"Monologue" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cattle skinner before announcing his displeasure, had missed the first shot. When he dragged himself out from under his deceased horse the scenery was undisturbed save for a small cloud of dust hovering over a distant rise to the north of him. After delivering a short and bitter monologue he struck out for the ranch and arrived in a very hot and wrathful condition. It was contagious, that condition, and before long the entire outfit was in the saddle and pounding north, Pete overjoyed because ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... Langham been an observant person he would have noted that her very brief replies did not exactly encourage further questions. But his idea of conversation was either a monologue or a means of obtaining information, so he instantly demanded, "What does her ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... launched with marvelous promptitude; about the theatres, about the peculiar institutions of his native country, about the humidity of Paris about the pretty complexions of the American ladies, about his impressions of France and his opinion of its female inhabitants. All this was a brilliant monologue on the part of the duchess, who, like many of her country-women, was a person of an affirmative rather than an interrogative cast of mind, who made mots and put them herself into circulation, and who was apt to offer ...
— The American • Henry James
... of Prospero in this act detract from its dramatic force? Did the arrangement of Shakespeare's stage make this convenient. (See description of the threefold stage of the Globe Theatre in "Anthonie and Cleopatra," pp. 172-173). Is the monologue rightly disused in modern plays? Why? Compare Ibsen's plays in ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... after a long monologue that was meant to bring distraction from the noise of the inferno. "I wish as 'ow we was a bit closer to the devils so that they couldn't shell us. I'd like to get me 'and round ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... Ode as it stands, without attempting to decide whether it is dialogue or monologue. Perhaps the opinion which supposes it to be spoken by Horace in his own person, as if he had actually perished in the shipwreck alluded to in Book III, Ode 4, v. 27, "Me... non exstinxit... Sicula Palinurus unda," deserves more attention than ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... long monologue, uninterrupted by Claire, he told of his affection for the Schoenstrom "prof" and his wife. The practical, slangy Milt of the garage was lost in the enthusiastic undergraduate adoring his instructor in the university that exists as veritably in a teacher's or a doctor's sitting-room in every ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... as an active intercourse between the worshipper and a Person other than himself, who is the object of his worship. It is not a soliloquy—what the Germans expressively call a Selbstgespraech, or "self-talk"; it is not a monologue, but a dialogue; it is not a mere contemplation, but addressed to Someone who is thought of as willing to listen and able to answer. As Sabatier has well said, "Prayer is religion in act; that is, prayer is real religion." Wherever men believe in a personal ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... those who excel upon it appeal to the patriotism which is never really dormant in us. Its close association with color in our civilization seemed to render it the fitting prelude of the next act, which consisted of 'Monologue and Songs' by a divine creature in lampblack, a shirt-waist worn outside his trousers, and an exaggerated development of stomach. What did he say, what did he sing? I don't know; I only know that it rested the soul and brain, that it soothed the conscience, and ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... up her sleeves, put the toast in the oven and the ham in the frying pan, with much the same grimness with which she had sat the night before listening to Mrs. Boyd's monologue. If this was the way they looked after Willy Cameron, no wonder he was thin and pale. She threw out the coffee, which she suspected had been made by the time-saving method of pouring water on last night's grounds, and made a fresh pot of it. After that she ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the vein of it, though the monologue ran on much longer. But at last he swung impatiently around and addressed Hilda. "I'm ready to throw up my hands. I think I'll go back to Minneapolis and tell MacBride I've had enough. He can come down here and finish ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster
... his paper, Madame her fancy work, and Edith, attempting to play solitaire, hopelessly fumbled her cards. Madame made a valiant effort to carry on a conversation alone, but at length the monologue wearied her, and she slipped quietly out ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... Sorrows by Pilate, told by the bass Narrator, the words of Jesus himself, however, being used invariably in the first person, and sung by the baritone voice, as when he says, "If my Deeds have been evil," immediately following the bass recitative. After another monologue by the Narrator, ensues the march to the cross,—an instrumental number which is brilliant in its color effects and somewhat barbaric in tone. Without any break, the sopranos enter with the words, "Forth the Royal Banners go," set to a melody from the Roman Catholic liturgy; ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... to his sway. Ears and mouths opened toward him the liege. Upon the magnet of his voice hung the eager atoms. There was a filmy, distant look in the eyes of the listeners, as of men rapt with the mystic utterances of a seer. My entrance unheralded broke up the monologue, whatever it was. But seeing the true sacrificial look on my brow, all at once, from chief to sutler, confessed a brother. To me then turning, Duespeptos, king of men, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... of the play. This is like that of a typical Greek tragedy with one exception. It opens, as is customary with Euripides, with a monologue, which explains the plot and the position of affairs, spoken by one of the characters, Apollo. Otherwise, it is like a regular tragedy, presenting two sorts of action, that of a chorus consisting of men or women whose functions were to comment on the action, ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... cakes to tempt him with, showered a host of questions on him about school and games and hobbies. Sir Francis exchanged views on weather, politics, and the coming cricket season with his guest. The latter subject mostly resolved itself into a monologue on the part of the baronet, since cricket held no more interest for Larssen than ninepins; but he listened with polite attention while Sir Francis expounded the chances of the Australian Team (he had been to Lord's that ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... compression of the lips now and then between clauses, heightened the effect of crispness in his felicitously chosen phrases. He was a good listener if one had anything to say, but he was not averse to presiding in monologue over a number of people, and often did so, for his fund of talk was so rich that others, in his presence, were sometimes slow to offer any contribution of their own. He was most adroit at this sort of entertainment, and had a way of apparently bringing others of the company into the ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... his boot-laces snaking along behind him, shuffled over to his chair once more and settled himself for conversation, which Ellen had learned meant a monologue. The edge of his sombrero backed his busy head and kindly face like a soiled grey halo. His low voice, never rising, never ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... since their entrance to the civilized surroundings of Mesa Blanca, had apparently dropped all initiative, and was simply a little Indian girl under orders, listened impassively to this curious monologue. She evidently thought white people use many words ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... hold that there was no direct adoption of a form intentionally dramatic, and that the modern sacred drama—the only drama for centuries—was simply an expansion of or excrescence from the services of the Church herself, which in their antiphonal character, and in the alternation of monologue and chorus, were distinctly dramatic in form. This, however, is one of those numerous questions which are only good to be argued, and can never reach a conclusion; nor need it greatly trouble those who believe that all literary forms are more or less natural to man, and that man's nature will ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... exclaimed during a pause in what had become almost a monologue. "Why haven't you ever talked like this before? I always thought I had to do it all and here you talk better than I ever thought of doing because you have something to say and mine is just ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... cried, "there won't be anything of that sort. You ain't going to be starred as a comic. You're a Refined Lecturer and Society Monologue Artist. 'How I Invaded England,' with lights down and the cinematograph going. We ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... and arbitrary style of composition he displays a harmonious beauty, never losing himself in description, but giving only such a sketch of scenes and persons as does not hinder the flowing movement of the narrative. Still less does he lose himself in conversation and monologue, but maintains the lofty privilege of the true epos, by transforming all into living narrative. His pathos does not lie in the words, not even in the famous twentythird and following cantos, where Roland's madness is described. ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... not quite know where he was leading, but she was sure he meant to say something which would vex her beyond bearing. At one moment she meant to cut short his narrative, but he prevented her, and when at last he ended, she was almost choking with agitation. It had been borne in upon her as his monologue proceeded, that she would rather die than accept anything from this man—anything of any kind. To fight him was the only thing. Nothing else could prevail in the end. His was the service of the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... coal-scuttle. Much solitude, and a lively habit of mind, had bred in him the habit of audible soliloquy, and having flung a shout for the janitor down the seven flights dividing the studio from the basement, he turned back, picking up the thread of his monologue. "Exactly like Boheme, really—that crack in the wall is much more like a stage-crack than a real one—just the sort of crack Mungold would paint if he were doing a ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... dropped, Graham was invited to stand in front of the machine and the tailor muttered some instructions to the crop-haired lad, who answered in guttural tones and with words Graham did not recognise. The boy then went to conduct an incomprehensible monologue in the corner, and the tailor pulled out a number of slotted arms terminating in little discs, pulling them out until the discs were flat against the body of Graham, one at each shoulder blade, one at the elbows, one at the neck and so forth, so that ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... attention. He could no more rest from travel than Ulysses; and he brought to those he associated with all the fruits that faring forth in strange lands could give to a mind singularly alert for education and experience under any and all conditions. His fondness for monologue frequently exposed him to raillery, like the above, in the column where Field daily held ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... had no sooner started than some question arose which not only interested but excited Mr. Gladstone. He at once entered upon an eloquent monologue on the subject. There was no possibility of interruption by any one, and Mr. Lincoln had no chance whatever to interpose a remark. When the clock was nearing eleven Labouchere interrupted this torrent of talk by saying: ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... the gaze of the spectator in either instance would bear the like aspect of familiarity or of incongruity, in contrast to or in association with, the characters represented at the moment before actual contemporaries. These later performances partake, of course, in some sense of the nature of a monologue. Besides which, they involve the display of a desk and a book instead of the almost ludicrous exhibition of a board inscribed, as the case might be, "Syracuse" or "Verona." Apart from this, however, a modern reading is, in the very nature ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... while in Europe. Sophia expresses in a letter to Hawthorne her entire satisfaction, though poor and in the midst of petty cares, under his enchanting protection. Daniel Webster's oration in Salem. Alcott's monologue. Thoreau's lecture. Letters about the attack of certain mistaken people upon Hawthorne as a Democrat and official. Hawthorne writes to Horace Mann upon the subject. The best citizens are active to remedy the offense against Hawthorne. George Mullet's letters describing ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... know dogs the more amazin' marvellous they are to me," Dag Daughtry, after he had compassed his fourth bottle, confided in monologue to the Shortlands planter that night just before bedtime. "Take Killeny Boy. He don't do things for me mechanically, just because he's learned to do 'm. There's more to it. He does 'm because he likes ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... remaining back in the semi-darkness, they all heard Jack Jepson break into a sort of monologue. He was talking to himself, in fashion ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... part of the program, it seemed, was to be a vaudeville. A famous tenor sang folk songs of sunny Italy; two French pantomimists did a graceful and amusing Pierrot and Pierrette; a comedian did a black-face monologue; and the first part of the program concluded with the performances of a young violinist, the son of a Russian tobacconist down town, whom Mrs. Berkeley Hammond had "discovered" and was now sending to Europe to complete his musical education. ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... The talk was chiefly monologue. Mrs. Labadie certainly slept, perhaps the Queen did so too, and Anne became conscious that she must have slumbered likewise, for she found every one gazing at her in the pale morning dawn and asking why ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... countenance; for the victory was won; yet again was old time defeated. Then he would discourse his best. Two topics were his: the weather, and "my brother the baronet's place in Lincolnshire." The manner of his monologue on this second and more fruitful subject was really touching. When so fortunate as to have a new listener, he began by telling him or her that he was his father's fourth son, and consequently third brother ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... buy them, disputing their possession with Morychus, Teleas, Glaucetes and every other glutton. Melanthius(2) will arrive on the market last of all; 'twill be, "no more eels, all sold!" and then he'll start a-groaning and exclaiming as in his monologue of Medea,(3) "I am dying, I am dying! Alas! I have let those hidden in the beet escape me!"(4) And won't we laugh? These are the wishes, mighty goddess, which we pray thee ...
— Peace • Aristophanes
... during our ride that his servitor was a German, and I had employed the last long hour of the journey in rubbing up my exceedingly rusty knowledge of that language, and arranging one or two effective sentences. Poor Karl's surprise and delight knew no bounds, and he burst forth into a long monologue, to which I could find no readier answers than smiles and nods, hiding my inability to follow up my brilliant beginning under the pretence of being very busy. By the time the gentlemen had stabled and fed the horses and were ready, Karl and I between us ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... Mr. Snee," says I, "but you ain't been called on for a monologue. You can print the whole story of how kitchen neutrality was violated, issue a yellow book, if you like; but just for the minute try to forget that assault with the roast and see if you can remember ever havin' ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... frequently heard the observation: "It is a very philosophical piece." As people changed from place to place, and sat wherever they liked, I overheard many different people's opinions of the drama. The suicide monologue affected these fresh and ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... monologue of Mammy's, with my back to her. A sudden exclamation of the name of the Lord made me start around and endanger my nose. I was not startled at the irreverence of the expression, however, as sacred names were familiar interjections of Mammy's, ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... about life and what he had done with it. He monologued so that at times he produced an effect of weird world-forgetfulness. I listened puzzled, and at that time not understanding many things that afterwards became plain to me. It is only in recent years that I have discovered the pathos of that monologue; how friendless my father was and uncompanioned in his thoughts and feelings, and what a hunger he may have felt for the sympathy of the undeveloped youngster who trotted by ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... features, heavy eyelids, a soldierly grey moustache. His body encased in a short black jacket with narrow sleeves, his long legs in very tight trousers, made up an agile, youthful, slender figure. He moved forward suddenly, and interrupted the mate's monologue. ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... national love of rhetoric, or a personal fancy of the chief actor for the centre of the stage, or from economical reasons, the version of "G. Shakespeare's" meritorious tragedy which was placed before us was almost wholly monologue. Thinking about it now, I can scarcely recall any action on the part of the few other characters, whereas Amleto's millions of rapid words still rain uncomprehended on my ears, and I still see his myriad grimaces and gestures. It was like Hamlet very unintelligently arranged for a very noisy ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... room and near him the family portraits leaned against the wall. The lamp on the table shed a weak light over the boarded floor, muddied by the feet of the van-men. Stephen sat on a footstool beside his father listening to a long and incoherent monologue. He understood little or nothing of it at first but he became slowly aware that his father had enemies and that some fight was going to take place. He felt, too, that he was being enlisted for the fight, that some duty ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... 1857.—Wagner's is a powerful mind endowed with strong poetical sensitiveness. His work is even more poetical than musical. The suppression of the lyrical element, and therefore of melody, is with him a systematic parti pris. No more duos or trios; monologue and the aria are alike done away with. There remains only declamation, the recitative, and the choruses. In order to avoid the conventional in singing, Wagner falls into another convention,—that of not singing at all. He subordinates the voice to articulate speech, and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... his arms behind him as he used to do during recitation in school. Perhaps he does it now, only you and I are not there to see. I wish you were here to listen to him; father speaks now and then, but the dialogue soon develops into a monologue and the master entertains and instructs us all. If you do not receive this letter on time know that it is because I am learning about the Jew; how he is everywhere proving the truth of prophecy by ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... or Book of the Creation, is described by Edersheim as "a monologue on the part of Abraham, in which, by the contemplation of all that is around him, he ultimately arrives at the conclusion of the unity of God"[19]; but since this process is accomplished by an arrangement of the Divine Emanations under the name of the Ten Sephiroths, and in ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... Salome's monologue was cut short by the entrance of her sister Judith, holding Lionel Hezekiah by his chubby wrist with a ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... enjoyed a considerable period of reflection during this monologue, and Jacky had not used the time unwisely, offering several unconscious arguments and suggestions to the matter under discussion; lurching over on the greensward and righting himself with a chuckle, kicking his bare feet about in ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the weather, and the small gossip of the film world, and a judiciously expurgated sketch of his life since he had last seen her. Marie answered him whenever his monologue required answer, but she was unresponsive, uninterested—bored. Joe twisted his mustache, eyed her ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... would find Hamlet's musings about the afterlife of his princely soul, the improbable, insignificant and undramatic monologue, as ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... literature, whether in Verse or prose, the dramatic monologue seemed to me the aptest for the exposition of character and habits of mind. It is the creation—or recreation—of Robert Browning, the most illuminating interpreter of the workings of the human mind that England has produced since Shakespeare died. ...
— Songs of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... marrying the sixth floor off. Poor Lucia's widow's weeds of five weeks were no obstacle to Mrs. Reilly. She frequently made the whole floor giggle, carrying on an animated Irish conversation with Lucia over the prospects of a second marriage—or rather, a monologue it was, since Lucia never knew she was being talked to. If ever there was a body with a "sex complex it was old Mrs. Reilly! When I asked her once why she didn't get busy marrying off herself, she called back: ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... led to the woodshed the Wildcat spoke aloud in the darkness. "Konk'rin' Hero! Him ridin' de mule an' us boys ridin' ouah feet. Huh! I's de Supreem Gran' Walkin' Arrangeh, is I? Well, tomorrow I starts arrangin'." His monologue was suddenly interrupted by an explosive braying which burst from the woodshed adjoining the one in which rested Lily. The Wildcat surrendered to his racing legs and galloped a panic jazz to the exit of the alley before his common-sense ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... was Edward Eggleston, whose residence was a small brick house just back of the Congressional Library. Eggleston, humorous, ready of speech, was usually surrounded by an attentive circle of delighted listeners and I often drew near to share his monologue. He was a handsome man, tall and shapely with abundant gray hair and a full beard, and was especially learned in American early history. "Edward loves to monologue," his friends smilingly said as if in criticism, but to me his talk ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... back row of the dress circle a late-comer, after a cursory glance at the programme, had settled down into a comfortable narrative, which was evidently the resumed thread of an unfinished taxi-drive monologue. ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... shaggy and black-grey hair which covers nearly the whole face—are never directed to any person around. They seem to gaze into vacancy; altogether there is something curious, weird, almost uncanny, in this great, big whale of a man, intoning his monologue with that curious detachment of eye and manner in the midst of a crowded, brilliant, and intensely nervous and restless ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... that perhaps the shocks he had passed through had taken all his original warmth out of him. His beaver hat, which he had retained on his head till this moment, he now placed under the seat, where he sat absolutely motionless till the end of the first act, as if he were indulging in a monologue which did ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... inquires thus because he cares a whit. He only wishes to emphasise his own immunity from mal de mer, and blow the smoke of his disgusting pipe into your face. Neither his stomach nor his intellect is sensitive. He has a monologue on sea-sickness: it is all nonsense, imagination. It denotes weakness, not so much of the stomach as of the mentality, the will, the character. And besides, you don't call this rough, do you? You ought to have crossed with him in the old Nausia in 'eighty-nine. Fourteen days and the racks ...
— Ship-Bored • Julian Street
... passion, he resolved on more masterly action. He kept a careful watch, and one afternoon followed her and Tinker and Elsie on one of their walks. They went briskly, and at the end of a mile he was maintaining a continuous, passionate monologue in tones charged with heartfelt emotion on the subject of his ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... but I do think she might have ASKED papa and mama, anyway—she needn't have been afraid just to ask them; she knew they couldn't come." And her smiling lip twitched a little threateningly, as she concluded the silent monologue. "I suppose she thinks I ought to be glad ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... transforming each axle of its wheels into sunshine. "To come so far to get a reception like that! A celebrity of the time to be treated thus by that Bohemian! One may try indeed to do good!" Jenkins gave vent to his anger in a long monologue of this character, then suddenly rousing himself, exclaimed, "Ah, bah!" and what anxiety there was remaining on his brow quickly vanished on the pavement of the Place Vendome. Noon was striking everywhere in the sunshine. Issued forth from ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... conversation and spoke of the coming round-up, of the poor condition of range stock owing to the severity of the winter; but it was a monologue. For a time the man sat and listened, as if he enjoyed the sound of her voice, contributing nothing to the conversation himself, then suddenly he stirred in his chair and waved a hand to indicate the unimportance ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... like Queen Mary, are not, on the whole, successful, though it would be unjust to deny dramatic power to the poet who has written, upon one hand, Guinevere and the Passing of Arthur, and upon the other the homely, dialectic monologue of ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... waited—a strange carriage which Lola scrutinized wonderingly as she approached. With delighted eyes she noted the purple cushions and the satin coats of the horses. Who could have come? Whose voice was that which issued from the house in an unbroken monologue, genial, laughing, breathless? ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... When the monologue was over the theatre resounded with the clapping of hands. Mariette rose, and holding up her rustling silk skirt, went into the back of the box and introduced ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... shrill monologue was intensified by hysteria. She pointed wildly, as if she saw again the awful sight which she had seen through that ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... side, they leaned against a curving elastic root that half supported, half encompassed them. The girl's capricious, fitful manner succumbed as before to the near contact of her companion. Looking into her eyes, Low fell into a sweet, selfish lover's monologue, descriptive of his past and present feelings towards her, which she accepted with a heightened color, a slight exchange of sentiment, and a strange curiosity. The sun had painted their half-embraced silhouettes against the slanting tree-trunk, and began to decline ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... revelation from heaven. But so clearly he was a Cheetah. He was a Hunting Leopard; the only beast that has an up-cast face and dreams and looks at you with absent-minded eyes like a man. She laced their journeys with a fantastic monologue telling in the third person what the Leopard and the Cheetah were thinking and seeing and doing. And so they walked up mountains and over passes and swam in the warm clear water of romantic lakes and loved ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... is what cultured people are like. In order to be cultured and not to stand below the level of your surroundings it is not enough to have read "The Pickwick Papers" and learnt a monologue ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... 'Typee,' etc. He lives in a spacious farmhouse about two miles from Pittsfield, a weary walk through the dust. But it as well repaid. I introduced myself as a Hawaiian-American, and soon found myself in full tide of talk, or rather of monologue. But he would not repeat the experiences of which I had been reading with rapture in his books. In vain I sought to hear of Typee and those paradise islands, but he preferred to pour forth his philosophy and his theories of life. ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... with great rapidity. The street which they had now entered, from the far end of the piazza, was narrow. It was encumbered by a string of laden mules, by a stream of foot passengers. Interruption of his monologue, short of raising her voice to screaming pitch, was impossible to Madame de Vallorbes. But when he ceased she addressed him, and her lips were drawn away from ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... Vallencay, but the great man took no part in it. His role was lofty, mysterious, and grand. When he spoke all were silent, all attentive, all obsequious: but there was no conversation, in our sense of the word, and no dialogue, for there were no interlocutors. It was a monologue, in fact, and an interesting one—for his memory was deeply impressed with the recollections of the past, and he delighted to call them up, and to astonish his auditors by the freshness and vigor of his coloring: but, so far as we can discover, he never allowed himself to indulge in unnecessary ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... audience didn't bother him a bit; for passin' out the monologue is his strong suit. Not to seem partial, he trails down Charlie and Helen and converses with them too. Course, all this occurrin' outside, I couldn't watch everything that took place; but I sits in the lib'ry with Sadie a lot more contented than I'd ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... full-blooded Romanies was impossible, because they were the cuckoos of the human race, who had no desire to build nests, and were pricked on to move about from one place to another over the earth,” Groome’s tongue became loosened, and he launched out into a monologue on this subject full of learning and full, as it seemed to me, of original views upon ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... imparted all the minutiae of his science. To this gentleman was assigned the honor of opening the seance by a brief exposition of the system, and of closing it by reciting in French a brilliant tragic monologue, the effect of which, in spite of the absence of appropriate costume and scenic illusion, electrified the audience. In this scene, "Les Terreurs de Thoas," those rapidly changing expressions of the features, those statuesque attitudes ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... over the table and took up a cigarette. Lighting it, he dropped the match and resumed his monologue. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... came down, and found Maxwell in a dreary muse over his manuscript. He looked up at her with a lack-lustre eye, and said, "Godolphin is jealous of Salome now. What he really wants is a five-act monologue that will keep him on the stage all the time. He thinks that as it is, she will take all the attention ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... moment Mother Uberta's monologue was interrupted by a loud rapping on the door; she bent down to attach the unfinished thread properly, but before she had completed this delicate operation, the door was opened, and two men entered. Seeing that they were strangers she sent them a startled glance, which presently changed ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... started marching off in a curious spasmodic manner. "You'd better move on," said the mariner. "Who's moving on?" said Mr. Marvel. He was receding obliquely with a curious hurrying gait, with occasional violent jerks forward. Some way along the road he began a muttered monologue, protests and recriminations. ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... into instant glowing response. "It's going to be a dandy! Every one's going to be there! Ford Patterson is going to do a monologue,—he's as good as a professional!—and George is going to send up a bunch of carrots and parsnips! And the Weston Male Quartette, Mark, and a playlet by the Hunt's Crossing ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... actresses from a company which was playing in Richmond at the time—these doubtless drawn to the place by the fact that Walter C. Kelly, billed in vaudeville as "The Virginia Judge," is commonly reported to have taken Judge Crutchfield as a model for his exceedingly amusing monologue. Mr. Kelly himself has, however, told me that his inspiration came from hearing the late Judge J.D.G. Brown, of Newport ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... plumb-full of book dope on the Yukon. He's Mister Wise Mike. He knows it all. Hear his monologue on 'How It Should Be Done.' He's going to live on deck to inure himself to the rigours of the Arctic climate. Works with a pair of spring dumb-bells to get up his muscle so's he can shovel out ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... language flowed more freely, and the story acquired perspective and coherence. As he became more and more absorbed in the narrative, his eyes assumed a dreamy expression, and he seemed to lose sight of his auditors, and to be living over again in monologue his life ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... or evolve her books from conversation, like Madame de Stael. She was too self-conscious, too desperately reflective, too rich in second-thoughts for that. But in tete-a-tete, and with time to choose her words, she could—in monologue, with just enough stimulus from a companion to keep it going—produce on a listener exactly the impression of some of her best work. As the low, clear voice flowed on in Mrs. Pattison's drawing- room, I saw Saragossa, Granada, the Escorial, and that survival of the old Europe ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... raison d'etre to the sentimentalized historical drama, no fault can reasonably be found with lyrical passages like that at the end of the third act of 'The Piccolomini'. Schiller found the soliloquy at hand as an accepted convention of the stage and he converted it occasionally into a lyric monologue, as Goethe had done before him in 'Iphigenie' and 'Faust'. This looked toward opera, toward Romanticism, toward a mixture of types; but it was effective as a mode of portraying states of feeling. The lyric monologue is of course ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... Lawless," said Harry, taking a seat next the person he addressed, which movement he accomplished during an immense row occasioned by Mr. Frampton, 387 who was grunting forth a mixed monologue of explanations and apologies to Sir John, by whom they were received with such a hearty fit of laughing that the tears ran down his cheeks—"My dear Lawless, the kind and generous way in which you take this matter makes me feel quite ashamed of my behaviour to ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... hostess could arouse him, and it soon became apparent from the listless hang of his hands and the distant light in his eyes that he had even become unconscious of her presence in the room. Observing the cause of her impatience, Fraser interrupted his interminable monologue to say, ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... laid it only to the exhaustion of a hideously rainy day, and talked on steadily. What Reed did not know till later was that her steady monologue was designed to cover up her real intention for just a little while, that she might gain time to stiffen to the resolution she had taken. The resolution had been growing up in her for weeks; it had come to its climax, only that very morning, when she had ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... welfare, and was doing my duty as a friend of the house.... But I venture to think that even had Kirilla Matveitch not cut short my outpourings, I should in any case not have had courage to finish my monologue. At times I set to work with all the solemnity of some sage of antiquity, weighing the qualities of the prince; at times I comforted myself with the hope that it was all of no consequence, that Liza ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... confidence in Larry's young friend, and that she proceeded forthwith to do so. She would have laughed at the thought that anyone could be afraid of her, but she felt instinctively that a soothing monologue, a sort of cradle-song, was what the occasion demanded; so she began to speak of the bluebells, the woods, the weather, saying with a sort of languid simplicity, the things that the moment suggested; "babbling," as she subsequently ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... Which if she is the cook, why not be called so? And going off to her bedroom with her dinner, no one downstairs being good enough to eat with her. I must say it isn't what I'm used to, and me lived with the first families. Quite the first." Mrs. Atkins ceased her weary monologue and gazed on the family with conscious virtue. She was dressed in dull black silk, and looked ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... in his chair, took his tea-cup as though it were a fresh addition to his responsibilities, and began to talk. He talked apparently without even breathing. He began on the weather, drifted on to art and music, and was just beginning a monologue on The Novel, when William rose and crept from the room like a guilty spirit. He found Mr. Blank under the library table, having heard a noise in the kitchen and fearing a visitor. A cigar and a silver snuffer had fallen from his pocket to the floor. He hastily replaced them. William went up ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... casuists. This salon had its talkers and speakers, those who tyrannized over the audience and those who charmed it, those who shot off fireworks and those who prepared them, those who had made a symphony of conversation and those who made of it a monologue and had no flashes of silence. They did not follow fashion there—they rather made it; in art and literature as in toilets, smallness follows the fashion, pretension exaggerates it, taste makes a compact ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... The hour was close at hand. So great was the strain under which she was laboring that she felt she could not continue five minutes longer. Would Alvarado never come? Would anybody come? She sat motionless and white as marble, while the chieftain stared at her in the pauses of his monologue. ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... permitted themselves to exchange a good many scowling and indignant glances, the while their professional visitors sang another of their delightfully novel sacred duets. Its charm of harmony for once fell upon unsympathetic ears. But then Sister Soulsby began another monologue, defending this way of collecting money, chaffing the assemblage with bright-eyed impudence on their having been trapped, and scoring, one after another, neat and jocose little personal points on local characteristics, ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... finger prints are the ones we found on the file. And he is the bird who always eats a lot whenever he does a job, specially eggs. How this bird can put away eggs is a wonder; he's a little feller, too." The monologue was cut short by the entrance of the prisoner who was chained to a burly headquarters man, accompanied by another ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... objects men pursue," Then Lord knows what is writ by Lord knows who. A modest Monologue you here survey, Hissed from the theatre the "other day," As if Sir Fretful wrote "the slumberous" verse, And gave his son "the rubbish" to rehearse. "Yet at the thing you'd never be amazed," Knew you the rumpus which the Author ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... bel esprit" had socially the touch of genius. Her ardent, impulsive nature lent to her conversation a rare eloquence that inspired her listeners, though she never drifted into monologue, and understood the value of discreet silence. "She rendered the marble sensible, and made matter talk," said Guibert. Versatile and suggestive herself, she knew how to draw out the best thoughts of others. Her swift insight caught the weak points of her friends, and her gracious adaptation ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... quite willing to supply information. Indeed, once he was fairly under way the conversation became a monologue. He talked like a man long pent up, who has had it over with himself again and again. He talked for nearly an hour, and I must confess I found it a pretty stiff bit of listening. But through it all there was the undertone of satisfaction one feels when one is neglecting work one has ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... his monologue or dialogue in a certain, continuous rhythm, but the elocutionist in order to insure an understanding of the sense of the lines, must make pauses and interruptions at places where the poet was not ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven
... woman who sat on the end of the sofa a few feet away as she talked to him. Sometimes her eyes were raised to his—eyes whose color seemed more beautiful because of the tears in them. Sometimes her head was almost buried in her hands. But she talked all the time—an odd, disconnected sort of monologue, half confession, half appeal. There was little in it which seemed of any great moment, and yet to Rochester it was as though he were face to face with a tragedy. This woman was ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... shows what attentive listening may accomplish toward social success. Let it be mentioned here, however, that no one individual should be so carried away by a pet hobby as to force conversation into a monologue. A very well bred man, no matter how great his interest in or eloquence upon any topic may be, always catches at the slightest ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... constructed for such a purpose. There was plenty of room, and a sufficiency of retreat for those who sat out, in addition to a conservatory large enough to have married off half the couples in the county. The audience was in an excellent humor, and the monologue, the first item of the programme, was received with a warmth which gave Charteris, whom rehearsals had turned into a pessimist, a faint hope that the main item on the programme might not be the complete failure ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse
... stood aside, and allowed her visitor to serve herself with beans. When Nance's first hunger had been satisfied, she began a rambling monologue, of an accustomed sort to which ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... a drama, not a monologue," pursued my father. "'Drama' is derived from a Greek verb signifying 'to do.' Every actor in the drama has something to do, which helps on the progress of the whole: that is the object for which the author created him. Do your part, and let the ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... During this monologue Louvois was so absorbed that he was within an ace of driving them all into the water, and would have done so, had they not seized the reins, and cried out that he was going to drown them. At their cries and movement, Louvois awoke as from a deep sleep, drew up, and turned, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... and invocation to Freedom. Condition of Columbus in a Spanish prison. His monologue on the great actions of his life, and the manner in which they had been rewarded. Appearance and speech of Hesper, the guardian Genius of the western continent. They quit the dungeon, and ascend the mount of vision, which rises over the western coast of Spain; Europe settling from ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... themselves able afterward to quote the most pathetic passages seemed rather to add to the enthusiasm with which they described the address. The first result was a shower of invitations to tea, occasions when Laura was easily led into monologue. Miss Filbert became a cult of evangelistic drawing-rooms, and the same kind of forbearance was extended to her little traces of earlier social experiences as is offered, in salons of another sort, to the ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... apt to limit itself to monologue; so, while Henry was greatly interested in this odd talk, it left him but little ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... you would be a riot in the two-a-day. Quit this hanky-panky And I'll make you a headliner." Well, I fell for his line of talk Like the sod busters had fallen for mine. Aaron Hoffman wrote me a topical monologue; Max Marx made me a suit of clothes; And Lew Dockstader wised me up On how to jockey my laughs. I opened in Hartford; Believe me, I was some scream. I gave them gravy, and hokum, And when they ate it up I came through ...
— The Broadway Anthology • Edward L. Bernays, Samuel Hoffenstein, Walter J. Kingsley, Murdock Pemberton
... mass. momento moment. momia mummy. monada monkey-trick, grimace. monasterio monastery. moneda coin; monedilla (dim.). mono,-a monkey; mono, -a neat, pretty, charming. monolito monolith, column of stone. monologo monologue, soliloquy. monotonia monotony. monotono monotonous. monstruo monster. monta amount; de poca monta insignificant. montana mountain. montar to mount. monte m. mountain; wood. monton m. heap, mass. morabito hermitage. morador m. inhabitant. ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... could elicit from her were brief "yeps" and "nopes." It was not unlike a "spirit reading," or a ouija-board seance. He told himself, in terms of the oil fields, that here was a dry well—that the girl was a "duster." Having exhausted the usual commonplace topics in the course of a monologue that induced no reaction whatever, he voiced a perfectly natural remark about the wonder of sudden riches. He was, in a way, thinking aloud of the changes wrought in drab lives like the Briskows' by the discovery of oil. He was ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... sent Mrs. Newton away when she came to help them at dinner. They locked their doors, and shut themselves in from the world, as mourners do with death. Adeline's monologue went on, with the brief responses which she extorted from Suzette, and at last it ceased, as if her heart had worn itself out in the futile ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... dramatic dialogue and movement, but dramatic monologue and episode. For illustration, we might refer to Hagar in the wilderness. Her tragic loneliness and shuddering despair alight upon the page of Scripture with the interest that attends the introduction of the veiled Niobe with her children into ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... on to Lucretia's stall, and the trainer continued in a monologue to Lauzanne: "You big slob! you're a counterfeit, if there ever was one. But I'll stand you a drink just to get rid of you; I'll put a bottle of whisky inside of your vest day after to-morrow, an' if you ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... his master with a doleful face, to say that Mr. Audley, from Figtree Court, was evidently out of spirits. Robert ate his dinner, and drank a pint of Moselle; but he had poor appreciation of the excellence of the viands or the delicate fragrance of the wine. The mental monologue still went on, and the young philosopher of the modern school was arguing the favorite modern question of the nothingness of everything, and the folly of taking too much trouble to walk upon a road that went nowhere, or to compass a ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... back to the shop and down the hill after the cattle, Ump drumming on the pommel with his fingers and firing a cackle of fantastic monologue. "Quiller," he said, "do you think Miss Cynthia will be glad to see the drove comin' ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... would be better in the third person. "St. Simeon Stylites" is a dramatic monologue more upon Browning's model, i.e., a piece of apologetics and self-analysis. But in this province Tennyson is ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... replies; T. K., who seems to regard conversation as largely a means of demonstrating her superiority, for she picks her subjects with the care a general selects his battlefield; F., who is a born pedagogue and seeks to instruct whoever listens to him, whose conversation is a lecture and a monologue; R. O., the reticent, says little but that pertinent and relevant, cynical and shrewd; and R. V., who says little and that with timidity and error. So there are specialists in caution and "common sense," self-controlled, never rash, calculating, cool ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... in which the two principal colours may be employed effectively, I may cite the Bacchic air, "O vin, dissipe la tristesse," and the pensive monologue, "Etre, ou ne pas etre," both from the opera Hamlet, by Ambroise Thomas. The forced, unnatural quality of the first calls for the use of a clear, ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... most jovial companionship, and once more his execution was postponed. It was as usual this time, the captain's wrath broke, shattered by that friendly blow upon the back. He still kept up a show of taciturnity, by a grumbling monologue concerning the undignified procedure of Irishmen in general, but the Irishman laughed so loud that Captain Jimmie was deceived into thinking he had said something very witty indeed, and laughed too, in ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... 'Bothwell,' a poetic monologue on Mary Stuart's lover. Of Aytoun's humorous sketches, the most humorous are 'My First Spec in the Biggleswades,' and 'How We Got Up the Glen Mutchkin Railway'; tales written during the railway mania of 1845, which treat of the folly and dishonesty of its promoters, and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... to breakfast; Uncle Tom buried himself in his newspaper and ate at intervals; Doris, as pretty as a picture in her pink gingham frock, began a long monologue about a dolls' tea-party she had had in a dream last night; Bobby busied himself with his porridge; Aunt Nell cooked the eggs in a little electric grill; and Judith found she had plenty to do attending ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... suddenly thinks that the vacant space of the waiter's shirt-front might also be utilised to advertise the Gee Whiz Ginger Champagne, he will instantly follow up the new idea in all its aspects and possibilities, in an even longer monologue; and will never think of looking at his watch while he is rapturously looking at his waiter. The consequence is that he will come late into the great social movement against chewing-gum, where an Englishman would probably have arrived at the proper ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... answer. She was still waiting for the news that he had to tell her. The logs on the fire fell about with a crackle, and Deulin rose to put them in order. While thus engaged he continued his monologue. ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... dismally out when evoked by the King, dismally in again at a nod from him. Whenever she did appear Prince John hovered about, looking tormented; afterwards the pock-marked Cluniac might be heard lecturing her on theology and the soul's business in passionless monologue. It was very far from gay. As for her, Richard believed her melancholy mad; he himself grew fretful, irritable, most quarrelsome. Thus it was that he first plundered and then punched ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... telling of it afterward. Be that as it may, it is certain that after urging McLean to take a good rest where he was and to come again and "sun himself" on their piazza, and being unaccountably cordial in his monologue (for the younger officer hardly knew how to express himself under the circumstances), the doctor finally vanished. Jeannie Bruce was so utterly "taken aback" by it all that for some minutes she totally forgot her part ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... monologue came to an end; every one had arrived, and Gringoire breathed freely once more; the actors continued bravely. But Master Coppenole, the hosier, must needs rise of a sudden, and Gringoire was forced to listen to him deliver, amid universal attention, the following ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... table in the centre of the stage, with his friends grouped about him, he delivers that inimitable, rambling, character monologue so famous in "A Magnolia Flower," at the same time that he deftly makes ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... opposition and at times he allowed one to see an unpardonable insolence. His charm was acquired and systematised, a mask which he wore only when it pleased him, while the charm of Stevenson belonged to him like the colour of his hair. If Stevenson's talk became monologue we did not know it, because our one object was to show by our attention that he need never leave off. If thought failed him we would not combat what he had said, or start some new theme, but would encourage him with a ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats |
