor-managers are all so clannish, and they have ...
— Berenice • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... were axactly performed, by the influence of spirits of different spheres. Every actor in the great drama was influenced by spirits for whose inspiration he was best prepared. But all that took place under the vigilance of the highest order of spirits for the accomplishment of prophecies. In Revelation, xvii: 10 ...
— Secret Enemies of True Republicanism • Andrew B. Smolnikar |
