"Diction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... placed the rope round her neck, and the cap on her head ready to be drawn over the face, she uttered a long and fervent prayer, expressed with great volubility and propriety of diction, every word of which could be distinctly heard by us as we circled the scaffold. She could not have rounded her periods more gracefully or articulated them more perfectly, if she had rehearsed her part beforehand! Though most of the ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... good mind, not much education; but he was a great reader, and especially loved poetry, and he taught his son to commit poetry to memory, and to model his mind on the clear diction and heroic strain of poets like Milton, Shakespeare, Dryden, and Pope. In these books of poetry the great chief-justice found the springs to freshen his own good character. To the last day of his life he loved literature, and was especially fond of ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... of the various schools of composers and virtuosi in the musical countries of Europe, from Corelli down to Vieuxtemps and Joachim. The author's judgment is in most cases fair and unbiassed, and his diction agreeably free from the current jargon of musical criticism.... The value of Mr. Hart's volume is increased by carefully engraved portraits of Corelli, ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... Tennyson portrays him, will always hold the first place with English readers as the ideal knight of the Holy Grail. The matchless diction of Tennyson has given the less perfect form of the legend a supreme charm and beauty. But Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parsifal, as spiritualized and humanized in Wagner's lyric drama, will be seen to be in fuller accord with the whole cycle and ...
— Parsifal - A Drama by Wagner • Retold by Oliver Huckel
... essential matters of grammar, diction, spelling, mechanics; and develops with thoroughness the principles of sentence structure. Larger units of composition it leaves to the ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... thing, indeed, is this factional pride, as made equally manifest in both forces; in one, for instance, of the Unlettered forces: The average farmer, or countryman, knows, in reality, a far better and wider range of diction than he permits himself to use. He restricts and abridges the vocabulary of his speech, fundamentally, for the reason that he fears offending his rural NEIGHBORS, to whom a choicer speech might suggest, on his part, an assumption—a ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... famous in Germany, who, while they are rightly anxious not to alter the text of the masters, carefully suppress every flight of thought, and, like E. d'Albert and H. von Buelow, seem to be giving a lesson in diction when they are ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... masterly piece of writing. Coleridge scribbled in the copy that now lies on the shelves of the British Museum this tribute to its author: "I remember few passages in ancient or modern authors that contain more just philosophy in appropriate, chaste or beautiful diction than the fine following pages. They reflect equal honour on Godwin's head and heart. Though I did it in the zenith of his reputation, yet I feel remorse even to have only spoken unkindly of such a man.—S. ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... that Θ must have had the Ο´ text before him, since the coincidences of diction, though not so continuous as in the Song of the Three, are still far too numerous to be accidental. Bissell (p. 443) says of all the three pieces, "Θ simply recast the version of LXX." This dictum, however true of the Three, must not be quite literally ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... gladly to her salon, then the rendezvous of the world of art and letters, and regretted not seeing him oftener. He was more than once invited to the literary sessions of Juilly college, and, under the spell of his diction, the pupils became animated by a new ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... image, but love is proverbially desperate in its figures of speech, and any thing was better than appearing to hesitate. Nevertheless, Miss Monson was too well instructed, and had too much real taste, not to feel surprise at all this extravagance of diction and poetry. ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... produced beautiful poetry in his Oriental Eclogues, four years before his Odes appeared. These were, it is admitted, of a different cast from his Odes, and of a gentleness and chastity of thought and diction, which he himself was conscious, some years afterwards, did not very well represent ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... it, and carried it forward and developed it with an independent energy. But like reader like poet. Both show the effects of having come into an estate they have not earned. A nation of readers has required of its poets a diction and symmetry of form equal to that of an old literature like that of Great Britain, which is also theirs. No ruggedness, however racy, would be tolerated by circles which, however superficial their culture, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... is an original composition and not a translation of Valmiki's work is one of the great religious poems of the world and not unworthy to be set beside Paradise Lost. The sustained majesty of diction and exuberance of ornament are accompanied by a spontaneity and vigour rare in any literature, especially in Asia. The poet is not embellishing a laboured theme: he goes on and on because his emotion ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... exemplified in the Middle Ages by the great epics of the Cid, the Infantes de Lara and other heroes, and in songs whose existence can rather be inferred than proved,—was never better. It produced the lyrico-epic romances (see Notes, p. 253), which, as far as one may judge from their diction and from contemporary testimony, received their final form at about this time, though in many cases of older origin. It produced charming little songs which some of the later court poets admired sufficiently to gloss. But the cultured writers, just admitted to the splendid cultivated ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... shows here all the vigor of his early days. There is the same pungency of diction, the same picturesque power. Not a person is introduced without a touch of vigorous individuality.... The characters seem to ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... diction I have sought after simple and idiomatic English, studying the noble archaism of the King James Bible, rather than affecting the Wardour Street dialect of William Morris or Professor Earle, which is often utterly unintelligible to any but the special student ...
— Andreas: The Legend of St. Andrew • Unknown
... attempt to imitate the lofty diction of the Seasons or Windsor Forest, the noble poem from which, I imagine, Thomson derived his sonorous style. He had a humble mind and knew his limitations, and though he adopted the artificial form of ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... study the speeches of John Bright. They are noteworthy for their simplicity of diction and uniform quality of directness. His method was to make a plain statement of facts, enunciate certain fundamental principles, then follow with his argument ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser
... for Divine guidance by opening the Bible at hazard; having a literal way of interpreting the Scriptures, which is not at all sanctioned by approved commentators; and it is impossible for me to represent their diction as correct, or their instruction as liberal. Still—if I have read religious history aright—faith, hope, and charity have not always been found in a direct ratio with a sensibility to the three concords, ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... with the blackness of death, and permits no pleasure to be pure and unalloyed."[844] I need not multiply quotations; evidently the poet believed what he said, though he may be using the exaggeration of poetical diction. And to a certain extent he is borne out by the literature of his time. In fact Polybius, writing nearly a century earlier of the Romans and their religion, implies that such notions were common, and ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... reading the Nouvelle Heloise, my dear. What you say is rather stilted in diction, but ...
— The Stepmother, A Drama in Five Acts • Honore De Balzac
... of thing, sir, expressed with your natural elegance of diction. Does your father contract with an 'insurance ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... has acquired no command of the rich vocabulary, the graceful elegance of diction, the mysterious beauty of expression, the abundant illustration, the art of storing nervous vigour and living thought into crisp and pregnant terseness: if this one weapon, a finished English education, is not at his disposal, his knowledge, as far as others are concerned, is so ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... matters; but they affected the past and Daniel rather than the future and himself. She could not fail to notice the supreme change that power had brought with it; his very handwriting seemed to have acquired a firmer line; while his diction certainly showed more strength of purpose. Could power modify character? It seemed impossible. She supposed, rather, that character, latent till this sudden change of fortune, had been revealed by power. Her first fears for the future of the business abated; but ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... philosophy, penetrating constitutions for their warnings, and human nature for its guides—a statesman's (as distinguished from an antiquarian's) use of history—a passionate scorn and invective for the base, tyrannical, and unjust—a fiery and copious zeal for liberty and for Ireland, and a diction and cadence almost lyrical, made Grattan the sudden achiever of a Revolution, and will make him for ever one of the very elements ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... with the utmost colour and variety. In contrast to the lovers out of fairyland I depicted a more ordinary couple, and I even introduced a third pair that belonged to the coarser and more comical servant world. I purposely went to no pains in the matter of the poetic diction and the verse. My idea was not to encourage my former hopes of making a name as a poet; I was now really a 'musician' and a 'composer,' and wished to write a decent opera libretto simply because I was sure that nobody ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... throttle. The lawyer will be more thorough in his sifting of evidence, and more convincing in the planning of his cases. The business man will be even more sharply alive to business. The college student can better grasp his studies, and write with stronger thought and clearer diction. The cook will get a finer flavor into the food. And so on to the end of the list. Why? Not by any magic, but simply and only because man was created to be animated and dominated by the Spirit of God. That is his normal condition. ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... as it was then, I have seldom heard equalled. It was not so much attractive as commanding. Though remarkably fluent and select, it was neither fluency, nor choice diction, nor wit, nor sentiment, that gave it its peculiar power, but accuracy of statement, keen discrimination, and a certain weight of judgment, which contrasted strongly and charmingly with the youth and sex of the speaker. I do not remember that the vulgar ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... we may turn to Le Chiffre d'Amour, or the "Lady carving an initial," as the prosaic diction of the Wallace Collection has it (No. 382). In this the equal delicacy of the sentiment and of the painting combine to effect a little masterpiece of Louis Quinze art. It is simple and natural, and entirely free from the besetting sins of so slight ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... amazing talent on record for telling lies; and Ethelberta, in wishing her fiction to appear like a real narrative of personal adventure, did wisely to make De Foe her model. His is a style even better adapted for speaking than for writing, and the peculiarities of diction which he adopts to give verisimilitude to his narratives acquired enormous additional force when exhibited as viva-voce mannerisms. And although these artifices were not, perhaps, slavishly copied from that master of feigning, they would undoubtedly have reminded her hearers ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... circumstances:—in fact all the modern authors represented in the present book may be said to have been prolific as writers. Gumundur Frijnsson was equally versatile as a writer of short stories and poems. He has a rich command of imagery and diction, and his style, at times a little pompous, is often powerful though slightly archaic in flavour. The ancient heroic literature doubtless fostered his manly ideas, which, however, sprang from his own experience in life. One must, he felt, be hard on oneself, and on one's guard against the vanity ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... His harshness was then only considered as habit; and strong sense and active benevolence were uppermost in the recollection of his familiar acquaintance. His conversation, when he condescended to lay aside his snappish, rude, and abrupt half-sentences, became flowing in diction, and uncommonly amusing with regard to its substance. He combined, with weightiness of expression, a dryness of characteristic humour, that demonstrated at once the vividness of his observation, and the force ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... i. 175: The manner of the repetition and some points in the diction raise suspicion that the passage is interpolated here; and so it is held to be by most Editors. In i. 175 we ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... called; for to have answered to the name of Jasmine would have been to proclaim her sex at once. Even the grim old master smiled at her through his horn spectacles as she entered the school-house of a morning, and any graceful turn in her poetry or scholarly diction in her prose was sure to win for her his unsparing praise. Many an evening he invited the "young noble" to his house to read over chapters from Confucius and the poems of Le Taipoh; and years afterward, when he died, among his most cherished ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... the style of Jeremiah, Cunaeus (de repub. Hebr. i. 3, c. 7) pertinently remarks: "The whole majesty of Jeremiah lies in his negligent language; that rough diction becomes him exceedingly well." It is certainly very superficial in Jerome to seek the cause of that humilitas dictionis of the Prophet, whom he, at the same time, calls in majestate sensuum profundissimum, in his origin from the viculus Anathoth. ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... Argus, with much dignity of diction, explained that it stood for the best interests of the people, and in the people's cause was fearless. It defied all and sundry to bring libel suits if they wanted to; it was prepared to battle for the people's rights. And its circulation went up and ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... Mr. Wyse said that he had met a mutual friend just now who had informed him that you were in residence, and had encouraged him to hope that you might give him the pleasure of your company, etc. This was alluring diction: it presented the image of Mr. Wyse stepping briskly home again, quite heartened up by this chance encounter, and no longer the prey to melancholy at the thought that you might not give him the joy. He was encouraged to hope.... These ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... critical comment is made on a particular line or a particular image, rhyme, word, etc. In short, as so often in Johnson, we are confronted with the large general statement in so much of the criticism in the Lives. The "diction" of Lycidas is "harsh." "Some philosophical notions [in Paradise Lost], especially when the philosophy is false, might have been better omitted." The plays of Nicholas Rowe are marked by "elegance of diction." Dryden is not often "pathetick." Some of Swift's poetry ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... essays, letters, dialogues, and sometimes orations, all of which were not only written and handed in for correction, but he frequently directed her to recite them from memory, and invited her to assist him, while he dissected and criticised either her diction, line of argument, choice of metaphors, or intonation of voice. In these compositions he encouraged her to seek illustrations from every department of letters, and convert her theme into a focus, upon which to pour all the concentrated light which research ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... struggle and of toil. He has many vigorous, but few happy lines; he has everything by purchase, and nothing by gift; he had no NIGHTLY VISITATIONS of the Muse, no infusions of sentiment or felicities of fancy. His diction, however, is more his own than of any among the successors of Dryden; he borrows no lucky turns, or commodious modes of language, from his predecessors. His phrases are original, but they are sometimes harsh; as he inherited ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... clear of the imperfections which, through unguarded avenues, find entrance into earth, water and air, and into the ways of men. Unfathomable was the depth of his gravity. With head slightly tilted he would mince his carefully selected words in a deep voice. His literary diction would give food for merriment to our elders behind his back, some of his high-flown phrases finding a permanent place in our family repertoire of witticisms. But I doubt whether the expressions he used would sound as remarkable to-day; ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... thought, given with sententious brevity, the poetical allusion that enlivened the discourse, and the dazzling imagery, are sure to be transmitted to their respective colonies and provinces. The ornaments of poetic diction are now required, not, indeed, copied from the rude obsolete style of Accius [e] and Pacuvius, but embellished with the graces of Horace, Virgil, and [f] Lucan. The public judgement has raised a demand for harmonious periods, and, in compliance with the taste of the age, our orators grow ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... commencing Author on such a subject; and writing for the press has been but very little my employment, I trust that an ample excuse will be granted for any errors that may appear, or for the want of that happiness of diction with which more able and ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... that comely dress ought to go with comely diction," said Abe. "But that's a thing you can't learn in books. There's no grammarian of the language of dress. Then I'm so big and awkward. It's a rather ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... the communal ballad is full of leaps and omissions; the style is simple to a fault; the diction is spontaneous and free. Assonance frequently takes the place of rhyme, and a word often rhymes with itself. There is a lack of poetic adornment in the style quite as conspicuous as the lack of reflection and moralizing in ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... knowledge" stands for the erroneous doctrine that the 526:21 knowledge of evil is as real, hence as God-bestowed, as the knowledge of good. Was evil instituted through God, Love? Did He create this fruit-bearer of sin in contra- 526:24 diction of the first creation? This second biblical account is a picture of ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... sophists, who flourished in the decline and degradation of ancient literature, and strewed their gaudy flowers of rhetoric over the dead muse of Greece. He is evidently of a much later period than Alciphron, to whom he is also very inferior in purity of diction, variety of subject, and playfulness of irony. But neither of them ever deserved to be wakened from that sleep, in which the commentaries of Bergler, De Pauw, and a few more such industrious ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... employ for its quantitative estimation. In one particular review of our work where we are taken to task for producing 'an aggravating book, inchoate in the highest degree ... disfigured by an obscurity of diction which must materially diminish its usefulness' ['Nature,' 1897, p. 241], the author, who is a well-known and competent critic, makes use of the short expression in regard to the more complex carbohydrates, 'Above cane sugar, higher in the series, all is chaos,' and in reference to starch, ...
— Researches on Cellulose - 1895-1900 • C. F. Cross
... title of A Voyage written by a Venetian officer[212] of the Gallies, who was carried prisoner from Alexandria to Diu in India, &c. These copies differ in several respects besides the title. That by Ramusio is altered in several places both in the substance and diction, which in many parts of that edited by Aldus is obscure. Yet that edition is of use to correct some errors of the press in Ramusio. Our translation is from the text of Aldus, but we have marked the variations in that of Ramusio, and have likewise ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... hand, Mr. Gladstone be judged by the impression he made on his own time, his place will be high in the front rank. His speeches were neither so concisely telling as Mr. Bright's nor so finished in diction; but no other man among his contemporaries— neither Lord Derby nor Mr. Lowe nor Mr. Disraeli nor Bishop Wilberforce nor Bishop Magee—deserved comparison with him. And he rose superior to Mr. Bright himself in readiness, in ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... were bell-like—his diction perfect. The girl gasped. The man blinked, then turned again to Mike. "I hope you received ...
— Before Egypt • E. K. Jarvis
... Others who pursue a different track will interest him likewise; I do not interfere with their claim, but wish to prefer a claim of my own. There will also be found in these volumes little of what is usually called poetic diction; as much pains has been taken to avoid it as is ordinarily taken to produce it; this has been done for the reason already alleged, to bring my language near to the language of men; and further, because the pleasure ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... Many times he walked into Boston to listen to some distinguished orator, returning, often alone, after the treat was enjoyed. This was the pains he took to hear Edward Everett several times, who became his favorite. He admired him for the elegance of his diction, and the beauty with which all of his addresses were invested. He saw more power in Webster, and more elegance ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... who have seen Mr. GREELEY in the bar-room of a certain city hotel, dashing down brandy or pouring down whisky, and have next morning perused a Tribune editorial on "The Evils of Intemperance," need not be reminded of the chief source of H.G.'s animated style and vigorous diction. An extended walk along the beautiful avenues of the city, or a drive through Central Park, invariably prepares Mr. GREELEY's mind for the birth of an article on the advantages to young men of leaving the metropolis ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 1, Saturday, April 2, 1870 • Various
... instead of "golden pin" we say "gold pin"; instead of "earthen works" we say "earth works". 'Golden' and 'earthen', it is true, still belong to our living speech, though mainly as part of our poetic diction, or of the solemn and thus stereotyped language of Scripture; but a whole company of such words have nearly or quite disappeared; some lately, some long ago. 'Steelen' and 'flowren' belong only to the earliest period ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... they bring in the story to supply the defect of language. It is quite otherwise with my author; the elegance and perfection of his way of speaking makes us lose the appetite of his plot; his refined grace and elegance of diction everywhere occupy us: he is ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... prose, both in his dramas, in the descriptive comments of his masques, and in the "Discoveries," is characterised by clarity and vigorous directness, nor is it wanting in a fine sense of form or in the subtler graces of diction. ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... poetical thought and feeling that I know. It is impossible, I think, to find a truer expression of passion, anguish, tenderness, and supernatural terror, than those poems contain. The dew of heaven on the mountain fern is not more limpid than the simplicity of their diction, nor the heart's blood of a lover more fervid than the throbbing intensity of their passion. Misery, love, longing, and despair have found no finer poetical utterance out of Shakespeare; and the deepest chords of woe and tenderness have been touched ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... seigneur still clung to him, so that he even ripped you up with an air, and I have been told that he was a raconteur of repute. He was never more sinister than when he was most polite, which is probably the truest test of breeding; and the elegance of his diction, even when he was swearing, no less than the distinction of his demeanour, showed him one of a different caste from his crew. A man of indomitable courage, it was said of him that the only thing he shied at was the sight of his own blood, which was thick and of an unusual colour. In dress he somewhat ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... intelligence, and benevolence. His manners were easy and cordial, his dress, habits, and tastes simple, and his style of living temperate in the extreme. His speeches and his official papers, both military and civil, are alike famed for their propriety of feeling and their chastity of diction. His private life was unblemished, and the loveliness of his disposition made him the idol of his own household and the favorite of all who knew him. His martial courage was only equaled by his Spartan simplicity, his unaffected modesty, his ever wakeful humanity, his inflexible ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... advantage of another language, ventured to copy or to rival the Sicilian bard: he has written with greater splendour of diction, and elevation of sentiment: but as the magnificence of his performances was more, the simplicity was less; and, perhaps, where he excels Theocritus, he sometimes obtains his superiority by deviating from the pastoral character, and performing ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... mind you do have, Olive! I wish you'd come into my classes; I'd teach you how to generalize, and give you some much-needed lessons in beauty of diction. You mean well; but you certainly do talk like a housemaid, and—Good morning, Mr. Brenton. Jolly sort of morning, too!" Then Dolph digressed. "What in thunder is the matter with ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... Majesty." To which the King is said to have replied, "You do well to put me in the way of making a MAN of him;" and ordered him a pension of 500 pounds. This story, however current, seems to have been made after the event. The King's answer implies a greater acquaintance with our proverbial and familiar diction than King William could ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... in his narrative the verbose diction characteristic of pagan literature, where we often find one and the same argument embellished and polished by a variety of colors. We find by experience that no human power of description can do justice to inward emotions. In consequence, verbosity, as a ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... work. Unmethodical and without proportion, it may have been either compiled clumsily after the poet's death, or put together carelessly by himself amid the indolence which grows sometimes upon old age. It declares the essentials of poetry to be unity of conception and ingenuity of diction, urges that mechanical correctness must be inspired by depth of feeling, gives technical rules of dramatic action, of the chorus, of metre. For matter such as this a Horace was not needed, but the felicity of its handling has made ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... shorter poems are characterized by original invention and felicity of expression. His Atys is one of the most remarkable poems in the whole range of Latin literature, distinguished by wild passion and the noblest diction. ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... work it would have been impossible for me to bring it at all before the public. My earnest effort has been to be as faithful to the poet as possible, and for this reason I have not attempted to render rime, a dangerous obstacle to a natural expression of the poet's thought and diction. But I hope that the critics will judge my work as that of a mere pioneer. I know there is value in the theme; and if this value is made sufficiently evident to arouse the interest of poetry lovers in the achievements of contemporary Greece I shall have reaped ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... spoke solemnly, and his queer diction somehow was not unbecoming or grotesque. I suppose George Fox and Savonarola did not use quite the ordinary language ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... friend of Mme. Calve, who is especially fond of her songs. She has accompanied Calve on an American tour, and has appeared with her before Queen Victoria at Windsor. She sings herself with a light but attractive voice and the most perfect diction. Of late she has composed for Calve some acting songs, such ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... gifts and virtues that made of a woman what the eighteenth century called a virtuoso, an accomplished model of the seductions of her time. Jeliotte had taught her singing and the clavecin; Guibaudet, dancing; Crebillon had taught her declamation and the art of diction; the friends of Crebillon had formed her young mind to finesse, to delicacies, to lightness of sentiment, and to irony of the esprit of the time. All the talents of grace seemed to be united ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... Englishman to write a really sane tragic piece, elegant from beginning to end, was the illustrious Mr. Addison. His "Cato in Utica" is a masterpiece in diction and in beauty of verse. Cato himself seems to me the finest character in any drama; but the others are far inferior to him, and the piece is disfigured by a most unconvincing love-intrigue which inflicts a weariness that kills the play. The custom of dragging in a superfluous love-affair came from ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... the very words in which we now read them. It is sufficient that every fact hath its foundation in truth, as I do seriously aver is the ease in the ensuing pages; and when it is so, a good critic will be so far from denying all kind of ornament of style or diction, or even of circumstance, to his author, that he would be rather sorry if he omitted it; for he could hence derive no other advantage than the loss of an ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... laughed with him. "Oh, that fellow Ojen could surprise you with far better inventions; that was nothing for him. But his writing was euphonious, his diction ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... Charles Gildon, whose books are forgotten under the dust of more than two centuries, in 1693 and 1694 denied that Shakspere's plays had any excellence, any wealth in profound sentences or truth to nature, any originality, force or beauty of diction; and placed him far below the ancients in all essential points,—in ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... sufficient to secure for it the attention of all who read or love poetry. Long before the critic can pronounce upon its merits, it will be found in the hands of thousands. Longfellow is perhaps the most popular among American poets. His rhythm is always varied and musical, his diction in good taste, his treatment ever adapted to the subject he has in hand. If he seldom strikes the deepest chords of being, his touch is always true, tender, and sympathetic. 'The Birds of Killingworth' is full of beauty. If the 'Tale of a Poet,' it is also a song of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... expressions are little foxes that spoil the grapes of perfect diction, but they are very little foxes; it is the false elegance of stupid pretentiousness that is an annihilating blight which ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... that the majesty of the Scriptures strikes me with admiration, as the purity of the Gospel hath its influence on my heart. Peruse the works of our philosophers with all their pomp of diction; how mean, how contemptible are they compared with the Scriptures! Is it possible that a book, at once so simple and sublime, should be merely the work of man? Is it possible that the sacred personage, whose history it contains, should be himself a mere man? ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... the white stone pulpit against the rock on the right of the Grotto was occupied by a priest from Toulouse, whom Berthaud knew, and to whom he listened for a moment with an air of approval. He was a stout man with an unctuous diction, famous for his rhetorical successes. However, all eloquence here consisted in displaying the strength of one's lungs in a violent delivery of the phrase or cry which the whole crowd had to repeat; for the addresses were ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... totally lifeless and insipid, it will be impossible but these Tales should be preferred to the Iliad; especially as I design to put them into a kind of style that shall be neither verse nor prose; a diction lately much used in tragedies and heroic poems, the former of which are really heroic poems from want of probability, as an antico-moderno epic poem is in fact a meer tragedy, having little or no change of scene, no incidents but a ghost and a storm, and no events but ...
— Hieroglyphic Tales • Horace Walpole
... of which one's friends are the protecting headlands. That I knew my work to be exceedingly faulty goes without saying; that it was utterly bad, I was scarcely ready to believe. Dr. Field, noted for his pure English diction and taste, would not publish an irredeemable story, and the constituency of the New York "Evangelist" is well known to be one of the most intelligent in the country. Friendly opinions from serial readers were reassuring as far as they went, but of course ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... Instances of bad grammar in his letters are frequent, when dealing with ordinary topics. In no sense a polished man, he could, however, when the occasion required it, assume in his grammar and diction the grace and elegance of the scholar, but it does not often come to the front. He was too rugged, too headstrong, to pay much attention to the little niceties ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... upon the age. . . To imitate the fictions and sentiments of Spenser can incur no reproach, for allegory is perhaps one of the most pleasing vehicles of instruction. But I am very far from extending the same respect to his diction or his stanza. His style was, in his own words and peculiarities of phrase, and so remote from common use that Jonson boldly pronounces him to have written no language. His stanza is at once difficult and unpleasing: tiresome to the ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... varied impressions, in quest of appropriate forms and a deeper comprehension of the sources from which language derives its power as a vehicle of art. The influence of Wordsworth is observable in a studied familiarity of diction, as well as in the tendency to versify every thought or emotion suggested by daily observation. These peculiarities, coupled with the frequency of bold ellipses, provoked discussion, and seemed to promise a fresh expansion of poetical forms, in a somewhat different ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... i. p. 9.) In this passage Mr. Hume has given a summary of the Life of Agricola. It is extended by Tacitus in a style more open than the didactic form of the essay on the German Manners required, but still with the precision, both in sentiment and diction, peculiar to the author. In rich but subdued colors he gives a striking picture of Agricola, leaving to posterity a portion of history which it would be in vain to seek in the dry gazette style of Suetonius, or in the page of any writer of ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... first-hand account of any kind of trickery on his part. She considered him a man of open childlike nature, thoroughly honest and truthful, and that in her opinion his utterances in the trance state were much superior in thought and diction to his ordinary talk. She said she should like to give Mr. Myers a few additional details with regard to the fire phenomena reported in Madame Home's book, "D. D. Home, His Life and Mission," on her authority. Madame Home's secretary, ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... for the outside of it, which is words, or (as I may term it) diction, it is even well worse; so is that honey-flowing matron eloquence, apparelled, or rather disguised, in a courtesan-like painted affectation. One time with so far-fetched words, that many seem monsters, but most ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... spite of her ordinary sedateness of demeanour and constant asseveration that she would only marry a clergyman like her father, she is, to use Teddy's expressive diction, "spliced to a sodger," having become engaged some time since to a gallant captain in a marching regiment that was quartered for a while at Bigton, within ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... give themselves up to elaborate and exhaustive research and excite the admiration of their hearers, either by their scientific reasonings, their eloquence, the studied grace of their gestures, or by their perfect diction. Others add to all this beautiful and useful teaching, but so that it only slips in here and there, as it were, by chance, and is not expressly dwelt upon. But when we have only one aim, and when all our reasonings and all our movements tend towards ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... with dignity: expound with grace Each ground of reasoning in its time and place; Let order reign throughout—each topic touch, Nor urge its power too little, or too much. Give each strong thought its most attractive view, In diction clear, and yet severely true, And as the arguments in splendor grow, Let each reflect its light on all below. When to the close arrive make no delays By petty flourishes, or verbal plays, But sum ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... either in the General Advertiser, Gazetteer, or Courant. From these specimens, and some I have since had the pleasure to see in MS. Mr. BLOOMFIELD appears fully to possess the simple, yet elegant, pathetic, and animated flow of Composition, the sweetness of Diction, Thought, and Numbers, which the SONG or BALLAD in their ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... clothed in a diction free, forcible, and various. 'Childe Harold', although avowedly a fragment, contains many fragments which would do honour to any poet, of any period, in ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... employ every spare moment studying the manual and should write every story, even his first one, as nearly as possible in accord with the printed rules, as the copy readers will insist on a strict observance of the regulations. Many of the rules will be mere don'ts, embodying common errors of diction. Others may be particular aversions of the editor or the head copy-reader and may have little regard for or relation to best usage. But such rules must be observed, even though they may be as absurd and contrary to all custom, as ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... foreboding because in this case it is not mistaken diction. Foreboding suggests coming evil; the laughter of boys is wholehearted. It was merely that things were not exactly as they should be; it was not natural that age should be so youthful. The fates were playing, ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... picture, here is economy and scrupulous selection of epithet, here is no "poetic" diction of the despised sort. But something is lacking, none the less. It does not haunt you, it does not ingratiate itself with your ear, you do not find yourself repeating it days and months later. Close the book—and ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... orations deserve to be looked at, for they are favourable examples of the eloquence which American taste applauded, and as such they help to show how original Lincoln was in the simpler beauty of his own simpler diction. In justice to the Whigs, let it be noted that they declared for the maintenance of the Union, committing themselves with decision on the question of the morrow; but it was a singular platform that resolutely and ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... fact's a fact—and 't is the part Of a true poet to escape from fiction Whene'er he can; for there is little art in leaving verse more free from the restriction Of Truth than prose, unless to suit the mart For what is sometimes called poetic diction, And that outrageous appetite for lies Which Satan angles with ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... is, the salle is fully as interesting to me as the performance, good as that is—with a handsome, delicate-looking young professor of music playing the violin, an actor from the Palais Royale showing a diction altogether remarkable, two well-known gymnasts doing wonderful stunts on horizontal bars, a prize pupil from the Conservatory at Nantes acting, as only the French can, in a well- known little comedy, two ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... I could furnish extempore; for the necessity of ransacking my memory and invention for all sorts and combinations of periphrastic expressions as equivalents for modern ideas, images, relations of things, &c., gave me a compass of diction which would never have been called out by a dull translation of moral essays, &c. "That boy," said one of my masters, pointing the attention of a stranger to me, "that boy could harangue an Athenian mob better than you and I could address ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... men have not been the product of a school curriculum, or of an academic training. In no single instance, as far as can be ascertained, has nobility of character, or the possession of genius, or soundness of judgment, or even beauty of diction in literature, been attributable to the grind in grammatical rules, the fact-cramming, and the mental gymnastics which go to make up what is called ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... in his gentle, old-fashioned diction, wherein lurked the faintest trace of foreign accent, "I never heard him say anything about loving flowers. But I ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... with humor and pictorial quality, and some of his stories had so stimulated my imagination that I was eager to have more time with him among his wards. Without precisely following his narratives I had found myself able to reproduce the spirit of them in my own diction. His ability as a sign-talker was of especial service to me for, as he signed to his visitors, he muttered aloud, for my benefit, what he was expressing in gesture, and also what the red man signed in reply. In this way I got at the psychology ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... harmony to the last; by asserting that Waller confessed he owed the music of his numbers to Fairfax's Godfrey of Bulloign. The truth is, this gentleman is perhaps the only writer down to Sir William Davenant, who needs no apology to be made for him, on account of the age in which he lived. His diction is so pure, elegant, and full of graces, and the turn of his lines so perfectly melodious, that one cannot read it without rapture; and we can scarcely imagine the original Italian has greatly the advantage in either, nor is it very probable that while Fairfax ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... pitying his emotion, remarked to Thompson in a gratuitously lively tone, and with diction too florid for ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... papers during this period, although now little read, have been praised by Mr. James Ford Rhodes as an exact estimate of public sentiment, as voicing in energetic diction the mass of the common people of the North. Lincoln wrote to thank him for one of them, adding, "I fear I am not quite worthy of all which is therein kindly said of me personally." Luckily Lincoln never saw an earlier letter in which Lowell ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... dear fellow, mine is not yet written. There is one important feature, nay, the most important feature of all—the style of language, the diction—on that, Barnstaple, ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... completion of 'Omoo' that Melville began to study the writings of Sir Thomas Browne. Heretofore our author's style was rough in places, but marvellously simple and direct. 'Mardi' is burdened with an over-rich diction, which Melville never entirely outgrew. The scene of this romance, which opens well, is laid in the South Seas, but everything soon becomes overdrawn and fantastical, and the thread of the story loses itself ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... speech, mark you, the professor said, of a finished orator, full of courteous haughtiness and pouring in chastened diction I will not say the vials of his wrath but pouring the proud man's contumely upon the new movement. It was then a new movement. We were ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... none of which were better than those from Horace. His command of the various languages into which he rendered English verse was extraordinary, and his translations were so free and spirited in thought and diction as to excite the admiration of the best scholars. When it is said that his translations of French and Latin odes preserved their poetical expression and sentiments with the freedom of original composition almost unequalled ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... from the suggestion of the lovely Countess of Dalkeith, who had heard a wild, rude legend of Border diablerie, and sportively asked him to make it the subject of a ballad. He cast about for a new variety of diction and rhyme, and having happened to hear a recitation of Coleridge's unpublished "Christabel" determined to adopt a similar cadence. The division into cantos was suggested by one of his friends, after the example of Spenser's "Faery ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... the misuse of words rife among us can be checked by diligent exercises in good English, such as this book provides. These exercises, in conjunction with others to be found in different volumes by the same author, will serve to correct careless diction and slovenly speech, and lead to the art of speaking and writing correctly; for, after all, accuracy in the use of words is more a matter of habit than of theory, and once it is acquired it becomes just as easy to speak or to write good English as bad English. It was Chesterfield's resolution not ...
— Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases • Grenville Kleiser
... take Thackeray to task for his "and whiches," and your professor who disdains the voice of the people, which is the voice of the god of grammar. I know all the scholiast has to say (surely he is the silly [Greek: scholastikos] of Greek anecdote), and indeed I owe all my own notions of diction to a work on "Style" written by him. It was from the style of this work that I learnt what to avoid. The book reminded me of my old schoolmaster, who grew very angry with me for using the word "ain't," and vociferated "Ain't! How often am I to tell you ain't ain't a word?" ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... It is in Part II. of the Poetics, when treating of Tragedy, that Aristotle lays down his main principles. Here after treating of the Fable and the Manners, he proceeds to the Diction and the Sentiments. By ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... writing will have rules of its own, from which it will not be allowed to swerve, and which distinguish it from all others. Style will be thought of almost as much importance as thought; and the form will be no less considered than the matter: the diction will be polished, measured, and uniform. The tone of the mind will be always dignified, seldom very animated; and writers will care more to perfect what they produce than to multiply their productions. It will sometimes happen that the members of the literary class, always ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... of on our listener or ourselves; and for the second, to learn to rate the expressiveness of language more highly than its compeers. The opposite of this, the disposition to set correctness above expressiveness, produces that peculiarly vulgar diction, known as "school-ma'am English," in which for the sake of a dull accord with usage, all the picturesque, imaginative, and forceful employment ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... flowers on the ground, took over the book, and read it from the very first page; and the more she perused it, she got so much the more fascinated by it, that in no time she had finished reading sixteen whole chapters. But aroused as she was to a state of rapture by the diction, what remained even of the fascination was enough to overpower her senses; and though she had finished reading, she nevertheless continued in a state of abstraction, and still kept on gently recalling the text to mind, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... find such lines as those in the work of an unknown author. The verses gain strength as they advance, and the diction is terse and keen. This one short extract would suffice to show that the writer was a literary craftsman of a ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... a funeral oration was delivered by Nero to the immense concourse of people that were convened. The oration was written by Seneca. It was a high panegyric upon the virtues and the renown of the deceased, and it represented in the brightest colors, and with great magnificence of diction, his illustrious birth, the high offices to which he had attained, his taste for the liberal arts, and the peace and tranquillity which had prevailed throughout the empire during his reign. To write a panegyric upon such a man as Claudius had been, ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... the truly Platonic rhythm. There are single sentences, and now and then entire paragraphs, which are gems in their way, that sparkle none the less for the plain setting of common sense and unpretending diction by which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... Ruskin has explained to us how the decadence of Gothic architecture commenced through care bestowed on window tracery for itself instead of as an avenue or vehicle for the admission of light. Read "words" for tracery, "thought" for light, and we see how inspiration avenges itself so soon as diction is made paramount; artifice, which demands and misses watchful self-concealment, passes into mannerism; we have lost the incalculable charm of spontaneity. Comparison of "Eothen" with the "Crimea" will I think exemplify this truth. The ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... and it required little invention to paint the duchess of York as Venus, or to represent her husband protected by Neptune, and Charles consulting with Proteus. But though the device be trite, the lyrical diction of the opera is most beautifully sweet and flowing. The reader finds none of these harsh inversions, and awkward constructions, by which ordinary poets are obliged to screw their verses into the fetters of musical time. Notwithstanding the obstacles ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... Greek exemplars; to feel the emotion one wishes to rouse; to stamp the universal with the mark of individual genius; to be straightforward and rapid and omit the unessential; to be truthful to life; to keep the improbable and the horrible behind the scenes; to be appropriate in meter and diction; to keep clear of the fallacy of poetic madness; to look for the real sources of successful writing in sanity, depth of knowledge, and experience with men; to remember the mutual indispensability of genius and cultivation; to combine the pleasant and ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... however, only be designated singly by rather enlarging the strict and usual sense of the term Style so as to include not merely diction, but the whole manner of presentation—what, in short, is intended by the French word faire. For this, or part of this, he made, in relation to his poems, a sort of apology-explanation in the lines prefixed to the collected edition, and entitled "The ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... would deny to the itinerant vendor of comestibles that sympathy which is accorded to the joys and sorrows of his more refined fellow-creatures, it is impossible to view without alarm the hold which his loose and ungrammatical diction is obtaining in the most cultured salons of to-day. Anxious to minimise the danger, yet loth to check a sentiment of fraternity so creditable to our common humanity, I have devised a plan by which Mr. CHEVALIER's songs may he rendered in such-wise that while all their deep humanity is preserved, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 16, 1892 • Various
... bills of the poor, and they loved his jokes. They were of the class within grasp of the elementary sense of humour of his audience. This type of gentleman he undoubtedly was, but to that possessed of graceful tact and expressing itself in good diction—by some considered necessary attributes of a gentleman—he could lay no claim. Neither could he to that ideal enshrined in my heart, who would not have had seven little children—one of them a baby—and a poor little broken-down wife at the same time; ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... and idealist, and thus akin to the Romanticists—though he lacks their perfection of diction—in his feeling for the beauty of atmospheric effects, and also in his enthusiasm for music, which he loved passionately. The description of Montriveau's emotions when the cloistered Duchesse de Langeais plays in the church of Spain—and Balzac tells us that the sound of the organ ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... Armand's diction so quaintly, imitating his stride, his awkward gesture, and his faulty phraseology with such funny exaggeration that Heron laughed in ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... she floundered and came to grief. Her adversary laughed at her, and in the intervals of rating Cecile for having inked her dress, flaunted some shrill controversy which left them all staring. Louie vindicating, the claims of the Holy See with much unction and an appropriate diction! It seemed to David, as he listened, that the irony of life could hardly be ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "I have compared the diction and vocabulary of these letters with those employed in my own writing—I am not unknown as a magazine contributor—and I find no points of similarity between the two." There is much further evidence in this case for which I refer the ...
— The New Revelation • Arthur Conan Doyle
... almost exclusively derived. The beginning of the day was always devoted by her to the New Testament in Greek, after which she read select orations of Isocrates and the tragedies of Sophocles, which I judged best adapted to supply her tongue with the purest diction, her mind with the most excellent precepts, and her exalted station with a defence against the utmost power of fortune. For her religious instruction, she drew first from the fountains of Scripture, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... the use of the English language to the greatest height of which it was capable. He employed 15,000 words. "The last act of 'Othello' is a rare specimen of Shakespeare's diction: of every five nouns, verbs, and adverbs, four ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... writes, it must be owned, platitudes; but all are simple, and some are stated with dignity. Her power, her integrity, her tenderness, her pomp, the liberal and public interests of her life, her good breeding, her education, her exquisite diction, are such as may well make a reader ask how and why the literature of England declined upon the vulgarity, ignorance, cowardice, foolishness, that became "feminine" in the estimation of a later age; that is, in the character of women succeeding ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... up with animation. "The new people! My goodness, sir, yes! Have you seen them? Have you seen Newport, for instance?" His diction now (and I was to learn it was always in him a sign of heightening intensity) grew more and more like the formal speech of his ancestors. "You have seen ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... not welcome when heard with difficulty. Besides this, there is use of dialect—vulgar when assumed by Octavian, mixed when called for by such characters as Valzacchi and his partner in scandal mongery, Annina. To be compelled to forego a knowledge of half of what such a master of diction as Mr. Reiss was saying was a new sensation to his admirers who understand German. Yet the fault was as little his as it was Mr. Goritz's that so much of what he said went for nothing; it was all his misfortune, including the fact that ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... originality. In the form of ode, elegy, eclogue, or sonnet, we have verses which show tender feeling and a genuine appreciation of nature. But the human interest is slight, and the author is unable to escape from the conventional poetic diction of the eighteenth century. Phrases like "vocal groves," "Pomona's rich bounties," or "the sylvan choir's responsive notes" meet the reader at every turn; direct observation and concrete imagery are sacrificed to trite abstractions, ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... few moments' perusal of this work will satisfy the reader that it has not the slightest pretension to be considered a literal translation, while, by its departure from the strict letter of the author, it has gained nothing in elegance of diction. It is accompanied by "critical, historical, geographical, and classical notes in English, from the best Commentators, both ancient and modern, beside a great number of notes, entirely new;" but notwithstanding this announcement, these annotations will be found to be but few in ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... compositions, instead of forming a balance, appeared rather an interpolation of heterogeneous matter. Mr. Wordsworth added two or three poems written in his own character, in the impassioned, lofty, and sustained diction which is characteristic of his genius [among them the "Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey"]. In this form ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... her, and his ears caught much of what she said. He was astonished at the grace and perfection of her language; it seemed to him like a strain of music filled with every melody of earth and heaven, surpassing poets in beauty of diction, philosophers in truth,—and in purity of affection, all the saints and sweetest women of whom he ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... little. It seems to be mythological, and probably relates to the loves of Diana and Endymion; but of this, as the scope of the work has altogether escaped us, we cannot speak with any degree of certainty, and must therefore content ourselves with giving some instances of its diction and versification. And here again we are perplexed and puzzled. At first it appeared to us that Mr. Keats had been amusing himself and wearying his readers with an immeasurable game at bouts rimes; but, if we recollect ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... on farce, and of "imagination all compact." And Lamb could by no means rival him in splendor of description, vivacity of retort, energy of criticism, or in riotous and uproarious mirth. De Quincey alone could match the splendor of his diction when describing outward sights and sounds, and De Quincey had not a tithe of his intense love of Nature, and appreciation of her glory and magnificence. Ruskin alone equals him in this, and he scarcely reaches the height of rhetorical ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... clothed his empty but pompous periods with the ermine of royalty, to ensure them the reverence of a deluded multitude; who stripped Virtue of her ancient prerogatives, and fed her with the crumbs from his table. His polished diction, undeniable talent and fine acquisitions served most unhappily to disguise his real poverty of sentiment, and for a time, at least, diverted the current of popular feeling from the true, beautiful, and reliable in early literature ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... succumb. Among these are fashion, or the influence of an aristocracy, whether of birth or education, popular writers, orators, preachers—a centralised government organising its schools expressly to promote uniformity of diction, and to get the better of provincialisms and local dialects. Between these dialects, which may be regarded as so many "incipient languages," the competition is always keenest when they are most nearly allied, and the extinction of any one of them destroys ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... observed by Poets of every denomination, he dwells on the necessity of unity of design, the danger of being dazzled by the splendor of partial beauties, the choice of subjects, the beauty of order, the elegance and propriety of diction, and the use of a thorough knowledge of the nature of the several different species of Poetry: summing up this introductory portion of his Epistle, in a manner perfectly agreeable ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... understanding; then, "Oh, what a lucky fellow! Well, Fortune does favour fools—that's certain! It is always so!"— and forthwith the exclaimer relates half a dozen similar instances. Thus accumulating the one sort of facts and never collecting the other, we do, as poets in their diction, and quacks of all denominations do in their reasoning, put a part for the whole, and at once soothe our envy and gratify our love of the marvellous, by the sweeping proverb, "Fortune ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Hutchinson, we never heard him plead anything of moment, except that he was finically Frenchified in his diction; of which he gave this instance—that having occasion to notice a brick wall, (which was literally that, not more and not less,) when reconnoitring the French defences, he called it a revetement. And we ourselves remember his using the French word gloriole rather ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... at this time: "Dr. Kahn is one of the most accurate and effective students in a class of eighty-four members, most of them sophomores, although the class includes many seniors. The subject is the study of the style and diction of prominent prose authors, with some theme work. Last year Miss Kahn attained a very high rank in the study of the principles of good English style during the first semester, and in that of synonyms during ...
— Notable Women Of Modern China • Margaret E. Burton |
