"Demosthenes" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... abilities stand in the way. It is said that people would go to hear Cicero and would come away and say, "Did you ever hear anything like it? wasn't it sublime? wasn't it grand?" But they would go and hear Demosthenes, and he would fire them so with the subject that they would want to go and fight at once. They forgot all about Demosthenes, but were stirred by his message; that was the difference between ...
— Men of the Bible • Dwight Moody
... the lives of the people as they are being lived. Then I look through those wonderful windows there—how they glitter in the sunshine, don't they!—and I think I hear the men speak whom they have sent to plead their cause. Some Demosthenes from Tower Hill exhausts himself with phrase-making, shouts himself into a perspiration, drawing lurid, pictures of hideous and apparent wrongs, and a hundred or so well-dressed legislators whisper behind ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that when he appeared before a large and mixed audience he failed to call forth general enthusiasm. He who wishes to carry the multitude away with him must have in him a force akin to the broad sweep of a full river. Chopin, however, was not a Demosthenes, Cicero, Mirabeau, or Pitt. Unless he addressed himself to select conventicles of sympathetic minds, the best of his subtle art remained uncomprehended. How well Chopin knew this may be gathered from ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... bit. Her mother's fine contempt for ladylike accomplishments had even intervened in the high-school days to prevent her taking a free-hand course required in the curriculum, during which you spent weeks making a charcoal study of a bust of Demosthenes. But this lack never even occurred to Rose as a handicap. She hadn't the faintest impulse to make a beginning by putting a picture down on paper and making a dress of it afterward. She went straight at her materials, or the equivalent of her materials, as a sculptor goes at his clay. She couldn't ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... extensive information and a memory which has suffered nothing to escape it, I never saw any man whose conversation impressed me with such an idea of his superiority over all others. As Rogers said the morning of his departure, 'this morning Solon, Lycurgus, Demosthenes, Archimedes, Sir Isaac Newton, Lord Chesterfield, and a great many more went away in one post chaise.' He told us a great many details relating to the Queen's trial, and amongst other things (which I do not believe) ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... thou that didst inspire Maro and Flaccus, and the Grecian bard, With lofty numbers, and heroic strains Unparallel'd, with eloquence profound, And arguments convictive, didst enforce Fam'd Tully, and Demosthenes renown'd; Ennius, first fam'd in Latin song, in vain Drew Heliconian streams, ungrateful whet To jaded Muse, and oft with vain attempt, Heroic acts, in flagging numbers dull, With pains essay'd; but, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... he is inoculating successfully wid his own ripe and flourishing ignorance. No, sir; nor like Gusty Gibberish, or (as he has been most facetiously christened by his Reverence, Father O'Flaherty) Demosthenes M'Gosther, inasmuch as he is distinguished for an aisy and prodigal superfluity of mere words, unsustained by intelligibility or meaning, but who cannot claim in his own person a mile and a half of dacent reputation. However, quid multis ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... B.C.). Several orations of Demosthenes. ... English'd from the Greek by several hands. London, for Jacob Tonson, ...
— The Library of William Congreve • John C. Hodges
... extraordinary personage in his way. He grew deranged through love, and fancied himself possessed of two heads. One of these he maintained to be the head of Cicero; the other he imagined a composite one, being Demosthenes' from the top of the forehead to the mouth, and Lord Brougham's from the mouth to the chin. It is not impossible that he was wrong; but he would have convinced you of his being in the right; for he was a man of great eloquence. He had an absolute ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... oracles was greatly lessened when they became an artifice of politics. Themistocles, with a design of engaging the Athenians to quit Athens, in order to be in a better condition to resist Xerxes, made the Pythoness deliver an oracle, commanding them to take refuge in wooden walls. Demosthenes said, that the Pythoness philippised, to signify that she was gained over by ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... Great Britain rests, in no small degree, on the refined taste and classical education of her politicians; and the portion of her oratory acknowledged to be the most energetic, bears the greatest resemblance to the spirit of Demosthenes.—North American Review. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 357 - Vol. XIII, No. 357., Saturday, February 21, 1829 • Various
... was a large one. The governor took the chair and introduced me in this original way: "Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "I want to say about Chauncey Depew, whom I am now going to introduce to you as the lecturer of the evening, that he is no Demosthenes, because he can beat Demosthenes out of sight. He prepared his speech in the carriage in which I was bringing him up here, and he don't have, like the old Greek, to chew pebble-stones in ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... addressed the House with more than his wonted ability. He exposed the flimsiness of the charges against him, and the gross partiality of the proceedings. But the House was in search, not of justice, but of a victim, and neither the eloquence of a Demosthenes nor the reasoning powers of a Pascal would have availed aught with that hostile majority. Attorney-General Boulton, in the course of the discussion, delivered himself of a tempest of characteristic abuse against the ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... confession, that he had taken great pleasure in hearing of a tanker-woman say, as he passed: "This is that Demosthenes," is wonderfully ridiculous from so solid an orator. I myself have often met with that temptation to vanity, if it were any; but am so far from finding it any pleasure, that it only makes me run ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... session, and Caesar was coming down the street toward the capitol, conversing with some personal friends, and followed, as usual, by a large number of citizens. Just as he was passing in front of Demosthenes and Thucydides' drug store, he was observing casually to a gentleman, who, our informant thinks, is a fortune-teller, that the Ides of March were come. The reply was, "Yes, they are come, but not gone yet." At this moment ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Parliament who gie us any credible portraiture of the facts." He looked up at the portrait of Oliver Cromwell behind him, and exclaimed with great vehemence: "I ha' gone doon to the verra bottom of Oliver's speeches, and naething in Demosthenes or in any other mon will compare wi' Cromwell in penetrating into the veritable core of the fact. Noo, Parliament, as they ca' it, is joost everlasting babblement and lies." We led him to discuss the labor question and the condition of ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... metrical effect in prose on those feet which were not much used in poetry. Aristotle recommended the paean [uuu-]. Cicero preferred the cretic [-u-] which he says is the metrical equivalent of the paean. Demosthenes was especially fond of the cretic. Rhythm pervades the whole sentence but is most important at the end or clausula, where the swell of the period sinks to rest. The ears of the Romans were incredibly sensitive to such points. We are told that an assembly was stirred to wild applause ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... JOHNSON. 'I don't believe it, sir. Burke has great knowledge, great fluency of words, and great promptness of ideas, so that he can speak with great illustration on any subject that comes before him. He is neither like Cicero, nor like Demosthenes, nor like any one else, but speaks as well as ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... Yet he who would excuse the sudden wheel, Upon his courser might the blame bestow: But, after, he so ill his strokes did deal, Demosthenes his cause might well forego. With paper armed he seems, and not with steel, So shrinks he at the wind of every blow: At length he breaks the ordered champions through, Amid loud ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... have been, Laurie studied to some purpose that year, for he graduated with honor, and gave the Latin oration with the grace of a Phillips and the eloquence of a Demosthenes, so his friends said. They were all there, his grandfather—oh, so proud—Mr. and Mrs. March, John and Meg, Jo and Beth, and all exulted over him with the sincere admiration which boys make light of at the time, but fail to win from the world ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... justice, his genius, elevated by this sublime sentiment, would be equal to that of the greatest orators. He followed my advice, and now feels the good effects of it. His defence of M. de Portes is worthy of Demosthenes. He came every year within a quarter of a league of the Hermitage to pass the vacation at St. Brice, in the fife of Mauleon, belonging to his mother, and where the great Bossuet had formerly lodged. This is a fief, of which ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... printers: and, which is to be marvelled, among many scholars, and, which is to be pitied, among some preachers. Truly, I could wish (if at least I might be so bold to wish, in a thing beyond the reach of my capacity) the diligent imitators of Tully and Demosthenes, most worthy to be imitated, did not so much keep Nizolian paper-books {92} of their figures and phrases, as by attentive translation, as it were, devour them whole, and make them wholly theirs. For now they cast sugar and spice ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... the Greek emperors is still standing, and there letters shine with a last lustre. While the foe is at its gates, it rectifies its grammars, goes back to origins, rejects new words, and revives the ancient language of Demosthenes. Never had the town of Constantine been more Greek than on the eve of its destruction.[877] The fame of its rhetoricians is spread abroad; men come from Italy to hear John Argyropoulos, the Chrysoloras, the famous Chrysococces, deacon of ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... accurately chest-abdominal—breathing is correct and natural for both male, and female, and that the shoulders should remain as fixed as were Demosthenes' under the points of the swords hung over them, is now so generally admitted as to need no argument here. If any one has still a doubt on the subject let him observe a sleeping infant. It affords a perfect example of lateral-abdominal breathing, and no one can ...
— Resonance in Singing and Speaking • Thomas Fillebrown
... translate to me from the French the historical explanations in Mingault's notes. In Greek I read the Iliad and Odyssey through; one or two plays of Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes, though by these I profited little; all Thucydides; the Hellenics of Xenophon; a great part of Demosthenes, Aeschines, and Lysias; Theocritus; Anacreon; part of the Anthology; a little of Dionysius; several books of Polybius; and lastly Aristotle's Rhetoric, which, as the first expressly scientific treatise on ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... they had their convivial meetings, their amours, their hours of relaxation, pleasantry, and mirth; they were treated, in short, with so much humanity in general, as to occasion that observation of Demosthenes, in his second Philippick, "that the condition of a slave, at Athens, was preferable to that of a free citizen, in many other countries." But if any exception happened (which was sometimes the case) from the general treatment described; if persecution took the place of ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... every library which he had an opportunity of consulting." Note in the catalogue. It was purchased by Dr. Hunter, and is now in his Museum. Originally it belonged to Dr. Taylor, the editor of Lysias and Demosthenes, who originally procured it from the Harleian Library, for four guineas only. We are told that, during his life, one hundred guineas would ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... 20th of September, 1776, all the troops in Charleston were ordered to rendezvous without the gates of the city, to hear, as we were told, "Some great news." Soon as we were paraded, governor Rutledge ascended a stage, and in the forcible manner of a Demosthenes, informed, that Congress had dissolved all relation with England, by an open Declaration ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... men, wealthier than you and me, have accepted the offers of those who came forward to indemnify the persecuted for the demolition of their property. Ask yourself if Demosthenes or Milton, the two most illustrious defenders of liberty, by speech and pen, would have thrust aside the tribute which is due to such men alone. Would you dash out the signature of one who declares you his trustee for a legacy to your children? ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... a mind to elevate your mind, to raise it to its highest pitch, and even to exceed yourself, upon any subject, think how Homer would have described it, how Plato would have imagined it, and how Demosthenes would have expressed it; and when you have so done, you will then, no doubt, have a standard which will raise you up to the dignity of anything that human genius can aspire to." Mr. Hastings was calling upon himself, and raising his ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... calling names for?"—roared Lavretzky, in his turn.—"Work ... act ... Tell me, rather, what to do, but don't call names, you Poltava Demosthenes!" ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... among our people by the news-papers.' Sir Adam mentioned the orators, poets, and artists of Greece. JOHNSON. 'Sir, I am talking of the mass of the people. We see even what the boasted Athenians were. The little effect which Demosthenes's orations had upon them, shews that they ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... your mental jewels to shine at their brightest; if ever you wish a tolerably good disposition to seem like that of an angel; if ever, in a fit of vanity, you would like to appear as a blend of Apollo, Lancelot, Demosthenes, Prince Charlie, Ajax, and Solomon, just fly to Stoke Revel and become part of the household. Assume nothing; simply appear, and the surroundings will do the rest; like the penny-in-the-slot arrangements. Seen upon a background of Bates, William, Benson, Big Cummins, the Curate, Miss Smeardon, and ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Demosthenes Platterbaff, the eminent Unrest Inducer, stood on his trial for a serious offence, and the eyes of the political world were focussed on the jury. The offence, it should be stated, was serious for the Government rather than for the prisoner. He had blown up the Albert Hall on the ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... busines, to alter the cou[n]- saill of kynges, by their wisedome and eloquence, to a better state, and also to be exquisite in thother, is a thing of all most [Sidenote: Demosthe- nes. Tisias. Gorgias. Eschines[.] Tullie. Cato.] noble and excellent. The eloquence of Demosthenes, Isocra- tes, Tisias, Gorgias, Eschines, were a great bulwarke and staie to Athens and all Grece, Rome also by the like vertue of Eloquence, in famous and wise orators vpholded: the wise and eloquente Oracions of Tullie againste Catiline. The graue and sentencious oracions ...
— A booke called the Foundacion of Rhetorike • Richard Rainolde
... governments upon their people most thoroughly, and understood their operation upon the social relations of society, and the character and minds of the people. He was wont to say there was no hereditary transmission of mind; that this was democratic, and a Caesar, a Solon, or a Demosthenes was as likely to come from a cottage and penury as from a palace and wealth; that virtue more frequently wore a smock-frock than a laced coat, and that the institutions of every government should be so modelled as to afford opportunity to these ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... whose soul is eloquent within him will gain much from any eloquence of his fellow. Only he whose heart is a prophet will hear the prophet. A divine preparation of the nature, divine activities of the soul, precede all high uses of communication. Though Demosthenes or Phillips speak, it is the hearer's own spirit that convinces him. Conviction cannot be forced upon one from without. Hence the well-known futility of belligerent controversy. No possible logic will lead a man ahead of his own intelligence; neither will any take from him the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Quixote, "means the eloquence of Demosthenes, as Ciceronian means that of Cicero, who were the two most eloquent orators ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... its sacred fountain. The olive-tree of Pallas-Athene was there, and her colossal statue. On the plain below were the temples of Theseus and Jupiter Olympus, and innumerable others. He stood where Socrates had stood four hundred years before, defending himself against the charge of atheism; where Demosthenes had pleaded in immortal strains of eloquence in behalf of Hellenic freedom; where the most solemn and venerable court of justice known among men was wont to assemble. There he made the memorable discourse, a few fragments ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... that, when a boy, he burst into tears on hearing Herodotus read his History, and the impression made upon his mind was such as to determine the bent of his own genius. And Demosthenes was so fired on one occasion by the eloquence of Callistratus, that the ambition was roused within him of becoming an orator himself. Yet Demosthenes was physically weak, had a feeble voice, indistinct articulation, and shortness ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... power, genius flags of itself. Genius in the midst of society is a pain, an internal fever which would require to be treated as a real disease, if the records of glory did not soften the sufferings it produces."—"Athenians! what troubles have you not cost me," exclaimed DEMOSTHENES, "that I may be talked of ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... annals of the upper world. Where there are no wars there can be no Hannibal, no Washington, no Jackson, no Sheridan;—where states are so happy that they fear no danger and desire no change, they cannot give birth to a Demosthenes, a Webster, a Sumner, a Wendell Holmes, or a Butler; and where a society attains to a moral standard, in which there are no crimes and no sorrows from which tragedy can extract its aliment of pity and sorrow, no salient vices or follies on which ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... inquire where the secret of so wide and so durable a popularity lay. They were compelled to own that the ignorant multitude had judged more correctly than the learned, and that the despised little book was really a masterpiece. Bunyan is indeed as decidedly the first of allegorists, as Demosthenes is the first of orators, or Shakspeare the first of dramatists. Other allegorists have shown equal ingenuity but no other allegorist has ever been able to touch the heart, and to make abstractions objects of terror, of pity, and of ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... with these ugly social facts continuously, led me to this belief. It came very slowly as did also the opinion that the missionary himself or the pastor, be he as wise as Solomon, as eloquent as Demosthenes, as virtuous as St. Francis, has no social standing whatever among the people whose alms support the institutions, religious and philanthropic, of which these men are the executive heads. The fellowship of the saints is a pure fiction, has absolutely no foundation ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... memory of that vandal pope. He shares with Bernini the reproach of having added those hideous belfries which now rise above each end of the vestibule—as wanton and unprovoked an offense against good taste as ever was committed. A cocked hat upon the statue of Demosthenes in the Vatican would not be a more discordant addition. The artist should have gone to the stake, before giving his hand to such a ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... gold. The queen or bishop worried him in private about casting their nativities, and finding their fates among the stars. But the statesman, who dealt with more practical matters, hired him as an advocate and rhetorician, who could fight his master's enemies with the weapons of Demosthenes and Cicero. Wherever the scholar's steps were turned, he might be master of others, as long as he was master of himself. The complaints which he so often uttered concerning the cruelty of fortune, ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... Hamilton remarked dryly, as his wife paused, "you have omitted one salient qualification of the modern woman: she is, preeminently an orator. Why, you, yourself, are a feminine Demosthenes—nothing less." But he abandoned, his tone of raillery, as he continued: "And so, what you've been doing—that's your idea ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... all arts. The education of a king is barely sufficient for the education of the comprehending and comprehensive actor. If he is to satisfy every one, he should possess the commanding power of a Caesar, the wisdom of Solomon, the eloquence of Demosthenes, the patience of Job, the face and form of Antinous, and the strength and ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... arguing, because much of the effect of their powers of reasoning, and of their wit, when they grow up, will depend upon the gentleness and good humour with which they conduct themselves. A woman, who should attempt to thunder like Demosthenes, would not find her eloquence increase her domestic happiness. We by no means wish that women should yield their better judgment to their fathers or husbands; but, without using any of that debasing cunning which Rousseau recommends, ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... thus impaired the unity of national feeling, and her only statesman, Pitt, remained in studied seclusion, the First Consul might well feel assured of the impotence of the Island Power, and view the bickering of her politicians with the same quiet contempt that Philip felt for the Athens of Demosthenes. ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... political his only talents. His eloquence was an era in the senate; peculiar and spontaneous; familiarly expressing gigantic sentiments and instructive wisdom; not like the torrent of Demosthenes, or the splendid conflagration of Tully; it resembled sometimes the thunder, and sometimes the music of the spheres. He did not conduct the understanding through the painful subtilty of argumentation, nor was he ever on the rack of exertion; but rather lightened ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... any town, he took the pains to find out something of the local history, and thus touched the patriotism of his audience in the parish bounds, and the past glories of America were revived in terms of a new and strange flattery. We were like the Athenians after hearing the Philippics of Demosthenes,—all ready to march against the Austrian. Before he left New York I had volunteered to fight or conspire, or take any part in the struggle which might fall to me. I kept my counsel from my family, and ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... bay, passed near enough the island of AEgina to see the ruined temple on one of its hights—almost to count its columns—then coasted along the rugged shores of Argolis, which we eagerly studied with the aid of a map. Here was the peninsula Methana, and half hiding it, the island Calauria, where Demosthenes put an end to his life, once the seat of a famous Amphictyony. Then the bold promontory which shuts in the fertile valley of Troezer, then the territory of Hermione, stretching between the mountains and the sea. We ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... angel. Why should the evil one have a monopoly in the soul-market? But you remind me of my argument. You would have distracted Demosthenes in the heat of a peroration, or Socrates in the midst of his defence, if you had flashed that hair of yours before their old eyes. You have almost taken the life out of my argument. I was going to say that my peculiarity is ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... men, who had become settled in their ways and who had begun to pass their days in a sort of sleepy submission to the idea of the gradual passing away of their lives, awoke and went into Main Street in the evening to argue with skeptical farmers. Beside Ed Hall, who had become a Demosthenes on the subject of progress and the duty of the town to awake and stick to Steve Hunter and the machine, a dozen other men held forth on the street corners. Oratorical ability awoke in the most unexpected places. Rumors flew from lip to lip. It ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... "the forest-born Demosthenes," as Lord Byron called him, was defending an army commissary, who, during the distress of the American army in 1781, had seized some bullocks belonging to John Hook, a wealthy Scottish settler. The seizure was not quite legal, but Henry, defending, painted the hardships the patriotic army had ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... are accustomed to designate as a fool; but to connect the two as cause and effect is like saying that a man was a great athlete because he was lame, or that Lord Byron had a beautiful face because he had a club-foot, or that Demosthenes was a great orator because he stammered. Men have been made by their foibles, but in those cases weakness in some directions has been more than compensated for by strength in others. Boswell lacked some of the great literary powers, but he possessed others, and those that he did ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... cleare and many. 40 Demetrius Phalerius, an orator, And (which not oft meete) a philosopher, So great in Athens grew that he erected Three hundred statues of him; of all which, No rust nor length of time corrupted one; 45 But in his life time all were overthrowne. And Demades (that past Demosthenes For all extemporall orations) Erected many statues, which (he living) Were broke, and melted into chamber-pots. 50 Many such ends have fallen on such proud honours, No more because the men on whom they fell Grew insolent and left their vertues ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... o'er all, the Torrent Prophet, An inspired Demosthenes, To the Doubter's soul appealing, Louder than the preacher-seas: Dreamer! wouldst have nature spurn thee For a dumb, insensate clod? Dare to doubt! and these shall teach thee Of a truth there ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... curiosity, I think I'll drive across and look at the legless Demosthenes," said her companion. "I was going to do a little shopping, anyway. So I'll report later, if he's revoluting or ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... him to the Sistine Chapel. He has no feeling for art, and, being very true and earnest, could only do his best to try to admire Michael Angelo; but here and there, where he understood, the pleasure was expressed with a blunt characteristic simplicity. Standing before the statue of Demosthenes, he said: 'That man is persuaded himself of what he speaks, and will therefore persuade others.' She liked him exceedingly. For my part, I should join in more admiration if it were not for his having ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... simple, rugged, direct, strong. He had but a scanty vocabulary. It contained no word for treason but "treason." He described a lie by a word of three letters. The character of his speech was that which Plutarch ascribes to Demosthenes. He was strongly stirred by simple and great emotions—love of country, love of freedom, love of justice, love of honesty. He hated ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... Mr Donnithorne, as he carefully filled his pipe with precious weed, "your oratorical powers are uncommon! Surely thy talents had been better bestowed in the Church or at the Bar than in the sickroom or the hospital. Demosthenes himself would have paled before thee, lad—though, if truth must be told, there is a dash more sound than ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... be won, and the honor of the Athenian arms be preserved from the stigma of a retreat. Hers was, indeed, a spirit that might be broken, but never would bend. At the head of this second expedition she wisely placed her best general, Demosthenes, one of the most distinguished officers that the long Peloponnesian war had produced, and who, if he had originally held the Sicilian command, would soon have ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... did not remain for long with that gentleman, who made more fuss about the letters of Ulric von Hutten than of the harangues of Demosthenes, and in whose house water was the only drink. Afterwards I followed various callings, but all without success. I became a pedlar, a strolling player, a monk, a valet, and at last, by resuming my ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... than that of all the ancient systems of philosophy; though even in these, in point of theory, we might trace great liberality and consideration for human rights. Where could be found finer sentiments of liberty than in Demosthenes and Cicero? Where bolder assertions of the rights of mankind, than in Tacitus and Thucydides? But, alas! these were the holders of slaves: It was not so with those who had been converted to Christianity. He knew, however, that what he had been ascribing to Christianity ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... think of all times coming; and how, whenever there should be any restlessness against the tyranny of materialism and dogma, a cry should go up for Plato.—So let Isocrates, the 'old man eloquent,'—let a many-worded not unpeculant patriotic Demosthenes who knew nothing of the God-world—attend to an Athens wherein the Gods were no longer greatly interested;—the great Star Plato should rise up into mid-heaven, and shine not in, but high over Athens and quite apart from her; drawing from her indeed the external elements of his ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... and by day, too, that he's to be the West's most wonderful orator, and that he's to hold the thousands in his spell. He's a coming Henry Clay and Daniel Webster rolled into one. He's read that story about Demosthenes holding the pebble in his mouth to make himself talk good, and they do say that he slips away out on the prairie, where there's nobody about, and with a stone in his mouth tries to beat the old Greek at his own game. I don't vouch for the truth ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... Attic {56b} commonwealth it was the privilege and birthright of every citizen and poet to rail aloud and in public, or to expose upon the stage by name any person they pleased, though of the greatest figure, whether a Creon, an Hyperbolus, an Alcibiades, or a Demosthenes. But, on the other side, the least reflecting word let fall against the people in general was immediately caught up and revenged upon the authors, however considerable for their quality or their merits; whereas in England it ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... periods of his life Richard did not cast behind him classical reading. He spoke copiously and powerfully about Cicero. He had read, and he had understood, the four orations of Demosthenes, read and taught in our public schools. He was at home in Virgil and in Horace. I cannot speak positively about Homer,—but I am very sure that he read the Iliad now and then; not as a professed scholar would do, critically, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... eloquence and talents of Demosthenes could not effect among the States of Greece, might have been effected by the simple device of Committees of Correspondence. The few have been enabled to keep the many in subjection in every age from the want of union among the latter. ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... was called Rhetoric, and of which the Sophists were the chief masters. Moreover, as Rhetoric was especially political in its nature, it presupposed or introduced the cultivation of History; and thus the pages of Thucydides became one of the special studies by which Demosthenes rose to be ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... Demosthenes to be the more removed from noise, and less subject to distraction, caused a small chamber to be made under ground, in which he shut himself up sometimes for whole months, shaving half his head and only half his face, that he might not be in a condition ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 546, May 12, 1832 • Various
... undertook to improve Morisine in Greek, and, for four days in the week, explained some passages in Herodotus every morning, and more than two hundred verses of Sophocles, or Euripides, every afternoon. He read with him, likewise, some of the orations of Demosthenes. On the other days he compiled the letters of business, and in the night filled up his diary, digested his remarks, and wrote private letters to his friends in England, and particularly to those of his college, whom he continually exhorted to perseverance in study. Amidst ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... Halifax" (a very clever work), declares that for four hundred years there has not been a generation in which some Leland (or Leyland) of the old Bussli de Leland stock has not written a work on antiquity or allied to antiquarianism, though in one case it is a translation of Demosthenes, and in another a work on Deistical Writers. He traces the connection with his own family of the Henry Leland, my ancestor, a rather prominent political Puritan character in his time, who first went to America in 1636, and acquired land which my grandfather ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... you scolding about?" cried Lavretsky in his turn. "To work, to do. You had better say what one should do, instead of scolding, O Demosthenes of Poltava."[A] ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... "Historical Sketches of the Statesmen who flourished in the Time of George the Third;" in 1845-6, "Lives of Men of Letters and Science who flourished in the Time of George the Third;" and he has since given to the world works on "The French Revolution," on "Instinct," "Demosthenes' Oration on the Crown," &c., &c. Collections of his Speeches and Forensic Arguments, and of his Critical Essays, as well as the other works above referred to, have been republished in Philadelphia, ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... having such a champion and biographer as James Boswell. Johnson's Life by Boswell is without a rival among biographies: in the words of Macaulay: "Homer is not more decidedly the first of heroic poets; Shakspeare is not more decidedly the first of dramatists; Demosthenes is not more decidedly the first of orators, than Boswell is the first of biographers;" and Burke has said that Johnson appears far greater in Boswell's book than in his own. We thus know everything about Johnson, as we do not know about any other literary ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... back men from evil, and therefore is called necessary, it ought also to promove them unto good, and therefore is called profitable. Human laws, in Mr Hooker's judgment,(33) must teach what is good, and be made for the benefit of men. Demosthenes(34) describeth a law to be such a thing cui convenit omnibus parere which it is convenient for every one to obey. Camero(35) not only alloweth us to seek a reason of the church's laws (Non enim ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... it was not merely at hazard that he selected the statues of great men to adorn the gallery of the Tuileries. Among the Greeks he made choice of Demosthenes and Alesander, thus rendering homage at once to the genius of eloquence and the genius of victory. The statue of Hannibal was intended to recall the memory of Rome's most formidable enemy; and Rome herself was represented in the Consular Palace ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... also a very ignorant class of oculists in Rome in the time of Nero, but at Marseilles Demosthenes Philalethes was deservedly celebrated, and his book on diseases of the eye was in use for several centuries. The eye doctors of Rome employed ointments almost entirely, and about two hundred seals have been discovered which had been attached to pots of eye salves, each seal bearing the inventor's ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... mind the greatest in the world's history, from Demosthenes—Men of Athens, march against Philip, your country and your fellow-men will be in early bondage unless you give them your best service now—down to our own Phillips and Gough,—Wendell Phillips against the ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine
... Demosthenes expose their faults to the Athenians more frankly and fearlessly, and with such manliness that at the time of his death there was no person in the British Islands more generally respected. On a trial vote that was taken by a London newspaper ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... "Protagoras," the "Phaedrus," the "Timaeus," the "Republic," and the "Apology of Socrates." 5. Plutarch cannot be spared from the smallest library: first, because he is so readable, which is much; then, that he is medicinal and invigorating. The Lives of Cimon, Lycurgus, Alexander, Demosthenes, Phocion, Marcellus and the rest, are what history has of best. But this book has taken care of itself, and the opinion of the world is expressed in the innumerable cheap editions, which make it as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... cynical critic to illustrate these vagaries otherwise than so many slips and trippings of the tongue and pen, to which all men are liable in their unguarded moments—from Homer to Anacreon Moore, or Demosthenes to Mr. Brougham. Our course is rather that of a good-humoured expose, the worst effect of which will be to raise a laugh at the expense of poor humanity, or a merited smile at our own dulness and mistaken sense ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various
... Seneca; and Demosthenes, called by Cicero the prince of orators, has, according to Hermippus, more of art than of nature. To Demades, his orations appear too much laboured; others have thought him too dry; and, if we may trust AEschines, his language is ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... the then world ... first time I had ever heard the lying scoundrel speak.... Demosthenes of blarney ... the big beggar-man who had L15,000 a year, and, proh pudor! the favour of English ministers instead ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... happen that Athens, after having recovered an equality with Sparta, should be forced to submit to the dominion of Macedon when she had two such great men as Phocion and Demosthenes at the head of ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... William O'Brien should wear prison clothes, sleep on a plank bed, and be subjected to other indignities, but Mr. Mahaffy goes far beyond such mild measures as these, and begins his history by frankly expressing his regret that Demosthenes was not summarily put to death for his attempt to keep the spirit of patriotism alive among the citizens of Athens! Indeed, he has no patience with what he calls 'the foolish and senseless opposition to Macedonia'; regards the revolt of the Spartans against 'Alexander's Lord Lieutenant ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... sort of playing with Billy with his eyes and grin, and turning like to let the whole crowd in on the joke, "DECLINE? The eminent gentleman declines! And he is going to sit down, too, with all that speech bottled up in him! O Demosthenes!" he says, "you have lost your pebble in front of ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... this seed are discernible in every line of his works. While having all reverence for his college companions, Aristotle, Aeschylus, and Demosthenes, his mind instinctively turns towards the deemed heretical works of the later French philosophers, D'Holbach, Condillac, La Place, Rousseau, the encyclopaedists, and other members of that school. His intellect he furbishes with stores of logic ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... were being made, roused himself angrily; and, to show us that he at least was no Anglo-maniac, shot at us a look fierce as any bonassus; while he asked, abruptly, what we thought in England of one whom he styled the "Demosthenes of Ireland"—looked at us for an answer. As it would have been unsafe to have answered him in the downright, offhand manner, in which we like both to deal and to be dealt by, we professed that ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... thickness of the lips, the man that God made. And all the Laurences and D'Orsays now serve me well as illustration. I have the form and organism, and can better spare the expression and color. What would I not give for a head of Shakespeare by the same artist? of Plato? of Demosthenes? Here I have the jutting brow, and the excellent shape of the head. And here the organism of the eye full of England, the valid eye, in which I see the strong executive talent which has made his thought ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... sublime. In his intentness and earnestness, he did not suspect the liability of his expressions to the charge of a vindictiveness he was unconscious of in his own breast. It was like a philippic of Demosthenes; it was a Ciceronian oration against some Catiline, real or supposed. A poetic sort of revenge was all he meant to take, although his language to opponents, whom perhaps he sometimes mistook, may be ...
— Senatorial Character - A Sermon in West Church, Boston, Sunday, 15th of March, - After the Decease of Charles Sumner. • C. A. Bartol
... the matter to be reissued as his own. Long years after, a certain man was once praising the speeches of Lord Chesterfield and was led on to make explanations. He did so, naming two speeches, one of which he zealously declared had the style of Cicero; the other that of Demosthenes. Johnson becalmed the speaker by agreeing with him as to the excellence of the speeches, and then adding, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... at first somewhat of a disappointment. You do not often find the youthful Demosthenes chewing his pebbles in the same room with you; or, even if you do, you will probably think the performance little to be admired. As a general rule, the members speak shamefully ill. The subjects of debate are heavy; and so are the fines. The Ballot Question—oldest ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... birth and death are not exactly known, but we learn from his own works that he was a young student at Delphi, in the thirteenth year of the reign of the Emperor Nero, A.D. 66. He visited both Italy and Rome, and probably resided at Rome for some time. He wrote his Life of Demosthenes, at least after his return to Chaeroneia: he says (Life of Demosthenes, c. 2), that he had not time to exercise himself in the Latin Language during his residence at Rome, being much occupied with public business, and giving lessons in ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... me, when everything you do will be done twenty minutes too late; when every dollar you make will be subject to a cash discount of one hundred per cent; when every competitor you held cheap will suddenly develop the luck of the devil, the brains of a Demosthenes, and the courage of a ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... divide between us; Still more attractions to combine, Beside these services of mine, I will throw in a very fine (It would do nicely for a sign) 600 Original Titian's Venus.' Another offered handsome fees If Knott would get Demosthenes (Nay, his mere knuckles, for more ease) To rap a few short sentences; Or if, for want of proper keys, His Greek might make confusion, Then just to get a rap from Burke, To recommend a little work ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... and childlike affectations. And if some of them do not trim their souls quite as much as their gowns, or perhaps venture into society with minds naked to the verge of indecent ignorance, then I say to these, "Talk to me only with your eyes,"—and they can be more eloquent than any Demosthenes of your New England Athens. Women are younger than men, and nearer to nature; they have more animal life and spirits and glee. Their lively, frolicsome, sunshiny chatter keeps existence from growing mouldy and stale. We have it on the authority of the wittiest of Frenchmen, that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... this whole matter was a mixture of cowardice and meanness. Recollecting his poetical temperament, and the well-known stories of Demosthenes at Cheronea, and Horace at Philippi, we are not disposed to be harsh on his cowardice, but we have no excuse for his meanness. It discovers a want of heart, and an infinite littleness of soul. We can hardly conceive him to have possessed a drop of the blood of ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... delivered his maiden speech with some effect; and had been heard favorably on various subsequent occasions; on one of which it was that, to the extreme surprise of the house, he terminated his speech with a passage from Demosthenes—not presented in English, but in sounding Attic Greek. Latin is a privileged dialect in parliament. But Greek! It would not have been at all more startling to the usages of the house, had his lordship quoted Persic or Telinga. Still, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... the more generous feelings, the nobler aims, neutralizes even his intellect. He publishes his speeches, carefully solicitous of his fame, and provokes comparison in laboured dissertations with the oratory of Demosthenes and Cicero; he eulogizes the Duke of Wellington, and demands by inference whether he cannot praise as classically as even the ancients themselves; but his heartless though well-modulated eloquence lingers in first editions, like the effusions of inferior minds; nor is it of a kind ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... Hospital,) I enjoyed the inestimable advantage of a very sensible, though at the same time, a very severe master, the Reverend James Bowyer. He early moulded my taste to the preference of Demosthenes to Cicero, of Homer and Theocritus to Virgil, and again of Virgil to Ovid. He habituated me to compare Lucretius, (in such extracts as I then read,) Terence, and above all the chaster poems of Catullus, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... appeared since Burke. And yet if we compare it with Burke, or with the great Greek exemplar of all those who would give speech the cogency of act,—we see at once the causes of its practical failure. In Demosthenes the thoughts and principles are often as lofty as any patriot can express; but their loftiness, in his speech, as in the very truth of things, seemed but to add to their immediate reality. They were beaten ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... suffered disaster at Syracuse, and had given himself up, with all his army, to the Sicilians. But the assurances of safety which he had received were quickly proved false. He was no sooner in the hands of the enemy than he was shamefully put to death with his naval ally, Demosthenes; and his troops were sent to the quarries, where the plague and the hard labour lessened their numbers and increased their miseries. When this bad news reached Rhodes, the islanders rose in revolt against the supremacy of Athens, and resolved to side with Sparta. Balaustion[96:1] was there, ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... Wit and a fine Genius, and as one fears the Dreadful Character of a laborious Plodder: But notwithstanding this, the greatest Wits any Age has produced thought far otherwise; for who can think either Socrates or Demosthenes lost any Reputation, by their continual Pains both in overcoming the Defects and improving the Gifts of Nature. All are acquainted with the Labour and Assiduity with which Tully acquired ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... of letters Harvard College had a notable part. In 1806, John Quincy Adams was appointed Professor of Rhetoric and gave a course of lectures which moulded the taste of that school of orators to which Edward Everett belonged—a school of oratory which found its models in Demosthenes and Cicero. Everett became Professor of Greek in 1815; and George Ticknor, Professor of Belles-Lettres in 1816. Prescott graduated in 1814, Palfrey in 1815, and George Bancroft in 1817,—all three to add to American historiography works of enduring ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... strongly through the period between the battle of Marathon and the battle of Chaeronea, and has left its monuments in such plays as the Persae and Eumeuides of AEschylus, the Antigone of Sophocles, the Clouds of Aristophanes, the History of Thucydides and the Orations of Demosthenes, its last embodiment being perhaps the famous oath of that orator on the souls of those who risked their lives at Marathon."—History of English Poetry, vol. ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... cried Tom. "Listen, ladies and gentlemen, to our eloquent young Demosthenes, the only ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... great pagan orators, Cicero and Demosthenes, and the Doctors of the Church, Saints Augustine, John Chrysostom, &c.—these all wrote, polished and elaborated—we come to the four names that have flung a deathless glory around the French pulpit, that created a golden era of sacred eloquence which has never been ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... coming to the front. Among those named more and more frequently of late is T. C. DeLeon. The story is as full of plot as it can hold; and if action plays as large a part in fiction, as Demosthenes averred it did in oratory, "Juny" should ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... and begun lisping with Agincourt and Cressy, one uses one's self but awkwardly to the sounds of Tournay and Fontenoy. I don't like foreseeing the time so near, when all the young orators in Parliament will be haranguing out of Demosthenes upon the imminent danger we are in from the overgrown power of King Philip. As becoming as all that public spirit will be, which to be sure will now come forth, I can't but think we were at least as happy ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... the Greek customs is summed up in a few words by Demosthenes: "We marry wives in order to have legitimate children and a faithful guardian for our household; we have concubines for our daily service, and hetairas for the enjoyment ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... it a little; but I felt it my duty, as a censor of morals, to mark my reprobation of her having grown fat and wrinkled in her old age. It was necessary for me to correct the flattering picture drawn of her by that caitiff Canning. You know the contempt of Demosthenes for Canning. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... great real advantage in our progress through human life. Cicero deserves to be studied still more for his talents than for the improvement in language to be derived from reading him. He was unquestionably, with the single exception of Demosthenes, the greatest orator among the ancients. He was too a profound Philosopher. His 'de ofiiciis' is among the most valuable treatises I have ever ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... was spread upon its counter, and a benevolent dragon of knowledge in horn spectacles ran over the wares for Lewis Rand. "De Jure Maritimo, six shillings eightpence, my lad. Burnet's History and Demosthenes' Orations, two crowns, Mr. Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, a great book and dear! Common Sense—and that's Tom Paine's, and you may ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... you or one of your learned correspondents, tell me the origin or first user of the literary "smelling of the lamp?" I know that it is commonly attributed to Demosthenes? but if it is his, I want ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.03.23 • Various
... Budaeus as our first example of the French bookmen in the period that followed the invention of printing. Of Guillaume Bude, to give him his original name, it was said that he knew Greek as minutely as the orators of the age of Demosthenes. If there was any real foundation for the compliment it must have consisted in the fact that the Frenchman had more acquaintance with the language than his instructor George of Sparta. Budaeus is said to have paid a very large sum for a course of lectures ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... certain forms of purification which one does not know whether to describe as ablutions or anointings. Thus Demosthenes in his speech "On the crown', accused Aeschines of having "purified the initiated and wiped them clean with (not from) mud and pitch.'' Smearing with gypsum (titanos. titanos) had a similar purifying effect, and it has been suggested i that the Titans were no more than old-world votaries ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... advantage of him, and reject his book, because you find the writer personally antipathetic. Or he may take an unfair advantage of you, and control you by his personal fascination. You remember the critic of Demosthenes, who remarked to him of a certain oration, "When I first read your speech, I was convinced, just as the Athenians were; but when I read it again, I saw through its fallacies." "Yes," rejoined Demosthenes, "but the Athenians heard it only once." A book you read more than once: for you possess only ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... attention and secure the support of the great body of the people, who know nothing of colleges except through the newspapers. We have always been permitted to infer the intellectual and moral character of the audiences of Demosthenes, from the orations of Demosthenes; and may we not also infer the character of the American people, from the character of the press that they support? In a single issue may often be found an editorial article upon some question of present interest; a sermon, address, or speech, from ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... forming our students on the Latin models I recommend the Greek, especially Demosthenes . simplicity! This may be seen by a reference to Leopardi, who is perhaps the ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... patronage of the Medicis, a crowd of scholars who brought with them their manuscripts of Homer and the dramatists, of Thucydides and Herodotus, and most momentous perhaps for the age to come, of Plato and Demosthenes and of the New Testament in its original Greek. The quick and vivid intellect of Italy, which had been torpid in the decadence of mediaevalism and its mysticism and piety, seized with avidity the revelation of the classical world ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... better volume of travels has ever been written than the Journal; and the critic who has dealt at the reputation of Boswell its heaviest blow has yet to confess, that Homer is no more the first of poets, Shakespeare the first of dramatists, Demosthenes the first of orators, than Boswell is the first of biographers, ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... "Stutterin' Demosthenes! I didn't think there were enough horses in the world to move the thing! Madam, I have swiftly reached the conclusion that I am not a jerkline ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... facts and that of abstract reasoning, between the language spoken by the people and that of the learned; the one was a counterpart of the other; there was no term in any of Plato's dialogues which a youth, leaving his gymnasia, could not comprehend; there is not a phrase in any of Demosthenes' harangues which did not readily find a lodging-place in the brain of an Athenian peasant or blacksmith. Attempt to translate into Greek one of Pitt's or Mirabeau's discourses, or an extract from Addison or Nicole, and you will be obliged to recast and transpose the thought; you will be led ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... principal force consisted in his cavalry, would have been engaged in a very unequal combat: and Sapor was permitted to form the siege of Caesarea, the capital of Cappadocia; a city, though of the second rank, which was supposed to contain four hundred thousand inhabitants. Demosthenes commanded in the place, not so much by the commission of the emperor, as in the voluntary defence of his country. For a long time he deferred its fate; and when at last Caesarea was betrayed by the perfidy of a physician, he cut his way through the Persians, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... and Epicurean schools were only different phases of the same degeneration. "Thirst, for money, and nothing else, will be the ruin of Sparta!" (Cicero, De Offic, II, 22, 77.) See the magnificent description by Demosthenes, in which he shows the over-estimation of material things to be the principal cause of the decline of Athens, and in which he lays great stress on the fact, that Athens, on its decay, had a larger population, more wealth, ships, and evidences of external power, than in its golden age. ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... When Demosthenes was practising oratory, he sought the sea-shore; but Fitzgerald repaired instead to a piece of woods about half a mile distant. It was rather an ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... simplicity and frugality. In other respects he is said to have studied Hellenic literature late in life, and not to have read Greek books till extreme old age, when he greatly improved his style of oratory, partly by the study of Thucydides, but chiefly by that of Demosthenes. Be this as it may, his writings are full of Greek ideas and Greek anecdotes: and many of his apophthegms and maxims are ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... politicians as examples of parliamentary politeness. It was the good-natured and wise Franklin that helped him to this. It is certain, too, that at some part of his earlier life he read translations of Demosthenes; for of all modern orators Henry Clay was the most Demosthenian. Calhoun purposely and consciously imitated the Athenian orator; but Clay was a kindred spirit with Demosthenes. We could select passages from both these orators, and ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... you put a false construction on my words. I hold no brief, as at present advised, for the third profession qua profession but your Cork legs are running away with you. Why not bring in Henry Grattan and Flood and Demosthenes and Edmund Burke? Ignatius Gallaher we all know and his Chapelizod boss, Harmsworth of the farthing press, and his American cousin of the Bowery guttersheet not to mention Paddy Kelly's Budget, Pue's Occurrences and our watchful friend The ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce |
