"Conversational" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the maneuvering conversational tactics of Mr. Howe, Captain Douglas could not resist the vein of humor which flowed in incessant remark upon those with whom it came in contact. "Lady Rosamond made sad havoc in Fredericton," was his endless theme. "Look at Howe, judging from the length of his face the matter has assumed ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... keep her company, until the evening, when, under White's escort, she was to set out for England. The major had in a minimum of words expressed himself ready to do anything at any time, provided that the service did not require an abnormal conversational effort. ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... purple being an ornate and indecipherable monogram, wherewith to wipe his troubled brow. Susan Gluck's Orphan, who was playing down-wind, paused to inhale deeply and with a beatific expression. Restoring the fragrant square to its repository, the pink one essayed another conversational skirmish. ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... A conversational party even of tolerably well-educated persons, often presents itself in a ludicrous light. Some question has arisen amongst them. No one has any clear or definite information upon it. They have had disputes about the simplest matters of fact involved in it. Yet no person there, down to the youngest, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... quarrelled with his nephew Sir Barnes, Thomas Newcome went to visit his brother Hobson and his sister-in-law; bent on showing that there was no division between him and this branch of his family. And you may suppose that the admirable woman just named had a fine occasion for her virtuous conversational powers in discoursing upon the painful event which had just happened to Sir Barnes. When we fail, how our friends cry out for us! Mrs. Hobson's homilies must have been awful. How that outraged virtue must have groaned ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... discriminate. They are the blank checks of intellectual bankruptcy;—you may fill them up with what idea you like; it makes no difference, for there are no funds in the treasury upon which they are drawn. Colleges and good-for-nothing smoking-clubs are the places where these conversational fungi spring up most luxuriantly. Don't think I undervalue the proper use and application of a cant word or phrase. It adds piquancy to conversation, as a mushroom does to a sauce. But it is no better than a toadstool, odious ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... Simmy; remember he's studied for the ministry! How did I savey that Simpson aimed to be a sharp on doctrine?" A cow-puncher with a squint addressed the table in general. "I scents the aroma of dogma about Simpson in the way he throwed his conversational lariat at the yearling. He urbanes at her, and then comes his 'firstly,' it being a speculation as to her late grazing-ground, which he concludes to be the East. His 'secondly' ain't nothing startling, words familiar to us all from our mother's knee—'nice weather'—the congregation ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... afternoon to find that they were spending the evening in, and to find a very serious Natalie waiting, when he came down-stairs dressed for dinner. She made an effort to be conversational, but it was a failure. He was uneasily aware that she was watching him, inspecting, calculating, choosing her moment. But it was not until they were having coffee that ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... her; but she was too much taken aback by Beth's readiness to correct her on the instant, although it was an unaccustomed and a monstrous thing for a girl to address a mistress in an easy conversational way, let alone ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... found itself provided with a conversational topic of absorbing interest. Ethan Cronan, who had temporarily "taken on" the post-office and store, had no cause to fear that the old headquarters was in danger of losing popularity. The truth was that big Tom had so long presided over the daily gatherings that the new occupant ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... temper, and perhaps the influence lasted into later years. I have, however, heard her lecture. She was a very clever woman, and Mr. Henry James, in Temple Bar for March, 1893, thus does justice to her conversational power: ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... a bright, conversational air—"that some things are even more interesting for being waited for; the explanation ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... Still, as he grew older, he evinced more and more dislike of everything in the shape of exaggeration. He clothed his ideas with a thousand delicate shades of expression, and never pronounced an opinion without all sorts of reservations. These conversational habits, natural to a finely trained mind, used greatly to irritate the dry, terse old aristocrat, who was never in the least disarmed by the moderation of an adversary—quite the contrary! I always foresaw one danger. That danger was Bonaparte. My father had not himself retained an ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... head or tail of them. Next, he visited, in turn, the Chief of Police, the Vice-Governor, the Postmaster, and others; but in each case he either failed to be accorded admittance or was received so strangely, and with such a measure of constraint and conversational awkwardness and absence of mind and embarrassment, that he began to fear for the sanity of his hosts. Again and again did he strive to divine the cause, but could not do so; so he went wandering aimlessly about the ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... 1835 to the time of his marriage, and produced some nine plays, not all of which, however, were intended for the stage. "Paracelsus," the first of the series, has been fairly described as a "conversational drama," and "Pippa Passes," though it has been staged, is essentially a poem to read. The historical tragedy of "Strafford" has been impressively performed, but "King Victor and King Charles," "The Return of the Druses," "Colombe's Birthday," ...
— A Blot In The 'Scutcheon • Robert Browning
... know that this ship runs on an atomic pile," he said in a conversational tone of voice. "The cables are just under the floor in the control room and they can be reached through a ...
— The Stutterer • R.R. Merliss
... the same principle it is entirely likely that the American girl, who talks so much, says many more foolish things than the English one who, if she can help it, never talks at all. The American girl is only a girl after all, and because she has acquired a conversational fluency which the Englishwoman will only arrive at twenty years later, it is not just to suppose that she must also have acquired an additional twenty years' maturity ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... of their native place are in marked contrast to the silent, ruthless hurry in the streets of our large towns. The good burghers of foreign towns seem to have plenty of their own and other people's time to spare; they also possess the gift of unlimited conversational powers. I have known many a pleasant chat rudely interrupted by a group of British or American travellers who, with nose well inside a book, blue or red but obviously "guide," push their way, ruthless as Juggernaut, through bunches ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... He is dressed in mechanic's blue dungarees. His face is oily and his clothes stained. He wears boots, not clogs. He mechanically takes a ball of oily black cotton-waste from his right pocket when in conversational difficulties and wipes his hands upon it. He has a red muffler round his neck without collar, and his shock affair hair is surmounted by a greasy black cap, which covers perhaps one ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... though one man may take the mare to the water, no given number of men can make her drink; so, having accepted my place, I determined my complaisance should end there, and, in spite of all Lady Holland's conversational efforts, and her final exclamation, "Allen! do get Mrs. Butler to talk! We really must make her talk!" I held my peace, and kept the peace, which I could have done upon no other conditions; but the unnatural and unwholesome effort disagreed with me so dreadfully, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... delightful causerie—pleasant, genial talk about a most interesting man. Easy and conversational as the tone is throughout, no important fact is omitted, no valueless fact is recalled; and it is entirely exempt from platitude ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... The explanation is not wholly convincing, for they have the lighting arrangements in their own hands, and could easily afford the outlay. It may be that they like to remain close to the shops and to each other's doors for conversational purposes, since it is a fact that, socially speaking, the more restricted the area, the more expansive one grows. We broaden out, in proportion as the environment contracts. A psychological ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... are of great value and have their place, but because a smattering knowledge is bought at too high a price of ignorance of more valuable things. German, French, and Italian should be allowed and provided for by native teachers and by conversational methods if desired, and ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... age has not reversed their decision. He added learning to great natural ability, and brilliancy to profound thought; and although so deaf as to make communication with him difficult, he nearly concealed the defect by his remarkable eloquence and conversational gifts. Benjamin Franklin called him "the Cicero of America." His love for the beautiful attracted Edmund Burke. It is doubtful if he had a superior in the State in the knowledge of history and the classics, and in the study of science Samuel L. Mitchill alone stood above him. He ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... far-sighted but easy-going journeyman printer wandered along and started the "Napoleon Weekly Telegraph and Literary Repository"—a paper with a Latin motto from the Unabridged dictionary, and plenty of "fat" conversational tales and double-leaded poetry—all for two dollars a year, strictly in advance. Of course the merchants forwarded the orders at once to New York—and never heard of ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 3. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... references to the subject, beyond giving the terms of the official resignation and some scanty addenda thereto; but enough is said generally by Busch concerning Bismarck's conversations to show that the Chancellor was deeply mortified by his dismissal. Bismarck indeed expressly denies this in a conversational statement quoted by an able Bismarckian writer of our own time, Dr. Paul Liman; but in view of subsequent events and statements the denial can hardly be taken as sincere. The passage referred to is ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... remained there while he spoke to them of their daughter. Even in his manner of speaking Georgiana felt a decided difference. There was a curious crispness and succinctness of speech that marked the professional man, which was decidedly different from the more expanded conversational manner of ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... that "one of Raphael's Madonnas should have been formed by the selection of chance daubs of paint." The remark of Herschel's, quoted in "Life and Letters," II., page 241, that the "Origin" illustrates the "law of higgledy-piggledy," is probably a conversational variant of the Laputan comparison which gave rise to the passage in the "Descent ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... scrutiny.... She had not got to wait long, for almost immediately the grocer's boy came out of the shop with a heavy basket on his arm, delivered the small pot of ginger at her own door, and proceeded along the street. He was, unfortunately, a popular and a conversational youth, who had a great deal to say to his friends, and the period of waiting to see if he would turn up the steep street that led to Miss Mapp's house was very protracted. At the corner he deliberately put down the basket altogether and lit a cigarette, and never had Diva so acutely ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... remembered the name. Great-aunt Jane was one of the relations the Polkingtons did not use; she was not rich enough or obliging enough to give any help, nor grand enough for conversational purposes. She never figured in Mrs. Polkington's talk except vaguely as "one of my husband's people in Norfolk;" this when she was explaining that the Captain came of East Anglian stock on his mother's side. Jane was only a step-aunt to the Captain; his mother ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... women much more disposed to listen to anything I had to say than the men, who were in general so taken up with their traffic that they could think and talk of nothing else; the women, too, had more curiosity and more intelligence; the conversational powers of some of them I found to be very great, and yet they were destitute of the slightest rudiments of education, and were thieves by profession. At Madrid I had regular conversaziones, or, as they are called in Spanish, tertulias, with these women, who ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... half a dozen times, each time coming a little nearer the stone he was aiming at, some five yards distant. Possibly this was the borderman's way of oiling up his conversational machinery. At all events, ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... the door which is sealed forever upon the dead, and upon the Ka, the spiritual double," he said in a low conversational tone. "It has some remarkable representations of ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... the foundation of that undeviating integrity, fixedness of purpose, unwavering conscientiousness and unaffected reverence for the Divine Being, which ever characterized this Medical Reformer in after life. The influence of this paternal conversational instruction and moral training made him what he was, as a school-boy, as a college-student, as an author, a chemist and a physician. Untiring industry, conscientiousness, and a reliance upon Divine blessing, will in any sphere in life secure success, and Samuel Hahnemann ...
— Allopathy and Homoeopathy Before the Judgement of Common Sense! • Frederick Hiller
... fingers, and her hands are constantly busy with a piece of point lace embroidery; for many Dutch ladies cannot stand an evening without the companionship of a 'handwerkje,' as fancy-needlework is called. It does not in the least interfere with their conversational duties. She is rather tall. Dutch men and women seem to have all sizes equally distributed amongst them; it cannot be said that they are a short people, like the French and the Belgians, nor can the indication of middle size be so rightly applied to them as to their German neighbours, ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... as concerns metrical treatment on the other hand, the flexible and sounding verse on the whole does all honour to the composers. The fact that the iambic trimeters, which predominated in the originals and were alone suitable to their moderate conversational tone, were very frequently replaced in the Latin edition by iambic or trochaic tetrameters, is to be attributed not so much to any want of skill on the part of the editors who knew well how to handle the trimeter, as to the uncultivated taste of the Roman ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... inexpressible interest this special remark, put in by way of marginal incidental note, from a practical manufacturing Quaker, whom, as he is anonymous, we will call Friend Prudence. Prudence keeps a thousand workmen; has striven in all ways to attach them to him; has provided conversational soirees; play-grounds, bands of music for the young ones; went even 'the length of buying them a drum:' all which has turned out to be an excellent investment. For a certain person, marked here by a black stroke, whom we shall name ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... in a quiet, conversational tone, noting that Allison had closely eyed the heavy folds of the portiere, and once, stepping quickly thither, had drawn it aside and glanced about him; but the tutor had vanished, if that was what he was looking for. ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... great power over the lower tones of her rich voice. Her whisper electrifies and penetrates; her hurried words in the passion of the scene, where she drinks the sleeping potion, and afterward in the catastrophe at the end, although very far below conversational pitch, came to the ear with distinctness and with wonderful effect. In the final scene she reached the climax of her acting, which, from the time of Tybalt's death to the end, was full of tragic power that we have never seen excelled. It will be observed that we have placed the merit of ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... window, and so we made acquaintance. Then we were fetched to go over the university, the honours of which were done us by the "grand master" in a blue and gold gown, assisted by two professors who spoke French admirably well. Aumale, being much more lettered and academic than myself, kept the conversational ball rolling brilliantly. The huge institution, in which professors and students alike seemed to me to know their work thoroughly, is admirably organised, and is venerated throughout the whole country on account of its great antiquity. To the Portuguese mind it is the fountain-head of all knowledge; ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... value to us," he said in a conversational tone. "I am talking this way to you because you can be of much more value as a willing ally than you ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... Scotsman and the Irishman," began the Skeptic, in a conversational tone, "being about to be hanged, were given their choice of a tree. 'The oak for me,' says the Englishman. 'The Scotch elm for mine,' says the Scotsman. 'Faith,' says the Irishman, 'I'll be afther takin' a gooseberry bush.' 'That's too small,' ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... desperate purpose about this. When a sentimental young man seeks a private interview with a marriageable young woman, and recklessly refuses at the outset to retain at least his cane for the solution of the intricate conversational problem of what to do with his hands, it is an infallible sign that some madly rash intention has temporarily overpowered his usual sheepish imbecility, and that he may be expected to speak and act with almost ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2., No. 32, November 5, 1870 • Various
... energy left for anything else; and even this effort quite exhausts me. Art and politics! What, in the name of heaven, do I care for art and politics, with the knife at my throat? I only utilize these things; yes, I utilize them for conversational purposes, in order to deceive others as to my true, incessant and miserable preoccupations. Laughable, is it not? Why don't you smile, Monsieur—you, who have never ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... need to pray a little more than other folks," said Cis Jewell, folding her arms, and balancing herself in a conversational attitude. "My ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... wow!" remarked Sancho, in a mild and conversational tone, sitting up and touching one paw to his head, as if he saluted by ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various
... Grandfather, "that there is no record nor tradition of your conversational abilities? It is an uncommon thing to meet with ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... man he gave him credit for a certain amount of decency, and his indignation was proportionately great the following evening when Bella announced Mr. Hardy. He made a genial remark about Shylock and a pound of flesh, but finding that it was only an excellent conversational opening, the subject of Shakespeare's plays lapsed ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... blessing of Heaven upon their simple fare, the children did ample justice to the plain but substantial viands. Mrs. Gordon wondered how they found time to eat, there was so much to be said on all sides; but talk as they would—and it is an established fact that the conversational powers of children are developed with greater brilliancy at table than elsewhere—when the repast was finished there was very little reason to complain on ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... the foot St. George watched the city editor break bread with the familiar nervous gesture with which he was wont to strip off yards of copy-paper and eat it. There was a tacit assumption that he be the conversational sun of the hour, and in fostering this understanding the host took ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... earnestness and completeness; and I revert to it, in conclusion, as their paramount failing, and one fatal in many ways to the interests of art. Our landscapes are all descriptive, not reflective, agreeable and conversational, but not impressive nor didactic. They ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... of word and gesture in the conversational method of to-day there lies the history of the long struggle of the race through volubility to refinement of expression. Du Maurier's Punch pictures take their place in the field of psychology in which the modern novel has secured its greatest ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... mother, like many another clever son, Cynicus owed his talent. She was a woman of great intellectual endowment, with highly cultivated literary tastes. Her memory was remarkable and her conversational powers very great. She read much and thought deeply. In a modest way her parlour, which attracted many young people of literary and artistic leanings, recalled the Salons of France of a century ago. She entertained charmingly with tea and cakes and delightful talk. Of ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... introduction had been gone through, the cook and Mary retired into the back kitchen to titter, for ten minutes; then returning, all giggles and blushes, they sat down to dinner. Mr. Weller's easy manners and conversational powers had such irresistible influence with his new friends, that before the dinner was half over, they were on a footing of perfect intimacy, and in possession of a full account of the delinquency of ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... "Alas! Alas!" which, by the by, no one ever says. "Awah," like "Yauh," is now a woman's word although used by Al-Hariri (Assembly of Basrah) and so Al-awwahone who cries from grief "Awah." A favourite conversational form is "Yehh" with the aspirate exasperated, but it is an expression of astonishment rather than sorrow. It enters into Europe ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... placed, and the bait laid next day. Meanwhile, that afternoon, the doctor called me aside, and put me through a conversational sort of examination. I was studiously modest, but being very fairly grounded by the admirable system of teaching pursued by Miss Frankland, I not only satisfied him, but he took occasion to compliment ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... especially recall George William Curtis, a genius of the first brilliancy and remarkable withal for his versatile conversational powers. I was talking to him on one occasion when someone inquired as to his especial work in the co-operative fold of Brook Farm. His laughing reply was, "Cleaning door knobs." George Ripley was a distinguished scholar and a prominent journalist. His wife, a daughter of Francis Dana, ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... the instinct is systematically starved, the scholars being strictly forbidden to talk among themselves, while their conversational intercourse with their teacher is limited to receiving a certain amount of dry information, and giving this back, collectively or individually, when they are expressly directed to do so. The child's instinctive desire to converse, being ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... catchwords, as it were, memoria technica, which could easily be remembered, and would recall the fuller expositions that had been based upon them. Shortly after the Buddha's time the Brahmins had their s[u]tras in Sanskrit, already a dead language. He purposely put his into the ordinary conversational idiom of the day, that is to say, into P[a]li. When the Buddha died these sayings were collected together by his disciples into what they call the Four Nik[a]yas, or "collections." These cannot have reached their final form till about fifty or sixty years afterwards. Other sayings and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... made a gesture as if to a person within whispering distance. "Your coat is on fire," she said in an ordinary conversational tone, without knowing she had spoken aloud, and Mr. Vanrevel, more than one hundred feet away, seemed particularly conscious of the pertinence of her remark. He removed the garment with alacrity, and, for the lack of the tardy water, began to use it as a flail ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... squandering there is of the voice! How little there is of the advantage that may come from conversational tones! How seldom does a man dare to acquit himself with pathos and fervor! And the men are themselves mechanical and methodical in the bad way who are most afraid of the artificial training that is given in the schools, ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... very little conversation at first. Brook did not care to talk across to Clare, and Sir Adam seemed to have said all he meant to say for the present. Lady Johnstone, who seemed to be a cheerful, conversational soul, began to talk to Mrs. Bowring, evidently attracted ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... by bits in conversational spirals, it proved to be that he had decided that the carriage needed three horses, which he had known all along; and, chiefly, that he had desired to sleep upon a little scheme for exploiting the strangers. How long he had intended to pursue his slumberous ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... my dear nephew, take it in good part, if I point out a few of the conversational faults, of which young men are apt to be guilty. It is natural that we should talk most of that in which we are most interested. Now, of all things in the world, a young man feels most interested in himself. ...
— Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford - In Ten Letters, From an Uncle to His Nephew • Edward Berens
... dictate a thoroughly good letter to his superior or to a well informed customer. Good letters raise the tone of a business house, poor letters give the idea that it is a cheapjack concern. In social life, well written letters, like good conversational powers, bring friends and introduce the writer into higher circles. A command of language is the index of culture, and the uneducated man or woman who has become wealthy or has gained any special success is eager to put on this wedding garment of refinement. If he continues to regard ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... a highly intellectual and cultivated woman, with fascinating manners, a strong will, and singularly fine conversational powers. She usually exercised a controlling influence over all with whom she associated. Happy it was for Mrs. Dexter that a friend like Mrs. De Lisle came to her in the right time, and filled her mind with right ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... confide over-much and too much in other women is because leading more circumscribed lives than men commonly lead they are driven back upon themselves and into themselves and their sisters for interests and for conversational material. ...
— 'Oh, Well, You Know How Women Are!' AND 'Isn't That Just Like a Man!' • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... effect of the sunlight through the trees upon that water," said he in a conversational way; "it is ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... astounding terms' was a courageous step, it cannot be counted for originality in the development of the verse itself. Two features of his verse, however, are original and of his own creation. The first, its conversational ease and freedom, will be found more perfectly developed in Doctor Faustus and the later tragedies. Tamburlaine and the other mighty kings, emperors and captains have little skill in converse; when they speak they orate. This is true of the speeches in the earlier plays. Peele's are long monologues, ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... admiration; for they surpass the legitimate expectations of others. He is something besides an author, and is not therefore considered merely as an author. The hearts of men are open to him, as to one of their own class; and whether he exerts himself or not in the conversational circles of his acquaintance, his silence is not attributed to pride, nor his communicativeness to vanity. To these advantages I will venture to add a superior chance of happiness in domestic life, were it only ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... offended personality; while the third category had no existence at all, so far as I was concerned, since my contempt for them was too complete. This "comme il faut"-ness of mine lay, first and foremost, in proficiency in French, especially conversational French. A person who spoke that language badly at once aroused in me a feeling of dislike. "Why do you try to talk as we do when you haven't a notion how to do it?" I would seem to ask him with my most venomous and quizzing smile. The ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... he passed the angle of the house she dodged around to its rear and stole into the dairy room, being well aware that from this position she could overhear words spoken in ordinary conversational tones in the apartment above. She had barely gained her ambush when she heard Alida ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... and dropped into the chair next to Mike's. Mike was silent and thoughtful. He was in after Bob, and to be on the eve of batting does not make one conversational. ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... task to the child will be considerably lessened, as well as much knowledge attained. The means of doing this in a variety of ways will, no doubt, suggest themselves to the intelligent teacher; but as an illustration of what we mean, the following conversational plan may not ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... than I be, an' less wore," said Sarah Ellen, but she felt better now that she had rested, and her conversational powers seemed to be refreshed by her share of the little cake. "Doctor Bangs has behaved real pretty, I can say that," she continued presently in ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... a glance up the street, timed Cissie's arrival at the front gate, picked up his hat, and walked briskly to the library in the hope of finishing any business the Captain might have, in time to encounter the octoroon. He even began making some little conversational plans with which he could meet Cissie in a simple, unstudied manner. He recalled with a certain satisfaction that he had not said a word of condemnation the night of Cissie's confession. He would make a point of that, and was prepared to argue that, since he had said nothing, he meant nothing. ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... shaped, with the wide forehead and all the other good points which invariably go with that feature; but her face was just a trifle dished. Moreover, her eye was apt to be a bit dull. She had been a pet all her life, and, like most pets, her eye partook of the human quality. It had a conversational way of brightening and growing dull. On the whole, the head of Sally had a whimsical, inquisitive expression, and by her whole carriage she seemed to be perpetually putting her nose into ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... had continued a long-continued liaison with a complaisant friend. This had lasted some twenty years of his life, and had been to him an intolerable burden. He had come to see the necessity of employing his good looks, his conversational powers, and his excellent manners on a second marriage which might be lucrative; but the complaisant lady had stood in his way. Perhaps there had been a little cowardice on his part; but at any rate he had hitherto failed. The season for such a mode of relief was not, however, ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... conversational tendencies gratuitously furnished most of these valued details, after Michael J. Cassidy had ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... revised edition. No one has done more than he to popularize the study of words, which is only another name for the study of thought. His new book has the same agreeable qualities which marked its forerunners, maintaining an easy conversational level of scholarly gossip and reflection, the middle ground between learning and information for the million. Without great philological attainments, and without any pretence of such, he gives the results of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... that he had found another turtle just as small as the already existing treasure of the same kind. This morning Quentin and Black Jack have neither of them been willing to leave me for any length of time. Black Jack simply lies curled up in a chair, but as Quentin is most conversational, he has added an element of harassing difficulty to my effort ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... dimensions. Opposite the committee room is the lavatory, &c., for the use of members. At the West end of this flat the rooms both front and back are parlours, with folding doors between, so that while one may be used for conversational purposes or such like, the other may be fitted with a piano and also with games, such as chess, draughts, &c. The upper flat, which contains also very handsome rooms, beautifully finished, is divided into two portions, one to be occupied exclusively by the Secretary, and ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... number announced that she was going to Saint Moritz in January to take part in the winter sports, whereupon everyone was full of interest and curiosity, and Dreda swept onward to another bored-looking group, and hurled another conversational arrow. ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... not an advertising campaign in your town that says: "Beginning Monday and henceforth, ours shall be known as the Conversational Theatre"? At the door let each person be ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... THE SLEEVE.—A writer in Notes and Queries gives an instance of Curry's wit, introduced after a defeat in a conversational contest with Lady Morgan. "It was the fashion then for ladies to wear very short sleeves; and Lady Morgan, albeit not a young woman, with true provincial exaggeration, wore none—a mere strap over her shoulders. Curry was walking away from her little coterie, when she called out, 'Ah! come back, ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... lines that might lead into something that would justify a gesture towards her. It began to work on him. The original clinical urge to touch her just to see what reaction would obtain changed into a personal urge that grew higher as he found that he could not kick the conversational ball in that direction. The idea of putting an arm about her waist as he had seen men embrace their girls on television was a pleasing thought; he wanted to find out if kissing was as much fun as it was ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... rise at the hour necessary to reach his work at seven. Bertha's heart warmed to him. In a certain dreamy, speculative turn of eye he was like her father—a man inventing new forms as naturally as other minds copy worn models. He was gaining in conversational powers, as he came to know Mart better, and took occasion to lay before him the plans for several inventions, small in themselves, but of ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... had ever met a white man who was not. "Yes, ma," says Samuel. I said "You must have been associating with people whom you ought not to know." Samuel fortunately not having a repartee for this, paddled on with his long paddle for a few seconds. "Where be your husband, ma?" was the next conversational bomb he hurled at me. "I no got one," I answer. "No got," says Samuel, paralysed with astonishment; and as Mrs. S., who did not know English, gave one of her vigorous drives with her paddle at this moment, Samuel as near as possible got jerked head ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... up in this conversational bow-knot, Mr. Ramsay waited to be extricated. His idea had been to convey in the most delicate and roundabout way to Bijou that he was not the man to marry any woman for her money, and that if he had seemed to like a certain person a good deal it was not because she was the daughter of a rich ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... in conversational tone. Burglars of the third type do not hiss. The citizen in the bed looked at the round end of the ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... of humorous question; Mrs. Ellison looked blank; and Mr. Arbuton, having quite forgotten what he had said to provoke this comment now, looked puzzled and answered nothing: for he had this trait also in common with the sort of Englishman for whom he was taken, that he never helped out your conversational venture, but if he failed to respond inwardly, left you with your unaccepted remark upon your hands, as it were. In his silence, Kitty fell a prey to very evil thoughts of him, for it made her harmless sally look like a blundering attack upon him. But ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... that one was delighted, I'm sure, to have an opportunity to exercise her conversational gifts for the benefit of a single man instead of ...
— Elsie's Kith and Kin • Martha Finley
... means a bungler in his speech, but he was not fluent. He hesitated, and was at a loss for words, but whatever he wrote had a wonderful flow of harmony. The right word was always in the right place. Doubtless had he devoted as much attention to the acquirement of conversational ease, as he did to skill in writing, he would have been as successful in the one art as in the other. From early life it was his great ambition to be not merely a fine but a forcible writer. He did not seek splendor ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... sort of creature with pale eyes, ash-colored hair that clung damply to her head, and a colorless complexion; her conversational powers were limited to "Yes, sir" and "No, sir" (or Ma'am if sex demanded and Annie remembered in time). But Happy Jack loved her; and when a woman loves and is loved, her existence surely is justified for ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... twenty birds in an afternoon's walk. Here, too, is the metropolis of the turtledove, and the low sound of its crooning is heard all day in summer, the other most common sound being that of magpies—their subdued, conversational chatter and their solo-singing, the chant or call which a bird will go on repeating for a hundred times. The wonder is how the doves succeed in such a place in hatching any couple of chalk-white eggs, placed on a small platform of sticks, or ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... obligato of a prohibition hymn for the group of farmers around him when he caught sight of Everett as he came across the street. Instantly his voice was lowered to a honeyed conversational pitch as he came to the edge of the porch and held out a large, fat, white hand, into which Everett laid his own ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... he still did not say anything to Bigley, and that my old school-fellow was very silent, in fact we were none of us in a conversational frame of mind, but every now and then the idea kept creeping in that old Jonas must know about that cave, and the purpose for which it was used; and then I seemed to understand my father's thoughtful manner, for it was as though this discovery was likely to widen the ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... mutely in his face, making the slightest possible passes with an imaginary fiddle bow, and stopping, as he did so, sundry imaginary strings with the fingers of his other hand. 'Twas his constant consolation in conversational troubles. While these vexed him sorely, the passes would be short and slow, and the upper hand would not be seen to work; nay, the strings on which it operated would sometimes lie concealed in the musician's pocket, and the instrument ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... relax, and begin in a quiet conversational tone as though you were speaking to one large friend. You will not find it half so bad as you imagined; really, it is like taking a cold plunge: after you are in, the water is fine. In fact, having spoken a few times you ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... During his residence abroad, he made notes and criticisms on everything he met with that was excellent, much of which he subsequently embodied in his lectures before the Royal Academy. His talents, acquirements, and his great conversational powers made his society courted; and he formed some valuable acquaintances at Rome, particularly among the English nobility and gentry, who flocked there for amusement, and who heralded his fame at home. He also sent ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... letters without demanding what species of conversational significance her mistress attached to ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... Mrs. Crawford, and a number of young and elderly figures of distinction,—that a group having formed on the younger side of the room, and transcendentalisms and theologies forming the topic, a number of deep things were said in abrupt conversational style, Sterling in the thick of it. For example, one sceptical figure praised the Church of England, in Hume's phrase, "as a Church tending to keep down fanaticism," and recommendable for its very indifferency; whereupon a transcendental ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... ridiculous midshipmen, have, in the eyes of the girl whom he has come to see, a reputation that he can never win. They're in the Service; they're so dashing; they're so charmingly extravagant; they're so tremendous in face of an emergency that their conversational limitations of "Yes" and "No" are hailed as brilliant flights of genius. Their inane anecdotes, their pointless observations are positively courted. It is they who retire to the conservatory with the ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... of Sallust is characterised by the use of old words and forms (especially in the speeches). He makes use of alliteration, extensively employs the Historic Infinitive, and shows a partiality for conversational expressions which from a literary point of view are archaic. His abrupt unperiodic style of writing (rough periods without particles of connexion) has won for Sallust his reputation for brevity. His style is, however, the expression of the writer's character, direct, ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... another series in the early summer on Shakespeare. In the winter following, his play of "Remorse," a recast of the "Osorio" of 1797, was acted in London with some success. In the winter of 1813-14 he lectured, in a "conversational" fashion, at Bristol. He also wrote irregularly for the London papers during these years. But his studies, since his return from Germany, had been directed to metaphysics, and especially to the philosophical bases of poetry and theology; and the last twenty years ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Virgil, Tacitus, and Cicero, and now and then, forgetful of the turmoil around him, he improved his acquaintance with the classics. He also studied the Spanish language, with the result that he acquired an excellent conversational knowledge of it. The lad had opinions and the courage of them, and when he saw the cause of the Spanish beginning to fail he was exasperated by the apathy of the Whigs at home, and accordingly, with the audacity of youth, ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... at her father's confusion. The latter had suddenly, as she realized, made the surprising discovery that in this calm son of the San Gregorio he had stumbled upon a student, to attempt to break a conversational lance with whom must end in disaster. His daughter's mirth brought him to a realization of the sorry figure he would present ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... the persons he is to meet in the book, and making him agreeably familiar with the country through which he is to travel in their company. Indeed, the social taste of the times has lately fully shown how advantageous the like conversational disclosures have proved to the recent republications of the celebrated "Waverley Novels," by the chief of novel-writers; and in the new series of the admirable naval tales by the distinguished American novelist, both of whom paid to the mother- country the gratifying ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... simplicity governed his argument. The flaneur, the poseur—if such he was—no longer appeared. He came close to the jurymen, leaned his hands upon the back of a chair—as it were, shut out the public, even the judge, from his circle of interest—and talked in a conversational tone. An air of confidence passed from him to the amazed yet easily captivated jury; the distance between them, so gaping during the last two days, closed suddenly up. The tension of the past estrangement, relaxing all at once, surprised the jury into an almost ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Ted uneasily, catching at overheard phrases for a conversational jumping-off place. His mind, always a little on edge now with work and bad feeding, has been too busy since they came in comparing Rose Severance with Elinor Piper, and wondering why, when one is so like a golden-skinned August pear and the ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... The literary version of these prejudices or principles is given most explicitly in the 'Lives of the Poets'—the book which is now the most readable of Johnson's performances, and which most frequently recalls his conversational style. Indeed, it is a thoroughly admirable book, and but for one or two defects might enjoy a much more decided popularity. It is full of shrewd sense and righteous as well as keen estimates of men and things. The 'Life of Savage,' written in earlier times, is the best existing portrait ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... Peace? Disarmament? China? Free love? Mere conversational bubbles to be tossed in the air and disposed of in a burst of foam. Strong meat for old man Minick who had so long been fed on pap. But he soon got used to it. Between four and five in the afternoon, in a spot known as Under The Willows, the meeting took the form of a club—an ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... His first conversational maneuver was a feint. He inquired, with a certain affected indifference, what sort of weather Durant had met with on the journey down, and what sort he had left behind him in London; and then he seemed inclined ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... results of oral reading when systematically pursued as a school study, is the effect which it has in improving the tones of the voice for ordinary conversation and discourse, and in securing some measure of orthoepy as a fixed habit of utterance. Conversational speech is notoriously slovenly. The sonority of our vowels is lost, and their distinguishing qualities are obscured; and with unnoticed frequency our consonants are either dropped or amalgamated with one another. Yet, while amendment in these matters ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... near sure you're a liar," observed F. in the pleasantest conversational tone and still in English, "but you may be merely a poor diagnostician. Perhaps your poor insides couldn't get away with that rotten meat I saw you lugging ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... not broadly, not hilariously, only to the exact shade demanded by conversational sympathy. "Then we shall agree ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... was informed that music is never performed on such occasions as these, during conversational periods, as it is considered a desecration of a high ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... took before the sick man could be brought to sign another (a duplicate) that we might have one apiece, was one of the richest scraps of genuine drollery I ever saw in all my days. How, when the business was over, we became conversational; how I was facetious, and at the same time virtuous and domestic; how I drank toasts in the beer, and stated on interrogatory that I was a married man and the father of two blessed infants; how the ladies marveled thereat; how one of the ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... less we understood, the more gallantly, the more copiously, and with still the more explanatory gestures, Mapiao returned to the assault. We could see his vanity was on the rack; being come to a place where that fine jewel of his conversational talent could earn him no respect; and he had times of despair when he desisted from the endeavour, and instants of irritation when he regarded us with unconcealed contempt. Yet for me, as the practitioner of some ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Bull,' and spent much more than he had. He mingled freely in all the London circles of thirty years ago, whose glory is still fresh in the minds of most of us, and everywhere his talent as an improvisatore, and his conversational powers, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... know Balzac, my friend,' went on the young man in a conversational tone, 'or I would tell you that, like Rastignac, war is declared between ourselves and society; but if you have not the knowledge you have the will, and that is enough for me. Come, let us make the first step ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... Robert became tearful and whining before he was finally bumped protesting into bed. Theodore and Duncan prolonged their ablutions until the noise of shouting, splashing, and thumping in the bathroom brought Mother to the foot of the stairs. Rebecca was conversational. She lay with her slender arms locked behind her head on the pillow, and talked, as Julie had talked on that memorable night five years ago. Margaret, restless in the hot darkness, wondering whether the maddening ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... francs. The first order a pupil receives, on presenting himself for instruction, is this: "Say rose." Now your Parisian rather prides himself on a peculiar pronunciation of the letter r. He neither rolls it like an Italian, nor does he make anything like the noise standing for r in our conversational English,—something like uhr-ose,—a sound said to be peculiar to our language. A Parisian rolls his r, by making his uvula vibrate, keeping the tongue quite still: producing a peculiar gurgling sound. This is an abomination in the ears of the Conservatoire. "Ne grasseyez donc pas, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... with any except the most popular boys. Why, Bernice, I'm cut in on every few feet—and who does most of it? Why, those very sad birds. No girl can afford to neglect them. They're the big part of any crowd. Young boys too shy to talk are the very best conversational practice. Clumsy boys are the best dancing practice. If you can follow them and yet look graceful you can follow a baby tank across a ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... It shows what conversational resources are always at hand in a seaport town, that the boatman with whom I first happened to visit this burning vessel had been thrice at sea on ships similarly destroyed, and could give all the particulars of their fate. I know no class of uneducated ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... the oldest, and with hardly an exception. In spite of their piety, they could twang off an oath with Sir Toby Belch in person. There was nothing so high or so low, in heaven or earth or in the human body, but a woman of this neighbourhood would whip out the name of it, fair and square, by way of conversational adornment. My landlady, who was pretty and young, dressed like a lady and avoided patois like a weakness, commonly addressed her child in the language of a drunken bully. And of all the swearers that I ever heard, commend me to an old lady in Gondet, a village of the Loire. I was making a sketch, ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Hogg's co-operation. We believe it to be pretty well known that the offensive language attributed to the Shepherd in the "Noctes" has no more to do with Mr. Hogg than by attempting to imitate his conversational style. This impropriety, which is beyond a literary joke, was reprobated some months since by the Quarterly Review, but here the offending parties are properly visited with a burst of honest indignation which may not ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 543, Saturday, April 21, 1832. • Various
... not yet quite come out—they are the best talkers. As for your young misses, they are only put about the table to look at—like the flowers in the centre-piece. Their blushing youth and natural modesty preclude them from easy, confidential, conversational ABANDON which forms the delight of the intercourse with their dear mothers. It is to these, if he would prosper in his profession, that the Dining-out Snob should address himself. Suppose you sit next to one of these, how pleasant it ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... few seconds, he regains courage and reappears, having probably communicated the intelligence to the other frogs; for many big heads and many big eyes appear, in all parts of the pond, looking like so many hippopotami on a small scale. Soon a conversational "Wurk; wurk, wurk," begins: you don't understand it; luckily, perhaps, as from the swelling in their throats it is evident that the colony is outraged by the intrusion, and the remarks passing are not complimentary to the intruder. These frogs are ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... belonged to a generation where these men were remembered, and where it was common enough to hear stories of their Attic nights, those noctes caenaeque deorum which really in brilliancy must have far transcended anything that Europe could boast of conversational power. The youth of the time I speak of were full of these traditions. "If I am not the rose, I grew near one," was no foolish boast; and certainly there was both in the tone of conversation and the temper of society a sentiment that showed ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... melody was always remarkable. But to-day he whistled falsely and shrilly between his teeth. At last he met my eye. He winced slightly, but recovered himself, and going to the fence, stood for a few moments on his hands, with his bare feet quivering in the air. Then he turned toward me and threw out a conversational preliminary. ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... me to the nearest monte game, where the "spieler"—a smooth-faced lad of not more than nineteen—sat behind his three-legged little table, green covered, and idly shifting the cards about maintained a rather bored flow of conversational incitement to bets. ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... at Vivey, the person whose name excited the curiosity and the conversational powers of the villagers—Marie-Julien de Buxieres—ensconced in his unpretentious apartment in the Rue Stanislaus, Nancy, still pondered over the astonishing news contained in the Auberive notary's first letter. The announcement of his inheritance, dropping from the ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... the other day. We find her very little changed from what she was when she came to take tea and spend an evening at our little red cottage, among the Berkshire hills, and went away so dissatisfied with my conversational performances, and so laudatory of my brow and eyes, while so severely criticising my poor mouth and chin. She is the funniest little old fairy in person whom one can imagine, with a huge nose, to which all the rest of ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... deserves to rank with Wendell Phillips' "The Lost Arts." In truth it is very much like Phillips' lecture. In "The Lost Arts" Phillips tells in easy conversational way of the wonderful things that once existed; and Starr King relates in the same manner the story of some of the wonderful things that are right here and all around us. It reveals the mind of the man, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... breakfast, Bertram managed to separate the aunt from the niece by sitting between them. It was long, however, before Mr. M'Gabbery gave up the battle. When he found that an interloper was interfering with his peculiar property, he began to tax his conversational powers to the utmost. He was greater than ever about Ajalon, and propounded some very startling theories with reference to Emmaus. He recalled over and over again the interesting bits of their past ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... and Rustum— a tale of the Tartar wastes. One of his noblest poems, called Rugby Chapel, describes the strong and elevated character of his father, the Head-master of Rugby. —His prose is remarkable for its lucidity, its pleasant and almost conversational rhythm, and its perfection ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... Countess Galotti, Virginius into Count Odoardo, an Italian prince takes the place of Appius Claudius, and a chamberlain that of the unblushing minister of his lusts, &c. It is not properly a familiar tragedy, but a court tragedy in the conversational tone, to which in some parts the sword of state and the hat under the arm as essentially belong as to many French tragedies. Lessing wished to transplant into the renownless circle of the principality of Massa Carara the violent injustice ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... examples of conversational or descriptive art which, in a large and mixed society, would, even if possible, be hardly so much as perceptible. I may take as two other examples Sophy, Lady Roden, and Lady Dorothy Nevill. Unlike Lady Dorothy, whose ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... new meaning and a sort of tragic pathos in the face of death. The facts of his life are summed up, and the features of his character are brought out as if by accident in the course of the defence. The conversational manner, the seeming want of arrangement, the ironical simplicity, are found to result in a perfect work of art, which is ...
— Apology - Also known as "The Death of Socrates" • Plato
... which high themes and spirited eloquence find spontaneous and unaffected expression through the same medium as might be employed in a deliberate definition of the nature of poetry. The various sets of lectures are pitched in the same conversational key and are found adequate to conveying a notion of the grandeur of Milton as well as of the ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... she went on alone. His last words had impressed her. Everything he had said seemed somehow to have a special meaning under its obvious conversational sense. Till she went in at the door of the cottage she felt his eyes resting ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... to announce, said the lieutenant, facing the company and taking on an easy conversational tone. "At rest!... You've done good work in the storehouse here, men. I'm glad I have such a willing bunch of men under me. And I certainly hope that we can manage to make as many promotions as possible—as many ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... although I cannot yet state this in final or positive terms, that, at least in most cases, such an unravelment and resurrection of the past life history can be obtained by an analysis of the dream conducted in the ordinary, waking state, and the usual conversational mode of history-taking ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... from cradle to bed, or paced the room, or sat and sang, or lay and cried herself, in sheer despair of rest; to wandering away on lonely walks; to stepping often into a neighbor's to discuss the election or the typhoid in the village; to forgetting that his wife's conversational capacities could extend beyond Biddy and teething; to forgetting that she might ever hunger for a twilight drive, a sunny sail, for the sparkle and freshness, the dreaming, the petting, the caresses, all the silly little lovers' habits of their early married ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... of Mr. Blaine's remarks his well-modulated voice assumed a conversational tone, tinged with sarcastic bitterness as he occasionally indulged in bantering allusions to his lack of legal education. As he proceeded he became more impressive in words and action, and before he had concluded he had advanced between the desks into the centre aisle, where, with head erect and ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore |
