"Phrasing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that our civilization was founded by two mighty aristocracies of intellect, to whom the religions of their day were, as they are to us, nothing but more or less graceful fairy-tales.[4] We know that many of the greatest men the world ever saw, while phrasing their relation to the "deus absconditus" in various ways, were utterly free from that penitential, supplicatory abjectness which is the mark of Asian salvationism. And though of course the conscious filiation to Greece and Rome is rare, the habit of mind which holds up its head in the world ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... that volition and emotion are not expressed. They are, strictly speaking, never absent from normal speech, but their expression is not of a truly linguistic nature. The nuances of emphasis, tone, and phrasing, the varying speed and continuity of utterance, the accompanying bodily movements, all these express something of the inner life of impulse and feeling, but as these means of expression are, at last analysis, but modified forms of the instinctive utterance ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... cosmology, the metaphysics may be advanced (so advanced as to be called hasty and apt to run into the theological barrages), the religion, the mysticism, the "conviction of sin," the vision of the invisibles, the perception of the imponderables, are positive, vivid, sincere, passionate in phrasing and in intention. Sincere as Mr. WELLS is always sincere; sincere rather than stable, patient, learned and so forth. I rather wonder that he insists so much on his finite God. The postulate hardly touches ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 6, 1917 • Various
... yet in its major outlines follows closely the thought that is within his mind. If the training has failed to give the pupil this power, it will be of little advantage to him to have mastered some of the minor matters of technique, or to have learned how to improve his phrasing, polish his sentences, and ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... for much of a voice in a comic song. You don't expect correct phrasing or vocalization. You don't mind if a man does find out, when in the middle of a note, that he is too high, and comes down with a jerk. You don't bother about time. You don't mind a man being two bars in front of the accompaniment, and easing up in the middle of a line to argue it ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... to the time when I had first seen her running down that shining strip of hard-beat earth. Yes, it was a deer, and it ran down the brook, and presently I heard the hounds yelping in the woods. I returned to my room and again I strove to study, but the logical phrasing was harsh to me, and I threw down the book. I would fish in the pools that lay along the stream toward the mill. The ground in the yard and about the barn was so dry that I could find no angle worms, and I decided to dig in the damp moss-land near the spring. The hoe struck a hard substance and ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... sake, to make his sermons so attractive and so interesting that hearers shall not be repelled from partaking of the Divine provision for hungry and thirsty souls. It is his duty to make his sermons so simple in phrasing, so intelligible in arrangement, so luminous by illustration that the average hearer shall readily understand them. To the arts of persuasion and appeal he must devote special attention, for the purpose of the sermon is to induce men to believe ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... The phrasing of the edict was ambiguous, as Madison indicated. Notably, while neutral vessels having on board merchandise neutral in property, but British in origin, were to be seized when voluntarily entering a French port, it was not clear whether ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... from the one straight, progressive path, let us consider this expression: 'The wages of sin is death'. This leads us to the question: what is death? Do you remember what Drummond says? He first explains in a most interesting way what life is, using the scientist's phrasing. A human being, for instance, is in direct contact with all about him—earth, air, sun, other human beings, etc. In biological language he is said to be 'in correspondence with his environment,' and by virtue of this correspondence is said to be alive. To live, a human being must continue to ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... the great outdoors, according to Peter, is an arena of endless murder and rapine and warfare, and the cleanest acre of forest or prairie under the sun somewhere has its stains of blood and its record of cruelty. We talked about Susie and the negative phrasing of the ten moral laws and the Horned Dinosaur from Sand Hill Creek (whose bones Peter reckoned to be at least three million years old) and the marriage customs of the Innuits. And we talked about Matzenauer and Kreisler and the ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... describe to me the locality, the accessories—how shall I say it?—the mise en scene. Then, at my own time, at my own hour, under circumstances of my own choosing, I will go to them. I will present myself—I will appear before them!" said the Baroness, this time phrasing her idea with a ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... handsome and dignified young lady in his arms for a matter of twenty-odd miles was not as alluring to him as it might have been to another, for he was a slight young man, only a little while out of West Point. But orders were orders, and he gave Frances to understand that in diplomatic and polite phrasing. ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... her as much and as loudly as he liked. The effect this composition was calculated to produce rested on a fundamental idea which was quite simple, yet startling in its development. Unfortunately I worked it out rather hurriedly. In not very carefully chosen phrasing the orchestra was to represent the ocean, and, as far as might be, the ship upon it. A forcible, pathetically yearning and aspiring theme was the only comprehensible idea amid the swirl of enveloping sound. When the whole had been repeated, there was a sudden jump ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... setting him the key. Jog the foot-path way through Tuscany in my company, it's Lombard Street to my hat I charm you out of your lassitude by my open humour. Things I say will have been said before, and better; my tunes may be stale and my phrasing rough: I may be irrelevant, irreverent, what you please. Eh, well! I am in Italy,—the land of shrugs and laughing. Shrug me (or my book) away; but, pray Heaven, laugh! And, as the young are always very wise when they find their ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... committee to frame an amendment which should protect whites as well as blacks and operate in behalf of corporations as well as individuals. In other words, Conkling was making the interesting contention that his committee had had a far wider and deeper purpose in mind in phrasing the Amendment than had been commonly understood and that the demand for the protection of the negro from harsh southern legislation had been utilized to answer the request of business for federal assistance. The safety of the ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... skill and feeling which weave an enchanted spell. Those who have known the troubadour Riccardo have doubtless heard what are called greater voices, artists who hold for a triumphant moment the hazardous peak of the high C, whose roulades and phrasing are exquisite and admirable. But the singer whom they wish to hear, whose singing is a part of life, like the beauty of flowers and the dawn, is the singing of the troubadour Riccardo. It is so with Cecilia's playing, and it is impossible to suppose a person sensitive ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... of partiality and prejudice, we will at once state that we believe it possible for a man to be singular in his manner and quaint in his mode of phrasing, and yet to utter an opinion in some one direction which, if neither novel nor interesting, nor even tenable, shall yet have the one redeeming merit of representing a conceivable point of view. But when a man begins by stating that he belongs to the Democrats and then claims as his own the views ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... preliminary, substituting a blank phrasing for uncomprehended words; but the melody swept without faltering to its conclusion. Janin answered irritably, disturbed ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Secretary of Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, put this in briefer phrasing when he said, "General GOUGH may feel keenly the Ulster situation. Tommy Atkins will feel not less keenly the industrial situation." House listened in significant silence to illustration pointing the moral. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various
... His phrasing was seldom well-inspired. Had he said, "I trust you, my child, and I know I shan't regret it," which was what he meant, she would have come to meet him more than half-way. As it was she said, "Thank you!" again, and left him without more words. ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... to his future father-in-law comparatively easy. There was not much feeling in it perhaps—even Vera, who read it with partial eyes, could not help noting the fact—but, after all, it was in a sense a matter of business; and so she was able to find consolation in its clear, incisive phrasing. She was glad when it was finished, more glad still when they had strolled down to the pillar box outside the gates, and dropped the envelope in it. Their relations were on a definite footing now, and she had little doubt that her father would be well pleased. ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... car. He glanced up at the clock of the Metropolitan tower. The bronze hand pointed to the stroke of six. As he looked, the first note of the quarter chimes rang out. The car swung the corner and headed down the street. McCarthy stepped forward. The sweet chimes ceased their fourfold phrasing, and the great bell began its ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... Historical, by Lord Rosebery, consists not so much in his recollections of people as in the delight of reading good prose. Lord Rosebery has a natural dignity and a charm of lucid phrasing that adapts itself admirably to the essay form he has chosen. The subjects he takes up are beloved figures of the past. Robert Burns, as Lord Rosebery talks of him, walks about in Dumfries and holds spellbound by sheer personal charm the guests of the tavern. There are papers on Burke, ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... shattered themselves on the stone walls about him—singly, in bunches, in long, detached wails. The organ yelped and snarled as Truesdale, time routed and accent annihilated, abandoned himself to the expression and the phrasing of the true Italian school. Two or three passing children paused on the pavement; a park policeman, stationed on the next corner, walked his sedate iron-gray slowly along to ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... Effectiveness in Phrasing. Where in literature will you find more beautiful phrases, more effective figures, than abound in this poem? Notice particularly the following, and try to determine why each ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... first chorus of Israel in Egypt, except as the treatment of a phrase of chorale or canto fermo? Again, to return to the 16th century, what are the hymns of Palestrina but figured chorales? In what way, except in the lack of symmetry in the Gregorian phrasing, do they differ from the contemporary setting by Orlando di Lasso, also a Roman Catholic, of the German chorale Vater unser im Himmelreich? In modern times the use of German chorales, as in Mendelssohn's oratorios and organ-sonatas, has had rather the aspect of a revival ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... drew up his report in elegant phrasing. Geissler had written: "The man will also have to pay land tax every year; he cannot afford to pay more for the place than fifty Daler, in annual instalments over ten years. The State can accept his offer, or take away his land and the fruits ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... with the eyes of April, the hearts of June'" (early spring and early summer would be the more accurate Indian phrasing). ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... Oscar's pecuniary position was great; but his respect for himself—especially at the present crisis—was, if possible, greater still. In deference to the first sentiment he was as polite, and in deference to the second he was as positive, in phrasing his remonstrance, as a man could be. "Permit me to remind you, dear Oscar, that my claim to interfere, as Lucilla's father, is at least equal to yours," proceeded the rector. "In the hour of my daughter's need, it is my parental duty to be present. If you go to your cousin's ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... happened to be President of the Club at that time, so Mrs. Salisbury had only to ignore graciously the rather offensive phrasing of the invitation, and to await the news of her election, which ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... she is a cultivated lady, accustomed to talking with people of our world—people who know England and its great houses well enough to have made her familiar with the knowledge of where certain pieces of famous furniture are.—The very phrasing of her sentences is the phrasing of our Shibboleth, and not the phrasing of the ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... own native speech, began an extravagant but perfectly dignified and diplomatic translation of his master's protests. Where and when, by what instinct, he had assimilated and made his own the grotesque inversions and ponderous sentimentalities of Teutonic phrasing, Paul could not guess; but it was with breathless wonder that he presently became aware that, so perfect and convincing was the old man's style and deportment, not only the simple officials but even the bystanders were profoundly impressed by this farrago of absurdity. A happy word ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... had neither the emotion nor the ardor of Lacordaire. He was too much a priest and too little a man. Yet, here and there in the rhetoric of his sermons, flashed interesting effects of large and solid phrasing or touches of nobility that ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... smoking as he spoke, and tumbling out his sentences without finishing them as though some one would prevent him from phrasing them. ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... could not lecture without that piece of chalk to fumble in his fingers, and once he had been stricken to impotence by their hiding his supply. He came and looked under his grey eyebrows at the rising tiers of young fresh faces, and spoke with his accustomed studied commonness of phrasing. ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... on a note of surprise. Gefty's reaction had not been too rational, but it was prompt. Maulbow's tone and phrasing implied he was armed. Gefty wasn't, but he kept a gun in the instrument room for emergencies. He'd been through a whole series of unnerving experiences, winding up with being shagged out of his storage ...
— The Winds of Time • James H. Schmitz
... old fellow," Richard answered, more touched by this difficult voicing of what he knew to be Hugh's genuine devotion than he should have been by the most felicitous phrasing of another's congratulations. "And I can tell you this. There's nobody else I know whom I would have brought here to see my preparations—nobody else who would have understood how I feel about—what I'm ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... have deservedly won a place in all anthologies. His facility in the handling of blank verse is also remarkable. Lovers of Milton may regret the massive grandeur of an earlier style; but, as in every art, so in poetry, we pay for advance in technical accomplishment, in suppleness and melodious phrasing, by the loss of other qualities which ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... singer are brought into requisition. She must grasp the content, whether it be song or aria, in order to effect this grouping intelligently. Accent, crescendo and diminuendo are the most important factors in phrasing. From the very beginning the student should be careful how and where she takes breath and gives accent; there must always be a reason, and thought will generally make the ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... caused by any distrust of them or by any undervaluing of the high qualities of the true, the beautiful, and the good which the young man brings to it. Let no young man get the idea that the world of society and affairs is "down on him," to borrow the phrasing of the people again. Let him never for a moment feel that this world of experience and present power does ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... The music, that distant, mellow phrasing of the call of love, the music had unstrung him. While he paced the bridge before her coming that music had been melting the ice of his natural reserve. But he did not pardon himself because he had ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... the grand opera as primo basso cantante. He was warmly received by the press, and had already won a name at the Opera Comique and at concerts. In this singer may be noted the firmness of accent and scholarly mode of phrasing, always in harmony with the prosody of the language, which are part of the tradition of the great school. He always bears himself well on the stage, and the sobriety of his gesture is a salutary example which some of his present colleagues ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... Howard Favor, my secretary, for the typing cheerfully undertaken. In the labor of preparing the final draft for the publishers I shall ever remember with gratitude the careful thought and skillful phrasing of Miss Mary Putnam of the English Department of the Melrose High School whose corrections and amendments were nothing less than creative. Finally, I wish to let stand my heartfelt thanks to the Right Reverend Henry Knox Sherrill, ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick
... the third seat from the back found the phrasing strangely familiar. He seemed to know what was coming. Sure enough, it was almost word for word the arguments the women had used when they came before the House. The audience was in a pleasant mood, and laughed at every point. It really did not seem to take ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... The phrasing has a peculiar quaintness, old fashioned, perhaps, but with a grace and dignity all its own. Through the formal, stately sentences the hidden sweetness creeps like the crimson vine upon the autumn ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... missing a note. It was purely a song of joy expressing exuberance of life and whole-souled enjoyment. He mimicked thirty different American birds, but their songs were hurried without the proper pauses and phrasing. It was what piano player music is to hand-played melodies, lacking the beauty and soul of the ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... with him. I remember a quite admirable sermon he preached at Eton at this date—it was most simple and moving. But at the same time the effect largely depended upon a grace of which he was unconscious—quaint, naive, and beautiful phrasing, a fine poetical imagination, tiny word-pictures, and a youthful and impetuous charm. His gestures at that time were free and unconstrained, his voice ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... his fist. His own praises had fired him, though his marvellous memory that could hold even the complete libretti of operas had been little in doubt as to Heine's phrasing. ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... and the black holes of the smoky chimneys. Leaning in the niche of a battlement, we gazed and listened, and breathed it all in, enjoying the beautiful sunshine and balmy air impregnated with the pungent odour of the ruins. And there, without thinking of anything in particular, without even phrasing inwardly about something, I dreamed of coats of mail as pliable as gloves, of shields of buffalo hide soaked with sweat, of closed visors through which shot bloodthirsty glances, of wild and desperate night ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... Her phrasing gave him an opening. "You're quite right. I should like you to get whatever would help you in—in your profession before ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... ILLUSTRATIONS. On the back of a photograph intended for reproduction the author should write or type a brief explanation of what it represents. If he is skillful in phrasing this explanation, or "caption," as it is called, the editor will probably use all or part of it just as it stands. If his caption is unsatisfactory, the editor will have to write one based on the writer's explanation. A clever caption ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... and the manner rasped the nerves of Mr. Calvin almost beyond endurance. He was accustomed to phrasing his views with elegance, and although in truth his ideas in the matter on hand were not widely different from those of Mr. Irons, the latter had stated the proposition with a boldness which made it impossible for him to agree ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... it twice as strong as the way you put it," said McTee; and he repeated his phrasing of the message ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... of Hermaphroditus and Salmacis (Meta. IV. 285 ff.), and the hunting in Calydon (Meta. VIII. 270 ff.). Ovid is quoted in Latin in three early plays; and even where a translation was available, the phrasing of Shakespeare's allusions sometimes shows knowledge of the original. Most of Ovid had been translated into English before Shakespeare began to write, and Golding's version of the Metamorphoses (1567) was used for the references ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... recognized; but all follow the same grammatical rules. A correct style in singing consists in the careful observance of the principles of Technique; a perfect Diction; the appropriate Colouring of each sentiment expressed; attention to the musical and poetic Accents; judicious and effective Phrasing (whether musical or verbal), so that the meaning of both composer and poet may be placed ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... his affections. This pained the gentle and humble-minded girl, who, without having tasted the world's pleasures, had meekly consecrated herself to the lowly duties which lay nearest to her. For Bathsheba's phrasing of life was in the monosyllables of a rigid faith. Her conceptions of the human soul were all simplicity and purity, but elementary. She could not conceive the vast license the creative energy allows itself in mingling the instincts ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... evolved from it certain fundamental principles upon which I have largely based the cultivation of my own memory and mentality, and for which I can never be sufficiently thankful. Then I desired to be a public speaker. I became a "hobbyist" on pronunciation, enunciation, purity of voice, phrasing and getting the thought of my own mind in the best and quickest possible way into the minds of others. For years I kept a small book in which I jotted down every word, its derivation and full meaning with which I was not familiar. I studied ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... chocolate, and creamed oysters, visits to the circus, the menagerie, the vaudeville, and the multitude of side-shows. "Side-show," so the posters announced, was the designation of "a bewildering variety of elegant one-act specialties." Mary Brooks was very proud of that phrasing. ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... its most national traits, to these religious ballads. It is impossible to give any adequate account of them here, and it is especially difficult to convey an adequate idea of the genuine poetry and happy phrasing which are often interwoven with ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... best bit of phrasing and it pleased Benham very much. But, indeed, it was not her own phrasing, she had culled it from a disquisition into which she had led Mr. Rathbone-Sanders, and she had sent it to Benham as she might have ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... the Governor, defying such presumptuous interference, was not fortunate in phrasing his declaration that Morrison had no right to ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... interest is nothing other than the group activity itself. The words by which we name the interests often give the best expression to the value of the group activities in terms of other group activities: if I may be permitted that form of phrasing, they are more qualitative than quantitative in their implications. But that is sometimes a great evil as well as sometimes an advantage. We must always remember that there is nothing in the interests purely because of themselves and ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... Charles Edward Adair's care-free phrasing of it; but three hours later, when the cook of the "01" served him the most appetizing of luncheons in the big open compartment, and the steeply pitched walls of the lower Blue Canyon were still stinting the outlook from the car windows, he ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... Poetry Anthology, edited by Miss Monroe (a greater space, I believe, than was awarded to any other poet), that I can now repeat just one line—or, rather, two lines, such is Mr. Pound's odd way of phrasing his rhythms. ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... dressing-table, examining his hair and face and moustache with great care, craning his neck across the water-jug and drawing it back sideways to see the better. While he did so he sang softly to himself with quaint accent and phrasing: ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... whose special charm lies in its happy phrasing of acute observations of life. For the delicacy with which his personalities reveal themselves through their own letters, "the book might be favorably compared," says the Chicago Tribune, "with much of Jane Austen's character work"—and the critic ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... not, in style and method, more remote from Gladstone, nor Mr. George Alexander from Macready, than is Mr. Rufus Isaacs, the type of modern advocate, from Russell. Strength, passion, sonorousness, magnificence of phrasing, are things which the present generation vaguely approves in retrospect; but it would titter at a contemporary demonstration of them. While I was reading Pigott's cross-examination, an idea struck me; why do not the managers of our theatres, always querulous ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... executing wide intervals with unerring accuracy, together with a great variety of styles of bowing. The quality of tone which he produced was clear and pure, but not excessively full, and, according to Fetis, he was a master of technique and phrasing rather than a pathetic player,—there was no tenderness in ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... Fortunately the discussion has become academic in the half-century that has passed since Southern cheers over the first conquests of the Merrimac faltered before the acclaim which greeted the Monitor's achievement of her task. One may disagree with the phrasing of various historians on both sides, one may find it difficult to accept the inscription upon the shaft of the Merrimac outside the "Confederate White House" in Richmond, but no American can cease to wonder at the fortitude and daring of those other Americans who fought to the death in those hastily ...
— The Monitor and the Merrimac - Both sides of the story • J. L. Worden et al.
... Moreover, in phrasing the proposition, the debater should so state the subject that the affirmative side, the side that opens the discussion, is the one to advocate a change in existing conditions or belief. This method obviously corresponds to the way in which business is conducted in practical affairs. ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... is butchered to death. There is endless repetition in different keys, with different instrumental nuances, yet of true, intellectual and emotional mood-development there is no trace; short-breathed, chippy, choppy phrasing, and never ten bars of a big, straightforward melody. All this proves that Wagner had not the power of sustained thoughts like Mozart or Beethoven. And his orchestration, with its daubing, its overladen, hysterical color! ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... replaced with interesting | | Page 55: we we replaced with we | | Page 64: Epeleque replaced with Eperlecques | | Page 73: greatet replaced with greatest | | | | On Pages 78 and 79, the author uses a common British | | phrasing "Breakfast off a cup of coffee" and "Lunch off | | omelette". This is not a ...
— Letters from France • Isaac Alexander Mack
... is phrasing. This is the grouping together of words, phrases, clauses, and other units so that their meaning and significance may be easily grasped by a listener. As has been already said, pauses serve as punctuation marks for the hearer. Short pauses ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... her hand which Harkness was holding. He was still phrasing a conventional greeting as she flung him a gay laugh and a look from brown eyes that smiled encouragement. She was gone before he found ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... a collection of poems sad in tone, dainty in touch, echoed the French verses which he loved best, but offered nothing very original. They show a tinge of Baudelaire's fantastic love of morbid phases of life and beauty, and also of Leconte de Lisle's exquisite phrasing. But Bourget lacks poetic ardor, and in metre is always a little artificial. Although he went on writing poetry for some years, he found few readers until he turned to prose. When the 'Essais de ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... certain she'd broken no laws so far, though the sections in the law library covering the use and abuse of psionic abilities were veiled in such intricate and downright obscuring phrasing—deliberately, Telzey suspected—that it was really difficult to say what they did mean. But even aside from that, there were a number of arguments in ...
— Novice • James H. Schmitz
... in your own denial. You will recall that once, when taken to a ruined castle, you brooded on the dungeons until a plot popped into your head. You crammed it with quaint phrasing from the chroniclers. You stuffed it with soldiers' oaths. "What ho! landlord," you wrote gayly at midnight, "a foaming cup, good sir. God pity the poor sailors that take the sea this night!" And on you pelted with your plot to such conflicts and hair-breadth ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... Impossible that blind the mind, and looked out into the unknown. Amid stiff, abrupt sentences I wandered; and, presently, I had no fault to charge against their abrupt tellings; for, better far than my own ambitious phrasing, is this mutilated story capable of bringing home all that the old Recluse, of the vanished house, ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... don't deserve it." Then he steadied sharply and became practical. "So far, we've put it through, one way or the other," he went on. "Still, if I go in for the ministry," and his mother winced at the bald worldliness of his phrasing; "I shall have a year and a half more at college, and then three years of divinity school. We can do it, I suppose. For a matter of fact, I ought to be able to put it through alone, without a cent ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... e-text, empty categories have been omitted from each table. Variations in spelling and phrasing are as in the original. The complete structure, with all options ...
— Among the Mushrooms - A Guide For Beginners • Ellen M. Dallas and Caroline A. Burgin
... could produce from his files a collection of letters full of phrasing so vague and inconsequential that only his business instincts and knowledge of the situation enable him to interpret it. Any lawyer could give numberless instances where an inability to write clear and simple English has caused litigation ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... confuses. Never speak loudly. In a small room, speak as gently and easily as in conversation; in a large room, think of the people farthest away, and speak clearly, with a slight separation between words, and with definite phrasing,—aiming your ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... if Cellini had told that last story, would not its main facts have corresponded with those embodied in the following pages, though the tamer phrasing and more conventional attitude of the writer compared with the audacity of his ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... head; his heard was in his work; and for twelve hours he stood there, undisturbed by the clamour around him, and with grace and ease and confidence poured out the riches of his mind, in closely reasoned arguments, clothed in eloquent and faultless phrasing. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and at friends' houses on many other occasions, and few can answer better than I for the quality of Henley's talk if I have forgotten the actual words. Its strength was its simple directness,—no posing, no phrasing, no attitudinizing for effect. This, I know, was always what most struck people when they first met him on our Thursday nights, especially Americans, for with us in America the man who has won the reputation of greatness too often seems afraid he will lose it if he does ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... very easy thing to invite a friend to come to you at a given day and hour, and to accept or decline said invitation would appear a matter scarcely worth considering. This rash conclusion, however, disappears from view when it is recollected that the proper phrasing, the suitable signature, and the appropriate paper, are all matters of the nicest choice, and indicate with the most unerring accuracy the good or ill breeding of ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... offenders was delivered with boisterous earnestness, but the comic phrasing of it created irrepressible hilarity, and they had to leave the room. The preacher, in his closing remarks, reminded his hearers that he was once a black-hearted rascal, drinking, swearing, stealing, poaching, smuggling, and but for the mercy of God he ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... clearer medium, in which her idiosyncrasies showed. He walked about with her, sat with her, drove with her and dined face-to-face with her—a rare treat "in his life," as he could perhaps have scarce escaped phrasing it; and if he had never seen her so soundless he had never, on the other hand, felt her so highly, so almost austerely, herself: pure and by the vulgar estimate "cold," but deep devoted delicate sensitive noble. Her vividness in these respects became for him, in the special conditions, ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... the congenial task of composing a letter in which he should resign from the employ of the Light and Power Company. It was a question of a broken contract, so it must be diplomatically worded. Paul had spent the five evenings since his arrival at Kirkwood in puzzling over the phrasing of ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... in which he may be performing. He is esthetically a responsible factor, since it concerns him as part of the great idea. He is leading soloist and auxiliary in one. He is the significant instrument in the orchestration of the theme at hand, and knows his body will respond to every requirement of phrasing. You will find the infants, of two and three years of age even, responding in terms of play to the exacting rhythms of the dance, just as with orientals it was the children often who wove the ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... English sentence is out of the question. Further, and this is the most important point, the work of those in question almost never exhibits imagination expressed in intense, condensed, vivid, and suggestive phrase—such phrasing, for instance, as one will find in "The Eve of St. Agnes," which I am not alone in considering the most lavishly brilliant and successful brief effort in poetry in the language. To all of this might be added a refining of taste, something all too frequently lacking and something ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... less importance for the modern child than they may have had for that of the eighteenth century. The story is thus rendered more compact, and contains nothing to draw attention away from the fine qualities mentioned above. The quaint phrasing of the title, in itself one of the proofs of Goldsmith's authorship, furnishes a good comment on the meaning of the story: "The history of little Goody Two-Shoes/otherwise called Mrs. Margery Two-Shoes/the means by which she acquired ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... minute detail of the configuration of Seaton's brain engraved upon his own, Dunark spoke English in Seaton's own characteristic careless fashion. Only when thinking deeply or discussing abstruse matter did Seaton employ the carefully selected and precise phrasing, which he knew so well how to use. "Well, none of them was beyond repair and the juice was still on most of them. One was an object-compass bearing on the Earth. We simply fixed the bearings, put on some minor improvements, and here ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... apparently question the reliability of the written source. In most cases the seeming doubt is probably the result of awkward phrasing. Statements like "as the story doth us both write and mean,"[52] "as the book says and true men tell us,"[53] "but the book us lie,"[54] need have little more significance than the slightly ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... young politician and the Crow, were completely fascinated by her. She had not the slightest accent in speaking English, but now and then her phrasing had a quaint turn which was ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... is, of course, partly produced by the diction; but the diction, fine as it is, would be useless without the phrasing—that art by which the two forces of the metre and the sense are made at once to combat, to combine with, and to heighten each other. It is, however, impossible to do more than touch upon this side—the technical side—of Beddoes' genius. But it may be noticed that in his mastery ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... posterity that Mr. Jefferson did very well—which was doubtless due partly to the fact that he could write, if not ten times better, at least better than John Adams. Yet the happy phrasing of a brief paragraph or two could scarcely By itself have won so much fame for the author; and perhaps much Of the success of this famous paper came from the circumstance That ten years of controversy over the question of political rights had forced Americans ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... An unusual phrasing of a request when one is addressing one's commander; but the older man threw back his shoulders, that were bending under responsibilities too great for one man to bear, and took a long breath that relaxed his face ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... was that he had been phrasing his ideas very well, and he went to bed wondering why he could not talk in similar fashion when he was with Ruth. He was only a schoolboy, with a schoolboy's tongue, when he was ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... take a book, and by no means a small one, to go into this matter of phrasing which I am now discussing. Even in such a book there would doubtless be many points which would be open to assaults for sticklers in psychological technology. I am not issuing a propaganda or writing a ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... spoke again the beating of his own heart seemed to re-echo the quick sounds of Stephen's galloping horse. He was surprised at the method of her speech when it did come; for she forgot her Quaker idiom, and spoke in the phrasing of ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... "Here, devil, empty the quoins into the standing galley and the imposing stone into the hell-box; assemble the comps around the frisket and let them jeff for takes and be quick about it," I should recognize a mistake or two in the phrasing, and would know that the writer was only a printer theoretically, ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... The phrasing of the letter brought it all back. His precision of mind and resolve would have enabled him to go to his grave without having looked on her face again—but he was conscious that she was an integral part of his daily thought and planning and that he longed inexpressibly to see her. He sometimes ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the then astute Minister of Foreign Affairs, who saturated in the great series of international undertakings made by Japan since the first Anglo-Japanese Treaty of 1902, clearly believes that the stately Elizabethan manner which still characterizes British official phrasing is an admirable method to be here employed. The preamble is quite English; it is so English that one is almost lulled into believing that one's previous reasoning has been at fault and that Japan is only demanding what she is entitled to. ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... none of my handicraft or invention. They are merely the phrasing of laws in super-nature, the putting into words truths as absolute in their own sphere, as those laws which govern the conduct of the earth ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... rouse her dreams to passion. . . So our letters continued to jar. Then suddenly she wrote me one doubting whether she could ever care for any one who was a Socialist and did not believe in Church, and then hard upon it came another note with unexpected novelties of phrasing. She thought we were not suited to each other, we differed so in tastes and ideas, she had long thought of releasing me from our engagement. In fact, though I really did not apprehend it fully at the ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... a mere dry rigmarole, but include a certain appeal to sentiment. The subject should begin to make the entries himself when old enough to do so properly, i.e. so that the book will not be disfigured—though indeed the naivity of juvenile phrasing, etc., may be of a particular interest. From a graphological point of view, the evolution of the handwriting will be of interest; and if for no other reason, specimens of handwriting ought to appear in it from year to year, while the parent is still writing the other entries. ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... model edition." In a few sections others, such as Kullak, Dr. Hugo Riemann and Hans von Bulow, may have outstripped him, but as a whole his editing is amazing for its exactitude, scholarship, fertility in novel fingerings and sympathetic insight in phrasing. This edition appeared at ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... possibilities if one estimates people only coldly and in the light of everyday life. There is a sub-intellectual religious life which, very conceivably, when its utmost range can be examined, excludes nothing human from religious cooperation, which will use any words to its tune, which takes its phrasing ready-made from the world about it, as it takes the street for its temple, and yet which may be at its inner point in the directest contact with God. Religion may suffer from aphasia and still ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... responded to the toasts, especially the toast to "The Church in America," proposed by Dr. Wordsworth, Bishop of St. Andrews, and responded to by our own Bishop. He referred to some letters which those who had read the Aberdeen papers sent home had seen, in which there was discussion of the phrasing of the toast "The Church in Scotland." He said it did not become him to comment on the discussion at such a time, only if they should think of making any change in the phrasing at the next centenary it occurred to him that "Scotland in the ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... "Medee" and "Les Deux Journees." Mendelssohn many years afterward, writing to Moscheles in Paris, asked: "Has Onslow written anything new? And old Cherubini? There's a matchless fellow! I have got his 'Abencerages,' and can not sufficiently admire the sparkling fire, the clear original phrasing, the extraordinary delicacy and refinement with which it is written, or feel grateful enough to the grand old man for it. Besides, it is all so free and bold and spirited." The work would have had a greater immediate success, had not Paris been ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... personal well-being. One of his chiefest oppositions, according to his daughter, was to telling the friends or relatives of any stricken person that there was no hope. Instead, he would use every delicate shade of phrasing and tone in imparting the fateful words, in order if possible to give less pain. "I remember in the case of my father," said one of his friends, "when the last day came. Knowing the end was near, he was compelled to make some preliminary discouraging ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... place in what purports to be translation. The translator signs himself simply "r." Whoever he was, he had poetic feeling and power of expression. No mere poetaster could have given lines so exquisite in their imagery, so full of music, and so happy in their phrasing. This fact in itself makes it a poor translation, for it is rather a paraphrase with a quality and excellence all its own. Not a line exactly renders the English. The paraphrase is never so good as the original but, considered by itself, it is good poetry. The disillusionment comes ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... herself, ever so pleasantly and considerately—she scarce knew what to call it; but without prejudice to her consciousness, all the same, that women got out of predicaments better than men. The predicament of course wasn't definite or phraseable—and the way they let all phrasing pass was presently to recur to our young woman as a characteristic triumph of the civilised state; but she took it for granted, insistently, with a small private flare of passion, because the one thing she could think of to do for him was to show him how she eased him off. ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... listening to the talk at the next table, because the orchestra was quiet and the conversation unrestrained; then, too, a nautical phrasing caught my ear and aroused my attention. For I had been a lifelong student of nautical matters. A side glance showed me the speaker, a white-haired, sunburned old fellow in immaculate evening dress. With him at the table in the restaurant were other similarly clad men, evidently ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... second most important feature is that the instruction card clerk always uses the same standard wording for the same instructions. Repetition of phrasing is a virtue, and the use of the same word for the same thing and the same meaning repeatedly is very desirable. The wording, phrasing and sentencing should ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... never had his peer for prompt and pithy and witty and humorous sayings. None has equalled him, certainly none has surpassed him, in the felicity of phrasing with which he clothed these children of his fancy. Aldrich was always brilliant, he couldn't help it, he is a fire-opal set round with rose diamonds; when he is not speaking, you know that his dainty fancies are twinkling and glimmering around ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... two elements are separable only in thought, not in reality. Poetry is not common thought expressed in an uncommon manner; it is not an artificial phrasing of even the higher emotions. The higher emotions have a phrasing of their own; they fall naturally—whether as the result of instinct or of habit need not here be considered—into fitting forms. The form may be rhyme; it may be blank verse; it may be the old Hebrew parallelism; it may even be ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... which had applied to be universally provided with a man having exactly his attainments and no others. In less than a month he was installed in a responsible position as their foreign correspondent and in receipt of a very respectable salary. The rapidity of phrasing in this movement was abnormal—prestissimo, in fact, if we indulge our musical vocabulary. But the instrumentation would have seemed less surprising to Sally had she known the lengths her mother had gone in the proffer of a substantial guarantee for Fenwick's personal honesty. This seeming rashness ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... at him sharply. His exaggerated manner, the looseness of his phrasing, the flush on his cheeks were in strange contrast to his usual frank, ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... first-night. In the height of the Season it was not easy to get together a goodly selection of guests at short notice, and Francesca had gladly fallen in with Serena's suggestion of bringing with her Stephen Thorle, who was alleged, in loose feminine phrasing, to "know all about" tropical Africa. His travels and experiences in those regions probably did not cover much ground or stretch over any great length of time, but he was one of those individuals who can describe a continent on the strength of a few days' stay ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... vivid gestures, bright eyes, and perfect phrasing most delight in is personal heroism. And be it remembered that, though they do tell a funny story about German scouts who, in order to do their work, painted themselves the green of trees—and then, to complete the illusion, when they saw a Frenchman began to tremble like leaves—they give full ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... father, my dear father, Thou call'dst me fondly, but some moments past, Thy gentle child. I call my saint to witness I would be such. To say I love this man Is shallow phrasing. Since man's image first Flung its wild shadow on my virgin soul, It has borne no other reflex. I know well Thou deemest he was forgotten; this day's passion Passed as unused confrontment, and ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... drew an official-looking document from his blouse pocket and waved it high above the girls' heads. A series of ecstatic squeals arose from them. Opening the carefully folded paper he read its stereotyped phrasing, all of which is too serious to be herein repeated. Suffice it to say that ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... some of his poems exhibit, is as organic as any other feature of his language-shaping, and shows the rarest command of language. He has been charged with having "failed to reach continuous levels of musical phrasing". It's a charge which every one who appreciates Browning's verse in its higher forms (and its higher forms are not those which are addressed especially to the physical ear) will be very ready to admit. In the general tenor of his poetry, he is ABOVE the Singer,— ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... meeting Scaife's eyes, half thought that the speaker wished that John would fail—that he grudged him a triumph. None the less, the first verse, sung feebly, with wrong phrasing and imperfect articulation, revealed the quality of the boy's voice; and this quality Desmond recognized, as he would have recognized a fine painting or a bit of perfect porcelain. All his short life his father had trained him to look for and acclaim quality, whether in things ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... gradually grew into a tragedy of political idealism with Posa for its hero. As finally completed in the summer of 1787, Don Carlos had twice the length of an ordinary stage-play and, withal, a certain lack of artistic unity. But its sonorous verse, its fine phrasing of large ideas, and its noble dignity of style settled forever the question of Schiller's power as a dramatic poet. The third act especially is instinct with the best idealism of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... three together—may be developed to the highest art by the skill of the individual, often, indeed, only by a good ear for it. Whenever expression of the word's significance, beauty of the vocal material, and perfection of phrasing are found united in the highest degree, it is due either to knowledge or to a natural skill in the innumerable ways of fitting the sung word to the particular resonance—connections that are suitable to realize its significance, ...
— How to Sing - [Meine Gesangskunst] • Lilli Lehmann
... speech, which has beauty and capacity for creating delight and pleasure, like a flower, is frequent in our poet; his poetry is full of such examples. The kinds of phrasing have much novelty in Homer, as we shall go on to show, by giving a few examples from which ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... selections, the easiest to imitate is Addison. First, we should note the old-fashioned phrasing and choice of words, and perhaps translate Addison into simple, idiomatic, modern English, altering as little as possible. We note that the letter offered by Addison is purposely filled with all the faults of rhetoric which we never find ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... the prospectus of a Kentucky 'Female College.' Female college sounds well enough; but since the phrasing it in that unjustifiable way was done purely in the interest of brevity, it seems to me that she-college would have been still better—because shorter, and means the same thing: that is, if either phrase ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... sing. He wasn't using very much voice, just enough to let the melody ring upward to Uncle Peter, round and smooth and inexpressibly caressing. He wasn't singing as though it mattered especially what he sang, indeed at first the phrasing was careless. But presently his voice soared more freely, it grew vibrant ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... what has been attempted has been accomplished; and the best of it is that the auditor at the end of a large hall experiences this sense of satisfaction quite as fully as the persons sitting in the first row of seats. Without good attacks there can be no intellectual singing or speaking, no broad phrasing, and much more that all should aim at who come before the public, and which listeners have, indeed, a right to expect. But just because many persons feel this to be true, they make serious errors in ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... views she set forth were her own or somebody else's, I could see that she relished uttering them. Also, that she relished the euphony and felicity of her phrasing, which was certainly her own. Whether she spoke from conviction or not, one thing seemed indisputable: the atmosphere surrounding the books and authors she named had a genuine fascination for her. There was a naive sincerity in her rhetoric, and her delivery and gestures ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... about the pistol grip when a servant brought him a scribbled note. It had been handed in at the Embassy gate by a woman who fled after leaving it. It looked like Nedda's handwriting. It read like Nedda's phrasing. It appeared to have been written by somebody in a highly emotional state. But it ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... Had I really sinned as he said or was it only that man's madness? Yet there was a method in his fury.... I composed in my mind a violent reply, a reply of mild argument, a reply of lofty detachment; but they never got on paper in the end and I have forgotten their phrasing. The very letter of the angry man has got lost somehow; and nothing remains now but the pages of the story which I cannot recall and would not recall if ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... energies zealously into the acquirement of the classical learning proffered him at Eton; but a fine scholarship, great possession though it be, was not the only gain of his Eton years. Here, says Murphy in his formal eighteenth-century phrasing, young Fielding had "the advantage of being early known to many of the first people in the kingdom, namely Lord Lyttelton, Mr Fox, Mr Pitt, Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, and ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... its well balanced phrasing took Lavinia's fancy, and absorbed in the music she forgot her audience. She saw how the words were wedded to the notes and watched where the trills and graces came in. Pepusch played the air right through; waited a minute or ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce |
