"Diction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 3. Music had, however, among the Athenians, a far more comprehensive signification than with us. It included not only the harmonies of time and of tune, but the poetic diction, sentiment and creation, each in its widest sense. The study of music was with them, in fact, the general cultivation of the taste—of that which recognizes the beautiful—in contradistinction from reason, which deals only ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... marvellous discourse. Theron's conquest was of exceptional dimensions. The majority, whose project he had defeated, were strangers who appreciated and admired his effort most. The little minority of his own flock, though less susceptible to the influence of graceful diction and delicately balanced rhetoric, were proud of the distinction he had reflected upon them, and delighted with him for having won their fight. The Presiding Elders wrung his hand with a significant grip. The extremists of his own charge beamed friendship upon him for ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... Like Dryden, Keats now makes frequent use of the Alexandrine, or 6-foot line, and of the triplet. He has also restrained the exuberance of his language and gained force, whilst in imaginative power and felicity of diction he surpasses anything of which Dryden was capable. The flaws in his style are mainly due to carelessness in the rimes and some questionable coining of words. He also occasionally lapses into the vulgarity and triviality which marred certain ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... as she was called; for to have answered to the name of Jasmine would have been to proclaim her sex at once. Even the grim old master smiled at her through his horn spectacles as she entered the school-house of a morning, and any graceful turn in her poetry or scholarly diction in her prose was sure to win for her his unsparing praise. Many an evening he invited the "young noble" to his house to read over chapters from Confucius and the poems of Le Taipoh; and years afterward, when he died, among his most cherished papers were found odes ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... contemporary history. It at once animated and chastened his imagination; it modified his fancy; it furnished him with his models. On it his taste was formed; on it his style was moulded. From it his diction and his method derived their peculiarities. It transformed what would in all probability have been the mere counterpart of Caedmon's Paraphrase or Langland's Vision into Paradise Lost; and what would have been the mere counterpart of Corydon's Doleful Knell and the satire of the Three ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... both in his dramas, in the descriptive comments of his masques, and in the "Discoveries," is characterised by clarity and vigorous directness, nor is it wanting in a fine sense of form or in the subtler graces of diction. ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... Prose," differing from serious romance in its substitution of a "light and ridiculous" fable for a "grave and solemn" one, of inferior characters for those of superior rank, and of ludicrous for sublime sentiments. Sometimes in the diction he has admitted burlesque, but never in the sentiments and characters, where, he contends, it would be out of place. He further defines the only source of the ridiculous to be affectation, of which the chief causes are vanity and ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... one-eyed king Is, not unnaturally, bumptious. That Poulterer with a swaggering swing Strides to his door, the stock looks "scrumptious" In his eyes; but thrasonic diction To BULL ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 23, 1890. • Various
... What are all the thousand works of literary criticism called forth by, unless it be by that perpetual question which nags for an answer in all intelligent minds, the question "What is the gift which, behind all mere diction, behind all cadence and rhythm and rhyme, behind all mere lucidity, behind all mere intellect, and behind all variety of subject matter, makes writing everlastingly fresh, admirable, a thing of beauty ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... of Greek religion and Greek usage, but on their quainter side, and partly relish that extravagance. Subject and audience alike stimulate the romantic temper, and the tragedy of the Bacchanals, with its innovations in metre and diction, expressly noted as foreign or barbarous—all the charm and grace of the clear-pitched singing of the chorus, notwithstanding—with its subtleties and sophistications, its grotesques, mingled with and heightening a real shudder at the horror of the ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... Northwestern University said of her, at this time: "Dr. Kahn is one of the most accurate and effective students in a class of eighty-four members, most of them sophomores, although the class includes many seniors. The subject is the study of the style and diction of prominent prose authors, with some theme work. Last year Miss Kahn attained a very high rank in the study of the principles of good English style during the first semester, and in that of synonyms during the second semester. In the latter ...
— Notable Women Of Modern China • Margaret E. Burton
... looked big and strong and healthy, and her lungs were obviously good. She attacked the verse of the song with something of the vigour and breadth of treatment with which in other days she had reasoned with refractory mules. Her diction was the diction of one trained to call the cattle home in the teeth of Western hurricanes. Whether you wanted to or ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... read "In the Early Days," by Col. G. L. Cole, and I find it an interesting and instructive narrative, clothed in good diction and pleasing style. Few of the Argonauts took time or trouble to make note of the events of their journey and our California gold episode is remarkably barren of literature, a fact which makes Col. Cole's book ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole
... in selecting him for attorney-general, looked beyond the charming personality to the rapidly developing powers of the lawyer, who was even then captivating all hearers by the strength of his arguments and the splendour of his diction. Contemporaries of Talcott were fond of telling of this remarkable, almost phenomenal gift of speech. One of them mentions "those magical transitions from the subtlest argument to the deepest pathos;" another ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... however, permitted yourself certain expressions concerning his lordship here, which we cannot allow to remain where you have left them. You must retract, sir, or make them good." His gravity, and the preciseness of his diction now, sorted most ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... in fire and imagination as well as in judgment, witness his Ode on St. Cecilia's Day, and his fables, his latest performances. He was equally excellent in verse and prose: His prose had all the clearness imaginable, without deviating to the language or diction of poetry, and I have heard him frequently own with pleasure, that if he had any talent for writing prose; it was owing to his frequently having read the writings of the great archbishop Tillotson. In his poems, his ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... described sixteen years afterward the latter and the effects produced by him on that audience. Our young attorney vividly recalled how "'Abolitionist' was linked with contempt, in the silver tones of Otis, and all the charms that a divine eloquence and most felicitous diction could throw around a bad cause were given it; the excited multitude seemed actually ready to leap up beneath the magic of his speech. It would be something, if one must die, to die by such a hand—a hand somewhat worthy and able to stifle anti-slavery, if it could be stifled. The orator was ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... that statutes often give occasion to the most perplexing and distressing doubts and discussions, arising from the ambiguity that attends them. It requires great experience, as well as the command of a perspicuous diction, to frame a law in such clear and precise terms, as to secure it from ambiguous expressions, and from all doubts and criticisms upon its meaning ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... because Hobbes used language in this way that his translation of Homer is so ludicrous. Wordsworth broke down in his theory, that the language of poetry should be the every-day speech of men and women, though he nearly succeeded in finally extirpating "poetic diction." We think the proper antithesis is not between prosaic and poetic words, nor between the speech of actual life and a conventionalized diction, but between the language of real life (which is something different from the actual, or matter-of-fact) and that of artificial ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... of its delightful allusions, of its illustrative associations. Who that reads the poetry of Gray, does not feel that it is the refinement of classical taste which gives such inexpressible vividness and transparency to his diction? Who that reads the concentrated sense and melodious versification of Dryden and Pope, does not perceive in them the disciples of the old school, whose genius was inflamed by the heroic verse, the terse satire, and the playful wit of antiquity? ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... contributed to the Cause (if any) of Female Emancipation?' and being a total ignoramus up to date of the sheer existence of said hon'ble gentleman, I shall abstain from scratching my head over so Sphinxian a conundrum, and confine myself to knuckling to the obiter diction ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... and came to grief. Her adversary laughed at her, and in the intervals of rating Cecile for having inked her dress, flaunted some shrill controversy which left them all staring. Louie vindicating, the claims of the Holy See with much unction and an appropriate diction! It seemed to David, as he listened, that the irony of life could hardly ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... invitations were couched in Chesterfield-terms: Mr. Wyse said that he had met a mutual friend just now who had informed him that you were in residence, and had encouraged him to hope that you might give him the pleasure of your company, etc. This was alluring diction: it presented the image of Mr. Wyse stepping briskly home again, quite heartened up by this chance encounter, and no longer the prey to melancholy at the thought that you might not give him the joy. He was encouraged to hope.... These polite expressions were ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... Italic stock was still sound, not yet contaminated by the freedmen of Eastern extraction. Cities like Cremona and Mantua were truer guardians of the puritanic ideals of Cato's day than Rome itself. The clear expressive diction of Catullus' lyrics, full of old-fashioned turns, the sound social ideals of Vergil's Georgics, the buoyant idealism of the Aeneid and of Livy's annals speak the true language of these people. It is ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... tinged by the morning-beam with rosy light. The characteristic distinction of our author's style is this continuous and incessant flow of voluptuous thoughts and shining allusions. He ought to write with a crystal pen on silver paper. His subject is set off by a dazzling veil of poetic diction, like a wreath of flowers gemmed with innumerous dew-drops, that weep, tremble, and glitter in liquid softness and pearly light, while the song of birds ravishes the ear, and languid odours breathe around, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... life, as a thing that grows, that speaks, that has faced dangers, that is full of promise, that has charm, that is fit to stir a man's blood and demand a world's devotion; no wonder he has warmed to it, no wonder he has clothed it in the richest garments of diction and ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... circle of ideas is so enlarged, our habits are so different from those of by-gone centuries, that we look over this rare collection of old poems, rather to learn the manners of the people, than to enjoy the diction of their songs. We cannot doubt that this species of poetry excited an important influence when it was the staple of ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... author in the spirit of accurate history, would be far below the meed of praise that is due. He has executed this part of the book in a style of animated and lively description, and with that flowing and finished diction, which can only be attained when the mind of a writer is perfectly familiar with the events, and when, by the force of imagination, he becomes himself as it were an actor instead of a spectator of the scenes which ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... literary style of his own, not to be found, I think, elsewhere; it consists of an almost furious use of the A FORTIORI. His "how much more" is piled one upon another like castle upon castle in the clouds. The diction used ABOUT Christ has been, and perhaps wisely, sweet and submissive. But the diction used by Christ is quite curiously gigantesque; it is full of camels leaping through needles and mountains hurled ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... the most violent passions, and is full of the boldest metaphors. In sublimity Aeschylus has never been surpassed. He was in poetry what Phidias and Michael Angelo were in art. The critics say that his sublimity of diction is sometimes carried to an extreme, so that his language becomes inflated. His characters, like his sentiments, were sublime,—they were gods and heroes of colossal magnitude. His religious views were Homeric, and he sought to animate ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... he made the celebrated Pogram statter in marble, which rose so much con-test and preju-dice in Europe, that the brow was more than mortal. This was before the Pogram Defiance, and was, therefore, a pre-diction, cruel smart.' ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... Pearl" presented no greater obstacle to a modern reader than is offered by Chaucer's English, a translation might be a gratuitous task, but the Northwest-Midland dialect of the poem is, in fact, incomparably more difficult than the diction of Chaucer, more difficult even than that of Langland. The meaning of many passages remains obscure, and a translator is often forced to choose what seems the least dubious among ...
— The Pearl • Sophie Jewett
... either painter, poet, scientist, or mystic three types in the object of art a triplicity of persons the agent of AEsthetics when a man shrinks unfamiliar to himself Marcello Marie, Franck Mars Martellato Massenet Materialism Measure in oratorical diction Medallion of inflection Mediocrity Medium voice, the expression of moral emotions the normal voice Melody Menace, the head and hand Mengs Mental or reflective state Mercie Mind, the intellectual state Mode simpliste Modest people turn out the elbow Mohere Monsabre, Father ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... indignation:—"I sha'n't allow the bonfire no more—no, not at all; nor the fireworks neither—no, nothing of no kind of the sort." All this in his natural voice: then, swelling in dignity and in diction, "but, for the accumulated pile of combustibles, I say—for the combustible pile that you have accumulated, that you may not be deprived of the merit of doing a good action, the materials of which it is composed, that is to say, the logs of wood, and the ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... Mill's Principles, V, ch. 9, 7. In heathen Iceland, mariners were always paid a certain quota of the profits. Leo, in Raumer's historischem Taschenbuch, 1835, 524. The same was often the case in China. McCulloch, Comm. Diction. v. Canton. In England, its employment was rendered very difficult by the laws of partnership, which made each individual, except in great chartered societies, responsible for all kinds of debts contracted by the rest of the firm. J. S. Mill, B. ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... borrow the language of AEsop.[267] For as Sophocles said he had first toned down the pompous style of AEschylus, then his harsh and over-artificial method, and had in the third place changed his manner of diction, a most important point and one that is most intimately connected with the character, so those who go in for philosophy, when they have passed from flattering and artificial discourses to such as deal with character and emotion, are beginning to make genuine and modest progress ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... a selection from a large body of dog verse. It is a selection made on the principle of human appeal. Dialect, and the poems of the earlier writers whose diction strikes oddly on our modern ears, have for the most part been omitted. The place of such classics as may be missed is filled by that vagrant verse which is often most ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... even bought the story of Inkle and Yarico, which had made him feel very sorry for poor Mr. Inkle; so that his ideas might not have been below a certain mark of the literary calling; but his spelling and diction were too unconventional. ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot
... Platen is, barring his Weltschmerz (world weariness, compare Lenau) and the fact that he spent a good part of his life in foreign lands, the exact opposite of Heine. While Heine affects a certain carelessness of rhyme and rhythm and diction, Platen observes a studied elegance. His verse form is faultless as if chiselled in marble, his rhymes the most careful and pure. His ballads have a stately majesty of rhythm that reflects the inherent nobility of the poet. ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... It is in Part II. of the Poetics, when treating of Tragedy, that Aristotle lays down his main principles. Here after treating of the Fable and the Manners, he proceeds to the Diction and the Sentiments. By ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... are not wholly devoid of truth; he called his works Commissiones meras, or mere displays.[25] In this expression he hit off, happily enough, the somewhat theatrical, the slightly pedantic and pedagogic and professorial character of Seneca's diction, its rhetorical ornament and antitheses, and its deficiency in stern masculine simplicity and strength. In another remark he showed himself a still more felicitous critic. He called Seneca's writings Arenu ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... examples of recently acquired elegance in diction that are almost baboo-like in their hopelessness: "Because it interest about the countries that are far away. It gives knowledge to many of the people in this country." "So as to obtain knowledge from them and by reading books find out how the great men were in their former days and all about ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... the inflated diction of the complaisant Court newswriter, let us endeavour to approach somewhat nearer to ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... a letter which must have come like the song of a wood-thrush to the author, its diction being as pure as his own, and ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... further the language of the drama is removed from that of actual life, the nearer the spirit of it will approach to the ideal. An unwarrantable assumption, if there ever was one; and an assumption, as will be seen, that contains the seeds of the whole eighteenth-century theory of poetic diction. In the second place—but this is, in truth, only the deeper aspect of the former plea—Dryden comes perilously near to an acceptance of the doctrine that idealization in a work of art depends purely on the outward form and has little ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... eccentric critic, whose Arian sympathies it seemed to favour, endeavoured to resuscitate its credit, and one or two others, at long intervals, have followed in his wake; but practically it may be regarded as dead. It abounds in anachronisms of fact or diction; its language diverges widely from the Ignatian quotations in the writers of the first five centuries. Our author places its date in the sixth century, with Ussher; I should myself ascribe it to the latter half of the fourth century. This ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... the fact's a fact—and 't is the part Of a true poet to escape from fiction Whene'er he can; for there is little art in leaving verse more free from the restriction Of Truth than prose, unless to suit the mart For what is sometimes called poetic diction, And that outrageous appetite for lies Which Satan angles with for souls, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... something unique, full of wit, a veiled sarcasm that is rich in the extreme, it will all be found in this charming little book. The air of perfect sincerity with which they are told, the diction, reminding one of 'The Vicar of Wakefield,' and the ludicrous improbability of the tales, give them a power rarely met with in 'short stories.' There is many a lesson to be learned ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... test of reason, take from him, his sophisms, futilities, and incomprehensibilities, and what remains? In truth, he is one of the race of genuine sophists, who has escaped the oblivion of his brethren, first, by the elegance of his diction, but chiefly by the adoption and incorporation of his whimsies into the body of artificial Christianity. His foggy mind is for ever presenting the semblances of objects which, half seen through a mist, can be defined neither in form ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... to prove that within his proper limits the literal translator can always find room for the play of individual feeling. Mr. Longfellow seems to have developed to its utmost the Latin element in our poetical diction, and to have found in words of a kindred stock the best interpretation of the Italian, while Mr. Norton instinctively chooses for the rendering of Dante's tenderness and simplicity a diction almost as purely Saxon as that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... worth nothing. Rabbi ben Ezra was a universal genius and wanderer, whose travels brought him as far as England. His philosophy of life Browning has depicted in the well-known poem, whose beauty of diction and clarity of thought atone for countless ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... this description with that of another poet, a poet who sent forth his poetry daintily dressed in verse as well as carelessly wrapped in prose. Liszt tells us that Chopin had in his imagination and talent something "qui, par la purete de sa diction, par ses accointances avec La Fee aux Miettes et Le Lutin d'Argail, par ses rencon-tres de Seraphine et de Diane, murmurant a son oreille leurs plus confidentielles plaintes, leurs reves les plus innommes," [FOOTNOTE: The allusions are to stories by Charles Nodier. According to ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... half a century of prose and rhetoric. He restored poetry to its true function as the confession of an individual soul. Wordsworth has blamed Gray for introducing, or at least, assisting to introduce, the curse of poetic diction into English literature. But poetic diction was in use long before Gray. He is remarkable among English poets, not for having succumbed to poetic diction, but for having triumphed over it. It is poetic feeling, not poetic diction, that distinguishes him ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... afterward. There should be in the least, as well as in the greatest parts of a gentleman, 'les manieres nobles'. Sense will teach you some, observation others; attend carefully to the manners, the diction, the motions, of people of the first fashion, and form your own upon them. On the other hand, observe a little those of the vulgar, in order to avoid them: for though the things which they say or do may be the same, the manner ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... of his age. The English are less in need of energizing and moralizing than of intellectualizing, refining, and inspiring with the passion for perfection. This need accordingly determines the choice in most cases. So Milton presents an example of "sure and flawless perfection of rhythm and diction"; Joubert is characterized by his intense care of "perfecting himself"; Falkland is "our martyr of sweetness and light, of lucidity of mind and largeness of temper"; George Sand is admirable because of her desire to make ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... Bibliotheca Literaria was so little supplied with papers that could interest curiosity, that it could not hope for long continuance[1221]. Wasse, the chief contributor, was an unpolished scholar, who, with much literature, had no art or elegance of diction, at ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... what Joel liked. Head-work before all other work for him, and he set about the duty authoritatively and with promptitude. After rating the negroes roundly for their stupidity, and laying it on Mike without much delicacy of thought or diction, over the shoulders of the two blacks, he mustered his forces, and began to clear the channel with intelligence ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... entertain us, they bring in the story to supply the defect of language. It is quite otherwise with my author; the elegance and perfection of his way of speaking makes us lose the appetite of his plot; his refined grace and elegance of diction everywhere occupy us: he ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... He shrank from praise, and was obviously anxious not to appear more reverential or wise or devoted than he knew himself to be. He even used, because it was natural to him, a rugged style of expression when speaking of things or persons or institutions which for the most part uplift our diction and generally induce us to adorn or make careful selection of our vocabulary. He rapped out expressions which might have suggested carelessness or irreverence or suppressed doubt, but I soon found that there was an intense fire of evangelistic zeal ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... Nicko's tones were bell-like—his diction perfect. The girl gasped. The man blinked, then turned again to Mike. "I hope you ...
— Before Egypt • E. K. Jarvis
... observed that the stile of this letter doth not exactly correspond with that of our hero's speeches, which we have here recorded, we answer, it is sufficient if in these the historian adheres faithfully to the matter, though he embellishes the diction with some flourishes of his own eloquence, without which the excellent speeches recorded in antient historians (particularly in Sallust) would have scarce been found in their writings. Nay, even amongst the moderns, famous as they are ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... going too far to insist as Hegel does that "metre is the first and only condition absolutely demanded by poetry, yea even more necessary than a figurative picturesque diction"; or even to say that the finest poetry is always metrical; still it remains a simple fundamental truth that metre is the natural form of poetic language. The great exceptions to this—the poetic prose of a Sir Thomas Browne, a Pater, a Carlyle, or the ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... perhaps: "His genius is so near the verge of bombast, that to approach his sublime is to rush into the ridiculous"; and he goes on to say that you might find the nearest echo of his diction in Shelley's Prometheus; but of his diction alone; for "his power is in concentration—that of Shelley in diffuseness." "The intellectuality of Shelley," he says, "destroyed; that of Aeschylus only increased his ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... their own experience, some of its color having fallen accidentally on the bare ideal outline which they wished to trace. We have simply a contour, a general sketch, filled up with the harmonious gray tone of correct diction.—Even in comedy, necessarily employing current habits, even with Moliere, so frank and so bold, the model is unfinished, all individual peculiarities being suppressed, the face becoming for a moment a theatrical mask, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... was absolutely immobile, and the customary facetiously quizzical lines of his face had given place to an expression of cold attention. When he spoke, Bob found that the picturesque diction too had vanished. ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... be made off his commodity, and so adds exorbitancy to his statements, which will leave a balance in hand after all. But people will not be deceived again and again. His credit becomes damaged. His moral bill returns dishonoured. His extravagance of diction, like extravagance in expenditure, involves him in difficulties, and thus the immediate fate of mendacity symbolizes that awful retribution which will finally exclude all liars from the society of ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... of two kinds, latent and dynamic: latent—those words he understands; dynamic—those he can readily use. Every intelligent man knows all the words he needs, but he may not have them all ready for active service. The problem of literary diction consists in turning the latent into the dynamic." Your dynamic vocabulary is the one you ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... enthusiast, no doubt, about these languages, and jealous of their claim to be considered true language, and not what people suppose them to be, the uncouth jargon of savages. I will only say that his translations of some of the Psalms into Mota are as lofty in their diction and as harmonious in their rhythm, in my estimation, as anything almost I read in any language. This no doubt sounds exaggerated, and must be taken only for what it ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... conclude that we, young priests, should go in for high, flowery diction, long phrases, etc.? I could hardly imagine any man, least of all you, sir, holding ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... became Professor of Hebrew in the College de France. He was suspended from his office in 1863, and permitted to read again only in 1871. He had formally separated himself from the Roman Church in 1845. He was a member of the Academy. His diction is unsurpassed. He died in 1894. In his own phrase, he sought to bring Jesus forth from the darkness of dogma into the midst of the life of his people. He paints him first as an idyllic national leader, then as a struggling and erring hero, always aiming at the highest, ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... the approximate meaning where the literal was impossible, to turn all this into fairly smooth English. But in such a process all the strength and individual character of the original would inevitably have been lost. What I have endeavoured to do is to indicate the diction which a man of Wagner's peculiar turn of mind would have used, if he had written in English instead ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... Neither the Records nor the Chronicles can be said to display such a propensity in any marked degree. The Chronicles do, indeed, draw upon the resources of Chinese history to construct ethical codes and scholarly diction for their Imperial figures, but the Records show no traces of adventitious colour nor make an attempt to minimize the ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... those portions of the original which, being narrative are exceedingly simple as to idea and style, have been invariably rendered in a manner the most liable to censure, exhibiting not only a slovenly carelessness in regard to diction, but not unfrequently a disregard of accuracy when the slightest particle of attention was only necessary to render the meaning which the sacred writer endeavours to convey. These are its greatest, and, it may perhaps be said, its only defects; ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... thirteenth century the very same witticism meets us again, in the Hebrew Machberoth of Immanuel. But obviously it would be an endless task to trace the similarities of poetic diction between Hebrew and other poets: suffice it to realize that ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... ourselves in this matter, for what we call decoration has often a new and genuinely poetic content of its own; but wherever there is mere decoration, we judge the poetry to be not wholly poetic. And so when Wordsworth inveighed against poetic diction, though he hurled his darts rather wildly, what he was rightly aiming at was a phraseology, not the living body of a new content, but the mere worn-out body of ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... radiance' is borrowed from Mr. Wordsworth, a Poet whose versification is occasionally harsh and his diction too frequently obscure; but whom I deem unrivalled among the writers of the present day in manly sentiment, novel imagery, and vivid colouring. Note, 1796, p. 185: Footnote, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the river," said Toni cheerfully, amused, as of yore, by his somewhat pedantic diction. "But do tell me, Mr. Dowson, how do you expect to make a ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... acknowledgments. "Lastly," he declares, "I can never express my grateful sense of the good nature of Mrs Oldfield ... nor do I owe less to her excellent judgment, shown in some corrections which I shall for my own sake conceal." The comedy is dedicated, with the graceful diction and elaborate courtesies of the period, to Fielding's cousin, that notable eighteenth-century wit, the Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; and from the dedication we learn that to Lady Mary's approval, on her first perusal, the play owed its existence. What the approval of a great lady of ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... which gave them vitality when first pronounced—the living presence and voice of the speaker; the listening Senate; the grave excitement of the hour and of the impending conflict. The wordiness and exaggeration; the highly Latinized diction; the rhapsodies about freedom which hundreds of Fourth-of-July addresses have since turned into platitudes—all these coming hot from the lips of men whose actions in the field confirmed the earnestness of their speech—were ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... this second volume has given the small carpers who pick at the 'eds' of past participles, and stickle for old-fashioned moon-shine instead of moon-shine, fewer causes of complaint. His diction is well-chosen and befitting his themes; and this is a characteristic which peculiarly marks the true artist, if it does not indicate the true genius. His execution, his 'style of handling,' is adapted to his subject; an excellence in which too many artists, whether painters ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... can find perfect satisfaction in the versification of the 'Essay on Man,' we can understand his saying of 'Lycidas,' that 'the diction is harsh, the rhymes uncertain, and the numbers unpleasing.' In one of the 'Ramblers' we are informed that the accent in blank verse ought properly to rest upon every second syllable throughout the whole ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... had his. A very pretty young Quakeress, of about David's age, came from North Carolina to visit Mr. Kennedy, who was her uncle. David fell desperately in love with her. We cannot better describe this adventure than in the unpolished diction of this illiterate boy. If one would understand this extraordinary character, it is necessary thus to catch such glimpses as we can of his inner life. Let this necessity atone for the unpleasant rudeness of speech. Be it remembered that this reminiscence was written after David Crockett ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... is seldom applied to the work of teaching. We judge the teacher by the process rather than by the product, and we introduce a number of extraneous criteria to hide the absence of a real criterion. We watch the way in which he conducts a recitation, how many slips he makes in his diction and syntax, inspect his personal appearance, ask of what school he is a graduate and how many degrees he possesses, inquire into his moral character, determine his church membership, and judge him to ...
— Twenty-Five Years in the Black Belt • William James Edwards
... stop to refer to the dictionary for words that he does not know. Although the special feature writer is limited to terms familiar to the average reader, he need not confine himself to commonplace, colloquial diction; most readers know the meaning of many more words than they themselves use in everyday conversation. In treating technical topics, it is often necessary to employ some unfamiliar terms, but these may readily be explained the first time they appear. Whenever ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... and diction of this opera, as it is somewhat improperly termed, being rather a dramatic poem, strongly indicate the taste of Charles the Second's reign, for what was ingenious, acute, and polished, in preference to the simplicity of the true sublime. ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... "the father of our poetry;" though, as Johnson says, he was the first of our authors who can be said to have written English. To Chaucer, however, are we indebted for the first effort to emancipate the British muse from the ridiculous trammels of French diction, with which, till his time, it had been the fashion to interlard and obscure the English language. Gower, on the contrary, from a close intimacy with the French and Latin poets, found it easier to follow the beaten track. His first work was, therefore, written in French measure, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 364 - 4 Apr 1829 • Various
... rending aside of the curtain, which hung like a shroud before the grim horrors of that seething lower world of misery. In his earlier work there had been a certain delicate fancifulness, an airy grace of diction and description, a very curious heritage of a man brought up in the narrowest of lines, where every influence had been a constraint. There was nothing of that in the words which were leaping now hot from his heart. Yet he knew very well that ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... is an original composition and not a translation of Valmiki's work is one of the great religious poems of the world and not unworthy to be set beside Paradise Lost. The sustained majesty of diction and exuberance of ornament are accompanied by a spontaneity and vigour rare in any literature, especially in Asia. The poet is not embellishing a laboured theme: he goes on and on because his emotion bursts forth again and again, diversifying ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... to us how he became a skilled artificer with his pen, and how with obstinate persistence he taught himself daintiness of diction. In his first book of travels he mentions how the branch of a tree caught him, and the flooded Oise bereft him of his canoe. "On my tomb, if ever I have one," he wrote, "I mean to get these words inscribed, HE CLUNG TO HIS PADDLE." The ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • E. Blantyre Simpson
... His diction was rapid and terse—so rapid as to create the impression that he bit off the ends of the longer words. He turned his fierce blue eyes upon the uniformed officer who stood at the end of ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... rhetorical Latin languages. Wagner's poetry is eloquent of his affection for the German language, and there is a heartiness and candour in his treatment of it which are scarcely to be met with in any other German writer, save perhaps Goethe. Forcibleness of diction, daring brevity, power and variety in rhythm, a remarkable wealth of strong and striking words, simplicity in construction, an almost unique inventive faculty in regard to fluctuations of feeling and presentiment, ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... with the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, and have no doubt admired its beautiful simplicity of diction. But perhaps you will be surprised when I inform you that this Prayer-Book is for the most part ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... good dramatic work, unless in an age in which dramatic power and insight were almost extinct. It is poor even in its poetical elements, and is redeemed only by the finely solemn tone of its moral reflexions and the singular refinement and equable smoothness of its diction. That it obtained the applause of Voltaire must be ascribed to the fact that it was written in accordance with the rules of French classical ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... could have been further in person, voice, and temperament from Dumas' appealing heroine than the veteran actress who first acquainted me with her. Her conception of the character was as heavy and uncompromising as her diction; she bore hard on the idea and on the consonants. At all times she was highly tragic, devoured by remorse. Lightness of stress or behavior was far from her. Her voice was heavy and deep: "Ar-r-r-mond!" she would begin, as if she were summoning him to the bar of Judgment. But the ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... is given of the various schools of composers and virtuosi in the musical countries of Europe, from Corelli down to Vieuxtemps and Joachim. The author's judgment is in most cases fair and unbiassed, and his diction agreeably free from the current jargon of musical criticism.... The value of Mr. Hart's volume is increased by carefully engraved portraits of Corelli, Viotti, Paganini, and ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... of growth and settled down. Work on his machine continued when he could afford to buy the parts, and his writing settled down into a comfortable channel once more. In his spare time James began to work on Martha's diction. ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... Workmen's "bags" Are very "polished" where the "sags" From salient joints protuberant, Grow shiny with continual friction; But "polished knees" in poet's diction ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 13, 1893 • Various
... towards her, and his ears caught much of what she said. He was astonished at the grace and perfection of her language; it seemed to him like a strain of music filled with every melody of earth and heaven, surpassing poets in beauty of diction, philosophers in truth,—and in purity of affection, all the saints and sweetest women of whom he ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... in business, and was largely endowed with an inventive genius. Though hitherto scarcely known as a poet, he wrote verses so early as his eleventh year, which are described by his biographer as having "evinced a maturity of taste, a refinement of thought, and an ease of diction which astonished and delighted his friends," and the specimens of his more mature lyrical compositions, which we have been privileged to publish from his MSS. are such as to induce some regret that they were not ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... will not say as much of my writings, in which I study to be as little incorrect as the hurry of business and shortness of time will permit; but I may better say, as Tully did of the history of his consulship, which he also had written in Greek, that what errors may be found in the diction are crept in against my intent. Indeed, Livius Andronicus and Terence, the one a Greek, the other a Carthaginian, wrote successfully in Latin, and the latter is perhaps the most perfect model of the purity and urbanity of that tongue; but I ought not to ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... hyena utters as soon as it's dark in Africa: "How nice traveller would taste,'' the hyena seems to say, and "I want dead White Man.'' It is the rising note of the shell as it comes nearer, and its dying away when it has gone over, that make it reminiscent of the hyena's method of diction. If it is not going over then it has something quite different to say. It begins the same as the other, it comes up, talking of the back areas with the same long whine as the other. I have heard old hands say "That one is going well over.'' "Whee-oo,'' says the shell; but just ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... words seem in the way of the idea, and the latter appears not to have strength enough to clear the passage. Occasionally, a short, sharp sentence comes like a flash of lightning from the cloud of his verbiage, and relieves the twilight of his diction. There are but few felicitous phrases in his manifold volumes. He has hardly any of those happy combinations of words which stick fast to the memory, and do more than pages to express the author's meaning. He has little command of expression. ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... Sir John Arnway was mayor in that year, according to one account: but the name recurs pretty positively in 1327-8, and about that time Randall Higgenet, a monk of Chester Abbey, wrote the plays. But in the text handed down they are of a much later style of diction, and no doubt later in date than the Towneley or ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... the errors of the world, has now become the enlightened moralist, that laments their necessity, or endeavours to find out their remedy. A corresponding alteration is visible in the external form of the work, in its plot and diction. The plot is contrived with great ingenuity, embodying the result of much study, both dramatic and historical. The language is blank verse, not prose, as in the former works; it is more careful and regular, less ambitious in its object, but more certain of attaining it. Schiller's ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... elsewhere we find that he had lived very recently in the establishment of the Earl of Ashburnham, for he observes in the preface: "I beg the candour of the Public will excuse the incorrectness of the Language and Diction. My situation in life as an actual servant to the Earl of Ashburnham at the time of the first publication of this Book will I trust plead my Apology." He informs his readers on the title-page, and repeats in the preface, that a material part of the work consists of a translation ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... work, and find markets for their work; if machines and the Black Country are ugly, famine would be uglier still. I have no instruction to give you, and you would not thank me for wasting your time with rhetorical praise of art, even if I had all the flowers of diction at my command. To me, as an outer barbarian, it seems that some of the language on these subjects is already pretty high pitched. I have thought so even in reading that one of Mr. Addington Symond's ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... i. 175: The manner of the repetition and some points in the diction raise suspicion that the passage is interpolated here; and so it is held to be by most Editors. In i. 175 we find {tris} ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... Dr. Francis's Translation of Select Speeches from Demosthenes, which Lord Brougham naturally used a little in his own labors on that theme, there may be traced several peculiarities of diction that startle us in Junius. Sir P. had them from his father. And Lord Brougham ought not to have overlooked them. The same thing may be seen in the notes to Dr. Francis's translation of Horace. ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... spoken in the very words in which we now read them. It is sufficient that every fact hath its foundation in truth, as I do seriously aver is the ease in the ensuing pages; and when it is so, a good critic will be so far from denying all kind of ornament of style or diction, or even of circumstance, to his author, that he would be rather sorry if he omitted it; for he could hence derive no other advantage than the loss of an additional pleasure in ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... with that felicitous simplicity and eloquence of diction which characterize all Mr. Woodworth's efforts for the ...
— The Diving Bell - Or, Pearls to be Sought for • Francis C. Woodworth
... a philosophy, penetrating constitutions for their warnings, and human nature for its guides—a statesman's (as distinguished from an antiquarian's) use of history—a passionate scorn and invective for the base, tyrannical, and unjust—a fiery and copious zeal for liberty and for Ireland, and a diction and cadence almost lyrical, made Grattan the sudden achiever of a Revolution, and will make him for ever one of the ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... made the English Don Quixote, roughly traduced by some Jervas, perhaps the best of all English books. And it was the same element that made the journey of Roderick Random to London, so ostensibly a narrative of coarse jokes and common experiences and burlesque manners, told in no very choice diction, essentially a wonderful vision of the eighteenth century, carrying to one's very nostrils the aroma of the Great North Road, iron-bound under black frost, darkened beneath shuddering woods, haunted by highwaymen, with an adventure waiting beyond every turn, and ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... atmosphere is perfumed with affectation. A toilet is described with the solemnity of an altar raised to the goddess of vanity, and the history of a silver bodkin is given with all the pomp of heraldry. No pains are spared, no profusion of ornament, no splendour of poetic diction to set off the meanest things. . . . It is the perfection of ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... the fineness of its diction and for its clear presentation of the subject, relieved here and there by a quaintly humorous turn of phrase that is altogether delightful."—Colin C. Stewart, ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... his criticism, his satire, his controversial or friendly discussions, are full of energy, versatility, refinement, boldness, and strength; and his remarkable power of clear, picturesque, expressive diction, not unworthy of our foremost masters of English, appears all at once, as it were, full grown. It is difficult to believe, as we read the later portions of his life, that we are reading about the same ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... a liberal estimate and tolerance of the opinions of others, ready intuition of human nature; and perhaps his most valuable faculty was rare ability to divest himself of all feeling or passion in weighing motives of persons or problems of state. His speech and diction were plain, terse, forcible. Relating anecdotes with appreciating humor and fascinating dramatic skill, he used them freely and effectively in conversation and argument. He loved manliness, truth, and justice. ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... passages embedded in mediocre verse, he rises for a moment to heights not reached by any other of our poets; but Bacchus is in the grand style throughout. Its texture can bear comparison with the world's best in this kind. In imaginative quality and austere richness of diction what other verse of our period approaches it? The day Emerson wrote Bacchus he had in him, as Michael Drayton said of Marlowe, "those brave translunary things that the first ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Not since she was a little kid, Charles, as you express it with that elegance of diction and refinement of thought that seem never to desert you. Accordingly—er— [impatiently] Now I have forgotten what I was going to say. That comes of your provoking me to be sarcastic, Charles. Adolphus: will you kindly tell me where ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... the diction too recent for the song to have any great antiquity. I have never seen ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 44, Saturday, August 31, 1850 • Various
... to make a just estimate of his genius; and from what remains, it cannot, I presume, be said with candour and impartiality, that he has excelled Homer in the sublimity and variety of his thoughts, or the strength and majesty of his diction. ...
— Essays on Wit No. 2 • Richard Flecknoe and Joseph Warton
... style would necessarily be offensive to the reader, but also because in language Herodotus is not archaic. His style is the "best canon of the Ionic speech," marked, however, not so much by primitive purity as by eclectic variety. At the same time it is characterised largely by the poetic diction of the Epic and Tragic writers; and while the translator is free to employ all the resources of modern English, so far as he has them at his command, he must carefully retain this poetical colouring and by all means avoid the courtier ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... of the language conspired with Roman haughtiness to prevent this application.[139] The Epicureans, indeed, had made the experiment, but their writings were even affectedly harsh and slovenly,[140] and we find Cicero himself, in spite of his inexhaustible flow of rich and expressive diction, making continual apologies for his learned occupations, and extolling philosophy as the parent of ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... on the advice of Wordsworth and Southey. "The language," we are told in an introductory note, "was intended to be dramatic; that is, suited to the narrator; and the metre corresponds to the homeliness of the diction. It is therefore presented as the fragment, not of a poem, but of a common Ballad-tale. Whether this is sufficient to justify the adoption of such a style, in any metrical composition not professedly ludicrous, the Author is himself in some doubt. At all events, it is not ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... in conduct, with an ironical reserve. He talks little, either of himself or of others; neither desiring his own praise, nor caring to utter blame. He wonders at nothing, bears no malice, is no gossip. His movements are slow, his voice deep, his diction ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... elevate." They had to describe the great battle of good and evil and they described both; but they accepted a working Victorian compromise about what should happen behind the scenes and what on the stage. Dickens did not claim the license of diction Fielding might have claimed in repeating the senile ecstasies of Gride (let us say) over his purchased bride: but Dickens does not leave the reader in the faintest doubt about what sort of feelings they were; nor is there any reason why he should. Thackeray ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... of incisive diction and of moving prose, conceived in the best Oxford manner, drew a terrible picture of what might occur in withdrawing troops from a foreshore in presence of a ferocious foe. Its polished periods portrayed a scene of horror and despair, of a bullet-swept ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... are brought forward as dramatis personae. St. Joseph, the wise men, and the shepherds are made to speak in patois. But the Virgin says what she has to say in classical French. In the refinement of her diction, her elevation above those with her is expressed. At Marseilles an annual fair of statuettes is held, the profits of which are spent in setting up Bethlehem creches in the churches and other places. Each statuette represents a contemporaneous ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... purely "ideographic" fashion. The conservatism which is a feature of proper names everywhere, in consequence of which the archaic traits of a language are frequently preserved in them, just as they are preserved in terms used in the ritual and in poetic diction, is sufficient to account for the interesting fact that the Semitic settlers of the Euphrates valley in handing down their names from one generation to another retained the custom of writing them in "Sumerian" fashion, or, as we might also put it, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... and reverence Madonna pictures like this have awakened as we read the words of an old chant. In quaint diction and with fanciful imagery the writer tried to express his feelings in the presence of a painting which, if not this veritable Madonna of the Chair, was certainly ...
— Raphael - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll |
