"Oratory" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... these last few days has been created Pontifex Maximus? And yet I have seen all whom I have mentioned ardent in these pursuits when old men. Then there is Marcus Cethegus, whom Ennius justly called "Persuasion's Marrow"—with what enthusiasm did we see him exert himself in oratory even when quite old! What pleasures are there in feasts, games, or mistresses comparable to pleasures such as these? And they are all tastes, too, connected with learning, which in men of sense and good ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... in the Mamertine prison, over what is said to have been—and very possibly may have been—the dungeon of St. Peter. This chamber is now fitted up as an oratory, dedicated to that saint; and it lives, as a distinct and separate place, in my recollection, too. It is very small and low-roofed; and the dread and gloom of the ponderous, obdurate old prison are on it, as if they had come up in a dark mist through the floor. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... broke out he followed the Earl of Bedford. In September, 1642, Sir Hugh Pollard wrote to the Earl of Bath: 'The Earl of Bedford is now at Taunton, in want of men and money; he hath sent to his friends Chudleigh, Bampfield, and Northcote, for a supply of both, whose oratory cannot get one trained man to ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... varied as were the powers of Sir Robert Peel as a public speaker, he was not an orator in the strictest and highest sense of that word. True oratory is the offspring of genius, and he, gifted though he was, had not the sacred fire of genius in his soul. In the style which he adopted, and which was probably the best suited to his natural powers, he was all but perfect: lucid, argumentation, frank, at least in ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... giving little heed to her father. Amos was given to fireside oratory. She was turning over in her mind the scene in the woods between John and the half breeds. That then was a part of the process of removing the patient's leg! The ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... which assembled at the end of 1788, in order to prevent the use or rather abuse of the liberum veto, soon formed itself into a confederation, abolished in 1789 the obnoxious Permanent Council, and decreed in 1791, after much patriotic oratory and unpatriotic obstruction, the famous constitution of the 3rd of May, regarded by the Poles up to this day with loving pride, and admired and praised at the time by sovereigns and statesmen, Fox and Burke among them. Although confirming most of ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... do not lose much; though the Parliament is met, no politics are come to town; one may describe the House of Commons like the price of stocks—Debates, nothing done. Votes, under par. Patriots, no price. Oratory, books shut. Love and war are as much at a stand; neither the Duchess of Hamilton, nor the expeditions are gone off yet. Prince Edward has asked to go to Quebec, and has been refused. If I was sure they would refuse me, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... must not omit to mention, what was more to the credit of the manners of the time, that in a small recess, illuminated by a taper, were disposed two hassocks of velvet and gold, corresponding with the bed furniture, before a desk of carved ebony. This recess had formerly been the private oratory of the abbot; but the crucifix was removed, and instead there were placed on the desk, two Books of Common Prayer, richly bound, and embossed with silver. With this enviable sleeping apartment, which was so far removed from every sound save that of the wind sighing among the oaks of the ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... of Persia. Inflamed by this speech, young Misson showed what he could do, when, calling all hands up on deck, he made his first, but, as events proved, by far from last, speech. The result was a triumph of oratory, the excited French sailors crying out: "Vive le Capitaine Misson et son Lieutenant le Scavant Caraccioli!" Misson, returning thanks in a few graceful words, promised to do his utmost as their commander ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... gestures of a hand which suggested a prehensile, well-inked claw, welcomed him in an outburst of oratory, iridescent with adjectives which gushed from him like a volume of water from a fire-plug, that made Crowheart's jaw drop. While Symes may have felt that the editor was going it rather strong when he compared him to the financial geniuses ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... them, and it was this breadth and genuineness which laid the foundation of his power as a preacher, making him strike unerringly those master chords that are common and universal in every audience. Gifts of oratory he had, both natural and acquired,—a full, melodious voice, so sympathetic in modulation and so attuned to [131] reverence that I have heard more than one person say that his first few words in the pulpit did more towards lifting them to a truly religious frame of mind than the whole service from ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... was pleased with the expedition, and was lighting the band on its way with spirit lamps; or that the meteors were the spirits of departed braves, coming to assist their worldly brothers in another impending fight; but he was not sanguine enough of possible results to indulge in any attractive oratory. He merely informed his warriors that he had not time to consult his medicine, but that as soon as he could he would interpret ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... subjects for narrow partisan oratory. They go to the heart of what we Americans are all about—all ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Watts, "this is very interesting, both as a point of view and as oratory; but it isn't business. Peter, we came down this morning to take whatever legal steps are necessary to put Dot in possession of her grandmother's money, of which I have been trustee. Here is a lot of papers about it. I suppose everything is there ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... and at the opposite side of the quadrangle a portal communicated by a long and dark passage with the prior's lodging. This was a sort of inferior castellated mansion, with a spacious hall, and a smaller dining-chamber immediately adjoining. At the end was a fair chapel or oratory. Ascending a flight of stone steps, they came to a low door. The conductor knocked, and De Poininges soon found himself in the presence of the proud Prior of Burscough. He wore a square cap of black stuff, after the fashion of his order. His cloak, or upper garment, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... these noble and generous princes, wanting money to maintain the forces they had raised, pawned their dominions to those very prelates who had first engaged them in this enterprise: doubtless a notable mark of the force of oratory in the churchmen of those ages, who were able to inspire that devotion into others, whereof they seemed so ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... Hecuba, is as brief and energetic in his expression as Shakspeare himself. Simplicity of language, energy of thought, and force of passion, are the grand characteristics of the Greek drama, as they were of the Greek oratory, and their combination constituted the excellence of both. The fire of the poet, the reach of imagination, was reserved for the chorus, which frequently exhibited the most sublime specimens of lyric poetry, rivalling the loftiest strains of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... shows, what any member of Parliament will tell you, that if you want real oratory, the preliminary noggin is essential. Unless pie-eyed, you cannot ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... oratory when he heard the mingled singing and shouting, and at the same moment a servant entered in great alarm, despite the strict regulation of the Arch-priest that he was never to be interrupted at his prayers. This man announced that a body of fanatics was coming down the hill, but the abbe ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... chosen to illustrate the rules have been taken with a due regard to their fitness to exemplify the principles involved, and to show the various styles of reading, declamation and oratory, and the selections have been made in such a manner as to adapt them for use in schools, colleges and ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... mimicry and drama took the upper hand; from ceremonies they developed into performances; they passed from the stage in the church porch to the stage in the street. A waggon, the natural human platform for mimicry or oratory, became in England as it was in Greece, the cradle of the drama. This momentous change in the history of the miracle play, which made it in all but its occasion and its subject a secular thing, took place about the end of the twelfth century. The rise of the town guilds gave the plays ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... shape, and decoration. There are places for upwards of two hundred statues, large and small; and some of the carved heads were of medallion size, and well executed. It is impossible to contemplate this beautiful oratory, even in its mutilated state, but with feelings of admiration; the taste of the designer, no less than the execution of the sculptor, are wonderful, and although every part is covered with niches, pedestals, and canopies, interspersed with relievos, grotesque designs ...
— Ely Cathedral • Anonymous
... Rabelais in his easy chair" or pointed to Hogarth, or afterwards dwelt on Claude's classic scenes, or spoke with rapture of Raphael, and compared the women at Rome to figures that had walked out of his pictures, or visited the Oratory of Pisa, and described the works of Giotto and Ghirlandaio and Massaccio, and gave the moral of the picture of the Triumph of Death, where the beggars and the wretched invoke his dreadful dart, but the rich and mighty of the earth quail and shrink before it; and ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... with refreshing of silver rivers,' and the 'thickets, which being lined with most pleasant shade, were witnessed so to by the chereful deposition of many wel-tuned birds'; there are the pastures where 'the prety lambs with bleting oratory craved the dams comfort,' where sat the young shepherdess knitting, whose 'voice comforted her hands to work, and her hands kept time to her voices musick,' a country where the scattered houses made 'a shew, as it were, of an accompanable solitarines, and of a civil ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... fared on this errand has been related. But first, as you may perhaps remember, he went at night to shrive the hermit of Gouda. He found him dying, and never left him till he had closed his eyes and buried him beneath the floor of the little oratory attached to his cell. It was the peaceful end of a stormy life. The hermit had been a soldier, and even now carried a steel corselet next his skin, saying he was now Christ's soldier as he had been Satan's. When Clement had shriven him and prayed by him, he, in his turn, sought counsel of one ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... Rising from the bosom of organic nature, pressing up like a bud closely wrapped in its sheaf of clustering and sheltering leaves, destined to indefinite development, the human word is born; it is named: Oratory, Poetry, Music! The art temple is now complete. Symbol of the universe, it represents all that is contained therein under the glittering veil ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... was hungry and at three he was bringing all his powers of eloquence to bear upon the obtuse owner of a village garage who was stubbornly hostile to the idea of leaving his bed to provide a lunatic with gasoline. Archie's vociferous oratory had the pleasing effect of filling all the windows in the neighborhood with unsympathetic hearers and the village policeman appeared and made careful ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... suggest to Major Dobbin to accompany Mrs. Fry; Alcibiades would bring Homer and Plato in his purple-sailed galley; and I would have Aspasia, Ninon de l'Enclos, and Mrs. Battle, to make up a table of whist with Queen Elizabeth. I shall order a seat placed in the oratory for Lady Jane Grey and Joan of Arc. I shall invite General Washington to bring some of the choicest cigars from his plantation for Sir Walter Raleigh; and Chaucer, Browning, and Walter Savage Landor, should talk with Goethe, who is to bring ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... was always glad of an opportunity. He was gifted with a burning natural eloquence, which, though perhaps a little too freely employed in exciting the 'Wertherism of the uncultivated,' had in it genuine power. He was a master of that oratory which no limitation of knowledge can repress, and which no training can impart. The neighbouring rector could eclipse Woodwell's scholarship, and the freethinker at the corner shop in Markton could demolish his logic; ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... force of argument, and a very laudable spirit of freedom. Mr. Elliot, in particular, one of the commissioners of the board of admiralty, distinguished himself by a noble flow of eloquence, adorned with all the graces of oratory, and warmed with the true spirit of patriotism. Mr. Oswald, of the treasury, acquitted himself with great honour on the occasion; ever nervous, steady, and sagacious, independent though in office, and invariable in pursuing the interest ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... sir, I can assure you that wood is the material generally used in the manufacture of political puppets. There will be more blockheads than mine in St. Stephen's, I can tell you. And as for oratory, why I flatter my whiskers I'll astonish them in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... oratory, but pardon me while I look for my stethoscope," he said. "I want to see what effect an hour's run will have on the hearts of a ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... appreciate the New Englander's fondness for disputation and argument; as a soldier, he was certain to obey to the full the letter of his instructions; and, as an Anglican, he was likely to favor the church and churchmen of his choice. He was not a diplomat, nor was he gifted with the silver tongue of oratory or the spirit of compromise. He came to New England to execute a definite plan, and he was given no discretion as to the form of government he was to set up. He and his advisory council were to make the laws, ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... the Pazzi Conspiracy was 1478. A few years later the same building witnessed the extraordinary effects of Savonarola's oratory, when such was the terrible picture he drew of the fate of unregenerate sinners that his listeners' hair was said actually to rise with fright. Savonarola came towards the end of the Renaissance, to give it its death-blow. By contrast there is a tablet on the right wall of the cathedral in ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... the most eloquent man I ever listened to. I don't mean that he's the greatest man, or the profoundest statesman, or the wisest politician, or the sagest political economist; but I do mean that, for natural powers of persuasion and denunciation—for natural oratory—I have never known his rival. If Plato's maxim, 'that oratory must be estimated by its effects,' is at all correct, then is M. Dantes the greatest orator in France, for the effect of his oratory is miraculous. There is a sort ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... But Cortes desired us to throw the idols down the steps of the temple, and sending for lime, of which there was plenty in the island, the Indian masons built by our direction a very handsome altar, on which an image of the Holy Virgin was placed, and a crucifix was erected in a small chapel or oratory close to the altar. After these preparations were completed, the mass was celebrated in great order by the reverend Father Juan Diaz[3], to which ceremony the chiefs, priests, and natives ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... not allow much merit to Whitefield's oratory. 'His popularity, Sir, (said be,) is chiefly owing to the peculiarity of his manner. He would be followed by crowds were he to wear a night-cap in the pulpit, or were he to preach ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... hardly one present wore a coat. He had his audience with him before he spoke. When he began he caught them tighter to his cause, using not merely flowing rhetoric of speech, but the close-knit, advancing, upbuilding argument of a man able to "think on his feet,"—that higher sort of oratory which is most convincing with an American audience ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... indiscriminate war of extermination against his ministers and followers, and every principle of the Gospel and morality. Every form of faith, every mode of adoration, fell indiscriminately under the proscriptions of its unsparing wrath. The towering abbey and humble oratory, were alike swept away in the general tornado, and mingled their ruins together. But the race of the good were not all expelled from this scene of havoc and outrage. The voice of piety still found a ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... Darrell was thrown up from oblivion into note. He could not form a Cabinet, certainly not; but he might help to bring a Cabinet together, reconcile jarring elements, adjust disputed questions, take in such government some high place, influence its councils, and delight a public weary of the oratory of the day with the eloquence of a former race. For the public is ever a laudator temporis acti, and whatever the authors or the orators immediately before it, were those authors and orators Homers and Ciceros, would still shake a disparaging head, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... xvi. 13. "And (at Philippi) on the Sabbath we went out of the city by a river-side, where prayer was wont to be made," or where a proseuche, oratory, or place of prayer was allowed. The particularity to be remarked is, the situation of the place where prayer was wont to be ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... the Bible deserves all praise because of the literary excellence of its style. There are, indeed, sublime passages to be forever cherished as entitled by their very sublimity of expression to permanent place in the world's literature. All this we most gladly admit. Oratory like that of the book of Isaiah, some of the sentences of the patriarchs, passages from the Psalms or from the Sermon on the Mount, the parables, the thirteenth chapter of Paul's First Epistle to ...
— Understanding the Scriptures • Francis McConnell
... eloquence of Demosthenes exhibits everywhere a general stamp of earnest and simple strength. But it is well to remember the charge made against the style of Demosthenes by a contemporary Greek orator, and the defence offered by the best Greek critic of oratory. Aeschines reproached the diction of Demosthenes with excess of elaboration and adornment ([Greek: periergia]). Dionysius, in reply, admits that Demosthenes does at times depart from simplicity,—that his style is sometimes elaborately ornate and remote from the ordinary usage. But, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... be some local celebration," thought Lynde. "Rural oratory and all that sort of thing. That will ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Harold," said the Earl, briefly. "My daughter is now in her oratory, and we shall have time enow to treat of things mundane ere she is free to receive thee, and to preach to thee of things ghostly, the last miracle at St. Alban's, or the last dream of the King, who would be a ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "minor traits" such as the "aesthetic perceptions" cannot have been evolved by natural selection (p. 20) or by sexual selection? Darwin holds that our musical faculties were developed by sexual preference long before the acquisition of speech. He believes that the "rhythms and cadences of oratory are derived from previously developed musical powers"—a conclusion "exactly opposite" to that arrived at by Mr. Spencer.[12] The emotional susceptibility to music, and the delicate perceptions needed for the higher branches of art, were ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... born in Kentucky—Kentucky, the home of impassioned oratory: the home of Clay, the State of splendid ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... of the speech. It was heavy in the extreme, and I confess that I was disappointed and tired long before it was finished. No doubt the speech was full of fact and argument, but it had none of the fire of oratory, or intensity of feeling, that marked ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... le bon dieu, man, cease your cruel mockery!" said Brellier, suddenly, in a husky voice, as the clerk rose to quell the interrupted flow of oratory, and the court ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... In great oratory the same transposition takes place. Almost every one can recall occasions when there was an absolute fusion of thought, feeling and emotion between the speaker and the audience—when one mind dominated ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... various humours of the successive pontiffs, the papal capital drew within its walls eminent scholars from all the states of the Italian peninsula. Rome was the world-city, a centre from which radiated honours, distinctions, and fortune. Gifts of oratory, facility in debate, ability in the conduct of diplomatic negotiations, a masterly style in Latin composition, and even perfection in penmanship, were all marketable accomplishments, for which Rome was the highest bidder. If classical learning and the graces ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... fakirs were in the minority. The percentage of gullible ones was small. Mostly it was a place of oratory, the haunt of propagandists. Thompson listened to Social Democrats, Social Laborites, syndicalists, radicals, revolutionaries, philosophical anarchists, men with social and economic theories of the extremist type. But they talked well. They had a grasp of their ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... stood at the door of his bank and observed half a dozen men on the steps of the First National. Amzi, a careful student of his fellow-townsmen, was aware that men and women were passing into the rival bank in larger numbers than usual, even for a Saturday, and that the mellifluous oratory of Alec Waterman had not drawn from the First National corner a score of idlers who evidently felt that the center of interest lay there rather than at the court-house. Amzi planted himself in his favorite chair in the bank window and watched the ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... which they bit off from a huge triangular mass still hot from the kettle. He had never seen any candy just like that, and wondered if he had better try a piece. The speaking on the stand attracted and held his attention, however. Oratory always had a powerful attraction for him. He moved forward and stood ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... got into The Ivies and forced his way into the library where I was writing. A horrible looking fellow, with a tortured face, he waved a pistol in front of me, ranting phrases reminiscent of oldfashioned soapbox oratory. I am not ashamed to admit nervousness, for this is not the first time my life has been threatened since attaining prominence. Happily, the madman's aim was as wild as his speech, and though he fired four ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... virtue for mere emolument and pay. They delighted, as Cicero tells us, to plead the opposite sides of a cause with equal effect. And they found exquisite pleasure in raising difficulties, maintaining paradoxes, and passing off mere tricks of oratory for solid proofs. This is the uniform representation of the sophistical spirit which is given by all the best writers who lived nearest to their times, and who are, therefore, to be presumed to have known them best. Grote[904] has made an elaborate defense of the Sophists; he charges ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... wait where they were till he came back, the Black Hunter strode on to the general's tent, and, without more ado than to enter, made known the object of his coming there, in a speech that smacked somewhat of the Indian style of oratory; which I will give you, as nearly as I can, in ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... true musical delight: which consists only in apt Numbers, fit quantity of Syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one Verse into another, not in the jingling sound of like endings, a fault avoyded by the learned Ancients both in Poetry and all good Oratory This neglect then of Rime so little is to be taken for a defect though it may seem so perhaps to vulgar Readers, that it rather is to be esteem'd an example set, the first in English, of ancient liberty recover'd to Heroic Poem ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... in the schools, the costly ornaments and studied contrivances of speech, shock and disgust men, when their own lives, and the fate of their wives, their children, and their country, hang on the decision of the hour. Then words have lost their power, rhetoric is vain, and all elaborate oratory contemptible. Even genius itself then feels rebuked and subdued, as in the presence of higher qualities. Then patriotism is eloquent; then self-devotion is eloquent. The clear conception, outrunning the deductions of logic, the high purpose, the firm resolve, the dauntless ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.
... the story of his wretched articulation and how he shut himself up and practised speaking with pebbles in his mouth in order to overcome it. Few of the great orators, indeed, seem to have succeeded in oratory without difficulty. Neither Cicero nor Burke spoke with the natural ease of many a young man in a Y.M.C.A. debating society. And the great writers, like the great orators, have been, in many instances, men doomed in some important respect to lead frustrated lives. Mr Beerbohm recently said that ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... had not yet been born. Hunger, they pointed out with lofty ardour, might not be comfortable in every case, but it was glorious, and in the line of immortal fame. All of this was somewhat marred by their occasional gulping and hiccoughing, for six-course dinners are not friendly to ethereal oratory. When one of them got through, the other, having finished the picking of his teeth, would take the stand and divulge anew to these underfed immortals the secrets of ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... paying his tribute. It received 35 ayes and the opposition could muster only five votes. The Senate resolution was submitted in the Assembly and voted on February 2. Gallery and lobbies were thronged and only time limited the oratory. It received 66 ayes, 12 noes. Governor Johnson had insisted on the submission of the amendment as ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... education suitable for a prince in the thirteenth century included what was technically termed the eighteen sciences: "1. oratory, 2. general knowledge, 3. grammar, 4. poetry, 5. languages, 6. astronomy, 7. the art of giving counsel, 8. the means of attaining nirwana[1], 9. the discrimination of good and evil, 10. shooting with the bow, 11. management of the elephant, ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... men-servants in the hall, the women in a common room) or oriele, the folk at the side-tables. (Oriele is an ear, but here it signifies a little room at the upper end of the hall, where stands a square or round table, perhaps in the old time was an oratory; in every old Gothic hall is one, viz. at Dracot, Lekham, Alderton, &c.) The meat was served up by watch-words. Jacks are but an invention of the other age: the poor boys did turn the spits, and licked the dripping-pan, and grew to be huge lusty knaves. The beds of the servants ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... hideous monument of bad taste is falling fast to ruin. I cannot imagine how such fantastic horrors can ever have been sanctified, but so it is; and the Indian fakir who fastens a real skull round his neck, the Roman pilgrim who hangs a model of one to his rosary, and the friar who decks his oratory with a thousand of them, are one and all acted upon either by the same real superstition, or spiritual vanity, craving to distinguish itself even by ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... perpetually as to destroy the unity which ought to result from the whole poem. This is the general rule, but, of course, subject to some modifications, according to the different kinds of prose or verse. Some prose may approach towards verse, as oratory, and therefore a more studied exhibition of the media may be proper; and some verse may border more on mere narrative, and there the style should be simpler. But the great thing in poetry is, quocunque modo, to effect a unity of impression upon the whole; and a too great fulness ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... remains recorded in condemnation, perhaps against the utterer and listener alike, but assuredly against one of them. We shall not so easily bear with the silk and gold upon the seat of judgment, nor with ornament of oratory in the mouth of the messenger: we shall wish that his words may be simple, even when they are sweetest, and the place from which he speaks like a marble rock in the desert, about which the people have gathered ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... to a younger branch of the tribe of Koreish. On solemn occasions they convened the assembly of the people; and, since mankind must be either compelled or persuaded to obey, the use and reputation of oratory among the ancient Arabs is the clearest evidence of public freedom. [33] But their simple freedom was of a very different cast from the nice and artificial machinery of the Greek and Roman republics, in which each member possessed an undivided share of the civil and political rights of the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... In oratory and unstudied eloquence the American Indian has at times equalled even the lofty flights of the Greeks and Romans. The noted Red jacket, perhaps the greatest orator and philosopher of primitive America, was declared by the late Governor Clinton ...
— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman
... smile, said, "Nothing but that Mozart should have been here to listen." Looking and listening, "Here," thought I, "is another jewel in the crown of womanhood, to radiate and glorify the lives of all." I have such an intense pride of sex that the triumphs of woman in art, literature, oratory, science, or song rouse my enthusiasm ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... system of education the greater part of what the poor man's children learn is clean forgotten in a few years; and if not, serves mainly to create and foster discontent, which vents itself in a passion for mass-meetings and the fuliginous oratory of our ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... the number of those who read his books is still rapidly increasing. For everyone who sat with him in private company or at the transaction of public business,—for every ten who have listened to his oratory in Parliament or from the hustings,—there must be tens of thousands whose interest in history and literature he has awakened and informed by his pen, and who would gladly know what manner of man it was that has done them so ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... said, and went into her oratory to pray: and there was need of prayer, for the Minstrel's foreboding was no idle one. Ere London knew it the Plague was at her gates; yet the King, undeterred, came to spend Christmas at Westminster; but Martin was not in his train. Men's mirth waxed hot ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... welcome. He was lodged in a remote and obscure quarter of the city and was already part of a little coterie from which earnestness had quite crowded out tact and in which the development of the energies left but scant room for the cultivation of the amenities. With this small group reform and oratory went hand in hand; its members talked to spare audiences on Sunday afternoons about the Readjusted Tax. Such a combination of matter and manner had pleased and attracted Abner from the start. The land question was the question, after all, and eloquence must help the ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... in her feeling about going to church. In summer, she loved rather to stroll over The Mountain, on Sundays. There was even a story, that she had one of the caves before mentioned fitted up as an oratory, and that she had her own wild way of worshipping the God whom she sought in the dark chasms of the dreaded cliffs. Mere fables, doubtless; but they showed the common belief, that Elsie, with all her strange and dangerous elements of character, had yet strong religious ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... as should induce them to return. 8. Ten commissioners were deputed. The dignity and popularity of the ambassadors procured them a very respectful reception among the soldiers, and a conference began. They employed all their oratory; while Sicin'ius and Lu'cius Ju'nius, who were speakers for the soldiery, aggravated their distresses with all that masculine eloquence which is the ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... in arm-chairs and waited patiently. Through the closed door they could just hear the long continuous drone of the Badger's voice, rising and falling in waves of oratory; and presently they noticed that the sermon began to be punctuated at intervals by long-drawn sobs, evidently proceeding from the bosom of Toad, who was a soft-hearted and affectionate fellow, very easily converted—for the time being—to ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... necessary to effective oratory. The great majority of Negroes in Africa are both orators and logicians. A people who have such noble qualities as this race seems to possess has, as a logical necessity, the poetic element in a ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... on Morals and the instructions in Oratory, which were found among the writings of Cato, may be regarded as the Roman quintessence or, if the expression be preferred, the Roman -caput mortuum- of Greek philosophy and rhetoric. The immediate sources whence Cato drew were, in the case of the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... fine appearance, striving to excel in pulpit oratory, advertising the work they have done—so many have been converted through my labors, etc. All these works are indications ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... the inventor himself. Now he the most easily attains the truth, that is persuaded he has it not; and he chooses best, just as he that has no children of his own adopts the best. Mark this well, that poetry, mathematics, oratory, and sophistry, which are the things the Deity forbade Socrates to generate, are of no value; and that of the sole wisdom about what is divine and intelligible (which Socrates called amiable and eligible for itself), there ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... circumstances, all these are the externals or clothes of men. It is necessary to look behind them and beyond them if we would reach the genuine human heart. One of the reasons why he detested what he called stump oratory was because he believed it to be a great school of insincerity. Its end was not truth, but plausibility. It was the effort of interested men to throw opinions into such forms as might most captivate uninstructed men; to keep ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... may be fitted for more than one thing. Caesar could have equaled if not surpassed Cicero in mere oratory had he not preferred to find, in war and government, a fame more enduring. But, if you try all things for which you may be equipped by Nature, you will so scatter your energies through the delta of your aptitudes that your very wealth and variety of gifts neutralizes ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... the Greeks, the Thoth of the Egyptians, and the Taaut of the Phœnicians, we have heretofore spoken sufficiently at length. He was the inventor of letters and of Oratory, the winged messenger of the Gods, bearing the Caduceus wreathed with serpents; and in our Council he ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... Nobody seems to have taken the trouble to state that the Bristow charges were untrue, but that the requesting of the Senator to answer them would be an insult to that dignitary was made subject of the warmest oratory. So warm was it, that the opposition to Perkins melted away like wax - or putty, if putty melts - until but five members of the caucus had the courage to vote to ask Perkins to declare himself on the transportation problem. ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... not so wicked was this: they saw that I, who was so young, and exposed to so many occasions of sin, withdrew myself so often into solitude for prayer, read much, spoke of God, that I liked to have His image painted in many places, to have an oratory of my own, and furnish it with objects of devotion, that I spoke ill of no one, and other things of the same kind in me which have the appearance of virtue. Yet all the while—I was so vain—I knew how to procure respect for myself by doing those things which in the ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... my stars! I never heard anything so great since I was born.'—'Divine!' said I; and thus we went on with our interjections, not to say tears, to the end. Tears enough were shed. Not a dry eye, I believe, in the house, except some of the jackasses who had occasioned the necessity of the oratory. These attempted to laugh, but their visages 'grinned horribly ghastly smiles.' They smiled like Foulon's son-in-law when they made him kiss his father's dead and bleeding hand. Perhaps the speech may not read as well. The situation ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... the dancers, actors, operatic stars and general entertainers than any other two types combined. In everything save acrobatics and oratory he holds the ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... time endeavouring to collect my baggage, pretending to pay no attention whatever to the absurd oratory. To this day I cannot yet grasp what the oppression of Europe had to do with my wanting to pay for something I had never had. I then repeated my offer, which was again refused. With the protection of his strong ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... administration of its government would be in the hands of the church authorities. Moses Thatcher might lead a rebellion for a time, but it would be brief. Brigham H. Roberts might avow his independence in some wonderful burst of campaign oratory, but he would be forced to fast and pray and see visions until he yielded. I might rebel and be successful for a moment, but the inexorable power of church control would crush me at last. Yet, if I surrendered in this matter of the tariff, I should be doing exactly ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... hinted gesture, with a semitone of intonation, the speaker lightly set forth and underlined the processes of reason; he could not shift a foot nor touch his spectacles, but what persuasion radiated in the court—it is impossible to conceive a style of oratory more rational or civilised. The point to which he spoke was pretty in itself. The people, as I had been told, did not think the orator honest; some judge, on a particular occasion, had inclined to the same view, and the man of talent was disbarred. By a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... this day pouring forth its clear waters, sweet to the draught and wholesome to the taste, is honored with the name of Saint Patrick, and, as is said, gives health or relief to many laboring with divers diseases; and it rises near the seaside, and over it the devotion of posterity has erected an oratory, with an altar built in the ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... her mind thus warned dwelled on the dangers they were about to incur in Paris. She rose suddenly and went to her bedroom without speaking. Her bedroom was the best in the house; next came a dressing-room and an oratory, in the tower which faced towards the forest. Soon after she had left the salon the dogs barked, the bell of the small gate rang, and Durieu rushed into the salon with a frightened face. "Here is the mayor!" he said. ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... apostles, and evangelists, grace the upper part of the choir—executed from the characteristic designs of Candit. The pulpit and the seats are beautifully carved. Opposite the former, are oratories sustained by columns of red marble; and the approach to the royal oratory is rendered more impressive by a flight of ten marble steps. The founder of this church was William V., who lies buried in a square vault below: near which is an altar, where they shew, on All Saints Day, the brass coffins ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... to his fair and impartial rulings and usual courtesy and dignity of manner, is attributable the fact that there was not considerably more friction than developed. Even as it was, the discussions were acrid and verged at times close to personalities and the oratory, especially on the part of those who advocated the "six-bit" policy, was both perfervid and vociferous. However, the representatives of the companies that had made up their minds that their honor and contracts were worth ...
— The Spirit of 1906 • George W. Brooks
... local business which under a system of Home Rule ought to be discussed in the Irish Parliament, may vitally concern the prosperity of every inhabitant of Ireland, but it will not in general lend itself to oratory, or arouse popular excitement. The questions, on the other hand, to be discussed in the Imperial Parliament at Westminster, as, for example, whether Mr. Gladstone or Lord Salisbury shall be head of the British Cabinet, whether the royal ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... of an exhortation given, just before the expedition to Jacksonville, Fla., to the soldiers of Colonel Higginson's 1st South Carolina Volunteers, by one of these negro preachers, would be worthy a place in 'American Oratory.' I remember only one striking passage, where, in his appeal to the troops to fight bravely, he urged them to seek always the post of danger, since heaven would be the immediate reward of all who should be ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... In rather high dudgeon they came, ready to make trouble if the chance arose; but Frontenac's display of armed strength, his free-handed bestowal of presents, his tactful handling of the chiefs, and his effective oratory at the conclave soon assured him the upper hand. The fort was built, and the Iroquois, while they continued to regard it as an invasion of their territories, were forced to accept the ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... was held in the Count's oratory, and the Churchman knelt before the crucifix and swore in the most solemn manner that he would bring Adalbert safely back to ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... great Penitentiary goes in state to S. John Lateran's. He is met, before he enters their college, by the minor penitentiaries, who at this basilic are Franciscans, minori osservanti. Having sprinkled those present with holy water, he goes up to their private oratory[44] in the Lateran palace, whither he is escorted by the prelates and other ministers of the apostolic Penitenzieria. After a short prayer, he proceeds to the library, where he holds the Segnatura or tribunal for signing documents relating to his office, and afterwards enters the basilic of St. ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... Brazen-nose." "A speech, a speech!" vociferated all the party. "Yes, worthy brother cracks," replied I, "you shall have a speech, the very acme of oratory; a brief speech, composed by no less a personage than the great Lexicographer himself, and always used by him on such occasions at the club in Ivy-lane. Here's all your healths, and Esto perpetua." "Bravo!" said Eglantine;" ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... its actors are seldom soldiers whom all the ages agree to admire, and often theologians whom all fear or dislike, or politicians whom all obey {171} and despise. Yet how magnificently Milton turns this weakness into a strength! His speeches have not the eternal humanity of Homer's: but as oratory, above all as debating oratory, they have no poetic rivals outside the drama. The poet who had lived through the Long Parliament and the trial of Strafford knew the art of speech as Homer could not know it. It ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... with all sorts of eye-pleasing flowers; thickets, which, being lined with most pleasant shade, were witnessed so, too, by the cheerful disposition of many well-tuned birds; each pasture stored with sheep, feeding with sober security; while the pretty lambs, with bleating oratory, craved the dams' comfort; here a shepherd's boy, piping as though he should never be old; there a young shepherdess, knitting and withal singing, and it seemed that her voice comforted her hands to work, and her hands kept ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... a right to be heard in his own defence," said Arthur, with the cool justice of an Englishman; and he stopped the angry Carlo's arm, who was going up to the culprit with all the Italian vehemence of oratory and gesture. Arthur went on to say something in bad Italian about the excellence of an English trial by jury, which Carlo was too much enraged to hear, but to which Francisco paid attention, and turning to Piedro, he asked him if he was willing ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... trellis-work on the outside of the windows gave a wonderfully mediaeval look to the apartment. There was, moreover, a magnificent bay window, which formed a little room of itself, besides a second room much less, which, with carved wood wainscot and ceiling, could have served as an oratory. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... forget, I should heartily despise him. Notwithstanding the difficulties which are to be encountered by those who have not had the advantage of an English education, he by degrees formed a mode of speaking to which Englishmen do not deny the praise of elegance. Hence his distinguished oratory, which he exerted in his own country as an advocate in the Court of Session, and a ruling elder of the Kirk, has had its fame and ample reward, in much higher spheres. When I look back on this noble person at Edinburgh, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... He was, however, carried to the Jerusalem Chamber, and on learning its name, praised God that the prophecy that he should die in Jerusalem would be fulfilled. His son, the gay and dissolute Prince Harry, attended his father in his last moments, and then retired to an oratory, and spent a long day on his knees. Henceforth the latter was a changed character, and every one was astonished at the way in which he shook off the past, and devoted himself to his new duties ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... similar. Nor in a religious picture do you want the savoir-faire of the master to be always protruding itself; it detracts from the feeling of reverence, just as the thumping of cushion and the spouting of tawdry oratory does from a sermon: meek religion disappears, shouldered out of the desk by the pompous, stalwart, big-chested, fresh-colored, bushy-whiskered pulpiteer. Rubens's piety has always struck us as of this sort. If he takes a pious subject, it is to ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... revelation of the treachery of Tubbs. To hear her romance described as the sparking of an old maid—and by the sparker! From Miss Higglesby-Browne had come a snort of fury, but she said nothing, having apparently no confidence in the effect of oratory on pirates. She did not even exhort Aunt Jane, but left it to me to sustain my drooping ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... had been admitted to monastic vows, he preached a trial "Sermon to the Jews" in a large oratory near the Ghetto. A church would have been contaminated by the presence of heretics, and even from the Oratory any religious objects that lay about had been removed. There was a goodly array of fashionable Christians, resplendent in gold-fringed mantles and silk-ribboned hats; ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... in Nareda a young adventurer named De Boer. A handsome, swaggering fellow in his late twenties. He was a good talker; he spoke many languages; he could orate with fluency and skilful guile. His smile, his colorful personality, and his gift for oratory, made it easy for him to stir ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... besides his high military reputation, that of being skilled in oratory. There is, however, in the translation more than a trace of the enthusiasm with which Dunois speaks of the deeds of the heroic maiden. Dunois, Bastard of Orleans as he is always called, bore the following titles, as recited by the chronicler: ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... her disgrace was soon discovered, or revealed; and her unhappy and almost distracted husband immediately commenced a suit against Clay. He chose Alfred Percy for his counsel. In this cause, where strong feelings of indignation were justly roused, and where there was room for oratory, Alfred spoke with such force and pathos that every honest heart was touched. The verdict of the jury showed the impression which he had made upon them: his speech was universally admired; and those who had till now known him only as a man ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... paragrams, among the beauties of good writing, and produces instances of them out of some of the greatest authors in the Greek tongue. Cicero has sprinkled several of his works with puns, and, in his book where he lays down the rules of oratory, quotes abundance of sayings as pieces of wit, which also, upon examination, prove arrant puns. But the age in which the pun chiefly flourished was in the reign of King James the First. That learned monarch was himself a tolerable punster, and made very few bishops or Privy Councillors that had ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... Even broken bones, it is said, have been known to unite at the sound of his voice: he is a born healer, as independent of mere treatment and skill as any Christian scientist. When he expands into oratory or scientific exposition, he is as energetic as Walpole; but it is with a bland, voluminous, atmospheric energy, which envelops its subject and its audience, and makes interruption or inattention impossible, and imposes veneration and credulity on all but the strongest minds. He is known in the ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw
... especially to Coltman and Guptil, for all the work fell upon them. By this time they were almost unrecognizable because of dirt and grease and their hands were cut and blistered. But they stood it manfully, and at each new accident Gup rose to greater and greater heights of oratory. ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... heard Edith was taking Aylmer for a drive, he apologised very much indeed for not going with her. He said, frankly, much as he liked Aylmer, wounded heroes were rather a bore. He hoped Aylmer would forgive him. And Madame Frabelle had promised to take him to the Oratory. She disapproved of his fancy of becoming a Catholic; she was not one herself, though she was extremely high, and growing daily higher, but the music at the Oratory on that particular day was very wonderful, ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... fragments of addresses give us only an imperfect reflection of the style of Mr. Lincoln's oratory during this period, they nevertheless show its essential characteristics, a pervading clearness of analysis, and that strong tendency to axiomatic definition which gives so many of his sentences ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... student peruse closely the four speeches to which I have called attention; they underlie all that passed in the famous debate with Douglas; all that their author said and did after he succeeded to the presidency. They stand to-day as masterpieces of popular oratory. But for our present purpose the debate with Douglas will suffice—the most extraordinary intellectual spectacle the annals of our party warfare afford. Lincoln entered the canvass unknown outside the state of Illinois. He closed it renowned ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... Lucien, who, being moved at his instance, were constantly attending clubs and popular meetings where they often delivered speeches and debated public matters, while Napoleon sat listening in silence, as he had no turn for oratory." "One day in December," the narrator continues, "I was sent for by his uncle already mentioned, in order to assist him in preparing his testament; and, after having settled his family concerns, the conversation turned upon politics, when, speaking of the improbability of Italy being revolutionized, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... buy so much meal of such a merchant, at such a price, and with such funds; how it was to be resold, and never given away on any pretext; how Mr. Somers had explained that giving away their means was killing the goose that laid the golden eggs, when the young priest, in an attitude for oratory, declared that the poor had no money with which to make the purchase; and how in a few weeks' time they would be able to grind their own flour at Herbert Fitzgerald's mill;—all this was also told. But the telling did not give so much gratification to Mrs. Townsend as ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... strength did not lie in oratory, intimated his wish that Lord Menteith should open the business of the council. With great modesty, and at the same time with spirit, that young lord said, "he wished what he was about to propose had come from ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... not forgotten; and according to the custom of the times, and the doctrines of the Roman church, she endeavoured to propitiate the favour of Heaven by vows as well as prayers. In a small crypt, or oratory, adjoining to the chapel, was hung over an altar-piece, on which a lamp constantly burned, a small picture of the Virgin Mary, revered as a household and peculiar deity by the family of Berenger, one of whose ancestors had brought it ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... art. Poetry, painting, music, sculpture, architecture please, thrill, inspire; but oratory rules. The orator dominates those who hear him, convinces their reason, controls their judgment, compels their action. For the time being he is master. Through the clearness of his logic, the keenness of his wit, the power of his ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... constitutionally diffident he is, to see him so courageous. And when I remembered how he used to hesitate and stammer, it seemed marvellous to hear him talk on with an ease, a fluency, a fervor truly eloquent. I never ask to listen to finer oratory. My aunt, in spite of her indignation, was confounded into silence. Count Tristan could not say a word, and Maurice looked as though amazement alone kept him from throwing himself in his friend's arms, and I fear I almost felt like doing ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... decrees by refusing to exhibit herself for the popular entertainment, the horrible whisper is forthwith circulated that she has been 'disappointed,' and is hiding her green wound in her sewing-room or oratory. 'Disappointed,' forsooth! That is what they say of every girl who is not married to somebody by the time she is twenty-five. It matters not whether she cares for him or not. Having but one object in existence, there can be but one species of disappointment. ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... his material prospects, he had thrown it all aside, after a grand fashion, that had really made the girl think that all Miss Stanbury's money was as nothing to his love for her. She and Priscilla and her mother had been carried away so entirely by Brooke's oratory as to feel for the time that the difficulties were entirely conquered. But now the aspect of things was so different! Whatever Brooke might owe to Miss Stanbury, she, Dorothy, owed her aunt everything. She would immolate herself,—if ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... desirez." And to the Subsidys as well that for the Commons, I mean the layety, as for the Clergy, the King writes, "Le Roy remerciant les Seigneurs et Prelats et accepte leur benevolences." The Speaker's speech was far from any oratory, but was as plain (though good matter) as any thing could be, and void of elocution. After the bills passed, the King, sitting on his throne, with his speech writ in a paper which he held in his lap, and scarce looked off of it all the time he made his speech to them, ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... were the Holy Land of our fathers? The good man adopted me his son by formal rites of law; and I strove to make him just return: no child was ever more dutiful to father than I to him. He would have had me a scholar; in art, philosophy, rhetoric, oratory, he would have furnished me the most famous teacher. I declined his insistence, because I was a Jew, and could not forget the Lord God, or the glory of the prophets, or the city set on the hills by David and Solomon. Oh, ask you why I accepted any of the benefactions of the Roman? I loved him; ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... express strong feelings in different tones— anger and impatience by low,—fear and pain by high notes. (38. Rengger, 'Saugethiere von Paraguay,' s. 49.) The sensations and ideas thus excited in us by music, or expressed by the cadences of oratory, appear from their vagueness, yet depth, like mental reversions to the emotions and thoughts ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... lounging at the drinking saloons, talking a great deal about the wrongs of the working classes, and winning to himself some friends from a certain turbulent class who listened admiringly to his loud, communistic oratory. ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... altogether lacking in lustre or expression. They told their sad tale with piteous brevity. The brain was active and vigorous no longer, or, if still active, was so to no definite purpose. The spark of reason was for the time quenched within him. His oratory and his writings were no longer to be dreaded. The man whose large presence had once carried about with it unmistakable evidences of physical and mental power had been reduced to a physical and mental wreck. ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... oratory a good story is told of a barrister pleading before Lord Ellenborough: "My lord, I appear before you in the character of an advocate for the City of London; my lord, the City of London herself appears before you as a suppliant for justice. My lord, it is written ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... The army set about furbishing and repairing their armor, and the King gave a supper that evening to the earls and barons of his army, where they made good cheer. On their taking leave the King remained alone with the lords of his bedchamber; he retired into his oratory, and, falling on his knees before the altar, prayed to God that if he should combat his enemies on the morrow, he might come off with honor. About midnight he went to bed and, rising early the next day, he and the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... of the members are a very favourable specimen of the parliamentary oratory of Queen Elizabeth's reign, as may be seen from the following delivered by Mr Martin. He is no philosopher, it will be observed, in political economy, but speaks from the actual grievances witnessed by him. 'I speak for a town that grieves and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... a soldier and a sailor. He had even set his heart on rivalling Bourdaloue and Bossuet. Though an avowed freethinker, he had sate up all night at sea to compose sermons, and had with great difficulty been prevented from edifying the crew of a man of war with his pious oratory. [31] He now addressed the House of Peers, for the first time, with characteristic eloquence, sprightliness, and audacity. He blamed the Commons for not having taken a bolder line. "They have been afraid," he said, "to speak out. They ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... deputation remained in England, indulging in voluminous protocols and lengthened conversations with the Queen and the principal members of her government. It is astonishing, in that breathless interval of history, that so much time could be found for quill-driving and oratory. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... revivifying the dry bones thereof, knew this and reveled in the knowledge. It was not often that such a virgin parish could be found nowadays, with scores of impressionable, unspoiled souls on which fervid oratory could play skillfully, as a master on a mighty organ, until every note in them thrilled to life and utterance. The Rev. Geoffrey Mountain was a good man; of the earth, earthy, to be sure, but with an unquestionable sincerity of belief and purpose which went far to counterbalance ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... and justly so, of her aristocracy; but there is not one of them all, through the whole length and breadth of the land, to whom she can point more exultingly than to this young nobleman. His opening address would have done honour to one long trained in the schools of oratory, and that was its smallest merit. The emphatic and earnest tone of admiration in which he spoke of the peasantry of his country—his generous and touching allusions to Burns in his earlier years, to what he had done and suffered, and to the honours ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... fighting the hosts of advancing morn, when a Tory Member—Mr. Seton-Karr—approached the closed doors of the House of Commons, and demanded admission to a seat. For nearly an hour he was left alone with the darkness, and the ghosts of dead statesmen and forgotten scenes of oratory, passion, and triumph. But as six o'clock was striking, there entered the yard around the House two figures—similar in purpose—different in appearance. Mr. Johnson, of Ballykilbeg, is by this time one of the familiar types of the House; and, from his evident sincerity, is, in spite of the ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... any like style of behavior or oratory or social intercourse or household arrangements or public institutions or the treatment of bosses of employed people, nor executive detail or detail of the army and navy, nor spirit of legislation or courts or police or tuition or architecture or songs or amusements or the costumes ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... had endeavoured to persuade him to take a part in parliamentary affairs, and to exercise his talent for oratory more frequently.] ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... liked. He consequently took very little part either in debates or committees. In March 1742, on a motion being made for an inquiry into the conduct of Sir Robert Walpole for the preceding ten years, he delivered his maiden speech; (25) on which he was complimented by no less a judge of oratory than Pitt. This speech he has preserved in his letter to Sir Horace Mann, of March 24th, 1742. He moved the Address in 1751; and in 1756 made a speech on the question of employing Swiss regiments in the colonies. This speech he has also himself preserved in the second ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... making some reference to the calamity that had befallen him. The whispered disgrace had become a public record. Would he defend his son against the charges? All in all, it was a most sensational scandal—one sure to move a congregation more deeply than the richest oratory. ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... p. 20, well observes that this comparison may also be sarcastically applied to the frigid style of oratory. It, of course, here merely denotes the ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... seeming to remember he was not alone, walked hastily towards a little oratory he has built on the beach, near which is the grave of his Louisa; I followed him a few steps, I saw him throw himself on his knees; and, respecting his ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... failure nowhere. In war, there stands Toussaint L'Overture and Maceo; in education, B. T. Washington; in oratory, Frederick Douglas; in art, H. O. Tanner; in letters, Phyllis Wheatley and Paul Lawrence Dunbar. These and others like them are our prophets of the future. Being thus judged by our best men, it doth not yet appear what we shall be. The Greeks are great in ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... keep out of sight by slumping down in his seat and getting behind big Tom Curwood, but Coach Murray singled him out and ordered him to stand up and make a speech. Every one laughed at Ned, and big Tom Curwood thought that the right half-back's attempt at oratory was so funny that he laughed louder than any one else until he heard Coach Murray's fatal words: "All right, Tom, you're next!" whereupon his features "froze" in a look of embarrassment. The roar that went up when Tom's face became suffused with red nearly caused the big center ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... common exercise in the ancient schools of rhetoric to take an abstract question, and to harangue first on one side and then on the other. The question, Ought popular discontents to be quieted by concession or coercion? would have been a very good subject for oratory of this kind. There is no lack of commonplaces on either side. But when we come to the real business of life, the value of these commonplaces depends entirely on the particular circumstances of ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... extended to the man the just approbation which it so heartily extended to his books. The Latin critics assigned history,—and accordingly history in miniature, biography,—to the department of oratory. The feeling, in consequence, has long prevailed of regarding biography as the field for the display of every other feeling then veracity. It has been emotional, or it has been decorously dull. To all such writers the style adopted by Boswell would appear, ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask |
