"Dialogue" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... if they had been shot; they fixed their gaze on Filippo. He began talking rapidly to them in Italian, gesturing freely. They replied in the same language. For fully ten minutes the heated dialogue continued. Jim and his mates listened in silence, now and then catching a word they had learned from Filippo, but not comprehending the drift ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... colours of an incredible sunset. Rob Roy trapped in the Tolbooth, and confronted with Bailie Nicol Jarvie, draws no sword, leaps from no window, affects none of the dazzling external acts upon which contemporary romance depends, yet that plain and humorous dialogue is full of the essential philosophy of romance which is an almost equal betting upon man and destiny. Perhaps the most profoundly thrilling of all Scott's situations is that in which the family of Colonel Mannering are waiting for the carriage which may or may ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... to make this experiment. A few passes threw Mr. Vankirk into the mesmeric sleep. His breathing became immediately more easy, and he seemed to suffer no physical uneasiness. The following conversation then ensued:—V. in the dialogue representing the patient, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... window, saw Harry's dog snuffing along the path to the wood, thought he could not be far from the house, and went to make inquiries; and now when Sir Ulick and King Corny were left alone together, a dialogue—a sort of single combat, without any object but to try each other's powers and temper—ensued between them; in which the one on the offensive came on with a tomahawk, and the other stood on the defensive ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... the supreme manifestation of the measure for dramatic purposes. In his plays it modulates and adapts itself to the changing emotions of every speaker, "from merely colloquial dialogue to strains of impassioned soliloquy, from comic repartee to tragic eloquence, from terse epigrams to elaborate descriptions." It is customary to distinguish three 'periods' in Shakespeare's blank verse, corresponding ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... Eugenius, thou wilt smile at the remembrance of a short dialogue which passed betwixt us the moment I was going to set out: —I must tell ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne
... tried first a recognised method of viewing questions from divergent points that has always attracted me and which I have never succeeded in using, the discussion novel, after the fashion of Peacock's (and Mr. Mallock's) development of the ancient dialogue; but this encumbered me with unnecessary characters and the inevitable complication of intrigue among them, and I abandoned it. After that I tried to cast the thing into a shape resembling a little the double personality of Boswell's Johnson, a sort of interplay between monologue ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... don't know," denied Roberta promptly. "As long as Miss Copeland herself is pleased with us, nobody else matters. And Miss Copeland is delighted—she sent me special word just now. So stiffen your backbone, Petruchio, and make this next dialogue with me as rapid as you know. Come back at me like flash-fire—don't lag a breath—we'll stir the house to laughter, or know the ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... town, to summon the inhabitants to surrender. The envoys were invited to a private conference with the chief men of the island; and between the representatives of Athens and the Melian nobles there ensued an extraordinary dialogue, which is given at great length by the historian, and is commonly known as the Melian Debate. We cannot suppose that the arguments here placed by Thucydides in the mouth of the Athenian speaker were really uttered as set ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... ones like Lettice, and romantic ones like Rosalind; and no incongruity seems to be found in matching a beautiful shepherdess named Dido with a Great Shepherd called Lobbin, or when the verse requires it, Lobb. And not merely the speakers in the dialogue are shepherds; every one is in their view a shepherd. Chaucer is the "god of shepherds," and ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... dialogue went on for what might have been an hour. Far ports and foreign streets, full sails and thronged inns, the fountains of paved courts, the market squares of dark and vivid nations, blossomed from the tongue of this chair-bound woman ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... "a dialogue matrimonial, which passed between Jonathan Wild, Esquire, and Laetitia his wife" ('nee' Laetitia Snap), "Laetitia asks, 'But pray, Mr. Wild, why b—ch? Why did you suffer such ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... write something like them. Each manuscript was a separate tragedy; and often there would be a letter or a preface to make certain that one did not miss the sense of it. Here would be a settlement-worker, burning with a message, but unable to draw a character or to write dialogue; here would be a business-man, who had studied up the dialect of the region where he spent his summer vacations, and whose style was so crude that one winced as he turned the pages; here would be a poor bookkeeper, or a type-writer, or other cog in the business machine, who had read of the ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... earlier treaty provisions, including the primacy of Roman Catholicism as the Italian state religion. Present concerns of the Holy See include religious freedom, international development, the Middle East, terrorism, interreligious dialogue and reconciliation, and the application of church doctrine in an era of rapid change and globalization. About 1 billion people worldwide profess ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... with the rise of the curtain, when the moody Varville, seated before the fire, interrogated Nanine. Decidedly, there was a new tang about this dialogue. I had never heard in the theater lines that were alive, that presupposed and took for granted, like those which passed between Varville and Marguerite in the brief encounter before her friends entered. This introduced the most brilliant, worldly, the most enchantingly gay scene I had ever looked ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... curtain was dropped, for this was the signal that the nun and her mother had arrived. An opening was made in the crowd as they passed into the church, and the girl, kneeling down, was questioned by the bishop, but I could not make out the dialogue, which was carried on in a low voice. She then passed into the convent by a side door, and her mother, quite exhausted and nearly in hysterics, was supported through the crowd to a place beside us, in front of ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... Navajo was coming up at a regular gallop. As the dialogue ended, he had got within about three hundred yards of the spring, and still pressed forward without slackening his pace. We kept our gaze fixed upon him in breathless silence, ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... you that a kind of poem in dialogue (in blank verse), or drama, from which the translation is an extract, begun last summer in Switzerland, is finished; it is in three acts, but of a very wild, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... on a Socratic dialogue in which I could see little point. I told him so, and he laughed. "'I am not sure that I am very clear myself. But yes—there IS a point. Supposing you knew-not by sight or by instinct, but by sheer intellectual knowledge, as I know the truth of a mathematical ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... During this brief dialogue Jerome was stealthily running his hands through the lining of my cloak until he comprehended I had misled him. I could almost put his thought in words. Together we arose, laying each our hands upon the half-closed door, he to hold it, I to open it, steady-eyed, and ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... Tell me but this.]—This little dialogue is very characteristic of Aeschylus. Euripides would have done it at three times the length and made all the points clear. In Aeschylus the subtlety is there, but it is not easy ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... was a chance, but in his eyes a providential chance, which put the Hortensius of Cicero between his hands. Augustin was about nineteen, still a student; according to the order which prevailed in the schools, the time had come for him to read and explain this philosophical dialogue. He had no curiosity about the book. He took it from his sense of duty as a student, because it figured on the schedule. He unrolled the book, and began it, doubtless with calm indifference. All of a sudden, a great ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... some amusing anecdotes by the late Dr. Walsh; and in the Settlers, a dialogue, by Miss Leslie, of Philadelphia, are a few touching points of distinction between savage and civilized life; the Indian Island, by L.E.L., is more of a story; a Walk in a Flower Garden is from the accomplished ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 576 - Vol. 20 No. 576., Saturday, November 17, 1832 • Various
... amusement. Once when it was a question of Mill's doctrine of cost of production as compared with that of a leading modern collectivist, he leant forward and supplied a correction of something Wharton had said. Wharton instantly put down his cigarette and addressed him in another tone. A rapid dialogue passed between them, the dialogue of experts, sharp, allusive, elliptical, in the midst of which the host gave the signal for joining ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... there a curtain of gaudy chintz, half drawn, marked the resting-place of a sybarite. A leg hung over the edge very white and lifeless. An arm stuck straight out with a dark palm turned up, and thick fingers half closed. Two light snores, that did not synchronise, quarrelled in funny dialogue. Singleton stripped again—the old man suffered much from prickly heat—stood cooling his back in the doorway, with his arms crossed on his bare and adorned chest. His head touched the beam of the deck above. ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... had been received from his own Colonel. So I said, "Then let my men through, sir," and rode on through the lines, followed by the grinning Rough Riders, whose attention had been completely taken off the Spanish bullets, partly by my dialogue with the regulars, and partly by the language I had been using to themselves as I got the lines forward, for I had been joking with some and swearing at others, as the exigencies of the case seemed to demand. ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... true a sense of proportion that in scenes even of coarse derision, almost bordering on buffoonery, the central figure remained unsoiled and unaffected by his surroundings. A writer less filled with the religious sense must have been strongly tempted to descend to biting dialogue, in which his hero should silence his adversaries by superiority in the use of their own weapon. A truer instinct warned our author that any such scene must immediately tend to a lowering of character. ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... instance of the prophetic force of Mr. Jingle's imagination; this dialogue occurring in the year 1827, and the Revolution ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... Cage. She has many wise utterances on this phase of the worry question. For instance, in referring to the mad race for wealth and position that keeps a man away from home so many hours of the day that his wife and child scarce know him she introduces the following dialogue: ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... pause here, while the speaker presumably filled his pipe. Then some one drew an audible sigh of content; and a kind of dialogue took place—though there was but the one voice full of quaint lifts and falls. Garth and Natalie, smiling ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... good memory, a fertile fancy, a ready wit, fluency of speech, and a brazen countenance, so that you shall tell a man a most bare-faced falsehood, and afterwards adduce such connected proofs as especially characterize actual facts. The following dialogue is a specimen of the talents of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various
... or well known children's story, and put it into the form of a little play for children. Find a story that is rather short, and that has a good deal of dialogue in it. In writing the play, try to make ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... seems to have led Galileo to expect that there might be some corresponding change in the attitude of the Papal authorities on the great question of the stability of the earth. He accordingly proceeded with the preparation of the chief work of his life, "The Dialogue of the two Systems." It was submitted for inspection by the constituted authorities. The Pope himself thought that, if a few conditions which he laid down were duly complied with, there could be no objection to the ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... dread, became an object of diversion; every one took pleasure in watching the progress of their ingenious work. I was careful not to divulge the secret to strangers. If any one, coming on business, passed outside the arch while I was standing before the hanging nests, some such brief dialogue as ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... assent, and a broad-brimmed straw hat was passed rapidly from hand to band. It was half full of silver when it reached O'Flaherty. The Advertiser had never before had such a circulation, for the crowd had rapidly increased during the preceding dialogue, ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... perhaps the most important single element in the play. In the original version the scene in the chancel was carried by dialogue but production showed the mistake. From the time that the music begins, it, with the pantomimic action of the actors is all sufficient to interpret the mood and meaning ...
— Why the Chimes Rang: A Play in One Act • Elizabeth Apthorp McFadden
... and clarinet repeat it over a counterpoint formed by the Fate theme (2 horns), and the curtain opens to the accompaniment of the Forest motive. This latter theme, with the motive of Fate, underscores the earlier portions of the dialogue between Golaud and Melisande. At Golaud's words: "Oh! you are beautiful!" we hear (page 7, measure 1) an ardent phrase in the strings expressive of his awakened passion for ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman
... for the Theatre-Lyrique, Paris, spoken dialogue was used in place of the recitatives subsequently added by the composer when the work passed, ten years later, into the repertoire of the Opera. In its earlier form, therefore, it belonged to the category of opera-comique, in which tenors were then ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... begins to poison the Moor's mind is admirable in the situations and movements of the actors. A great variety is given to the dialogue by the minute directions set down for the guidance of the players. It would be tedious to give them in detail; but I must point out the truth of one action, near the end. The poison is working; but as yet ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... poor Madame, who innocently left them to select their own lessons. Sometimes they would repeat the same lessons three days running, making grimaces at us to say nothing. Sometimes Gatty managed so to arrange it, that, during four or five long pages of dialogue, all she had to say was, "Et Tartuffe" "Le Pauvre-homme" two or three times, and then she received the good jeton necessary for such a ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... our monstrous, momentous dialogue. I can't now make out how long that dialogue went on. It spread itself, I know, in heavy fragments over either three days or four. I remember myself grouped with Marion, talking sitting on our bed in her room, talking standing in our dining-room, saving this thing or that. Twice ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... (1662) was entitled The Coffee Scuffle, and professed to give a dialogue between "a learned knight and a pitifull pedagogue," and contained an amusing account of a house where the Puritan element was still in the ascendant. A numerous company is present, and each little group being occupied with its own subject, the general effect is that ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... in Edinburgh, wrote a rhyming dialogue between two rustics, on the battle of Sheriff-muir: Burns was in nowise pleased with the way in which the reverend rhymer handled the Highland clans, and wrote ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... the post can deliver them. If only one feels like writing, he should pour forth his heart to his friend, although that friend remain as silent as the grave. It would be as absurd to say that either party "owes the letter," as to charge him who had the penultimate word in a dialogue with the duty of making the first remark the next time he encounters her who had the last word. When the topic of immediate interest has been disposed of, a correspondence is over. It matters as little who contributed the larger proportion to it, as who contributes the most to a dialogue. When ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... When one contemplates all this from the point of view of art alone one cannot but be grateful that the supreme office of the Church should be the playing of the tragedy without the shedding of blood: the mystical presentation, by means of dialogue and costume and gesture even, of the Passion of her Lord; and it is always a source of pleasure and awe to me to remember that the ultimate survival of the Greek chorus, lost elsewhere to art, is to be found in the servitor answering the ...
— De Profundis • Oscar Wilde
... therefore incapable of naming rightly what they had failed to apprehend correctly. Plato's view of actual language, as far as it can be made out from the critical and negative rather than didactic and positive dialogue of "Kratylos," seems to have been very much the same as his view of actual government. Both fall short of the ideal, and both are to be tolerated only in so far as they participate in the perfections of an ideal state ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... who was a pupil of William Byrd, was the author of the first systematic treatise on music published in this country—"A plain and easy Introduction to practical Music," 1597, quaintly set down in form of a dialogue. The verses in his collections are mere airy trifles, and hardly bear to be separated from ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... embroidered with tinsel made a deep impression on her. When the king first approached, she thought him very imposing. He was going a-hunting, and was followed by a numerous train. He stopped short in front of the young girl and the following dialogue ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... had the man's words penetrated to the cell of Ivan Petrofsky, that the exile called out something. The guard started, hastened to that cell door, and for a few seconds there was an excited dialogue in Russian. ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Glider - or, Seeking the Platinum Treasure • Victor Appleton
... one-sided—dialogue. To the men marching immediately behind, it sounds like something between a soliloquy and a chat over ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... astonished. These bon-mots were followed by an account of how Gautier wrote his Sunday feuilleton, and how he and Balzac had once nearly come to blows. They had agreed to collaborate. Balzac was to contribute the scenario, Gautier the dialogue. One morning Balzac came with the scenario of the first act. "Here it is, Gautier! I suppose you can let me have it back finished by to-morrow afternoon?" And the old gentleman would chirp along in this fashion till midnight. I would then accompany him to his rooms ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... being only beautiful, the maxims being only noble and just, and the piece being cold, people no longer felt anything more than the coldness. Nothing is more beautiful than Virgil's second canto; recite it on the stage, it will bore: on the stage one must have passion, live dialogue, action. People soon returned to ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... days brought back, Borrow himself being horsed on the back of James Martineau, according to the picturesque legend, for such a thrashing that he had to lie in bed a fortnight and must bear the marks of it while he was flesh and blood. Borrow celebrated this escapade by a ballad in dialogue called "The Wandering Children and the Benevolent Gentleman. An Idyll of the Roads." {13a} There may have been another escapade of the same kind, for Dr Knapp {13b} prints an account of how Borrow, at the age of fifteen, and two schoolfellows ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... the delineation is obtained by engraving or painting. For, as I pointed out to you in my Fifth Lecture, everything is seen by the eye as patches of color, and of color only;—a fact which the Greeks knew well; so that when it becomes a question in the dialogue of Minos, "[Greek: tini onti te opsei horatai ta horomena]," the answer is "[Greek: aisthesei taute te dia ton ophthalmon delouse hemin ta chromata]."—"What kind of power is the sight with which we see things? ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... a rickety bed, holding a black cat in her arms, with five or six more purring around her. The two old cronies held together a long discourse of which, most likely, I was the subject. At the end of the dialogue, which was carried on in the patois of Forli, the witch having received a silver ducat from my grandmother, opened a box, took me in her arms, placed me in the box and locked me in it, telling me not to be frightened—a piece of advice which would certainly have had the contrary effect, if I had ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... between the Princess Hermonthis and her foot—which appeared to be endowed with a special life of its own—a very fantastic dialogue in a most ancient Coptic tongue, such as might have been spoken thirty centuries ago in the syrinxes of the land of Ser. Luckily I understood Coptic perfectly well ...
— The Mummy's Foot • Theophile Gautier
... through my mind was perhaps as subtle as the finest sophistry; it was a sort of dialogue between the mind and the conscience. "If I should lose Brigitte?" I said to the mind.—"She departs with you," said the conscience.—"If she deceives me?"—"How can she deceive you? Has she not made out her will asking for prayers for you?"—"If Smith loves her?"—"Fool! What does ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... 1614 was not the only utterance in the same strain that came from Helwisse's conventicle of London Baptists. In 1615 there appeared in print "Objections answered by way of Dialogue, wherein is proved, by the Law of God, by the Law of our Land, and by His Majesty's many testimonies, that no man ought to be persecuted for his Religion, so he testifie his allegeance by the oath appointed by Law." The author, or one of the authors, of this Dialogue, which is even more ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... of abstract thought great advances have been made on the Protagoras or the Phaedrus, and even on the Republic. But there is a corresponding diminution of artistic skill, a want of character in the persons, a laboured march in the dialogue, and a degree of confusion and incompleteness in the general design. As in the speeches of Thucydides, the multiplication of ideas seems to interfere with the power of expression. Instead of the equally diffused grace and ease of the earlier dialogues there ...
— Philebus • Plato
... thinking of the girl—or as the scientific might say, Nature was working her plans for the next generation under the cloak of a dialogue on linen. He could not read her individual character, owing to the confusing effect of her likeness to a woman whom he had valued too late. He could not help seeing in her all that he knew of another, and veiling in her all that did not harmonize with his sense ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... expect such hints of what is like to happen before long. I suppose, if some near friend were to watch one who was looking over such a pressing letter, he might possibly see a slight shadow flit over the reader's features, and some such dialogue might follow as that between Othello and Iago, after "this honest creature" has been giving breath to his ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... if he thought that Racine had strength sufficient to make him the equal of Corneille. "Sire," said the comic poet, "Racine has already surpassed Corneille by the harmonious elegance of his versification, and by the natural, true sensibility of his dialogue; his situations are never fictitious; all his words, his phrases, come from the heart. Racine alone is a true poet, for ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... been a close and attentive observer of nature and manners,—abounding in wit and humour,—and a pious and religious man. He was also a soldier, a good fisherman, and a warm admirer of Queen Elizabeth, of whom he gives a beautiful character in "A Dialogue full of pithe and pleasure, upon the Dignitie or Indignitie of Man," 4to., 1603, on the reverse of ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 26. Saturday, April 27, 1850 • Various
... dialogue the Indians looked from one speaker to another with keen interest, although none but their chief understood a word of what was said; and Stalker took advantage of their attention being turned for the moment from himself to carry out what Tolly had styled his "little game," all ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... has always been a source of perplexity to the student of Plato. While in fancy and humour, and perfection of style and metaphysical originality, this dialogue may be ranked with the best of the Platonic writings, there has been an uncertainty about the motive of the piece, which interpreters have hitherto not succeeded in dispelling. We need not suppose that Plato used ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... bells, the merry Christmas bells, Their music all our pleasure tells. (Repeat, singing tra la la whenever necessary to give the rhythm. They pause in groups in center, right, and left; some sit, others stand, and change their positions during the dialogue) ...
— Christmas Entertainments • Alice Maude Kellogg
... an eccentric functionary named Jervoise. I have never been quite able to understand his odd hypothesis about Mr. Pickwick being "the gentleman who had the waters bottled and sent to Clapham." But how characteristic the dialogue on the occasion! It will be seen that this M.C. cannot credit the notion of anyone of such importance as Mr. Pickwick "never having been in Ba- ath." His ludicrous and absurd, "Not bad—not bad! Good—good. He, he, re-markable!" showed how it struck him. A man of such ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... what they are: with a Dialogue between a Whore, a Pimp, a Pander, an old Bawd, and a Prodigal Spend-Thrift ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... slyly, at the conclusion of this little dialogue, and finding that he had grown thoughtful and appeared in nowise disposed to volunteer any observations, contented himself with lashing the pony until ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... This circumstance was so notorious at the time, that it occasioned a poetical satire in a dialogue between Motteux and his patron Henningham—preserved in that vast flower-bed or dunghill, for it is both, of "Poems on Affairs of State," vol. ii. 251. The patron, in his zeal to omit no possible distinction ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... to be seated, he no more thought of doing so than if it had been in the presence of the Persian king. I then handed my lamp to him, telling him (as was true) it contained all the oil I had in the house, and protesting I should be happier to finish my Dialogue in the morning. He took the lamp into my bedroom, and appeared to be much refreshed on his return. Nevertheless, he treated his chair with great delicacy and circumspection, and evidently was afraid of breaking it by too sudden a descent. I did not revert to the horse: but he went on of ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... the apprehension that it may be a ballad toned down. Dr. Grubitz has suggested this view of the Annal of 755, in which there is a fight in a Saxon castle (burh). The graphic description of the place, the dramatic order of the incidents, and the life-like dialogue of the parley, might well be the work of ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... of each other's hands, just as the boys do in "churning butter," but instead of turning around under their arms they turn half way, put one arm up over their head, bringing their right or left sides together, one facing one direction and one the other; then, standing still, the following dialogue ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... dialogue, at any rate, had the good effect of wakening Audrey to the practical aspects of her problem. Before their engagement could be announced, it was clear that Ted ought to be properly introduced to her friends. However she ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... angling is to see the fish Cut with her golden ores the siluer streame, And greedily deuoure the treacherous baite: So angle we for Beatrice, who euen now, Is couched in the wood-bine couerture, Feare you not my part of the Dialogue ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... so trifling as it seems. A great deal of nonsense has been written about imperfect measures in Shakespeare, and of the admirable dramatic effect produced by filling up the gaps of missing syllables with pauses or prolongations of the voice in reading. In rapid, abrupt, and passionate dialogue this is possible, but in passages of continuously level speech it is barbarously absurd. I do not believe that any of our old dramatists has knowingly left us a single imperfect verse. Seeing in what a haphazard way and in how mutilated a form their plays ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... commenced a vehement conversation with her in French. She responded in the same tongue. The dialogue ended, he turned to me ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... This little dialogue is a perfect piece of dialectic, in which granting the 'common principle,' there is no escaping from the conclusion. It is anticipated at the beginning by the dream of Socrates and the parody of Homer. The personification ...
— Crito • Plato
... mind would have been affected in the same way had she been reading his words instead of listening to them. She could not let him know that another face was often more distinct to her imagination than his to her actual sight, and that her thoughts were frequently more busy with a remembered dialogue than with this in which she was engaged. She had abundantly safe-guarded herself against serious misconstruction, but if gossip were making her its subject, it would be inconsiderate not ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... OF THE CHAMBER, who had entered during the last dialogue, and had been standing at a distance and listening to it with visible expressions of the deepest interest, advances in extreme agitation, and throws ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... lines later, relenting, he adds: "Now stop, traveller...within this narrow resting-place,"[23] and then we get the whole story. Sometimes a dramatic, lifelike touch is given by putting the inscription into the form of a dialogue between the dead and those who are left behind. Upon a stone found near Rome runs the inscription:[24] "Hail, name dear to us, Stephanus,...thy Moschis and thy Diodorus salute thee." To which the dead man replies: "Hail ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... the dialogue with a breezy exclamation, that he had seen a great picter outside of the place where the fat man was exhibitin'. Tried to get in at half-price, but the man at the door looked at his teeth and said he ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... her questions, and to receive the desired answers. I observed also, that she let go all her bow-lines, which seemed much to deaden her way, of which there still remained sufficient, notwithstanding, to carry her well clear of us. The following dialogue then passed, the Englishman asking the questions, of course, that being a privilege expressly appropriated to the public vessel ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... Ned interrupted, fearful of a long, involved dialogue between the two servants. "Tell me what ...
— The Boy Scout Camera Club - The Confession of a Photograph • G. Harvey Ralphson
... contemporaneity. But the chief source of external evidence is other literature, where we may find the book in question referred to or quoted. Such other literature may be by another author, as when Aristotle refers to a dialogue of Plato's, or Shakespeare quotes Marlowe; or may be other work of the author himself, as when Aristotle in the Ethics refers to his own Physics, or Chaucer in The Canterbury Tales mentions as his own The Legend of Good Women, and in The Legend gives a ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... gained information of the London shops where they were to be procured; she had learned to read medical prescriptions for the composition of drugs. She was at her Spanish still, not behind him in the ordinary dialogue, and able to correct him on points of Spanish history relating to fortresses, especially the Basque. A French bookseller had supplied her with the Vicomte d'Eschargue's recently published volume of a Travels in Catalonia. Chillon saw paragraphs marked, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... really very fine. This is the only kind of literary work which can be done in odd moments, for it requires long intervals of reflection, and does not demand the elaborate pruning essential to a finished style. One can't make a task-work of dialogue; there must be biting touches, summings-up, and flashes of wit, which are the blossoms of the mind, and come rather by inspiration than reflection. This sort of intellectual sport is very much in my line. I assist Gaston in ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... rabbis of Lithuania and Volhynia addressed a request to Levinsohn to write a book against this horrid libel. At their suggestion he published his work Efes Damim, "No Blood!" (Vilna, 1837), [1] in the form of a dialogue between a Jewish sage and a Greek-Orthodox patriarch ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... between two or more persons, reported in writing, a form of literature invented by the Greeks for purposes of rhetorical entertainment and instruction, and scarcely modified since the days of its invention. A dialogue is in reality a little drama without a theatre, and with scarcely any change of scene. It should be illuminated with those qualities which La Fontaine applauded in the dialogue of Plato, namely vivacity, fidelity of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... Perhaps that Italian play might be called Galeotto to Stephen Birkenholt. It affected him all the more because he was not distracted by the dialogue, but was only powerfully touched by the music, and, in the gestures of the lovers, felt all the force of sympathy. It was to him like a kind of prophetic mirror, revealing to him the true meaning of all he had ever felt for Dennet Headley, and of his ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... at the time—talking with himself, as it were, all about it. He began this one morning as he lay on the grass beside him, and that was the position in which he found he could best thus soliloquize. Now and then but not often Leopold would interrupt him, and perhaps turn the monologue into dialogue, but even then Wingfold would hardly ever look at him: he would not disturb him with more of his presence than he could help, or allow the truth to be flavoured with more of his individuality than was unavoidable. For every individuality, ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... until his wig shook again; and who roared and bellowed out his bombast, until every phrase swelled upon the ear like the sound of a kettle-drum. I might as well have attempted to fill out his clothes as his characters. When we had a dialogue together, I was nothing before him, with my slender voice and discriminating manner. I might as well have attempted to parry a cudgel with a small sword. If he found me in any way gaining ground upon him, he would take refuge in his mighty voice, and throw his tones like peals of ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," 'passim'. Never was any plan so incongruous and absurd as the groundwork of this production. The entrance of Thunder and Lightning prologuising to Bayes' tragedy [('vide The Rehearsal'), 'British Bards'], unfortunately takes away the merit of originality from the dialogue between Messieurs the Spirits of Flood and Fell in the first canto. Then we have the amiable William of Deloraine, "a stark moss-trooper," videlicet, a happy compound of poacher, sheep-stealer, and highwayman. The propriety of his magical lady's injunction not to read can only ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... distinctly his own. His personality was interesting and lovable, quickly responsive to a variety of human nature. No play of his was ever wholly worthless, because of that personal equation which lent youth and spontaneity to much of his dialogue. When he attained popular fame, he threw off his dramas—whether original or adapted from the French and German—with a rapidity and ease that did much to create a false impression as to his haste and casualness. But ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The Moth and the Flame • Clyde Fitch
... wind-demons might have been able to see the portions of a dialogue pass to and fro between the exhorter and ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... to realize that the woman would have the last word if the dialogue lasted until morning, ended it with ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... was followed by that of two of the officials of the Customs—vulgar, illiterate men, who, seating themselves at the cabin table, with a familiar nod to the captain, and a blank stare at us, commenced the following dialogue:— ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... I suppose you have him with you. Stella is just now showing a white leg, and putting it into the slipper. Present my service to her, and tell her I am engaged to the Dean, and desire she will come too: or, Dingley, can't you write a note? This is Stella's morning dialogue, no, morning speech I mean.—Morrow, sirrahs, and let me rise as well as you; but I promise you Walls can't dine with the Dean to-day, for she is to be at Mrs. Proby's just after dinner, and to go with Gracy Spencer(17) ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... great classics in ethical theory; and although its full meaning will not appear until we deal directly with the problem of government, I must allude to it here for the sake of the principle involved. The sophist of the dialogue, one Thrasymachus, attempts to overthrow Socrates's conclusion that virtue is essentially beneficent, by pointing to the case of the tyrant, who is eminent and powerful, as every one would wish to be, but who is at the same time wholly unscrupulous. ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... on the station platform an hour before. The bows, the hand-shakes, the strained smiles of greeting were all repeated, and two chairs being drawn together to represent a carriage, Miss Peggy seated herself on the nearer of the two, and went through so word- perfect a repetition of the real dialogue as left her hearer speechless with consternation. Eunice heard her own voice bleat forth feeble inanities, saw her lips twist in the characteristic manner which she felt to be so true, listened to Mariquita's gracious ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... The dialogue which actually did accompany the presentation of the handkerchief, though roughly corresponding to her rehearsal of it, was lacking in the dramatic pungency necessary for a really effective triumph; the reason being that the thoughts of both mother and daughter were diverted ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... what is confirmed by other testimony, that in reasoning Shelley never lost sight of the essential bearings of the topic in dispute, never condescended to personal or captious arguments, and was Socratically bent on following the dialogue wherever it might lead, without regard for consequences. Plato was another of their favourite authors; but Hogg expressly tells us that they only approached the divine philosopher through the medium ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... built upon a foundation of moral rectitude: and such a foundation they could find in the storehouse of their own domestic traditions."[157] When Cicero, who held him to be the greatest of Romans, wrote his dialogue on the State (de Republica), with the new idea pervading it of the moral and political ascendancy of a single man, he made Scipio the hero and the one ascendant figure in his work, and ended it with an imitation of the Platonic "myth," ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... head are still more openly expressed in his Prerogatives of Parliaments, a work not published till after his death. It is a dialogue between a courtier, or counsellor, and a country justice of peace, who represents the patriot party, and defends the highest notion of liberty which the principles of that age would bear. Here is a passage of it: "Counsellor. That which is done by ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... opportunity of seating himself beside him, and opened the conversation by some very polite observation upon the other's wearing apparel, which is always in the west considered a piece of very courteous attention. By degrees the dialogue prospered, and Mickey began to make some very important revelations about himself and his master, intimating that the "state of the country" was such that a man of his way of thinking had no peace or quiet ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... on the moral of this passage, what we would remark upon is the clearness and freedom of the dialogue,—a feature which we find pervading the whole ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... Andrew Langland, has enshrined two metrical compositions from his own pen; an epitaph on the Regent Murray, and an epistle to Joannes Ferrerius, Professor at Kinloss, 1542, and continuator of Hector Boece. The epitaph is dialogue-wise between the Bishop of Orkney, who was absent from the funeral, and ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... the German dialogue, Bonte translated to McClure the conversation of Herr Schmidt. The Teuton was telling his fellow countrymen that it was all a mistake; that this was the U-108 and that she had stumbled into the net by accident, having been pulled off her course by a ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... went just as before, and when he came within about sixty or seventy yards of the shore, he held up his white flag as the Dutchman did, and turning the boat's broadside to the shore, and his men lying upon their oars, the parley or dialogue ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... his prodigality is Blackmore characteristic of Blackmore. Other writers keep their quaint reflections for their dialogue, and confer immortality on their principal characters. But Blackmore has no sense of economy. As Mr. Saintsbury says of Thackeray, he could not introduce a personage, however subordinate, without making him a ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... servants would listen with curious awe, as they heard his step, pacing to and fro, in that deserted and inauspicious chamber, while his voice, in broken sentences, was also imperfectly audible, as if maintaining a muttered dialogue. These eccentric practices gradually invested him, in the eyes of his domestics, with a certain preternatural mystery, which enhanced the fear with which they habitually regarded him, and was subsequently confirmed by his giving orders ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... but he would neither yield nor apologise. He was always armed with a rifle, and accompanied by three or four men with ammunition. It was a common experience with us to wake up during the night and list to the same old hackneyed dialogue. "Halt!" in a voice of thunder, "who goes there?" "A friend," would be the invariable response, the tone, pitch, and temper of which would be regulated by the "pass" the friend had or had not ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... a result that exceeded all that Manual had anticipated from their amicable but droll dialogue; and the hint was hardly given, before he threw on the garments that agitation had before rendered such encumbrances; and in less time than we have taken to relate it, the marine was completely equipped for his departure. In the mean time, Captain Borroughcliffe ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... midinette who, so far as I could gather, murdered, or was about to murder, a mannequin. It was rather like a story by Catulle Mendes in which the translator had either skipped or cut out every alternate sentence. Next, a dialogue between Pan and St. Ursula, lacking, I rather thought, in "snap." Next, some aphorisms (entitled "Aphorismata" [spelled in Greek]). Throughout, in fact, there was a great variety of form, and the forms had evidently ...
— Enoch Soames - A Memory of the Eighteen-nineties • Max Beerbohm
... There was no trace of habitation, yet the voices were those of some monotonous occupation, and Lance distinctly heard through them the click of crockery and the ring of some household utensil. It appeared to be the interjectional, half listless, half perfunctory, domestic dialogue of an old man and a girl, of which the words were unintelligible. Their voices indicated the solitude of the mountain, but without sadness; they were mysterious without being awe-inspiring. They might have uttered the dreariest commonplaces, but, in their vast isolation, they seemed musical ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... himself. When Bacon is introduced, we are assured that the aphorisms introduced are worthy of Bacon himself. What Cicero is made to say is exactly what he would have said, 'if he could;' and the dialogue between Walton, Cotton, and Oldways is, of course, as good as a passage from the 'Complete Angler.' In the same spirit we are told that the dialogues were to be 'one-act dramas;' and we are informed how the great philosophers, ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... is probable that some additions and some changes would have been made. The editor does not consider himself warranted to do more than give to the world a faithful copy, making only a few omissions and a few verbal alterations. The characters of the persons of the dialogue were intended to be ideal, at least in great part such they should be considered by the reader; and, it is to be hoped, that the incidents introduced, as well as the persons, will be viewed only as subordinate and subservient to the sentiments and doctrines. The dedication, ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon. Look not upon me because I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me." In the most beautiful language in the gift of the poets of that day Solomon converses with Naamah in the following dialogue: "Return, return O Shulamite; return, return that we may look upon thee." Naamah, "What will you see in Shulamite?" Solomon, "As it were ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... situations and sentiments of 400 old Plays (bran new to me) which I have been digesting at the Museum, and my appetite sharpens to twice as many more, which I mean to course over this winter. I can scarce avoid Dialogue fashion in this letter. I soliloquise my meditations, and habitually speak dramatic blank verse without meaning it. Do you see Mitford? he will tell you something of my labors. Tell him I am sorry to have mist seeing him, to ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... dialogue the other day, and captured some of the ancient thrill. No, the real trouble is that a generation of realism, or what has passed for realism on our American stage, has done its deadly work. It has killed romance. That is not at all what realism was ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... Alos whenever a descendant of the house of Athamas entered the Prytaneion. Of course the family were very careful, as a rule, to keep at a safe distance from the forbidden place. "What a sacrifice for Greeks!" as the author of the Minos(1) says in that dialogue which is incorrectly attributed to Plato. "He cannot get out except to be sacrificed," says Herodotus, speaking of the unlucky descendant of Athamas. The custom appears to have existed as late as the time of the scholiast ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... to some extent what has been given from the Autobiography. The first one refers to 'The Boundaries of Science, a Dialogue,' published in 'Macmillan's Magazine,' for ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... commits this error when he thinks it enough if he himself knows what he means and wants to say, and takes no thought for the reader, who is left to get at the bottom of it as best he can. This is as though the author were holding a monologue; whereas, it ought to be a dialogue; and a dialogue, too, in which he must express himself all the more clearly inasmuch as he cannot hear the questions ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... favor of a text that has a better chance of being read and understood by a modern audience. I have also excluded the insertions supposed to have been written by Ben Johnson, as well as the additional dialogue from III.xiii and IV.iii. Some alternate dialogue has been included as ...
— The Spanish Tragedie • Thomas Kyd
... low comedy, this truth is emphasised by the triumph of Costard, a natural mind, in an encounter with Armado, an artificial mind. At the end of the play the "learned men" are made to compile a dialogue "in praise of the owl and the cuckoo." The dialogue is of a kind not usual among learned men, but the choice of the birds is significant. The last speech of the play: "The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo," ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... of their dramatis person. In most there is a prince, a confidant, a buffoon or two, and a due proportion of female characters, represented by boys dressed in female attire. The dresses are handsome; and in one which I attended, the dialogue appeared to be lively and well supported, as far as I can judge from the roars of laughter which resounded from the Burman part of the audience. One sentimental scene, in which the loving prince takes leave of his mistress, and another where, after much weeping ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... long, long days in the apartment on the avenue des Champs-Elysees, waiting, waiting, while the earth trembled to the tramp of armed men and the tireless rumbling of caissons and camions, and the air was vibrant with the savage dialogue of cannon, ever ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... given. Cuthbert knew the place well; and Kate was quickly mounted on the palfrey, Culverhouse walking at her bridle-rein, whilst Cuthbert walked on ahead to choose the safest paths, and warn them of any peril in the road. He could hear scraps of lover-like dialogue, that sent his heart back to Cherry, and made him long to have her beside him; but that being impossible, he gave himself up to the enjoyment of the present, and found pleasure ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... An experiment. Method of regulating this. Introduction of the new plan. Difficulties. Dialogue with pupils. Study card. Construction ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... stage with his pen and hold its bleeding, gaping fragments up for the edification of Budapest, Petrograd, Vienna, London, Berlin, Paris, and Stevens Point, Wis., said that five minutes of Harrietta Fuller's conversation was worth a lifetime of New York stage dialogue. For that matter I think that Mr. Beerbohm himself would not have found a talk with her altogether ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... instruction; and as the author was not acquainted with any book that could prove a substitute for it, she thought that it might be useful for beginners, as well as satisfactory to herself, to trace the steps by which she had acquired her little stock of chemical knowledge, and to record, in the form of dialogue, those ideas which she had first derived ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... dialogue was cut short by the wild shout that rose from the crowd, the delusive cry of "A sail, a sail!" and Dunmore rushed with the rest to descry its myth-like form, if possible. It was some moments before hope again died down to a ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... an unusual proportion of dialogue in Malachi. Good men are perplexed by the anomalies of the moral order, and they are not afraid to debate them. Malachi's solution is largely, though not exclusively, iii. 8-12, apocalyptic; and though in this, as in his emphasis ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... the curious dialogue, or, if continued, what came after it did not reach the ears of Florence Kearney; they who conversed having sauntered off beyond his hearing. When he had translated what he heard to Cris Rock, the latter, like himself, was uncertain as to what it meant. ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... then, we are certainly of the Pythagorean company in that most characteristic dialogue, the Meno, in which Plato discusses the nature, the true idea, of Virtue, or rather how one may attain thereto; compelled to this subordinate and accessory question by the intellectual [61] cowardice of his disciple, though after his manner he flashes irrepressible light on that ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... started, carrying with it Cardinal Malipieri, one of the speakers in the above dialogue. The other, whom the reader has no doubt recognized as Faringhea, returned to the little garden-door of the house occupied by Djalma. At the moment he was putting the key into the lock, the door opened, to his great astonishment, and a man came forth. Faringhea ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... hearing child; the only difference was that she spelled the sentences into my hand instead of speaking them. If I did not know the words and idioms necessary to express my thoughts she supplied them, even suggesting conversation when I was unable to keep up my end of the dialogue. ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... person visible, and while I watched him he suddenly vanished. I went along the track for some distance but saw no one; and when I came back, the ticket agent was standing in the door of his office. I cannot explain to you the singular impulse which carried me out, when I heard the dialogue, because it is inexplicable to myself, save by the supposition that I was still dreaming; and yet I saw the negro man distinctly. There was a lamp-post near him, and he had a bundle on his shoulder. When the 3:05 train came, I went aboard and ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... plot or plan or purpose of any kind. Nor would there be analysis and description—nothing to skip, in fact. The people of his brain would do nothing and say nothing—at all events there would be no dialogue. The characters would be mere faint pencil-marks—something less ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... was pleased to meet Gertie, and, as the three went towards the red-bricked lions' house, mentioned that he proposed to write a dialogue sketch of the Zoo; up to the present little worth recording had been overheard, and he expected he would, as usual, be compelled to ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... The Busie Body. Yet, as she says in the epilogue, she has not followed the critics who balk the pleasure of the audience to refine their taste; her play will with "good humour, pleasure crown the Night." In dialogue, in plot, and particularly in the character of the amusing but inoffensive Marplot, she fulfills her simple theory of comedy designed not for reform ...
— The Busie Body • Susanna Centlivre
... dialogue, the attention of its participants was arrested by the sound of breaking twigs and other indications of the near approach of some one from the forest; and, the next moment, emerging through the ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... goes closely ordered, with a few pardonable enough digressions, from beginning to end. He has usually little concentrated grasp of character: the few personages of the Confessions are consistent throughout. His dialogue is, as a rule, extraordinarily slipshod and unequal: here there is no fault to find with it. His greatest lack, in short, is the lack of form: and here, though the story might perhaps have been curtailed, ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... alternating question and answer we have also a valuable indication of the manner in which the hymn was to be recited or sung. The whole production appears to be arranged in a dialogue form, the lines to be alternately read by the reciting priest and the chorus of priests or worshippers. The same method is followed in other productions, while in some, as we shall see, the dialogue does not proceed in alternate lines, ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... individual in complete harness, engaged in eating his heart; this was Discord. In front of the scene stood History and Rhetoric, attired as "triumphant maidens, in white garments," each with a laurel crown and a burning torch. These personages, after holding a rhymed dialogue between themselves, filled with wonderful conceits and quibbles, addressed the Prince of Orange and Maccabaeus, one after the other, in a great ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... unusual story. The dialogue is nothing if not original, and the characters are very unique. There is something striking on every page of the ...
— Susan Clegg and a Man in the House • Anne Warner
... scarcely-known work, le Cercle des Femmes, ou le Secret du Lit Nuptial; entretiens comiques, written by a long-forgotten author, Samuel Chapuzeau, in which a servant, dressed in his master's clothes, is well received by a certain lady who had rejected the master. But as the witty dialogue is the principal merit in Moliere's play, it is really of no great consequence who first suggested the ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... physical indecency of this show that struck Montague so much as its intellectual content. The dialogue of the piece was what is called "smart"; that is, it was full of a kind of innuendo which implied a secret understanding of evil between the actor and his audience—a sort of countersign which passed between them. After all, it would ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... Colley's remarks will be echoed by our own audiences, which are so often doomed to see the most delicate of plays acted in barns of theatres where all the sensitive effects of dialogue and action are swallowed up in the immensity of stage and auditorium. There is nothing more dispiriting, indeed, both to performers and spectators, than the presentation of some comedy like the "School for Scandal" in a house far better suited to the picturesque demands of ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... and her reflection, her reproduction seemed to him frivolous and meaningless. If he went then, however, he would go as he came, in so far as the play was concerned; the first act, relying altogether upon the jugglery of its dialogue, gave no clue to anything. He owed it to Hilda after all to see the piece out. It was only fair to give her a chance to make the best of it. He decided that it was worth a personal sacrifice to give it ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... been completed, when a formidable dialogue was struck up between the two fierce beasts that were approaching on opposite sides of the camp. Now they would utter a hoarse roaring, then a series of screams and yells, succeeded by a shrill mewing that resembled the caterwauling of cats—only louder and more terrific in its effect. Though ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... a masterly abridgment of the first part of the Timaeus, and was eagerly fastened on by commentators of the early Middle Ages whose direct knowledge of Plato was confined to the translation of that dialogue by Chalcidius. ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... forget you are in a court, and are falling into dialogue. Courts don't allow of chit-chat. Look ye, the evidence of the resurrection of Jesus is before the court, recorded by Matthew, Mark, and others. You must take it as it is; you can neither make it better, or ...
— The Trial of the Witnessses of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ • Thomas Sherlock
... the art of narrative must be equally observed. The choice of a noble and swelling style in prose affects the problem of narration in the same way, if not to the same degree, as the choice of measured verse; for both imply a closer synthesis of events, a higher key of dialogue, and a more picked and stately strain of words. If you are to refuse "Don Juan," it is hard to see why you should include "Zanoni" or (to bracket works of very different value) "The Scarlet Letter"; and by what discrimination are you to open your doors to "The Pilgrim's Progress" ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... after we knew the details of the cottage interior by heart; while a whole volume of active tragedy—Mary's six months in London—was left to our fevered imagination. And the sense of reality which she was at such pains to create was spoiled by dialogue freely carried on in the immediate vicinity of persons who were not supposed ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... the stage. It may be doubted whether he was, either by the bent of nature or habits of study, much qualified for tragedy. It does not appear that he had much sense of the pathetic; and his diffusive and descriptive style produced declamation rather than dialogue. His friend Mr. Lyttelton was now in power, and conferred upon him the office of Surveyor-General of the Leeward Islands; from which, when his deputy was paid, he received about ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... little dialogue, because I was young and ignorant enough at the time to ask what a German did when she spoilt a pudding, and was promptly informed that in Germany such things could not happen. A cook was not allowed to make puddings unless her mistress stood by and saw that she made ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick |
