"Fluency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nature, smartness, and animal spirits; hence arose a vivacity and fluency that were often amusing, and passed for very clever. Reserve she had none; would talk about strangers, or friends, herself, her mother, her God, and the last buffoon-singer, in a breath. At a hint from Rosa, she told her who the lady in the pink dress was, and the lady in ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... once saw him acting Mercutio, and very admirable he was in the guise of that noble, brave, frolicsome, impetuous young gentleman. The intense vitality, the glancing glee, the intrepid spirit—all were preserved; and the brilliant text was spoken with faultless fluency. It is difficult to realise that the same actor who set before us that perfect image of comic perplexity, the bland and benevolent Dean, in Dandy Dick, could ever have been the bantering companion of Romeo and truculent ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... Artemus Ward. The appropriator of the tale had a wide reputation in the West, and was exceedingly popular. Deservedly so, I think. He wrote some of the breeziest and funniest things I have ever read, and did his work with distinguished ease and fluency. His name has passed out of ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... digesting, as he best might, the discovery that there was another man in the world, besides the Rector of Dimchurch, with an excellent opinion of himself, and with perfectly unassailable confidence and fluency in expressing it. In the momentary silence that now followed, Oscar got his first opportunity of speaking. He had, thus far, been quite content to admire his clever brother. He now advanced to me, and asked what ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... expositions of doctrine he passed over; anything in the nature of reasoning muddled him. From hearing them incessantly repeated he knew the root theories of Socialism, and could himself hold forth on such texts as 'the community of the means of production' with considerable fluency and vehemence; but in very fact he concerned himself as little with economic reforms as with the principles of high art, and had as little genuine belief in the promised revolution as in the immortality of his own soul. Had he been called upon to suffer in ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... understood him as thoroughly as though he had declared his passion with all the elegant fluency of a practised Lothario. With a woman's instinct she followed every bend of his mind, as he spoke of the pleasantness of Plumstead and the stones of Oxford, as he alluded to the safety of the Romish priest and the hidden perils of temptation. She ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... talk to women as much as you can. This is the best school. This is the way to gain fluency—because you need not care what you say, and had better not be sensible. They too will rally you on many points, and, as they are women, you will not be offended. Nothing is of so much importance, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various
... other side and the dust streaks moving southward. Down on the swampy bank, squat between the cypress knees, Steve drank again, and then again,—in fact, emptied the squat, black bottle. The stuff filled him with a tremendous courage, and conferred upon him great fluency of thought. He waxed eloquent to the cypress roots upon the conduct of the war. "Gawd! if they'd listen ter me I'd te—tell them how!—I'd bui—build a bridge for the whole rotten army to cross on! Ef it broke I'd bui—build ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... man had been a member of the same religious sect as the widow and her son. When he found Christ he at once thought of his friends, and went over the mountain to tell them. Mrs. Chang received the Gospel gladly. She had been a preacher in that heathen sect, and had gained the fluency in speaking, and power in holding audiences, so necessary in the ...
— How I Know God Answers Prayer - The Personal Testimony of One Life-Time • Rosalind Goforth
... turn it to account in the career of public service to which he devoted himself, and in which he has remained pure and unblemished in the midst of a corrupt class. From the first he was destined to the European legations, on account of his fluency in speaking and writing both English and French; and he is one of the few who have employed their time usefully in the capitals of the Old World. Flexible by nature, honourable by education, and expeditious in business, his services have been perfect, and above all, loyal ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... to Belwick to-day,' she began, sitting very close to Mrs. Waltham, whose lap she kept touching as she spoke with excited fluency. 'I've seen Mrs. Yottle. My dear, what do you think she ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... combination of qualities. Then he began to talk. He has an air, that brigand; he can cock his head so as to deceive a bailiff; he can wear a certain nobility of countenance; and with it all he can importune like a beggar. He has a horrid and plausible fluency; he is deaf to denials; he drugs you with words and robs you before you recover consciousness. He had got the length of quoting my own verses to me, and I felt myself going, when deliverance arrived. A stout man paused on the pavement, ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... Fred, and myself. We were plotting mischief in the shadow of the Ariadne's anchors, right in the eyes of the ship. I forget the immediate cause of this piece of foolhardiness, but I remember Fred's hated fluency about 'dolphin-strikers,' 'martingales,' and what not; and, finally, my own assertion that I would touch the ship's forefoot, where we saw it gleaming below the glassy surface of the water, and Fred's mocking reply that I jolly well dared do no such a thing. Nelly's ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... politics he looked with peculiar pleasure to the services he had rendered to the Italian cause. Italy was always very dear to him. He had many valued friends there, and he spoke Italian (as he also did Spanish) with much fluency. Among my most vivid recollections are those of some happy days I spent ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... eunuchs, and from him in a natural course, to the King. Now from the King the tracking of this tale went to the under-cook down again, and from him to me. So was I summoned to the King, and the King discoursed with me—I with him, in fair fluency; he in ejaculations of desire to have sight of thee, I in expatiation on that he would see when he had his desire. Now in this have I not done thee a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... said Mabel. "If there is any quality for which you are distinguished, it is the even-tempered justice of your mind. You can argue on both sides of a case with equal fluency and force, and that quite independent ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... Historia,' Aelianus Claudius was a native of Praeneste and a citizen of Rome, at the time of the emperor Hadrian. He taught Greek rhetoric at Rome, and hence was known as "the Sophist." He spoke and wrote Greek with the fluency and ease of a native Athenian, and gained thereby the epithet of "the honey-tongued". He lived to be sixty years of age, and never married because he would not ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... had done his duty in bringing the action. On the other hand, Demetrius, a professor of Cynic philosophy, earned discredit for defending an obvious criminal[344] more for ostentatious motives than from honest conviction. As for Publius, courage and fluency alike failed him at the critical moment. This trial was the signal for further reprisals against prosecutors. Junius Mauricus[345] accordingly petitioned Domitian that the senate might be allowed ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... His father was a Canadian, his mother a Scotchwoman. He was born in Canada, brought up in one of the Yankee settlements on the Missouri, and had, from a mere youth, spent his life as a hunter in the wilderness. He could speak English, French, or Indian with equal ease and fluency, but it would have been hard for anyone to say which of the three was his native tongue. The younger man, who occupied the stern of the canoe, acting the part of steersman, was quite a youth, apparently about seventeen, but tall and stout beyond his years, ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... her usual kindness, prefaced the special matter of her application to Tom by making various inquiries about his mother and his own temporary change of situation. Thus far Tom was able to meet her questions with tolerable fluency, and no more embarrassment than was inseparable from the novelty of his situation. But, when she proceeded to question him about his knowledge of Captain Edward Nicholas, Tom faultered and betrayed the greatest confusion. The truth was that he knew him well, ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... without Malinal, for Aguilar could turn Spanish into Maya, and Malinal could turn Maya into Mexican. This means of communication, round about though it might be, was at once established. The intervention of Aguilar soon became unnecessary, for Malinal presently learned to speak pure Castilian with fluency and grace. She received instruction from the worthy priests who accompanied the expedition and was {124} baptised under the name of Marina, and it is by that name that she is known in history. Her eminence is even greater than that unfortunate Florinda, ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... the matters that could not be supervised at "long range." He found out how the pupils were improving in their reading, and especially in oral expression, in its syntax, its freedom from errors of construction, its clearness and fluency. He listed the common errors, directing his teachers to take them up in a systematic manner and eradicate them, and he did not fail to note at his next visit how much progress had been made. He noted the condition of the blackboard work, and kept a list of the improvements that he suggested. ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... those who entered blinded her. Then, above the lanthorn, the faces of La Tribe and Bigot broke upon her, and their shining eyes told her that they bore good news. It was well, for the men seemed tongue-tied. The minister's fluency was gone; he was very pale, and it was Bigot who in the end spoke for both. He stepped forward, and, kneeling, kissed ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... is at his father's side. What need to describe the sacred joy of those first few minutes, even if it were possible? But unrestrained tenderness between man and man, rare as it is, and, as it were, unaccustomed to itself, has no passionate fluency, no metaphor or poetry, such as man pours out to woman, and woman again to man. All its language lies in the tones, the looks, the little half-concealed gestures, hints which pass themselves off modestly in jest; and such ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... me a very bad sort of fellow,' he said. And then, as she made no answer, he plunged at once into his declaration. He was a cold lover on the stage, but practice had at least given him fluency, and now he was very much in earnest—he had never known till then all that she was to him: there was real passion in his voice, and a restrained power which might ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... university, he proceeded to Rome. A few weeks after my arrival there, I felt a tap on my shoulder at the dinner table, and, on looking up, I recognized my young Russian friend, who was already speaking Italian, with as much fluency as he had spoken English, French, and German, when we parted ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... Paddy would not dream of committing any of the atrocities you enumerate; on the contrary, if you ask him what is the chief drawback to his pleasure in society he will tell you that it is an overpowering bashfulness, which prevents him from expressing himself with the fluency he desires, and that his great wish when mixing in society is to receive sympathy and gentle encouragement to enable him ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... things, than in his after notions, examined and digested by longer and more mature deliberation. He had a very tenacious memory, and was a great master of the English language, expressing himself therein with easy fluency, and in a manly, yet withal a clear style." Glanvill died in 1680 at the early ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... fluency of real protest. He somehow felt he was on his defence in the presence of this woman representative of his employers. This girl was not there enduring the discomforts of the forests for amusement. She came with authority, and she seemed to possess great understanding. Arden ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... occasions, to confine him in irons. He was also represented as being extremely reserved, and refusing to answer any questions respecting himself, whether addressed to him by officers or seamen; that he spoke with fluency all European languages, on which account, he was extremely useful as an interpreter, both on the coast of Peru and Chili, and on that of Brazil; that he was a first rate swordsman, either with the small-sword or sabre, and a dead ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... third day Ajor and I were able to converse with considerable fluency, and it was a great relief to both of us, especially to Ajor. She now did nothing but ask questions whenever I would let her, which could not be all the time, as our preservation depended largely upon the rapidity with which I could gain knowledge of the geography and customs ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... years, that English education has less effect than might be expected in loosening the bonds of beliefs which seem to every one but a Hindoo the merest superstition. Hindoos who can read English with fluency, and write it with accuracy, are often extremely devout, and Hindoo devoutness must ever appear to an outsider, even to a European as sympathetic as the author, to be no better than superstition. A Hindoo able to read English with ease has ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... they were all together they should converse in the French alone, not only that they might help Harry, but also that they might have a common language. It was to her and Amalia like their native tongue, and their fluency for a time quite baffled Larry, but he was determined not to be beaten, and when Harry faltered and refused to go on, he pounded him on the back, and stirred ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... mastered English remarkably well," I could not help remarking, for she was speaking with great fluency, and with hardly any accent. This seemed to please her, for she gave me one of those ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... lapsed, and lapsed, and lapsed. The breaks became more numerous and lasted longer. Condy began to wonder if he was boring her. No sooner had the suspicion entered his head than it hardened into a certainty, and at once what little fluency and freshness he yet retained forsook him on the spot. What made matters worse was his recollection of other evenings that of late he had failed in precisely the same manner. Even while he struggled ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... Rhetor; a ninth, Grammaticus; a tenth, Medicus; an eleventh, Physiologus; a twelfth, Politicus; a thirteenth, Moralis. They have but one book, which they call Wisdom, and in it all the sciences are written with conciseness and marvellous fluency of expression. This they read to the people after the custom of the Pythagoreans. It is Wisdom who causes the exterior and interior, the higher and lower walls of the city to be adorned with the finest pictures, and to have all the sciences painted upon them in ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... whereupon "Nitch," who had ideas of his own, began to talk also with a fluency which was not customary, for he was naturally a taciturn man. They both forgot the dinner. "Nitch" never knew how ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... cause, or on some occasion of special peril to the truth he would bring forward an instance of signal deliverance from similar trial, in the previous history of the Church, or in the lives of her servants. There were those, who might speak with more fluency, or employ a more impassioned manner, but no one spoke more to edification. His prayers also were marked by the same evident thoughtfulness and spirituality. He was not hasty to offer his desires before God. ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... race were at free quarters in the little castle nigh to Bruxelles which Frank had taken; rode his horses; drank his wine; and lived easily at the poor lad's charges. Mr. Esmond had always maintained a perfect fluency in the French, which was his mother tongue; and if this family (that spoke French with the twang which the Flemings use) discovered any inaccuracy in Mr. Simon's pronunciation, 'twas to be attributed to the latter's long residence in England, where he had married ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... result of his influence over me was certainly the growing love of clearness and fluency to which he had trained me. I had already had to write the above-mentioned fugue for ordinary voices; my feeling for the melodious and vocal had in this way been awakened. In order to keep me strictly under his calming ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... consciousness. "We have no right whatever to speak of really unconscious Nature, but only of uncommunicative Nature, or of Nature whose mental processes go on at such different time-rates from ours that we cannot adjust ourselves to a live appreciation of their inward fluency, although our consciousness does make us aware of their presence. . . . Nature is thus a vast conscious process, whose relation to time varies vastly, but whose general characteristics are throughout the same. From this point of view evolution ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... Officer rose as the Deb Zimpun, removing his cap, entered the office and rushed towards him. The bullet-headed, cheery old gentleman beamed with pleasure as they shook hands and greeted each other in Bhutanese. Wargrave marvelled at the ease and fluency with which Colonel Dermot spoke the language. The Amban now entered the room and was formally presented by the ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... set to work, being still the pilgrim everywhere, in Europe, as well as at Jerusalem. "He was a man of very small stature, and his outside made but a very poor appearance; yet superior powers swayed this miserable body; he had a quick intellect and a penetrating eye, and he spoke with ease and fluency. . . . We saw him at that time," says his contemporary Guibert de Nogent, "scouring city and town, and preaching everywhere; the people crowded round him, heaped presents upon him, and celebrated his sanctity by such great praises that I remember not that like honor was ever rendered to ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... this cascade of smooth fluency, Valerie, still with her deepened color, here murmured that she, too, cared for the truth, but the current bore her on. "I don't think you see it, mama, else you could hardly have hurt ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... shall it be made conducive to the highest possible good? It must be studied, as an art. A girl may as easily be taught to converse well, as to recite lessons in philosophy. Persons differ, in this talent, it is true, as regards fluency; but this is by no means essential to useful conversation. Good sense, a respectable education, and a pure heart, are the great requisitions. She who has these, cannot fail, with suitable efforts, of becoming agreeable and edifying in ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... and on a fine summer day two months after, the C—— let go her anchor in Gibraltar Harbour to await her orders. A tall, fine-looking man came aboard to solicit business of a legitimate character. He spoke English with fluency and an almost correct accent. The captain knew he had some business connection with the syndicate, but did not give him any reason to suppose he had this knowledge. He was cognisant of the characteristics of these people, and determined that ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... paragraph, nor a period, is attributable to Franklin Pierce. He had no need of these devices to fortify his constituents in their high opinion of him; nor did he fail to perceive that such was not the method to acquire real weight in the body of which he was a member. In truth, he has no fluency of words, except when an earnest meaning and purpose supply their own expression. Every one of his speeches in Congress, and, we may say, in every other hall of oratory, or on any stump that he may have mounted, was drawn forth by the perception that it was needed, was directed ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... than that in the brass match-safe in question, but her instinct of hoarding had led her to keep it a secret from her husband. Now she lied to him with prompt fluency. ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... been formed chiefly through the windows of a railway carriage. She threw herself into the architectural studies of the Higher Thought Club, and distinguished herself, at the spring meetings, by her fluency, her competence, her inexhaustible curiosity on the subject of the growth of English Gothic. She ransacked the shelves of the college library, she borrowed photographs of the cathedrals, she pored over the folio pages of "The Seats of Noblemen ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... man, endowed with the gifts that reinforce the charm of his exterior, a fine voice, a winning smile, a fluency of which his inaugural is the best instance; an ample man, you might say. But he is too handsome, too endowed, for his own good, his own spiritual good. The slight stoop of his shoulders, the soft figure, ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... object of his ire, and that minister's County Government Bill was fiercely denounced as the "crowning dishonour to Tory principles," and the "supreme violation of political honesty." The audacity of Lord Randolph's attitude, and the vituperative fluency of his invective, made him a parliamentary figure of some importance before the dissolution of the 1874 parliament, though he was not as yet taken quite seriously. In the new parliament of 1880 he speedily began to play a more ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... cornflower—aye, and even so blue art thou, my scriven, to think how far the written page falls short of the bright ecstasy of thy dream! In the bottle, what magnificence of unpenned stuff lies cool and liquid: what fluency of essay, what fonts of song. As the bottle glints, blue as a squill or a hyacinth, blue as the meadows of Elysium or the eyes of girls loved by young poets, meseems the racing pen might almost gain upon the thoughts that are turning the bend in the road. A jolly throng, ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... growing a little miserly in this matter. Indulging in the rare, the sovereign luxury of thinking, he had suddenly become aware of time's precious fluency, and wondered why everyone else didn't think about it as passionately as he did. In the privacy of his room, weary after the day afoot, he took off his cutaway coat and trousers and enjoyed his old habit of stretching out on the floor for a good rest. There he would lie, ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... half that space. The stories we told were, as Sir Walter has said, interminable—for we were unwilling to have any of our favorite knights killed. Our passion for romance led us to learn Italian together; after a time we could both read it with fluency, and we then copied such tales as we had met with in that language, being a continued succession of battles and enchantments. He began early to collect old ballads, and as my mother could repeat a great many, he used to come and learn those she could recite ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... and was latterly at Havre, superintending the fitting out of his new vessel. Our hero made good progress during the few months that he remained at the pension, and when McElvina returned to take him away, not only could speak the French language with fluency, but had also made considerable progress in what Sir W. C—- used to designate in his toast as "the three R's,"—viz., "Reading, 'Riting, ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... still worse. In fact, no man ever will pronounce or talk a language which he does not use, for some part of every day, in the real intercourse of life. But that Pope read French of an ordinary cast with fluency enough, is evident from the extensive use which he made of Madame Dacier's labors on the Iliad, and still more of La Valterie's prose translation of the Iliad. Already in the year 1718, and long before his personal ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... "nor would he have expected you to be a customer. He is a remarkable character, well known all over the Metropolis. Particularly noted for his activity in disposing of his goods; never standing still for a moment, but accosting with extraordinary ease and fluency every person who appears likely to be a purchaser; always ready with an answer to any question, but delivering it with so much volubility, that it is impossible to propose a second enquiry, suiting at the same time his answer to the apparent ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... spend the night excepting on the softest down, and excepting on hair-cushioned lounges, she loves best to take a horizontal position. Her voice is of penetrating sweetness; her movements are full of grace. She speaks with marvelous fluency. She does not apply herself to any hard work; and, nevertheless, in spite of her apparent weakness, there are burdens which she can bear and move with miraculous ease. She avoids the open sunlight and wards it off by ingenious appliances. For her to ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... much worse occupations certainly," Flint began; but he saw that Winifred's attention had been diverted by the keeper, who had already begun to mount the stairs, talking, as he moved, with a fluency which denoted a long restrained flow of sociability. Winifred was glad to be saved the trouble of replying, for the unceasing climbing put her out of breath, and she felt that she might have been dizzy, but for the railing under her ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... once, and I do not intend to talk any more about it!" he is still more clearly delivered into the enemy's hands. He lays himself open to a charge of ingratitude, and the charge is pressed home with relentless fluency. Then, as to the doleful one's influence on children—the general modern tendency is towards making children happy, but the doleful one is a survival from some bad type, and takes a secret malign delight in wantonly inflicting pain on the minds or bodies of the young. Some dense ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... ancient manner to harmonize with the court. It represents "The Return from the Crusade" of one noble Pandolfo, and bears date and description in Latin. Quaint old-time stiffness and weather-worn coloring combine with modern correctness and fluency. The young artist is the wife of the architect of the pavilion and has won a silver medal in the Italian section of Fine Arts. Below this lunette stands a bronze copy of an antique David with the marble head of Goliath. Other interesting ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... "we cannot give him up yet; it is quite a pleasure teaching him. He already reads English with tolerable fluency, though we have not attempted yet to teach him to write. We ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston
... questionable whether Black Hawk possesses any marked military talents, although during his contest with the United States, it was common to represent him as an able warrior, who by the eloquence and fluency of his harangues, commanded the unlimited confidence of his band. He has, most probably, been overrated both for his eloquence and his skill in the battle field. He is no doubt a man of courage, and seems, from early life, to have had a strong predisposition ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... was, I think, the matter to be taken in hand. On this occasion also the room was full, and my hopes of a pleasant hour ran high. For some fifteen minutes I listened, and I am bound to say that the gentleman discoursed in excellent English. He was master of that wonderful fluency which is peculiarly the gift of an American. He went on from one sentence to another with rhythmic tones and unerring pronunciation. He never faltered, never repeated his words, never fell into those vile half-muttered hems and haws by which an Englishman in such a ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... decorated for his reception. The Italians adored Napoleon. They felt personally ennobled by his renown, for they considered him their countryman. The Italian language was his native tongue, and he spoke it with the most perfect fluency and elegance. The moment that the name of Napoleon was suggested to the deputies as President of the Republic, it was received with shouts of enthusiastic acclamation. A deputation was immediately send to the First ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... Want of means alone prevented her from executing her productions in marble. She was also familiar with the literature, not only of her own nation, but of the Latin, Spanish, Italian, and English languages, which she spoke with fluency and correctness, a rare accomplishment for a French woman. During the Empire and the Restoration she was intimate with Madame Recamier and Madame de Stael, and for penetration and readiness of mind and charm of manners was not unworthy to be named with ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... and talked to the men like a lawyer. I notice that these old women—I mean women of old—were all good talkers, and they didn't speak like meek, passive, submissive girls wrought up to sudden action by wrong, indignation or revenge, but they spoke with a freedom, vigor and fluency that betokened ...
— Fair to Look Upon • Mary Belle Freeley
... eyes on Worth's face talked louder than her tongue, but that also gained fluency as he looked back at her and nodded. "Stunts!" she repeated his word bitterly. "I didn't expect you to come back asking me to do stunts. I hated it all so—working out things like a calculating machine!" Her voice sank ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... alike formidable to all his enemies (for he has no friends), and his vote can be only valuable when accompanied by his Silence. A disappointed man with a bad temper, he is endowed with considerable but not first-rate abilities, and has blundered on through life, remarkable only for a fluency, in which he has many rivals at the bar and in the Senate, and an eloquence in which he has several Superiors. 'Willing to wound and not afraid to strike, until he receives a blow in return, he has not yet betrayed any illegal ardour, or Irish alacrity, in accepting the defiances, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... against a dam, rushed vigorous sentences from the great deeps opened in his soul by grief and change, and then leaped over in a beautiful, glittering flood. He wondered vaguely at his vehemence and fluency, at the silence in the hall, that these great people should listen to him at all. They heard him with astonishment, the leaders with interest, the Senator with tears; and Monsignor looked once towards the gallery where Anne Dillon sat literally ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... where he had been for some years trading and speculating in the various islands. He now spoke Dutch, French, Malay and Javanese, all equally well; English with a very slight accent, but with perfect fluency, and a most complete knowledge of idiom, in which I often tried to puzzle him in vain. German and Italian were also quite familiar to him, and his acquaintance with European languages included Modern ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... mother had not given her the best education. I believe she was a bit of a thief, and she could tell fibs with fluency and precision. The woman was a sinner; but her wild, strong affections were true, and her heart was not ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... were unnecessary, for, while his speech lacked in the characteristic fluency of other speeches, while the shock and pain caused his argument to be somewhat labored, yet it was with a soldierly firmness and iron determination, which more than all things in Roosevelt's career discloses to the country the real Roosevelt, who at the close of his official service as ...
— The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt • Oliver Remey
... child to transpierce and transport me; but this vivid sentiment that is natural to me has been variously handled by variety of forms, not so much higher or lower (for they were ever the highest of every kind), as differing in colour. First, a gay and sprightly fluency; afterwards, a lofty and penetrating subtlety; and lastly, a mature and constant vigour. Their names will better express them: Ovid, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... unsparing in His denunciation of persistent evil-doers. His mood was adapted to the conditions to which He addressed Himself; tender words of encouragement or burning expletives of righteous indignation issued with equal fluency from His lips. His nature was no poetic conception of cherubic sweetness ever present, but that of a Man, with the emotions and passions essential to manhood and manliness. He, who often wept with compassion, at other times evinced in word and action the righteous anger of a God. But of all His ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... letters to the Duke of Wellington upon this subject, which were marked by great ability. It was not, however, until the agitation for the Reform Bill commenced that Mr. Muntz became much known as a politician. He took up this cause with great ardour, and, being gifted with considerable fluency of speech, a powerful voice, a confident manner, and a handsome presence, he soon became immensely popular. Thomas Attwood, Joshua Scholefield, and George Frederic Muntz were the founders of the Political Union. The two former, as president and vice-president respectively, ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... one, and then the other, broke out into song. "'Infinite riches in a little room,'" my note-book says, again; and truly the song is marvelous,—a prolonged and varied warble, introduced and often broken into, with delightful effect, by a wrennish chatter. For fluency, smoothness, and ease, and especially for purity and sweetness of tone, I have never heard any bird-song that seemed to me more nearly perfect. If the dainty creature would bear confinement,—on which point I know nothing,—he would make an ideal parlor ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... o'clock, A.M., I was awakened by my fellow-travellers, and accompanied them to the caravanserai of the Turning Dervishes. A somewhat lengthened residence in the northern provinces of Persia, where a Turkish idiom is spoken, had given me a tolerable fluency in that language, and I was thus enabled to act as interpreter to my friends. The cicerone of the hotel conducted us to a circular building situated in the midst of a small garden, whither was hurrying a crowd composed of Greeks, Armenians, and Turks. Having arrived at the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... depend entirety on other men for the sentiments and opinions by which, at any given moment, they shall be guided. Such people were sufficiently numerous at Rome and the other cities and provinces of Italy. Demagogues, therefore, who were not without ability and possessed fluency of speech, found it no very difficult task to fashion as they had a mind, for these classes of citizens, any amount of political principles and programmes. Those even who were fairly imbued with constitutional ideas, but whose minds were not wholly decided, the leaders of the Red Republic ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... poetry does not permit of the development and iteration of pure feeling which we find in music; for poetic rhythms and melodies lack the variety and fluency of the musical. Yet poetry is capable, where music is not, of expressing brief, quick outbursts of feeling; for a few words, by referring to the causes and conditions of feeling, may adequately express what music needs time and many tones to convey. Poetry wins beauty by concentration, ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... recent alteration of University and College statutes came into force. An ignorant monk was certainly a rarity, an absolutely unlettered or uneducated one was an impossibility, and an abbot or prior who could not talk and write Latin with facility, who could not preach with tolerable fluency on occasion, and hold his own as a debater and man of business, would have found himself sooner or later in a very ridiculous and very uncomfortable position, from which he might be glad ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... dream. In dreaming we are often conscious of lively impressions, of a busy scene, and of objects and feelings succeeding each other with rapidity. We sometimes imagine ourselves earnestly speaking: and the topics we treat, and the words we employ, are supplied to us with extraordinary fluency. But the sort of vacancy and inoccupation of which I here treat, has a greater resemblance to the state of mind, without distinct and clearly unfolded ideas, which we experience before we sink into sleep. The mind is in reality in a condition, more properly accessible to feeling and capable ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... truth is that the poorest peoples in the world in acquiring foreign languages are the English and the French; the readiest are the Russians and Americans. It was, after a fashion, a liberal education to listen to the fluency in some half-dozen languages of Poor McGahan, the "Ohio boy," who graduated from the plough to be perhaps the most brilliant war correspondent of modern times. His compatriot and colleague, Frank Millet, who has fallen away from glory as a war correspondent, and has taken to ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... you—to—to remember—remember that I always liked you," he said with an effort, in curious contrast to his habitual fluency. "You won't believe it—some day. But it is true.... Perhaps I'll prove it, yet.... My father used to say that everything except death had been proven; and there remained, therefore, only one event of any sporting interest to the world.... He was a very interesting man—my ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... look of anxiety and depression invaded her small face. He guessed that she was thinking of her pictures, and began timidly to speak to her about them. When they returned to the world of art, his fluency left him; he felt crushed beneath the weight of his ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... itself against the force of ridicule. Half angry, half mortified, and, to say truth, half ashamed of his more manly and better purpose, Nigel was unable, and flattered himself it was unnecessary, to play the part of a rigid moral patriot, in presence of a young man whose current fluency of language, as well as his experience in the highest circles of society, gave him, in spite of Nigel's better and firmer thoughts, a temporary ascendency over him. He sought, therefore, to compromise ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... for that. Their communications were expressed entirely through the medium of Mr. Snoop, and even he explained afterwards that it was very difficult. The only languages of India which he was able to speak, he said, with any fluency were Gargamic and Gumaic both of these being old Dravidian dialects with only two hundred and three words in each, and hence in themselves very difficult to converse in. Mr. Yahi-Bahi answered in what Mr. Snoop understood to be the Iramic of the ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... inevitable change of the exterior seems to have no effect on the "inner man." "In the Prince's conversation I found the same talent, the unrivalled esprit. The fluency and elocution, so entirely his own, were as graceful, and the memory was as perfect, as at any ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... to and is largely made up of that terrible modern production, "the man in the street." It is quite ridiculous to pretend that because an Erasmus or a Casaubon could carry on literary controversies, with amazing fluency and hard-hitting, in Ciceronian Latin, therefore "the bald-headed man at the back of the omnibus" can give up the time necessary to obtaining a control of Latin sufficient for the conduct of his affairs, or for ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... had suffered sorely, but its gaps were filled from other sources and fresh supplies received from home. Close upon the middle of August it moved to take the field. This delay had not been without advantages, perhaps the chief of which was a fluency in French that many of his men were able to acquire. It had also given Jeb an opportunity to acquire an entirely new viewpoint regarding the purposes of this war, which had not ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... from those occupied by Fisher. A French valet, almost beside himself with terror, came hurrying out of the room to meet the porter and the Doctor Professor. Fisher again attempted to explain, but to no purpose. The valet also had explanations to make, and the superior fluency of his French enabled him to monopolize the conversation. No, there was nobody there—nobody but himself, the faithful Auguste of the Baron. His Excellency, the General Ignatieff, his Highness, the Prince Koloff, Dr. Rapperschwyll, all the suite, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... might have puzzled more than one "elegant scholar," became quite easy and familiar to me, but I have never attained a colloquial mastery over the language. I can talk, to be sure, with the most incorrect fluency, and I can make myself understood—at all events by Italians, whose quick, sympathetic apprehension of one's meaning, and courteous readiness to assist a foreigner in any linguistic straits, are deserving of grateful recognition from all of us who, however involuntarily, ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... varieties of this easily-flowing, unmodulated, unstable, unsatisfactory sound. Like the o (aw), this sound u (uh) has a vacant, unfinished, and inorganic character as a sound, while yet, from its great fluency, its frequent occurrence tends, more than that of any other sound, to give to Language that conversational fluency, rapidity and ease which are especially characteristic of the French Tongue. From this same easy laxity of its nature all the other Vowel Sounds tend, in English ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of trapper and trader life, but little trace of the simple young Canadian habitant was left in Pierre La Marche. He spoke mountain English and French patois with equal fluency. There was a decision of character about him that commanded the respect of his comrades. When the other trappers went to St. Louis, they used to drink and gamble away their hard-won dollars, few of these men caring for anything beyond the indulgence of immediate fancies. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... every day the deeper I get into it. Every thing is proper in it; nothing borrowed, as amongst us. Here are no auxiliary verbs. The prepositions are in great number. This it is that gives great ease, fluency, and richness to the expression of whatever you require, when you are once master enough to join them to the verbs. In all their absolute verbs they have a dual number. What we call the imperfect, perfect, and preter-perfect tenses of the indicative mood, admits, as with us, of varied inflexions ...
— An Account Of The Customs And Manners Of The Micmakis And Maricheets Savage Nations, Now Dependent On The Government Of Cape-Breton • Antoine Simon Maillard
... while he listened. Of the blanket-vending, depot-haunting type was this young man, with a ready smile and a quick eye for a bargain and a smattering of English learned in his youth at a mission, and a larger vocabulary of Mexican that lent him fluency of speech when the mood to talk was on him. Half of his hair was cut so that it hung even with his ear-lobes. At the back it was long and looped up in the way a horse's tail is looped in muddy weather, and tied with a grimy red ribbon wound round ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... is no flattery to say that in dress, attitude, inflection, manner, she was a thorough Parisienne. There was an elegant superficiality and a superficial elegance about her that I can never forget, nor yet her extraordinary volubility in a foreign language,—the fluency with which she expressed her inmost soul on all topics without the aid of a single irregular verb, for these she was never able to acquire; oh, it was wonderful, but there was no affectation about it; she had simply been a kind of blotting-paper, ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of its literary pre-eminence; David Neto, a student of philosophy; Benjamin Mussafia, Orobio de Castro, David Abenator Melo, the Spanish translator of the Psalms, and Daniel de Barrios, poet and critic—all using their rapidly acquired fluency in the Dutch language to champion ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... they made, shrinking from the crowd as a timid bather shrinks from icy water, driven to this performance by an unseen power. But the women were shrill and self-possessed, scolding their hearers, demanding an instant surrender to the Army, whose advantages they pointed out with a glib fluency as if it were ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... fluency of speech I possessed also a readiness at picking up information, and arraying the scattered fragments of news into a certain consistence, which greatly imposed upon my comrades. A quick eye for man[oe]uvres, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... inscrutable air of a man well-to-do in his affairs. I conceived he had been some while observing me from a distance, for a sparrow sat betwixt us quite unalarmed on the breech of a piece of cannon. So soon as our eyes met, he drew near and addressed me in the French language, which he spoke with a good fluency but an abominable accent. ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... would of necessity come to be a better understanding and a larger respect for the positions of the opponent. The men who would be selected as leaders or speakers to enforce the contentions of the party, would have to possess some reasoning faculty as well as oratorical fluency. The voters, instead of being shut in with one group of arguments more or less reasonable, would be brought into touch with the arguments of other groups of citizens. I can conceive of no better method for bringing ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... recent years, several examples of heredity in song have been vouchsafed to us. The younger Hood had his father's fluency, but, apparently, very little of his imaginative power. Philip Bourke Marston was, in the lyric vein, as successful, perhaps, as Dr. Westland Marston had been in the dramatic, and it is probable that he ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... arms?" said Bang, as he continued with great fluency, but little grammar; "ayez le ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... carried on with calmness and decency, by men, who do not suffer the ardour of opposition to cloud their reason, or transport them to such expressions as the dignity of this assembly does not admit. I have hitherto deferred to answer the gentleman who declaimed against the bill with such fluency of rhetorick, and such vehemence of gesture; who charged the advocates for the expedients now proposed, with having no regard to any interest but their own, and with making laws only to consume paper, and threatened them with the defection of their adherence, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... similar experience with 'John Gilpin,' and Burns's powerful dramatic tale, 'Tam O'Shanter,' was produced with great ease and rapidity. De Quincey records that, in his own case, his very best work was frequently done when he was writing against time. Scott's energy and fluency of composition are clearly indicated in the following passage ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... talking, talking with extreme fluency in a high tenor voice, the reddish hair flung back from the high forehead, the eyes now dancing, now aflame, every feature quick with ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... members by the strength of their eloquence. Practice makes perfect, and it is not to be wondered at therefore if a large proportion of The Twenty had become fluent. But more were wanted, and of our friend O'Mahony's fluency there could be no doubt. Therefore he was sent for, and on the very day of his arrival he proved to the patriotic spirits of Dublin that he was the man for Cavan. Three days afterwards he went down, and Cavan ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... were lads from Galway and Louth and Meath Who went to their death with a joke in their teeth, And worshipped with fluency, fervour, and zeal The mud on ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... begin to talk, it's worth while sitting out. B. explained in soft and winning words to the Judge that his life was a giddy round of society, long leave, and high pay, whilst he in the far North led a lonely life of continuous hard work and no pay to speak of; and the Judge, with equal if not greater fluency, described B.'s up-country life as perpetual leave on full pay, a long delightful picnic, and so on and so forth. My sympathy went with the Judge; I think his life is the least pleasant, but one had to allow for ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... despising alike the sordid trammels of a low and vulgar community, and the conventional restraints of a hypocritical society,—when two souls in perfect accord met and mingled in poetical union, then—but here the colonel's speech, which had been remarkable for a certain whiskey-and-watery fluency, grew husky, almost inaudible, and decidedly incoherent. Possibly Mrs. Tretherick may have heard something like it before, and was enabled to fill the hiatus. Nevertheless, the cheek that was on the side of the colonel was quite virginal and bashfully conscious until they ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... him; talk of his speech; congratulate him upon it; tell him you were extremely struck by the freshness and naturalness of what he said,—that there is something delightful in hearing an unhackneyed speaker,—that to speak with entire fluency looks professional,—it is like a barrister or a clergyman. Thus you may lighten the mortification of a disappointed man; and what you say will receive considerable credence. It is wonderful how readily people believe anything they would ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... something of an orator. FLYNN will show House how all these qualities may be combined in one man. Does it by the tiresome twenty minutes, the lamentable half-hour; popping up on every question with comically judicial air; talking on with fatal feeble flatulent fluency, whilst GILL sits nursing his ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 26, 1892 • Various
... mother, believe me when I say that I am sincerely delighted," returned the General, who had now, to a certain extent, recovered his senses; and inasmuch as, when occasion arose, he could speak with fluency, gravity, and a certain effect, he set himself to be expansive in his remarks, and went on: "We have been so dismayed and upset by the news of your indisposition! We had received such hopeless telegrams about you! ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... invisible caitiff called on him by name, and poured forth out of the darkness an endless, garrulous appeal for mercy. A sense of danger, of daring, had alone nerved Carthew to enter the forecastle; and here was the enemy crying and pleading like a frightened child. His obsequious "Here, sir," his horrid fluency of obtestation, made the murder tenfold more revolting. Twice Carthew raised the pistol, once he pressed the trigger (or thought he did) with all his might, but no explosion followed; and with that ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... translate the New Testament from the original sources into his beloved Castilian tongue. Before setting out for Rome he had so applied himself to the worn little grammar which the proprietor of the bookstall in Seville had loaned him, that he was able to make translations with comparative fluency. In the seminary he plunged into it with avidity; and when he returned from his journey with the Papal Legate he began in earnest his translation of the Testament. This, like so much of the boy's work and writing, was done secretly and in spare moments. And his zeal was such ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... in speaking of whom it is difficult to avoid superlatives. He is not so conscious of is powers and so ambitious of effect as the white-eyed flycatcher, yet you will not be less astonished and delighted on hearing him. He possesses the fluency and copiousness for which the wrens are noted, and besides these qualities, and what is rarely found conjoined with them, a wild, sweet, rhythmical cadence that holds you entranced. I shall not soon forget that perfect June day, when, loitering in a low, ancient ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... and real grounds of resentment, felt himself at once amused and instructed in listening to him, while the statesman, whose inward feelings had at first so much impeded his efforts to make himself known, had now regained all the ease and fluency of a silver-tongued lawyer of the very ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... them welcome. His wish was to be on friendly terms with them, and the people of their nation, one of whom, a great chief he seemed and full of wisdom, was even now his guest. Rolfe, who already spoke the native tongue with considerable fluency, replied, in suitable language, that he was grateful to the chief for the words he had let fall; that his guest was indeed a man of renown—his more than father and friend—and that it was with the object of visiting him, as well as to pay his respects ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston
... built up the musical structure of "Hansel und Gretel" in the Wagnerian manner, but has done it with so much fluency and deftness that a musical layman might listen to it from beginning to end without suspecting the fact, save from the occasional employment of what may be called Wagnerian idioms. The little work is replete with melodies which, though original, bear ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... rule, and, like the Emperor, perfectly willing to admit that his navy is closely modelled on that of Great Britain. Moreover, in addition to a thorough knowledge of his profession, he is able, in two cases out of three, to converse with useful fluency in English, French, and in ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... Lachlan searched anxiously for sound doctrine and deep experience, but he was not concerned about learning, and fluency he regarded with disgust. When a young minister from Muirtown stamped twice in his prayer at the Drumtochty Fast, and preached with great eloquence from the words, "And there was no more sea," repeating the text at ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... dainty Anthology. There is clear evidence[1] that Campion wrote not only the music but the words for his songs—that he was at once an eminent composer and a lyric poet of the first rank. He published a volume of Latin verse, which displays ease and fluency (though the prosody is occasionally erratic); as a masque-writer he was inferior only to Ben Jonson; he was the author of treatises on the arts of music and poetry; and he practised as a physician. It would be interesting to ascertain some facts about the life of this highly-gifted man; but hitherto ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... long speech. Voluble as Osterman himself, he, nevertheless, had at his command a vast number of ready-made phrases, the staples of a political speaker, the stock in trade of the commercial lawyer, which rolled off his tongue with the most persuasive fluency. By degrees, in the course of his speech, he began to insinuate the idea that the wheat-growers had never expected to settle their difficulties with the Railroad by the work of a single commission; ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... a haste and fluency utterly unlike his usual mode of speech, never taking breath, never taking his eyes from her, a man possessed; while she, shrinking back in her chair, her eyes cast down, her hands nervously clasping and unclasping each other, listened, beaten down by the tempest of an emotion such ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... discovered and had verified by prolonged experiment and experience. He was ready to oppose obedience to old lights as if they were oracles from which one did not dare to differ. Illustrious doctor smight be graduated from books, but books made not a single physician.(10) Neither graduation, nor fluency, nor the knowledge of old languages, nor the reading of many books made a physician, but the knowledge of things themselves and their properties. The business of a doctor was to know the different kinds of sicknesses, their causes, their ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... was uniformly most agreeable, for she spoke French with fluency, and employed it with wit. There was talk of open-work crowns and shut crowns. The Marquis de Dangeau, something of a savant and antiquary, happened to remark that, under Nero, that magnificent prince, the imperial crown had first ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... that I have known Miss Crawley for some time,—nearly for two years now, and—I may as well speak it out at once,—I have made up my mind to ask her to be my wife. That is why I am here." Considering the nature of the statement, which must have been embarrassing, I think that it was made with fluency ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... loca de la casa, hold up to scorn the indolent members of the bourgeoisie or aristocracy, and spur them into action. From this motive, perhaps, Galds devoted so much space to domestic finance. The often made comparison with Balzac holds good also in the fluency with which he handled complicated money transactions on paper, and in the business embarrassment which overtook him in real life. He had a lurking affection for a spendthrift: witness Pedro Minio and ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... Confederates "Rooney" Lee and I had in our youth been college mates. My classmate J.B. Clark of Mississippi was a graceful magnetic fellow who had small basis of scholarship, perhaps, but a marked power for effective utterance. He fascinated us by his warm Southern fluency, and we gave him at last the highest distinction we could confer, the class oration. He left us then and we did not see him for fifty years. He enlisted in the 21st Mississippi and passed through the roughest hardships and perils. We felt afterwards that he held ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... Sorbonne and secured the additional degree of Doctor of Science. I had received an excellent education in my youth and always had a taste for study, which I have taken pains to pursue in whatever part of the world I happened to be stationed. As a result I am able to converse with considerable fluency in English, as perhaps you have already observed, as well as in Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, Arabic, and, to a considerable extent, ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... a cabinetmaker dressed in a decent brown suit, spoke with fluency, and at the same time with that accent of moderation and savoir faire which some Englishmen in all classes have obviously inherited from centuries of government by discussion. Lady Charlotte, whose ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... spoke the Blackfoot tongue, and the offer of high wages failed to induce him to attempt the journey. He was a splendid specimen of a half-breed; he had married a Blackfoot squaw, and spoke the difficult language with fluency; but he had lost nearly all his relations in the fatal plague, and his answer was full of quiet thought when asked to be ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... a fluency which surprised himself, narrated the story which had been arranged by Rosalie, O'Grady going through his part, pointing to his lips, and making inarticulate sounds, while Reuben imitated him in a way ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... roar with his quaint sayings, and his local satires in the shape of impromptu doggerel; and he would also repeat snatches of orations which he had heard in Washington when Judge Wornum was a member of Congress. But his chief accomplishments lay in the wonderful ease and fluency with which he imitated the eloquent appeals of certain ambitious members of the Kockville bar, and in his travesties of the bombastic flights of the stump-speakers ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... to the heart of the khedive than statecraft. He rides well, drives well, rises early, and is of abstemious habits. Turkish is his mother tongue, but he talks Arabic with fluency and speaks English, ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... full upon it, she herself in shadow, her eyes veiled by their drooping lashes. Sitting there, the vivid consciousness of my happiness was like draughts of strong, delicious wine, and its effect was like wine, imparting such freedom to fancy, such fluency, that again and again old Nuflo applauded, crying out that I was a poet, and begging me to put it all into rhyme. I could not do that to please him, never having acquired the art of improvisation—that idle trick of making words jingle which men of Nuflo's ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... did not receive your ladyship's letter till within these few days," all the reserve of Lady Annaly's manner was dispelled: her smiles relieved his apprehensions, and encouraged him to proceed in his story with happy fluency. The carelessness of the drunken servant, who had occasioned so much mischief, was talked of for a ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... subject of this work leads the author to address the imagination and the heart: the variety and felicity of his illustrations—the richness and fluency of his eloquence—and the skill with which he wins the attention and commands the passions of his readers, leave him, among our English ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... received me with much cordiality. As he spoke English with fluency I was fortunate in finding him present, in order to show me over the works; on entering which, one of the things that particularly struck me was the excellence of a large wrought-iron marine engine single crank, forged with a remarkable degree of exactness in its general form. I observed also ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... supposed courage involved in crossing the Atlantic. Negroes have almost no relative ideas of distance or number beyond a very limited extent; they will say 'a tousan'd,' fifty or a hundred 'tousand,' with equal inexactitude and fluency. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... BARDS.—Many centuries must have elapsed before the poetical language of the Greeks could have attained the splendor, copiousness, and fluency found in the poems of Homer. The first outpourings of poetical enthusiasm were, doubtless, songs describing, in few and simple verses, events which powerfully affected the feelings of the hearers. It is probable that the earliest were those that referred to the seasons ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... "accomplishments" were talked of far and near in our country circles. Few, if any, of the people, however, who applauded her playing and singing, who admired her water-color drawings, who were delighted at her fluency when she spoke French, and amazed at her ready comprehension when she read German, knew how little of all this elegant mental cultivation and nimble manual dexterity she owed to her governess and masters, and how much to her elder sister. It was Ida who really ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... Montefalderon was a person of a very different calibre from Spike, as well as of different habits; and he did not choose to indulge in the quiet irony that formed so large an ingredient in his own character, with this new acquaintance. He spoke Spanish himself, with tolerable fluency, and a conversation now occurred between the two, which was maintained for some time with spirit and a ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... the attempt as labour in vain, and shed tears of helpless despondency on the blank unfinished paper. I can write fast enough now. Am I better than I was then? Oh no! One truth discovered, one pang of regret at not being able to express it, is better than all the fluency and flippancy in the world. Would that I could go back to what I then was! Why can we not revive past times as we can revisit old places? If I had the quaint Muse of Sir Philip Sidney to assist me, I would write a Sonnet to the Road between Wem and ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... old candidate for the priesthood managed to deftly evade this query by an assurance that in Britain the people were too far off and in a theological climate of their own. He was in the highest humour, and in this unusual flow of spirits he harangued the men of Bastelica with great fluency, getting, however, at Sollacaro somewhat nervous as the interview with the Corsican leader drew nigh. Paoli lived in constant dread of assassination, and the sudden arrival of this mysterious stranger was strongly calculated to arouse ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... attention with our hats on while Sir Arthur, who, as we have seen, is a linguist of great distinction, delivered to the sovereign, a most charming and graceful speech in Persian with an oriental fluency of flowery language that nearly took my ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... is a writing that preserves a close affinity for the round regular hand of the average school-boy, with the difference that while the characters are formed on regular copybook model, the hand is written with considerable fluency and firmness. It is generally only a little out of the perpendicular, sloping ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... spoke French with remarkable fluency and a calm disregard of accent and inflections, was well pleased to entertain the French gentleman, and at her house I had the happiness to make his acquaintance, greatly, as it proved, to my future advantage. He was glad to find any who spoke his own tongue well, and discussed our affairs with ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... her in his power again. She was planning the order of exercises for the meeting, which was as it should be; but it was not as right that she was leaping forward in her thoughts to the criticisms which the girls would make upon the part she should take, the hope that they would admire her fluency and spirituality, and say to her when ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... you received my note and last poem. I hope still more earnestly that you won't think I am putting my spite against your chastening hand into a presumptuous and troublesome fluency. ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... either to shelter in France, or to take service in the French or other foreign armies, that a knowledge of the language became almost a matter of necessity. In one of his short letters Keith had told her that, of all things, it was necessary that the lad should speak French with perfect fluency, and master as much German as possible. And it was to these points that his education had been almost ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... eyes glittered with sparks; his golden curls fell low on his white forehead; and from his lips, shaded by a tiny mustache, the words came out with increasing boldness and fluency, and more thickly intermingled with ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... I have taken lessons from a person who was twelve years in Pekin, and who speaks Manchu and Chinese with fluency. I pay him about six shillings English for each lesson, which I grudge not, for the perfect acquirement of Manchu is one of my most ardent ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... Magnus, his state of sullen fury made him indifferent even to threats of punishment. He swore with a determination and fluency worthy of a better cause. For myself, I could not endure his neighborhood. It seemed to me I could not live through the days that must intervene before the arrival of the Rufus Smith in the ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... selectness of its society. Although the members were chosen by the organization, yet "practical" farmers, and "practical" shoemakers, with their wives and children, are not supposed to have the easy grace of manners, the elegant language and the fluency and charm of cultivated and scholarly men and women. The little, scarcely organized Community had increased into a goodly number, so that its dining room was like a small hotel; and it was no longer held by the "Transcendentalists," but had become a ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... accompaniment of the lyre or grace the comic or the tragic stage. Satires also do I write and riddles, histories also on diverse themes, speeches that the eloquent and dialogues that philosophers have praised. Nay, and I write all these and much besides with equal fluency in Greek and Latin, with equal pleasure, like ardour and uniform skill. Most excellent proconsul, I would I could offer all these works of mine not in fragments and quotations but in entirety and ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... delicate constitution seemed to forbid the indulgence of hunting, tennis, and the other violent exercises in which he delighted. He was highly accomplished; spoke five different languages with elegance and fluency, and had made considerable progress in mathematics and other abstract sciences. His ambition knew no bounds. Had he reigned over a monarchy as absolute king, he would most probably have gone down to posterity a conqueror and a hero. But, unfitted to direct a republic as its first ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan |
