"Declamation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... In Greece, declamation was regarded as the principal step to honour and advancement in public life. The greatest men practised it, and as they held action to be the criterion of oratory, made the best actors their models; nor ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... unintelligible passages from "Macbeth;" replying to them, with a lisp that must have greatly heightened the tragic effect of this terrible dialogue, "My handth are of oo tolor" (My hands are of your color). Years—how many!—after this first lesson in declamation, dear Charles Young was acting Macbeth for the last time in London, and I was his "wicked wife;" and while I stood at the side scenes, painting my hands and arms with the vile red stuff that confirmed the bloody-minded ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... account by the modern critic, he is scarcely more an object of regard to the modern reader; and it must be confessed that after a dozen close-packed pages of subtle metaphysical distinction or solemn didactic declamation, in which the disembodied principles of all arts and sciences float before the imagination in undefined profusion, the eye turns with impatience and indifference to the imperfect embryo specimens of them, and the hopeless attempts to realise this splendid jargon ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... you have produced a play called Othello on more than one occasion; perhaps you will inform us whether the following passages are in your opinion suitable for public declamation? (Mr. FUSSLER then proceeded to read several extracts to which he objected on account of ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... her respect for their rights, the ingratitude with which her continuing benefits were repaid, the injustice done her by the executive, its tameness under British insults, were the inexhaustible themes of loud, angry, and unceasing declamation. It required a firmness of mind, and a weight of character possessed only by the chief magistrate, to maintain the ground he had taken, against such an assemblage of ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... thought, word, and deed, of all the Americans who have ever sojourned in the Old World, shine forth from every page of the Oration. And in the honest ardor of his defence of the natural and political rights of man, as they were taught by Turgot, by Montesquieu, by Jefferson, not content with declamation or rhetoric, he ploughs deep into the reasoning by which they were demonstrated or defended, and ranges wide over the fields of learning by which they were illustrated. Careful for nothing but for the truth itself, he refutes the errors of a French writer who had charged practical ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... He never travelled to heaven to gather new ideas; and he finds himself possessed of no other qualifications than what mere common observation and a plain understanding can confer. Thus he becomes gloomy amidst the splendour of figurative declamation, and thinks it hopeless to pursue an object which he supposes out of the reach ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... for college courses, will also prove valuable in classes in practical speaking in preparatory schools, as an aid in declamatory work (for this purpose Chapter II, The Conversational Mode, and Appendix II, Declamation, are particularly useful), and ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... declared to be the "order of the day." You imagine that the orator will lose self and party in his country. Nothing of all this follows, however. You have some common-places, perhaps common truisms, some undefined, mean-all-or-nothing, declamation about "constitution" and "principles," by way of exordium; for the rest, Rome is sunk as if it existed not, down to the peroration it is all about Cato himself, and his little Whig party ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... emperor, was a fellow pupil. This is by no means unreasonable despite a difference of seven years in the ages of the two pupils. Vergil coming from the provinces entered rhetoric rather late in years, whereas Octavius must have required the aid of a master of declamation early, since at the age of twelve he prepared to deliver the laudatio funebris at the grave of his grandmother. Thus the two may have met in Epidius' lecture room in the year 50 B.C. Vergil could doubtless have afforded tuition under such a master since he presently engaged ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... entered college, and during his freshman year took part in two contests, getting second place in each. During his sophomore year, he had the satisfaction of winning first place in declamation. Then it was that he made his boldest effort. He delivered an oration that he himself had written, and again won first place. After these successes it was not to be wondered at that his college elected him to represent the school ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford
... were, exclusively from some sublime or portentous phenomenon, but from some dog, or kettle, or fishwife, with a homely insight worthy of old Socrates himself. How personal he was becoming, too!... No long bursts of declamation, but dramatic dialogue and interrogation, by-hints, and unexpected hits at one and the other most commonplace soldier's failing.... And yet each pithy rebuke was put in a universal, comprehensive form, which made Raphael himself wince—which might, he thought, ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... of rhetoric and declamation teach economy in words; show the pupils by illustration and example how much better they look when their ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... dying man, and must challenge the best efforts of every actor of ambition and self-respect. But in the mouth of an actor who lacks knowledge of the true temper of Shakespearean drama, this speech is certain to be mistaken for a detached declamation of patriotism—an error which ruins its dramatic significance. As Mr Warburton delivered it, one listened to the despairing cry of a feeble old man roused for a moment from the lethargy of sickness by despair at the thought that the great country he loved was in peril of ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... of dry gravity, but it failed him often, though for a word only. At such times he would pause and cough behind his wasted hand, and these frequent breaks in the narrative made its quiet tones more touching to the hearer than any declamation or any profession of profound regret, however eloquently expressed, could possibly ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... and then the finger was raised, or the hand gently spread and waved. As he warmed in his discourse a kind of celestial grace glimmered about his person, and his pale, thoughtful face kindled and beamed with holy light. His sentences were entirely simple. There was no rhetoric, no declamation or display. Yet the soul of the hearer seemed to be fused in a spiritual eloquence which, like a white flame, burned all the personality of the speaker away. The people sat as if they were listening to ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... led on by Nature herself, introduced her school, the theatre presented a stage on which scarce a vestige of the human character as it really existed, was to be seen. But pompous monotony of speech held the highest praise, and "DECLAMATION ROARED WHILE ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... liberty, and the gross superstitions which have been incorporated with Christianity itself in some of the oldest and most powerful states of Europe. These and similar topics may be justly said to be the "loci communes of Atheism," and they are often employed in eloquent declamation or indignant invective, so as to make a much deeper impression, especially on young and ardent minds, than their intrinsic weight or real argumentative value can either justify or explain. Infidel writers have not been slow ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... such declamation, for declamation it is, however noble, be allowable in a poet, whose genius is so far removed from pompousness or pretence, much more is it allowable in an orator, whose very province it is to put forth words to the best advantage ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... usual declamation on the dignity and capacity of our nature: the superiority of the soul to the body, of the rational to the animal part of our constitution; upon the worthiness, refinement, and delicacy of some satisfactions, ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... a scandal,—he wrote for the English Review, and was employed to defend Warren Hastings. This he did in an able manner, although a well-known story describes him as listening to Sheridan, on the Oude case, with intense interest, and exclaiming, after the first hour, 'This is mere declamation without proof'—after the next two, 'This is a man of extraordinary powers'—and ere the close of the matchless oration, 'Of all the monsters in history, Warren Hastings is the vilest.' Logan died in the year 1788, in his lodgings, Marlborough ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... his trips through Europe and to England is shown in "Rigoletto," brought out in Vienna in 1851. In this opera his true power manifests itself. The music shows great advance in declamation, which lifts it above the ordinary Italian style of that time. With this opera Verdi's second period begins. Two years later "Trovatore" was produced in Rome and had a tremendous success. Each scene brought down thunders of applause, until the very walls resounded ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... his eccentric powers first awakened by the advertisement of the singular annual subject which the Academy of Dijon proposed for that year, in which he wrote his celebrated declamation against the arts and sciences. A circumstance which decided his future ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... in order to have a look at that remarkable man, as he held forth with wonderful effect on the requirements of true theatrical art. Turning towards the dismal scene, I gently and respectfully pointed out to Spontini the uselessness of his declamation, and promised that everything should eventually be ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... encourage much expectation that it will be on the favorable side." But his fears stimulated rather than discouraged him. He was always on his feet; always ready to meet argument with argument; always prompt to appeal from passion to reason; quick to brush aside mere declamation, and to bring the minds of his hearers back to a calm consideration of how much was at stake, and of the weight of the responsibility resting on that convention. Others were no less earnest and diligent than he; but he was easily chief, and the burden ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... had the present incumbents of office been placed in power by a vote of a majority, the original colonists having saved those who came later to the island all trouble in the premises. In these facts was an unceasing theme of declamation and complaint to be found. It was surprising how little the people really knew of the oppression under which they laboured, until this stranger came amongst them to enlighten their understandings. Nor was it less wonderful how many sources of wrong he exposed, that no one had ever ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... sport of Pope's "'Ercles vein," and the Confederates contrasted his noisy declamation with the modesty of Lee and Jackson. To the South the new commander was peculiarly obnoxious. He was the first of the Federal generals to order that the troops should subsist upon the country, and that ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... Dost began in a very low voice and went on, with his declamation growing louder, till it was a roar, when he suddenly ceased, and dropped down on the ground with his legs under him in the position of an Indian idol, and, with his chin upon his breast, sat there perfectly silent, and as if ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... Oehlenschlaeger, who had hitherto dominated the Norwegian as well as the Danish stage; and yet it did not by any means represent so complete a breach with the traditions of the romantic drama as was claimed by Bjoernson's admirers. The fresh naturalness and absence of declamation were a gain, no doubt; but there are yet several notes remaining which have the well-known romantic cadence. "Between the Battles," though too slight to be called an achievement, was accepted as a pledge of ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... nothing but "sound doctrine" can produce "the power of godliness." The popular commotions and social disorders which accompany modern revivals, render them highly suspicious, if they do not demonstrate them to be spurious. It is true, indeed, that passionate declamation, vociferous assertion of heresy, intensified by theatrical and violent gesticulation, may commove to a higher degree the active powers,—the passions of the sinner; but such appliances can generate ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... unnatural war, to glut his enmity or satiate his revenge, was determined to persevere, in spite of calamity or fate itself." In the burden of the speech, and the address, opposition had a fine theme for declamation. The mover of the address complained, in strong terms, that certain members were so lost to honour and duty, as to glory in the success of the enemy. Fox replied to this invective in the words which Lord ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the History of Pantomime it becomes a matter of considerable difficulty, and, as Baron, in his Lettres sur la Danse, observes that when the word Dancing occurs in an old author, that it should always be translated by "gesticulation," "declamation," or "Pantomime." When we read that an actress "danced" her part well in the tragedy of Medea, that a carver cut up food dancing, that Heligobalus and Caligula "danced" a discourse for an audience of state, we are to understand that they—actress, carver, and ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... are good, and who acquire fame, who have never felt this divine afilatus. The intellect of the audience appreciates them for their declamation, for the art and artifice which they manifest; but the humblest and most illiterate of that assembly know well that this studied eloquence does ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... mean while a richness of melody, and a picturesqueness of action, that enables it to delude, and that even draws tears from the eyes of, persons who can be won over by the eye and the ear, with almost no participation of the understanding. And this unmeaning rant and senseless declamation sufficed for the time to throw into shade those exquisite delineations of character, those transcendent bursts of passion, and that perfect anatomy of the human heart, which render the master-pieces of Shakespear a property for all ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... suffering and deserted cause of true religion, had swept honest David along with it thus far; but with the mention of the criminal court, the recollection of the disastrous condition of his daughter rushed at once on his mind; he stopped short in the midst of his triumphant declamation, pressed his hands against his ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... home, wasting my time in inglorious ease and safety, while they were disfiguring the fair face of our favoured Isle with blood and conquest. My father, who had frequently heard me burst out in loud declamation and expressions of a patriotic feeling of abhorrence, and threaten defiance in case any attempt at invasion was made, began to reason with me upon this subject; and he trusted that I should never ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... were smaller than at present, he would arrange them in University Hall for declamation, so as to cover as much space as possible. They did not understand this until he said, "Now we have a larger audience, if not more numerous;" and this placed every one ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... Where Bhishma is, there Drona must be. Do what Bhishma hath told thee. O grinder of foes, give unto the sons of Pandu half the kingdom. O sire, I acted as their preceptor as much as thine. Indeed, even as Aswatthaman is to me, so is Arjuna of white steeds. What use is there of much declamation? Victory is there ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... his foot, he continued his declamation: "I can see that you are that beautiful spirit of fire, which burns the home to ashes and lights up the larger world with its flame. Give to us the indomitable courage to go to the bottom of Ruin itself. Impart grace to all that ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... not found in his more elaborate performances. He has the supreme merit of perfect clearness, naturalness, and grace of expression. Though never eloquent, he sometimes rises to an earnest and dignified declamation. Not infrequently he has achieved the highest success, and clothed valuable thought in language so appropriate, that the phrases have passed into the national vocabulary and become popular catchwords. His first inaugural address ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... there was not a soul. I stole past him with a beating heart, got between the moveable scenes and the curtain, and advanced to the open part of the stage. Here I fell down upon my knees, but not a single verse for declamation could I recall to my memory. I then said aloud the Lord's Prayer. I went out with the persuasion that, because I had spoken from the stage on New Year's Day, I should, in the course of the year, succeed in speaking ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... was of a vehement and impetuous nature, of a quick apprehension, and a strong and aspiring bent for action and great affairs, the holidays and intervals in his studies he did not spend in play or idleness, as other children, but would be always inventing or arranging some oration or declamation to himself, the subject of which was generally the excusing of accusing of his companions, so that his master would often say to him, "You, my boy, will be nothing small, but great one way or other, for good and else for bad." he received reluctantly and carelessly instructions given him to ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... uplifted hand. Indeed, I thought at first he was in a furious passion and was going to knock someone down, till I saw calmly everyone sat; and then again I fancied we had come to a theatre by mistake; but happily I did not speak, and, without interrupting the declamation, chairs were given us, and exchanging a mute salutation with a lady of a noble cast of beauty, who guided us to seats, we quietly took our places. She was Julie d'Argennes, the daughter of Madame de Rambouillet. A gentlemen followed her closely, the Duke of Montausier, ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... imagination, which gave him an extraordinary advantage in arguing; for he could reason close or wide, as he saw best for the moment. He could, when he chose it, be the greatest sophist that ever wielded a weapon in the schools of declamation; but he indulged this only in conversation; for he owned he sometimes talked for victory[24]; he was too conscientious to make errour permanent and pernicious, by deliberately writing it. He was conscious ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... piece of blank verse in the book. This prologue to "Orestes," by Mr. Stephen Phillips, has strength, is firm in outline, somewhat tardy in movement, fit for sonorous declamation. The gravity which I have indicated as a ruling quality of all these youthful compositions makes itself felt here in its proper place. We might have wished, perhaps, for more of joyous accent in the ode to "Youth," ...
— Primavera - Poems by Four Authors • Stephen Phillips, Laurence Binyon, Manmohan Ghose and Arthur Shearly Cripps
... I believe that I desire the welfare of mankind." At eighty-four he exclaimed, in view of his approaching end, "I cannot bear to leave the world with all the misery in it." And this was no mere effusive declamation, but the genuine utterance of a zeal which condescended to the most minute and laborious forms of practical expression. "Poor dear children!" he exclaimed to the superintendent of a ragged school, after hearing from some of ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... of Shakespeare. To which I replied by repeating all the songs in the "Tempest." One of these, referring to the loves of certain sailors, is not very decent, but I had not the remotest conception of its impropriety, and so proceeded to repeat it. A saint of virtue must have laughed at such a declamation. ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... kind of wisdom, being detached and unsystematic, should embody itself in the short and pregnant form of proverb, sentence, maxim, and aphorism. The essence of aphorism is the compression of a mass of thought and observation into a single saying. It is the very opposite of dissertation and declamation; its distinction is not so much ingenuity, as good sense brought to a point; it ought to be neither enigmatical nor flat, neither a truism on the one hand, nor a riddle on the other. These wise sayings, said Bacon, the author of some of the wisest of them, are ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... as far as Mary got with her whispered declamation, for two white-capped maids came out and began spreading small tables under the beech-tree where she sat. She opened the book and began reading, because she did not know what else to do. While she had been watching Lloyd in the boat, Elise had been summoned to the house ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... (the heathen adversaries of Christianity) lament that every sex, age, and condition, and persons of every rank also, are converts to that name." (Tertull. Apol. c. 37.) I do allow that these expressions are loose, and may be called declamatory. But even declamation hath its bounds; this public boasting upon a subject which must be known to every reader was not only useless but unnatural, unless the truth of the case, in a considerable degree, corresponded with the description; at least, ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... lectured to his disciples;[1] yonder Quintus points out the "white peak of Colonus", described by Sophocles in "those sweetest lines;" while glistening on the horizon were the waves of the Phaleric harbour, which Demosthenes, Cicero's own great prototype, had outvoiced with the thunder of his declamation. So countless, indeed, are the memories of the past called up by the genius of the place, that (as one of the friends remarks) "wherever we plant our feet, we tread upon some history". Then Piso, speaking at Cicero's request, begs his friends ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... The tragedy called Irene which Johnson had brought with him to London was at length after twelve years produced by Garrick, who had by that time become a famous actor. Johnson had, however, no dramatic genius. "When Johnson writes tragedy," said Garrick, "'declamation roars and passion sleeps':* when Shakespeare wrote, he dipped the pen in his own heart." Garrick did what he could with the play, but it was a failure, and although Johnson continued to believe that it was good, he wrote ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... the pamphlet consists of a declamation in general on the advantages of a Commonwealth Government over a Kingly Government, and on the dishonour, inconveniences, and dangers, to the British Islands in particular, if they should relapse into the one form ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... the picture she made of passion and incensed declamation that he did not attempt to open the letter, and he wondered why there was such a difference between the effect of her temper on him now and the effect of it those long years ago. He had no feeling of uneasiness in her presence now, no sense of irritation. In ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... woman of talents wondered at for her beauty; while I can think on no reason for such perversion of language, unless it is that a small share of elegance will content those whose delight is to hear declamation; and that the most hackeyed sentiments will seem new, when uttered by a pair of rosy lips, and seconded by the expression of eyes from which every thing may ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... quality of the speaking, the proceedings bear an advantageous comparison with those of any popular movement with which we are acquainted, either in this country or in America. Very rarely in the oratory of public meetings is the part of verbiage and declamation so small, and that of calm good sense and ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... State, nor to exclude it therefrom; but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States." Then opened the roar of loose declamation in favor of "Squatter Sovereignty" and "sacred right of self-government." "But," said opposition members, "let us amend the bill so as to expressly declare that the people of the Territory may exclude slavery." "Not we," ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... judge the King?" He spoke harshly, even aggressively, and as if combating some undeveloped argument of La Mothe's. A burst of temper may not convince a man's own conscience, or quiet its uneasiness, but it silences its voice for a time as declamation can always silence pleading. "Who are we to question his justice or deny its right to strike? And it is as his arm of justice that you are here ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... the early "eighties" by the late Mr. Biggar, who spoke (if my memory serves me right) for nearly six hours on one occasion. Biggar, however, merely read interminable extracts from Blue Books, whereas my uncle indulged in four hours of genuine rhetorical declamation. My uncle derived his nickname from the fact that in our family the second son is invariably christened Claud, so I had already a brother of that name. There happen to be three Lord Claud Hamiltons living ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... service have extorted an opinion from me. I must not shrink from the truth: in confirmation of what I have already said, I must add, that your composition is strong in language, but weak in argument.'—'Ha! Much declamation, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... declamation through the first three years; and lectures on Physical Geography, Geology, History, and Chronology, and lessons in singing, distributed through the ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... glory that lay beyond a prolonged martyrdom; she spoke of stakes and flaming pyres; she spread the adjectives thickly on her finest tartines, and decorated them with a variety of her most pompous epithets. It was an infringement of the copyright of the passages of declamation that disfigure Corinne; but Louise grew so much the greater in her own eyes as she talked, that she loved the Benjamin who inspired her eloquence the more for it. She counseled him to take a bold step and renounce ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... rambling and disconnected, with which he prefaced this story of the day, was vaguely familiar to her. He sketched now for her in summary, and with the sonorous voice of one deeply impressed with the dramatic values of his declamation, the chronicle of his wanderings in strange lands—and these he had frequently told her about before. Soon she perceived, however, that he was stringing them together on a new thread. One after another, these experiences of his, as he related them, turned upon the obstacles and fatal pitfalls ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... but, though the versification in Macbeth's speech is certainly Shakspere's, such a lament had doubtless been made in other English plays, in direct reproduction of Seneca; and Shakspere, in all probability, was again only perfecting some previous declamation. ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... fortunes? Am I all this time deceiving myself with some wretched sophistry? Am I, then, an intellectual Don Juan, reckless of human minds, as he was of human bodies; a spiritual libertine? But why this wild declamation? Whatever I have done, it is too late to recede; even this very moment delay is destruction, for now it is not a question as to the ultimate prosperity of our worldly prospects, but the immediate safety of our very bodies. Poison! O God! O God! Away ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... on "Lyric Declamation: Recitative, Song and Ballad Singing," will be discussed the practical application of these basic principles of Style to the vocal music of the German, French, Italian ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... his turn, one day, to pronounce a declamation; and Dr. Hough, the president, happening to attend, thought the composition too good to be the speaker's. Some time after, the doctor finding him a little irregularly busy in the library, set him an exercise for punishment; and, that he might not be deceived by any artifice, locked the door. Yalden, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... the Annual Register, and in most of our popular histories. Keightley says, "The overtures of France for peace were readily listened to; and both parties being in earnest, the preliminaries were readily settled at Fontainebleau (Nov. 3rd). In spite of the declamation of Mr. Pitt and his party, they were approved of by large majorities in both Houses of Parliament, and a treaty was finally signed in Paris, Feb. 18, 1763." The napkins were probably a gift, on the occasion, to some public functionary. For the custom of noting the date of a great event by chronograms, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 219, January 7, 1854 • Various
... successful of all Thomson's plays; "but it may be doubted," says Dr. Johnson, " whether he was, either by the bent of nature or habits of study, much qualified for tragedy: it does not appear that he had much sense of the pathetic; and his diffusive and Descriptive style produced declamation rather than dialogue."-E. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... Ristori are so well known in America that the mere mention of her name is sure to recall some of the most delightful evenings ever spent by many of my readers. Her genius and beauty, her majesty and glorious method of declamation, have won her a foremost rank in her profession, and her virtues and nobility of conduct the esteem of all who have ever known her. There are indeed few women more estimable than Adelaide Ristori, Marchioness Capranica del Grillo. It may ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... the nation, all its laws, principles, vital forces, are equally menaced and imperilled; and they are, in virtue of that very fact, in abeyance, in order that they may be saved. It is said that the Constitution is not suspended because of rebellion, and this is the basis of much declamation, both in the Chicago platform and elsewhere, against the exercise of extraordinary powers on the part of the President. But the Constitution authorizes the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, that great writ of right which is the bulwark of our Anglo-Saxon liberty, 'when in cases of rebellion ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... not whether the Romish religion is true or false: build nothing on one or the other supposition. Therefore, away with all your common-place declamation about intolerance and persecution for religion! Suppose every word of Pope Pius's creed to be true! Suppose the Council of Trent to have been infallible; yet I insist upon it that no government not Roman Catholic ought to tolerate men ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... gentleman of my acquaintance pointed out to me the house in which Louvois had resided, and declared his opinion, that that minister had proved one of the greatest causes of the ruin of France; he followed up his assertion by a declamation of such length, that I shall not attempt to collect his arguments, but leave my readers to come to their own ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... Reckless, out-of-time playing disfigures what is meant to express the fluctuation of thought, the soul's agitation, the rolling of the waves of time and eternity. The rubato, from rubare, to rob, represents a pliable movement that is certainly as old as the Greek drama in declamation, and was employed in intoning the Gregorian chant. The recitative of the sixteenth century gave it prominence, and it passed into instrumental music. Indications of it in Bach are too often neglected. Beethoven used it effectively. ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... never be without a topic. Public disturbance is the element in which they live. They must assault the government, or perish of inanition; and they must stimulate the mob by the novelty of their demands, and the violence of their declamation, or they must sink into oblivion. The Irish opposition now turned to another topic, and brought forward the Roman Catholics for ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... picture were complete. That it is often on the actor's initial appearance that he sings his song or speaks his piece, strengthens the resemblance. But this is a natural growth under the influence of two publics, the Greek and the Roman, notably fond of declamation and oratory. LeGrand believes this a characteristic directly derived from a narrative form of Middle Comedy embodied ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... speech for Sextius is a declamation against Vatinius, who was one of the witnesses employed by the prosecutor. Instead of examining this witness regularly, he talked him down by a separate oration. We have no other instance of such a forensic manoeuvre ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... and conveniences of life, had not long been supposed the source of every corruption in government, and the immediate cause of faction, sedition, civil wars, and the total loss of liberty. It was, therefore, universally regarded as a vice, and was an object of declamation to all satirists, and severe moralists. Those, who prove, or attempt to prove, that such refinements rather tend to the increase of industry, civility, and arts regulate anew our MORAL as well as POLITICAL sentiments, and represent, ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... make use of what I see. What's it to me whether his talk is the voice of destiny or simply a bit of clap-trap eloquence? There's a good deal of eloquence of one sort or another produced in both Americas. The air of the New World seems favourable to the art of declamation. Have you forgotten how dear Avellanos can hold forth for ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... College, where he soon became one of the most popular boys in the school. His handsome face, graceful manners and elegant delivery were met with applause whenever he spoke in public, and a natural taste led him to seek every chance for declamation and acting. Even as a child he had showed his dramatic ability, and more than once he was urged to go upon the stage. But his father refused all offers and kept the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... and timid before the class in declamation and dreaded to face any kind of an audience, I felt in my soul a strange impulsion toward public speaking which for years made me miserable. The war and the public meetings for recruiting soldiers furnished an outlet for my suppressed sense of duty, and my first lecture was on ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... pause to listen to a sentence or two: "True eloquence indeed does not consist in speech.... Words and phrases may be marshalled in every way, but they cannot compass it.... Affected passion, intense expression, the pomp of declamation, all may aspire to it; they cannot reach it.... The graces taught 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 and their children and their country ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine
... girl can do it effectively. But the real meaning of Shakespeare is far above you yet, child. The comedy bit was best. There you showed real talent. It was both comic and pathetic. That's art. Don't lose it. The Portia was good declamation. Go on with that sort of thing; it trains the voice—teaches shades of expression. You've a good voice and natural grace—great ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... imperial parliament, where he distinguished himself by his eloquence more than he ever did as a tribune. His oratory was, however, characterised more by histrionic passion, rhetorical artifice, and boldness of declamation, than by logic or truth. Many times the beauty of his parliamentary orations dazzled his opponents, and drew forth their admiring eulogy, and often his sarcasms smote them with a severity more terrible than any launched from his side of the house. He became ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... papers less spirited and able than some of the foreign journals, but is attended with this advantage, that no particular set of men is enabled to exercise a predominant influence by means of these periodicals. Their abundance neutralizes their effects. Declamation and sophistry are made comparatively harmless by running ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 20, No. 562, Saturday, August 18, 1832. • Various
... no other poet has so fully brought out the power of the Latin language. Professor Ramsay, while alluding to the melancholy tenderness of Tibullus, the exquisite ingenuity of Ovid, the inimitable felicity and taste of Horace, the gentleness and splendor of Virgil, and the vehement declamation of Juvenal, thinks that had the verse of Lucretius perished we should never have known that the Latin could give utterance to the grandest conceptions, with all that self-sustained majesty and harmonious swell in which the Grecian muse rolls forth her loftiest outpourings. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... long-handled preserving spoon still in my hand, staring after Lady Alicia and the dust that arose from her car-wheels. I stood there in a sort of trance, with all the valor gone out of my bones and that foolish declamation of mine ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... equalisation of legal punishment, the abrogation of barbarous laws, the liberation of slaves; all these things, which stirred even the most corrupt and apathetic minds of the late eighteenth century, seemed merely so much declamation to Alfieri. To him, who could conceive no virtues beyond independent truthfulness, such things were mere sentimental trash, mere hypocritical nonsense beneath which base men hid their baseness. And the baseness, unhappily, was there: baseness of absolute corruption, ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... notice the flight of Ascyltos, and while I was pacing the gardens, engulfed in this flood-tide of rhetoric, a large crowd of students came out upon the portico, having, it would seem, just listened to an extemporaneous declamation, of I know not whom, the speaker of which had taken exceptions to the speech of Agamemnon. While, therefore, the young men were making fun of the sentiments of this last speaker, and criticizing the arrangement of the whole speech, I seized ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... received in silence, and almost immediately the party rose from the table. But when the others had gone, Birkin turned round in bitter declamation, saying: ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... throne, My voice declared his guilt, and stirr'd up France To call for vengeance. I too dug the grave Where sleep the Girondists, detested band! Long with the show of freedom they abused Her ardent sons. Long time the well-turn'd phrase, The high fraught sentence, and the lofty tone Of declamation thunder'd in this hall, Till reason, midst a labyrinth of words, Perplex'd, in silence seem'd to yield assent. I durst oppose. Soul of my honour'd friend, Spirit of Marat, upon thee I call— Thou know'st me faithful, know'st with what warm zeal I urged the cause of justice, ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... thrilled and awed at its first note: it was so strangely deep, so solemnly melodious, until, stirred by passion as it were, it became thick and husky in certain of its tones; but it was always audible, articulate, and telling, whether sunk to a whisper or raised clamorously. Her declamation was superb, if, as critics reported, there had been decline in this matter during those later years of her life, to which my own acquaintance with Rachel's acting is confined. I saw her first at the Francais in 1849, and I was present at her last performance ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... long cursing speech of Oedipus.]—Observe that this speech is broken into several divisions, Oedipus at each point expecting an answer and receiving none. Thus it is not mere declamation; it involves action and reaction between a speaker and a crowd.—Every reader will notice how full it is of "tragic irony." Almost every paragraph carries with it some sinister meaning of which the speaker is unconscious. Cf. such phrases as "if he tread my hearth," "had but his issue ...
— Oedipus King of Thebes - Translated into English Rhyming Verse with Explanatory Notes • Sophocles
... brought comparatively near; the desire to emigrate to the west has increased, and everybody in the Atlantic states has become interested and inquires about the Great Valley. That respectable place, so much the theme of declamation and inquiry abroad, "The Far West," has gone from this region towards the setting sun. Its exact locality has not yet been settled, but probably it may soon be found along the gulf of California, or near Nootka ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... terrible by the long trumpets,—a new method of instrumentation. The broken cadenzas which give such force to Robert's scene, the cavatina in the fourth act, the finale of the first, all hold me in the grip of a supernatural power. No, not even Gluck's declamation ever produced so prodigious an effect, and I am amazed ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... widespread, so subtle and manifold in their operation, that everyone comes in contact with them during life, and that everyone is liable to suffer, even before he is aware, perhaps hopelessly and forever, from the results of that contact. Vague declamation about immorality and vaguer warnings against it have no effect and possess no meaning, while rhetorical exaggeration is unnecessary. A very simple and concise statement of the actual facts concerning the evils that beset life ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... floor, that they might be saved so painful a sight. I had no hope he could clear himself; not another wish in his favour remained. But When from this narration Mr. Burke proceeded to his own comments and declamation—when the charges of rapacity, cruelty, tyranny were general, and made with all the violence of personal detestation, and continued and aggravated without any further fact or illustration; then there appeared more of study than of truth, more of invective ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... with a vesture of superstition. The Divine Spirit filters down to the human heart through a gross and material medium. And what is true of different stages of human history is not less true of different contemporary strata of knowledge and intelligence. In spite of democratic declamation about the equality of man, it is more and more felt that the same kind of teaching is not good for everyone. Truth, when undiluted, is too strong a medicine for many minds. Some things which a highly cultivated intellect would probably discard, and discard without danger, ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... 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 singing at all. He subordinates the voice to articulate speech, and for fear lest the muse should take flight he clips her wings. ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... which gave him a most extraordinary advantage in arguing; for he could reason close or wide, as he saw best for the moment. Exulting in his intellectual strength and dexterity, he could when he pleased be the greatest sophist that ever contended in the lists of declamation; and from a spirit of contradiction, and a delight in showing his powers, he would often maintain the wrong side with equal warmth and ingenuity: so that when there was an audience, his real opinions could seldom be gathered from his talk; though when he was in company with a single friend, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... emotion. Many of the members had sate in that very chamber with Russell. He had long exercised there an influence resembling the influence which, within the memory of this generation, belonged to the upright and benevolent Althorpe; an influence derived, not from superior skill in debate or in declamation, but from spotless integrity, from plain good sense, and from that frankness, that simplicity, that good nature, which are singularly graceful and winning in a man raised by birth and fortune high above his fellows. By the Whigs Russell ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... had given a very poor declamation he recommended constant practice. 'Why, I am always practising to myself,' says the man. 'Ah, that accounts for it; you are accustomed to such a ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... from declamation to reproach, Lester laughed outright; and his nephew, in high anger, rose ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Silvain (who, besides being an actor, is Professor of Declamation at the Conservatoire) is the method of the elocutionist, but of the elocutionist at his best. He has a large, round, vibrating voice, over which he has perfect command. "M. Silvain," says M. Catulle Mendes, "est de ceux, ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons |
