"Monologue" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... melted, and soared, under the touches of this Western Coleridge. He came to my room at the Golden Eagle, in Sacramento City, one night, and left at two o'clock in the morning. He walked the floor and talked, and it was the grandest monologue I ever listened to. One part of it I could not forget. It was with reference to preachers who turn aside from their holy calling to engage in ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... companionship, and once more his execution was postponed. It was as usual this time, the captain's wrath broke, shattered by that friendly blow upon the back. He still kept up a show of taciturnity, by a grumbling monologue concerning the undignified procedure of Irishmen in general, but the Irishman laughed so loud that Captain Jimmie was deceived into thinking he had said something very witty indeed, and laughed too, in ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... Ode as it stands, without attempting to decide whether it is dialogue or monologue. Perhaps the opinion which supposes it to be spoken by Horace in his own person, as if he had actually perished in the shipwreck alluded to in Book III, Ode 4, v. 27, "Me... non exstinxit... Sicula Palinurus unda," deserves more attention than ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... armour and roaring for battle. They care for no one. They stormed Convention yesterday and looted the cellar of Good-Manners, who died of fear without a wound; so they drank his wine and are to-day as strong as lions and as careless (saving only their Captain, Monologue, ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... carriage coming down the hill at full speed cut short his monologue. He had scarcely time to jump upon the sidewalk with a "Take care, you brute!" when his cry of anger was changed to one of stupefaction: ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... themselves in the summer-house, a little wooden room under the down-sloping boughs of a huge cedar, and pursued their conversation—or rather Bascombe pursued his monologue. A lively girl would in all probability have been bored to death by him, but Helen was not a lively girl, and was not bored at all. Ere they went into the house she had heard, amongst a hundred other things of wisdom, his ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... remains to be considered—that is a different side of the subject. If I do, it may be in a magazine—or—but this is another ground. And then, I have in my head to associate with the version, a monodrama of my own,—not a long poem, but a monologue of AEschylus as he sate a blind exile on the flats of Sicily and recounted the past to his own soul, just before the eagle cracked his great massy ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... condemnation of the Man of Sorrows by Pilate, told by the bass Narrator, the words of Jesus himself, however, being used invariably in the first person, and sung by the baritone voice, as when he says, "If my Deeds have been evil," immediately following the bass recitative. After another monologue by the Narrator, ensues the march to the cross,—an instrumental number which is brilliant in its color effects and somewhat barbaric in tone. Without any break, the sopranos enter with the words, ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... story of character, in the form of dramatic monologue. There is only one speaker, but we know by his words that another is present and can infer his part in the conversation. This story has the additional values ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... Westmoreland House, Miss Carew lived a monotonous but anxious life. For days together she hardly saw Molly, and then perhaps she would be called into the big bed-room for a long talk, or rather, to listen to a long monologue in which Molly gave vent to views and feelings ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... detailed his tastes in food, horses, liquors, and saddles in a long monologue which would have been tiresome to any one but an imaginative young Eastern student. Bill had a vast knowledge of the West, but a distressing habit of repetition. He was self-conscious, too, for the reason that he was really talking for the benefit ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... accompanied them. In fact the Theatre de la Foire was the germ that later developed into the Opera-Comique. Harrassed not only by the Theatre-Francais and the Theatre- Italien, but also by the Opera itself, they saw themselves obliged by the Court to abandon, in turn, dialogue and even monologue, and to depend upon placards as a means of expressing the plot to the audience. However, in spite of difficulties and opposition the Theatre de la Foire maintained ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... a dreary affair. Uncle David was out, Aunt Nellie had a headache so was unusually quiet, and Merle, with red eyes, sat silent and brooding. Mavis tried desperately to make a little conversation, but it was impossible to maintain a monologue, and she soon dropped the futile attempt. Merle, after eating half a piece of bread and butter and declining a chocolate biscuit, begged suddenly to be excused, and with two big unruly tears splashing down her cheeks fled ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... she encouraged Maltboy to take a seat by her, and commenced talking with him of the opera, of balls, of new music, of fashions, of the last novel, rattling away on these subjects as if her whole soul were wrapped up in the discussion. It was almost a monologue. Maltboy's part consisted of "Yes;" "I think so too;" "We agree perfectly," and adjectives of admiration occasionally thrown in. That musical voice! He could have listened with rapture to its recital of ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... seemed, or at least she desired an audience for a monologue, for she recognized no antiphonal obligations on the part of her listeners. The doctors were not doing her a speck of good, and she was just squandering money in a miserable boarding-house, when she might be enjoying ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... displays a harmonious beauty, never losing himself in description, but giving only such a sketch of scenes and persons as does not hinder the flowing movement of the narrative. Still less does he lose himself in conversation and monologue, but maintains the lofty privilege of the true epos, by transforming all into living narrative. His pathos does not lie in the words, not even in the famous twentythird and following cantos, where Roland's madness is described. ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... has made a great change in her." Bog here referred, but made no verbal allusion, to a certain friendly call which Pet had once made upon his aunt, on which occasion that elderly lady had entertained her visitor with a monologue two hours long, giving her a complete history of the malady, from its birth in the right great toe, three years previous, through all its eccentric phenomena, to that stage of the disease which made it, as the venerable sufferer observed ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... of us sometimes bow down in the house of Rimmon, and when the conversation languishes at the tea-table, fall back on a discussion of the last house match. It is the line of least resistance, and after a strenuous day's work it is not easy to maintain a monologue about Home Rule. Not the least of the boons of the war is that it has ousted games from the foremost place as a topic of conversation. I have not noticed that they are less keenly played, although the increase of military work ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... inquires thus because he cares a whit. He only wishes to emphasise his own immunity from mal de mer, and blow the smoke of his disgusting pipe into your face. Neither his stomach nor his intellect is sensitive. He has a monologue on sea-sickness: it is all nonsense, imagination. It denotes weakness, not so much of the stomach as of the mentality, the will, the character. And besides, you don't call this rough, do you? You ought to have crossed with him in the old Nausia in 'eighty-nine. ...
— Ship-Bored • Julian Street
... boot-laces snaking along behind him, shuffled over to his chair once more and settled himself for conversation, which Ellen had learned meant a monologue. The edge of his sombrero backed his busy head and kindly face like a soiled grey halo. His low voice, never rising, never ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... that no mention of wolves occurred in it. Johnson fell into a reverie upon wild beasts, and, whilst Reynolds and Langton were discussing something, he broke out, "Pennant tells of bears." What Pennant told is unknown. The company continued to talk, whilst Johnson continued his monologue, the word "bear" occurring at intervals, like a word in a catch. At last, when a pause came, he was going on: "We are told that the black bear is innocent, but I should not like to trust myself with him." Gibbon muttered in a low tone, ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... in this monologue that when Mr. Hooker swung around on me in his revolving chair I was startled, feeling that I had been caught eavesdropping. I thought he was going to rebuke me, but he only said, "What can ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... a monologue with grave enthusiasm on the town of his choice, when they came to the ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... as well as Ludwig, has been listening with some surprise to the singular monologue. "What harm can the sun do us now ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... scion of the Labour Battalion, was another visitor who called one afternoon, and I got permission for him to come up. He was one of the local comedians and quite as good as any professional. I would have gone miles to hear him. His famous monologue with his imaginary friend "Linchpin" invariably brought the house down. He was broad Lancashire and I had had a great idea of taking him off at one of the FANTASTIK Concerts some time, but unfortunately, it was not to be. He came tiptoeing ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... monologue was intensified by hysteria. She pointed wildly, as if she saw again the awful sight which she had seen through ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... was thumping and kneading him on the slab, Tanno went on talking a cheerful monologue of frothy gossip. I asked him ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... alone, or had fermented herself into fury by the certainty of his catching a fever. If Plantagenet remained at the abbey, she was generally sullen; and, as he himself was naturally silent under any circumstances, his mother would indulge in that charming monologue, so conducive to domestic serenity, termed 'talking at a person,' and was continually insinuating that she supposed he found it very dull to pass his day with her, and that she dared say that somebody could be lively enough if he ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... in her bed, and continued her monologue—which we will spare the reader—till the morning. Scarcely had the first rays of light filtered through the interlacing branches of jasmine and wavered into the room, when Nisida dressed herself hurriedly, and went ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... know dogs the more amazin' marvellous they are to me," Dag Daughtry, after he had compassed his fourth bottle, confided in monologue to the Shortlands planter that night just before bedtime. "Take Killeny Boy. He don't do things for me mechanically, just because he's learned to do 'm. There's more to it. He does 'm because he likes me. I can't give ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... to Saint-Dizier House. During all the way, Rodin remained mute, contenting himself with observing Father d'Aigrigny, and listening to him, as he poured forth his grief and fury in a long monologue, interrupted by exclamations, lamentations, and bursts of rage, directed against the strokes of that inexorable destiny, which had ruined in a moment the best founded hopes. When the carriage entered the courtyard, and stopped before the portico, the princess's face could be seen through one ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... His early lilting poems were without significance or individuality. But with The Old Huntsman (1917) Sassoon found his own idiom, and became one of the leading younger poets upon the appearance of this striking volume. The first poem, a long monologue evidently inspired by Masefield, gave little evidence of what was to come. Immediately following it, however, came a series of war poems, undisguised in their tragedy and bitterness. Every line of these ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... before a given evening two of them sprang up, only he, a stranger in this very fungiferous place, knew a fungus when he saw something like a fungus—if we disregard its quick liquefaction, for instance. It was only a monologue, however: now we have an all-star cast: and they're not only Irish; they're ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... dame so well, that you are sure to reap the penalty of it. Forbear, I warn you, before it is too late. I know of what I speak. I have been a gentleman for years, and I am acquainted with all the ins and outs of the calling. It is a poor one; avoid it. But you will pardon this somewhat lengthy monologue. I have kept you from your ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... admires Cicero who blames Catiline. Is it not so, master? What say you to this philosophy? I possess philosophy by instinct, by nature, ut apes geometriam.—Come! no one answers me. What unpleasant moods you two are in! I must do all the talking alone. That is what we call a monologue in tragedy.—Pasque-Dieu! I must inform you that I have just seen the king, Louis XI., and that I have caught this oath from him,—Pasque-Dieu! They are still making a hearty howl in the city.—'Tis a villanous, malicious old king. ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... the camp a group of officers congregated before a large mess tent appeared to be highly amused by the conversation—half monologue and half harangue of a singular-looking individual who stood in the centre. He wore a "slouch" hat, to the band of which he had imparted a military air by the addition of a gold cord, but the brim was caught up at the side in a peculiarly theatrical ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... means of demonstrating her superiority, for she picks her subjects with the care a general selects his battlefield; F., who is a born pedagogue and seeks to instruct whoever listens to him, whose conversation is a lecture and a monologue; R. O., the reticent, says little but that pertinent and relevant, cynical and shrewd; and R. V., who says little and that with timidity and error. So there are specialists in caution and "common sense," ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... professor, plumb-full of book dope on the Yukon. He's Mister Wise Mike. He knows it all. Hear his monologue on 'How It Should Be Done.' He's going to live on deck to inure himself to the rigours of the Arctic climate. Works with a pair of spring dumb-bells to get up his muscle so's he ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... mastery of style, these poems show Browning at the highest level of his poetic achievement. It is in these remarkable poems that he brought to perfection a poetic form which he practically invented, the dramatic monologue, a form in which there is but one speaker but which is essentially dramatic in effect. The dramatic quality arises partly from the implied presence of listeners whose expressions of assent or dissent determine the progress or the abrupt changes of direction of the speaker's words. In ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... after Sappho we find Theocritus harping on the same theme. His Enchantress is a monologue in which a woman relates how she made advances to a youth and won him. She saw him walking along the road and was so smitten that she was prostrated and confined to her bed for ten days. Then she sent her slave to waylay the youth, with these instructions: "If you see him ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... a monologue, but evoked in the give and take of argument with Mr. Osborne, who believed in never yielding an inch to the demands of labor, and with Mr. Dinwiddie, who, since his association with the Sophisticates, was looking forward ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... which might add to the comfort and sense of harmony which seemed so much a part of his young mistress's life. As he straightened a fruit knife here, or set right a fold of the snowy breakfast cloth, he kept up a low-murmured monologue after the manner of his race. Very little escaped old Jerome's sharp eyes and keen ears, and within the past forty-eight hours they had found plenty to see or hear, for a guest had come to Severndale. Yes, ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... monologue, Dick Penryn lit his pipe, took up the book he had been reading, and was soon deep in the pages of ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... imagined and not real to the poet himself; Browning was the first to project it to express imagined emotions of men and women, whether typical or individual, whom he himself had created. Alongside this perversion of the lyric, he created a looser and freer form, the dramatic monologue, in which most of his most famous poems, Cleon, Sludge the Medium, Bishop Blougram's Apology, etc., are cast. In the convention which Browning established in it, all kinds of people are endowed with a miraculous articulation, a new gift of tongues; ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... listened without thinking as I often listened to his talk for the mere music of the utterance; now, at a break in the monologue, I went into the next room, feeling that to listen consciously would be unworthy. On the whole his view of me was not unkindly: he disliked to hear any opinion that differed from his own and it never came into his head that Oxford was no nearer the meridian of truth than ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... they were married, when with Martin, such chatter had died unuttered on Rose's tongue. The few remarks which she did venture, nowadays, had the effect of a disconcerting splash before they sank into the gloomy depths of the thick silence. Occasionally, in sheer self defense, she carried on a light monologue, but Martin's lack of interest gave her such an odd, lonely, stage-struck sensation that she, too, became untalkative, keeping to herself the ideas which chased through her ever-active mind. Innately just, she attributed this ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... she had to restore confidence in Larry's young friend, and that she proceeded forthwith to do so. She would have laughed at the thought that anyone could be afraid of her, but she felt instinctively that a soothing monologue, a sort of cradle-song, was what the occasion demanded; so she began to speak of the bluebells, the woods, the weather, saying with a sort of languid simplicity, the things that the moment suggested; "babbling," as she subsequently assured Judith, "of green fields," until ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... the monologue was an incoherent discursive medley, now plaintive, now passionate, at times prayerful, then exultant. As he proceeded, he seemed to lose sight of his present aim at doing good in the hope of release from termless life, and become the ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... into short sentences. The dialogue became a monologue. I entered upon my declaration. With the assistance of Bettina, who supplied her mistress with cologne, I kept her attention alive through the incipient circumstances. Symptoms were soon told. I came to the avowal. Her hand lay reposing on ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... if she is the cook, why not be called so? And going off to her bedroom with her dinner, no one downstairs being good enough to eat with her. I must say it isn't what I'm used to, and me lived with the first families. Quite the first." Mrs. Atkins ceased her weary monologue and gazed on the family with conscious virtue. She was dressed in dull black silk, ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... value to his work. His dramatic experiments, like Queen Mary, are not, on the whole, successful, though it would be unjust to deny dramatic power to the poet who has written, upon one hand, Guinevere and the Passing of Arthur, and upon the other the homely, dialectic monologue ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... takes pains to refer to himself as "a simple, water-drinking bard," [Footnote: See The Waggoner.] and in lines To the Sons of Burns he delivers a very fine prohibition lecture. Tennyson offers us Will Waterproof's Lyrical Monologue, a reductio ad absurdum of the claims of the bibulous bard. Then, lest the temperance cause lack the support of great names, Longfellow causes the title character of Michael Angelo to inform us that he "loves not wine," while, more recently, E. A. Robinson pictures Shakespeare's ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... not catch Dr. Blake unawares. He laughed a laugh which rang as true as Mrs. Markham's. He even ventured on a humorous monologue in which he accused his sex of every possible failing, ending with a triumphant eulogy of the other half of creation. But Mrs. Markham, though she listened with outward civility, appeared to take all his jibes seriously—miscomprehended him ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... She had been talking long and vehemently. She and Derek were sitting in Freddie Rooke's apartment at the Albany, and the subject of her monologue was Jill. Derek had been expecting the attack, and had wondered why it had not come before. All through supper on the previous night, even after the discovery that Jill was supping at a near-by table ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... dressed in uniform, but their arms were concealed beneath their mantles, that they might not glimmer through the darkness. And then they quietly formed into ranks like supernumeraries on the stage of a theatre whilst the chief comedian is ending his monologue in front of the footlights. Only Anicza had observed them. During the whole course of the oath, she had not once looked at Fatia Negra's cursing lips, but at the groups forming in ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... a perpetual-motion conversationalist the old wildcatter broke records. He was a short barrel of a man, with small eyes set close together, and he made a figure of fun perched high up in the saddle. But he permitted no difficulties of travel to interfere with his monologue. ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... because you're different. I'm different; it's a jolly good thing to be different." I was not used, to people who took this wide view of circumstance, and his voice in the shadows sounded like some one speaking in a story-book. Yet although his monologue gave me an entirely new conception of life, no more of it lingers in my mind, save his last reflective criticism. "All the same, I don't see why you should always have dirty nails." He never confided ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... "talk" her books, or evolve her books from conversation, like Madame de Stael. She was too self-conscious, too desperately reflective, too rich in second-thoughts for that. But in tete-a-tete, and with time to choose her words, she could—in monologue, with just enough stimulus from a companion to keep it going—produce on a listener exactly the impression of some of her best work. As the low, clear voice flowed on in Mrs. Pattison's drawing- room, I saw Saragossa, Granada, the Escorial, and that ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the monologue was interrupted and he busied himself with the fuse, pouring from a flask taken from his doublet, fresh grains of powder upon the train already laid, that nothing should be lacking to speed the fire ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... will," said Patty. "That is, I'll help. I won't write it all alone, nor act it all by myself, either. I don't suppose it's to be a monologue, is it?" ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... After this monologue he continues, and addresses to the candidate the mid[-e] gag[)i]kwew[)i]n, or Mid[-e] sermon, in ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... can I do? It isn't my fault, for I would act anything—I'd stand on my head. But I can't find any one else, so that, unless I give a monologue—Denoisel has refused, and as for you, a sober man like you—well, I ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... to the being of a few years before, of whom it is written: "He was no longer on the earth; he was in an empyrean of golden clouds and perfumes; his imagination, so full of exquisite beauty, seemed engaged in a monologue with God himself!"* ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... Gaius Small, and, although he stammered, he loved the sound of his own voice. The demand for a dozen oranges furnished Gaius with subject sufficient for a lengthy monologue—"forty drawls and ten stutters to every orange," quoting Captain ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... conclusion so suddenly revealed that it has the effect of wit. It needs the highest culture and the finest breeding to prevent the conversation from running into mere persiflage on the one hand—its common fate—or monologue on the other. Our conversation is largely chaff. I am not sure but the former generation preached a good deal, but it had great practice in fireside talk, and must have talked well. There were narrators in those days who could charm a circle all the evening long with stories. When each day ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... them altogether, and give you the story in a simple narrative—a monologue? I know, friend Roblez, you're not a man greatly given to speech; so it will save you the necessity of opening your lips ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... that there was no direct adoption of a form intentionally dramatic, and that the modern sacred drama—the only drama for centuries—was simply an expansion of or excrescence from the services of the Church herself, which in their antiphonal character, and in the alternation of monologue and chorus, were distinctly dramatic in form. This, however, is one of those numerous questions which are only good to be argued, and can never reach a conclusion; nor need it greatly trouble those who believe that all literary forms are more or less natural ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... desperately hard to read, on account of the soggy weight of the book. Here we have, however, everything that he has thus far written which he thinks worth preserving. The first piece, Akra the Slave (1904), is a romantic monologue in free verse. Although rather short, it is much too long, and few persons will have the courage to read it through. It is incoherent, spineless, consistent only in dulness. Possibly it is worth keeping as a curiosity. Then comes ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... singularly well constructed for such a purpose. There was plenty of room, and a sufficiency of retreat for those who sat out, in addition to a conservatory large enough to have married off half the couples in the county. The audience was in an excellent humor, and the monologue, the first item of the programme, was received with a warmth which gave Charteris, whom rehearsals had turned into a pessimist, a faint hope that the main item on the programme might not be the complete failure it had ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse
... the New Era Drug Store and walk out smilingly to serve the New Era customers, patrons, the New Era called them. In five minutes he must be on duty, yet Peter felt that his very life depended upon bringing this wordy young man to a point in his monologue. ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... Common Study Discord in Childhood Virgin Youth Monologue of a Mother In a Boat Week-night Service Irony Dreams Old Dreams Nascent A Winter's Tale Epilogue A Baby Running Barefoot Discipline Scent of Irises The Prophet Last Words to Miriam Mystery Patience Ballad of Another Ophelia ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... head during her continuous monologue, saw tears running from her guest's eyes as she gazed on the idealized presentment ...
— Options • O. Henry
... is opened by that favourite device of Selma Lagerloef, the monologue, through which she pries into the very soul of her characters, in this case Ingmar, son of Ingmar, of Ingmar Farm. Ingmar's monologue at the plow is a subtle portrayal of an heroic battle between the forces of conscience and desire. Although this prelude ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... more whisky and helped the two men in a liberal manner. He abused the teetotal sect with ferocity, as he handed the seltzer, and pouring out a glass of water for himself, was about to resume his monologue, when Cotgrave broke in— ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... which showed clearly that Brother Burge was at that moment engaged in a terrified combat with the Powers of Darkness to decide whether he should, or should not, rifle his host's shop. His hands clenched and his ear pressed close to the wall, the jeweller listened to a monologue which increased in ...
— Captains All and Others • W.W. Jacobs
... pausing ere he daubs his thigh With pollen from a hollyhock near by, Declares he never heard in terms so just The labor problem thoughtfully discussed! The browsing ass looks up and clears his whistle To say: "A monologue upon the thistle!" Meanwhile the lark, descending, folds his wing And innocently asks: ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... equal anywhere? How could a thinker of his power of brain cover leagues of letter-paper with windy nonsense and mawkish insincerity? And finally, of what quality was the talk of one whose social life was entirely monologue? To the first of these questions Wordsworth perhaps helps with an analogy, but not very far; for it is certain that Wordsworth's opinion of the importance of his own verses was inflexible, whereas Coleridge, having another medium of expression, was by no means so insistent upon publishing. Upon ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... I remember now what I did say. I said that much as I enjoyed the pleasant give and take of friendly conversation, dearly as I loved even the irresponsible monologue or the biting repartee, yet still more was I attached to the silent worship of the valse's mazy rhythm. 'BUT,' I went on to say, 'but,' I added, with surprising originality, 'every rule has an exception. YOU are ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... with laughter shed patchouli and a man who smoked American cigarettes. At these and the steam heat, the nostrils of Herrick, trained to the odor of balsam and the smoke of open wood fires, took offense. He refused to be amused. The monologue artist, in whom Jackson found delight, caused Herrick only to groan; the knockabout comedians he hoped would break their collar-bones; the lady who danced Salome, and who fascinated Kelly, Herrick prayed would catch pneumonia ...
— The Nature Faker • Richard Harding Davis
... think I may say the entire evening, was occupied by a monologue addressed by the poet to my mother, who was of course extremely well pleased to listen to it. I was chiefly occupied in talking to my old schoolfellow, Herbert Hill, Southey's nephew, who also passed the evening there, and with whom I had a delightful walk the next day. But I did listen with ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... inwardly smiled during the old man's monologue, broken only by courteous, half-articulate interjections on his own part. He knew too well the old feud between their houses, the ambition that had possessed many a Vaufontaine to inherit the dukedom of Bercy, and the Duke's futile revolt ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... The monologue suddenly ceased, and, after a silent moment, a groan from the heart of the agonized man came to the ears of those outside. Presently, he emerged, white and wretched-looking, his face ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... morsel on the ground continued his noisy monologue, protesting in a language which is of an age rather than of a race, against the cruelty and the thoughtlessness and the distressing lack of consideration which his elder and ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... sat back in his chair, took his tea-cup as though it were a fresh addition to his responsibilities, and began to talk. He talked apparently without even breathing. He began on the weather, drifted on to art and music, and was just beginning a monologue on The Novel, when William rose and crept from the room like a guilty spirit. He found Mr. Blank under the library table, having heard a noise in the kitchen and fearing a visitor. A cigar and a silver snuffer had fallen from his pocket to the floor. He ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... Smith, and where he died on the 23rd May, 1860. As novelist, dramatist, and lecturer, he had achieved considerable reputation; and his unexpected death, at the early age of forty-four, brought to a sudden close the most popular monologue entertainment of this, or of any, time. Mr. Smith was an amusing writer and a most genial companion, and was ever ready to assist a professional brother in the hour of need. Against the brick wall, close to the gate of North End Lodge, ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... now, mommie," she remarked irrelevantly during a brief pause and relapsed into silence again. She knew that was good for at least five minutes of straight monologue, with her mother in that talking mood. She finished her supper while Warren listened abstractedly to a complete biography of the Meilkes and learned all about Marthy's energy and ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... the epilogues that pertained to particular plays, and could hardly be detached from them, were the "occasional epilogues," written with no special relevancy to any dramatic work, but rather designed to be recitations or monologue entertainments, that could be delivered at any time, as managers, players, and public might decide. Garrick, who highly esteemed addresses of the class, was wont, in the character of "a drunken sailor," to recite a much-admired ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... during the War, talking to her commander. He was unravelling for me the shining complexity of his "box of tricks," as he called his ship. He was sardonic (there was no doubt he was master of the brute he so lightly villified), and he was blithe, and he illustrated his scientific monologue with stories of his own experiences in the Heligoland Bight. These, to me, were like the bedevilments of those dreams from which we groan to awake, but cannot. The curious doings of this new age, I thought as I listened ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... 2, so that, although you will not get it for a few days, I may add to it occasionally and despatch it to you when it reaches a decent length, and before it reaches the colossal and iniquitous verbosity of my former screed—a monologue on the Great ...
— Letters from France • Isaac Alexander Mack
... middle-man with one, two or three different minstrel companies of repute; the editor or originator and author of a "funny column" in a Western small city paper; the author of the songs mentioned and a hundred others; a black-face monologue artist; a white-face ditto, at Tony Pastor's, Miner's and Niblo's of the old days; a comic lead; co-star and star in such melodramas and farces as "The Danger Signal," "The Two Johns," "A Tin Soldier," "The Midnight Bell," "A Green Goods Man" (a farce which he himself ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... but when in an unlucky moment he hinted that such energy could only be the result of consciousness on the Bibliotaph's part that he was in a measure pleading his own cause, the dialogue changed to monologue. For the Bibliotaph girded up his loins and proceeded to smite his opponent hip and thigh. All in good humor, to be sure, and laughter reigned, but it was tremendous and it was logically convincing. It was clearly not safe to have a reputation for good looks while the Bibliotaph ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... host upon whom I had forced myself. It was excellent champagne and with the help of a second glass I made the effort to begin a conversation with a Miss Helen Errold for whom the place upon one side of me was laid. It came more easy to me very soon, I frequently paused in my monologue, like Mark Anthony, for a reply, and sometimes I turned and spoke to Miss Rosalind Smith. Sir Richard at the other end talked sorrowfully on, he spoke as a condemned man might speak to his judge, and yet somewhat as a judge might speak to one that he once condemned ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... others remaining back in the semi-darkness, they all heard Jack Jepson break into a sort of monologue. He was talking to himself, in fashion something ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... monologue came to an end; every one had arrived, and Gringoire breathed freely once more; the actors continued bravely. But Master Coppenole, the hosier, must needs rise of a sudden, and Gringoire was forced to listen to him deliver, amid universal attention, ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... means, I think, one who dislikes the chief feminine characteristics) has heard my loose monologue, bursting all the time with one pent-up protest. At this point he will break out and say, "But what are we to do? There is modern commerce and its clerks; there is the modern family with its unmarried daughters; specialism is expected everywhere; ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... first part. The minstrel with the staying qualities was laboring with a monologue. "Spider", after his strenuous day, was sleeping off his exuberance. At the dullest part in the monologist's offering, "Spider" let go all holds. The skating rink was built on piles, over the river's ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... excellence, always the best of its kind. He has written the best comedy (School for Scandal), the best drama, (in my mind, far before that St. Giles's lampoon, the Beggar's Opera,) the best farce (the Critic—it is only too good for a farce), and the best Address (Monologue on Garrick), and, to crown all, delivered the very best Oration (the famous Begum Speech) ever conceived or heard in this country.' Somebody told S. this the next day, and on hearing it, he burst ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... face wore a gloomy expression. He was annoyed because Bridget had not been introduced to Mrs. Reynolds, and in considerable pain from the increasing rheumatism in his knee joint. In the midst of his old friend's monologue, ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... incense gloom, In drifting clouds and golden light; Once I was shod with fire, and trod Beethoven's path through storm and night: It is too late now to resume My monologue with God." ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... that there would be no comfort in talking before her; but it was a new thing to have to regard her little sister in the light of a spy, and again she had to reason down a sense of guiltiness. However, her aunt wanted Valetta as little as she did; and she had never so rejoiced in Fergus's monologue, 'Then this small fly-wheel catches into the Targe one, and so—- Don't you see?' —-only pausing ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... history that has stood the test of time and established itself in the esteem of men is frankly Utopian. Plato, when his mind turned to schemes of social reconstruction thrust his habitual form of dialogue into a corner; both the "Republic" and the "Laws" are practically Utopias in monologue; and Aristotle found the criticism of the Utopian suggestions of his predecessors richly profitable. Directly the mind of the world emerged again at the Renascence from intellectual barbarism in the ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... just crossed his threshold, where Ma'am Bougon was sweeping at the moment, as she uttered this memorable monologue:— ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... afford some aid and guidance in the study of Robert Browning's Poetry, which, being the most complexly subjective of all English poetry, is, for that reason alone, the most difficult. And then the poet's favorite art-form, the dramatic, or, rather, psychologic, monologue, which is quite original with himself, and peculiarly adapted to the constitution of his genius and to the revelation of themselves by the several "dramatis personae", presents certain structural difficulties, but difficulties which, with an increased familiarity, ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... the broadest worldly experiences and wit. He was younger than Calvin, but older than Wilmer Deakon, and a little fat. He had a small mustache cut above his lip, and closely shaved ruddy cheeks with a tinge of purple about his ears. Drawing out his monologue entertainingly he gazed repeatedly at Lucy. Calvin lost the sense of most that the other said; he was immersed in the past that had been made the present and then denied to him—it was all before him in the presence ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... first shot. When he dragged himself out from under his deceased horse the scenery was undisturbed save for a small cloud of dust hovering over a distant rise to the north of him. After delivering a short and bitter monologue he struck out for the ranch and arrived in a very hot and wrathful condition. It was contagious, that condition, and before long the entire outfit was in the saddle and pounding north, Pete overjoyed because his wound was ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... over and over to the voice which murmured "Once upon a time," but he sat not by a comfortable open grate, amid grandchildren. Instead, he lurked in East Fourteenth Street amid decaying agents' offices, hunting a chance to do a bad monologue in a worse vaudeville show. He had outlasted his time; he could not get work. He lived on those two heartless things, Hope and Memory. And for all I know he is living ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... mask, on which the many expressions appropriated to his dramatic character might be moulded into one permanent and unchanging expression, is favourable only to a partial and inharmonious effect; it is fit for nothing but a monologue, where all the attention may be directed to some great master of ideal mimicry. The modern practice of blending comedy with tragedy, though liable to great abuse in point of practice, is undoubtedly an extension of the dramatic circle; but the comedy should be as ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... powerful mind endowed with strong poetical sensitiveness. His work is even more poetical than musical. The suppression of the lyrical element, and therefore of melody, is with him a systematic parti pris. No more duos or trios; monologue and the aria are alike done away with. There remains only declamation, the recitative, and the choruses. In order to avoid the conventional in singing, Wagner falls into another convention,—that of not ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Alas! The monologue was an account of how a farmer got the best of a bunco steerer in New York City, and was delivered in the esoteric dialect of the Bowery. It was not long before willing smiles gave place to long-drawn faces of comic bewilderment, and, although Copernicus ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... time it had now got to be, and what was the meaning of my incarceration, till my brain became weary and I could scarcely distinguish the topic he discussed. But he kept on for all my seeming, and indeed real, indifference, kept on hour after hour in a monologue he endeavored to make interesting, and which probably would have been so if the time and occasion had been fit for my enjoying it. As it was, I had no ear for his choicest phrases, his subtlest criticisms, ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... movements illustrative of the results of different casualties and disorders; so that a stranger coming in, unacquainted with the lecturer's topics, might easily have supposed him to be an actor entertaining his audience with a monologue, after the manner of Matthews or Yates. This disposition, indeed, gave rise to a joke among his pupils of "Abernethy at Home," whenever he lectured upon any special subject. In relating a case, he was seen at times to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 530, January 21, 1832 • Various
... laid it only to the exhaustion of a hideously rainy day, and talked on steadily. What Reed did not know till later was that her steady monologue was designed to cover up her real intention for just a little while, that she might gain time to stiffen to the resolution she had taken. The resolution had been growing up in her for weeks; it had come to its climax, only that very morning, when ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... another little play of the same year, 1902, a play that for all its crudity and incompleteness is full of insight into Catholic Ireland, youth is again the theme, or the intolerance and self-righteousness of youth. "Eoghan's Wife" (1902) is only a monologue, only the old story of the woman who finds her home lonely and depressing because the wrong man is the man of the house. She looks out over "brown bogs with black water," wondering what is the way of escape ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... his hands, and looking apparently into the far past, he seemed to call up the miseries of the past, and to trace out in the future the vague outlines of some great scheme. And as his thoughts began to overflow, so to say, he broke out in a strange, spasmodic monologue,— ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... bitterly throughout this monologue. "Drunk in business hours! Thass awf'l! Mus'n' do such thing! Mus'n' get drunk, mus'n' gamble, mus'n' kill 'nybody—not in business hours! All right any other time. Kill 'nybody you want to—'s long 'tain't in business hours! ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... entertainments to the attractive concerts given by Mr. MOLLENHAUER. Two great actors, Mr. JEFFERSON and Mr. BOOTH, have at different times appeared at this house, and in Rip Van Winkle and Hamlet have given us the most perfect specimens of dramatic monologue. Lately, there was an attempt made to present Macbeth during the intermissions in the performance of the orchestra. Had an actor been engaged who was capable of playing Macbeth, and had a company been engaged to support him, ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... intercourse between the worshipper and a Person other than himself, who is the object of his worship. It is not a soliloquy—what the Germans expressively call a Selbstgespraech, or "self-talk"; it is not a monologue, but a dialogue; it is not a mere contemplation, but addressed to Someone who is thought of as willing to listen and able to answer. As Sabatier has well said, "Prayer is religion in act; that is, ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... exception, shows what attentive listening may accomplish toward social success. Let it be mentioned here, however, that no one individual should be so carried away by a pet hobby as to force conversation into a monologue. A very well bred man, no matter how great his interest in or eloquence upon any topic may be, always catches at the slightest hint ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... features, heavy eyelids, a soldierly grey moustache. His body encased in a short black jacket with narrow sleeves, his long legs in very tight trousers, made up an agile, youthful, slender figure. He moved forward suddenly, and interrupted the mate's monologue. ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... game of light conversation to perfection. By way of bridging the pause in events, he set himself to describing the society in which the Keiths would shortly find themselves launched. His remarks were practically a monologue, interspersed by irrepressible gurgles of laughter from Nan. Mrs. Sherwood sat quietly by. She did not laugh, but it was evident she was amused. In this ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... surprise, however, Bill did not instantly embark upon his usual monologue. Indeed, he hardly spoke at all. He champed a chop, and seemed to Archie to avoid his eye. It was not till lunch was over and they were ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... spacious farmhouse about two miles from Pittsfield, a weary walk through the dust. But it as well repaid. I introduced myself as a Hawaiian-American, and soon found myself in full tide of talk, or rather of monologue. But he would not repeat the experiences of which I had been reading with rapture in his books. In vain I sought to hear of Typee and those paradise islands, but he preferred to pour forth his philosophy and his theories of life. ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... with a low whinney, and Maurice, believing that the horse had given an ear to his monologue, laughed. But he flattered himself. The horse whinneyed because he inhaled the faint odor of his kind. He drew down on the rein and settled into a swinging trot, which to Maurice's surprise was faster and easier than the canter. They covered a mile this way, when Maurice's roving eye discovered ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... with it. He monologued so that at times he produced an effect of weird world-forgetfulness. I listened puzzled, and at that time not understanding many things that afterwards became plain to me. It is only in recent years that I have discovered the pathos of that monologue; how friendless my father was and uncompanioned in his thoughts and feelings, and what a hunger he may have felt for the sympathy of the undeveloped youngster who ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... monomaniac, conversation is apt to limit itself to monologue; so, while Henry was greatly interested in this odd talk, it left him but ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... the Poem, and invocation to Freedom. Condition of Columbus in a Spanish prison. His monologue on the great actions of his life, and the manner in which they had been rewarded. Appearance and speech of Hesper, the guardian Genius of the western continent. They quit the dungeon, and ascend the mount of vision, which rises over the western coast of Spain; ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow |
