"Exordium" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... adding others with good judgment and in general with good effect, but which by some fatality usually tend in his hands to excessive prolixity. This is certainly not the case with his dignified and spirited exordium, but in the fourth stanza he begins to copy history, and his muse's wing immediately flags. No more striking example of the superiority of dramatic to narrative poetry in vividness of delineation could be found than the contrast between Shakespeare's scene representing the Archbishop of ...
— The Battaile of Agincourt • Michael Drayton
... architectural division of superstructure into architrave, frieze, and cornice; parts which have been appointed by great architects to all their work, in the same spirit in which great rhetoricians have ordained that every speech shall have an exordium, and narration, and peroration. The reader will do well to consider that it may be sometimes just as possible to carry a roof, and get rid of rain, without such an arrangement, as it is to tell a plain fact without an exordium or peroration; but he ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... horror and of making us shudder with a creeping, nameless terror as the scene after the murder of Duncan, when Macbeth rushes out from the chamber of death, crying, "I have done the deed. Didst thou not hear a noise?" I have studied this famous exordium with extreme care, and I have sought diligently in the works of all the great modern orators, and of some of the ancient as well, for similar passages of higher merit. My quest has been in vain. Mr. Webster's description of the White murder, and of the ghastly haunting ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... of its containing damaging reflections on the elders. Then the present opening (vv. 1—5) was borrowed from Θ, and is marked in both Cod. Chis. and Syro-Hex. as not part of the original work, but a foreign exordium. Rothstein (p. 184, note) thinks that in place of the present borrowed commencement there stood a short introductory remark on the two judging elders. Though lacking proof, this conjecture is well within the bounds of possibility. Yet in the Syro-Hexaplar text the first five ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... would have shown by a general forward swivelling of the ears. Wonderful to tell, they were actually listening. But in truth it was no wonder, for seldom in any, and assuredly never in that church, had there been heard such an exordium to a sermon. ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... of Samos being come to Cleomenes King of Sparta, prepared with a long prolix Oration, to stir him up to war against the tyrant Policrates, after he had listned a good while unto them, his answer was: "Touching your Exordium or beginning I have forgotten it; the middle I remember not; and for your conclusion I will do nothing in it." A fit, and (to my thinking) a verie good answer; and the Orators were put to such a shift; as they knew not what to replie. ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... exordium Paul eagerly pressed forward and entered the bureau. There certainly was Colonel Pendleton, in spotless evening dress; erect, flashing, and indignant; his aquiline nose lifted like a hawk's beak over his quarry, his iron-gray moustache, now ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... question, and has, I think, mistaken the whole affair. The Irish editor did not attempt to unite Malone's fragments—quite the contrary—he left Malone's first fragment as he found it; but he took the second fragment, namely, the exordium of the pretended will of John Shakspeare, and substituted it bodily as the exordium of the will of William Shakspeare, suppressing altogether the real exordium of the latter. So that this Irish ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 28. Saturday, May 11, 1850 • Various
... upon Mr. Thomson's modesty, his untiring industry, and his devotion to his art. But in regard to that art, it may be observed that to characterise it solely as "packing the memory with pleasant fancies" may suffice for an exordium, but is inadequate as a final appreciation. Let me therefore note down, as they occur to me, some of his more prominent pictorial characteristics. With three of the artists mentioned in this and the preceding ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... shown off like the hyena of Exeter 'Change, looking almost as wild and feeling quite as savage. Presenting me to each and all of the splendid crowd which an idle curiosity, easily excited and as soon satisfied, had gathered round us, she prefaced every introduction with a little exordium which seemed to amuse every one but its object: 'Lord Erskine, this is the Wild Irish Girl whom you are so anxious to know. I assure you she talks quite as well as she writes.—Now, my dear, do tell my Lord Erskine some of those Irish stories you told us the other evening. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... Tell, they have disappeared. These overtures are not negligible. The overture to Guillaume Tell is notable for the unusual invention of the five violoncellos and its storm with its original beginning, to say nothing of its pretty pastoral. The fine depth of tone in the exordium of Struensee and the fugue development in the main theme are also not to be despised. But all that, we are told, is lacking in elevation and depth. Possibly; but it is not always necessary to descend to Hell and ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... light, just enough to give force and depth to the whole—a sense of duty, a duty that must be done, whether pleasant or otherwise, and about which there was no choice. What a world of anxiety and doubt the consciousness of this saves us!" This exordium reads more like the utterance of a man being led out to execution than a Minister going to a country possessing an ancient civilisation—a civilisation which had had its effect on every phase of the national life. What would not many of us now ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... to confess that this strange exordium dashed hopes which had already risen to a high pitch. Recovering myself as quickly as possible, however, I murmured that the honour of a visit from the King of Navarre ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... pretending that their sole purpose is to apply "moral suasion" to the slaveholders themselves. As a matter of curiosity, I should like to know what their idea of this "moral suasion" is. Their discourses—yours is no exception—are all tirades, the exordium, argument and peroration, turning on the epithets "tyrants," "thieves," "murderers," addressed to us. They revile us as "atrocious monsters," "violators of the laws of nature, God and man," our homes the abode ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... then that Sypher entered on the exordium of the speech which convinced her of the diabolical noisomeness of the Jebusa Jones unguent. His peroration summed up the contest as that ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... requested help, announces that he is himself busy about "the Contents... wch. I am Endeavouring to modell in my Head, in Order to communicate them to you, for your Directions & refinement," indicates that he has "already rough-hewn the Exordium & Conclusion," and asserts that "What I shall send you from Time to Time, I look upon only as Materials: wch I hope may grow into a fine Building, under your judicious Management" (Jones, ...
— Preface to the Works of Shakespeare (1734) • Lewis Theobald
... which Chaucer in his later works owed to the "Roman of the Rose" was considerable, and by no means confined to the favourite May-morning exordium and the recurring machinery of a vision—to the origin of which latter (the dream of Scipio related by Cicero and expounded in the widely-read Commentary of Macrobius) the opening lines of the "Romaunt" point. He owes ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... then, instead of continuing to interrogate him, made him a long speech upon the danger there is for an obscure citizen to meddle with public matters. He complicated this exordium by an exposition in which he painted the power and the deeds of the cardinal, that incomparable minister, that conqueror of past ministers, that example for ministers to come—deeds and power which none could ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... tree (Fig. 1) bearing its geese progeny. From the open shells in two cases, the little geese are seen protruding, whilst several of the fully-fledged fowls are disporting themselves in the sea below. Gerard's concluding piece of information, with its exordium, must not be omitted. "They spawne," says the wise apothecary, "as it were, in March or Aprill; the Geese are found in Maie or June, and come to fulnesse of feathers in the moneth after. And thus hauing, ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... "Khitb" the exordium of a letter preceding its business-matter and in which the writer displays all his art. It ends with "Amm ba'd," lit.but after, equivalent to our "To proceed." This "Khitb" is mostly skipped over by modern statesmen who will say, "Now after the nonsense let us come to the sense"; ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... began fiction a decade later than Thackeray, but seems more than a decade nearer to us. With her the full pulse of modern realism is felt a-throbbing. There is no more of the ye's and thous with which, when he would make an exordium, Thackeray addressed the world—a fashion long since laid aside. Eliot drew much nearer to the truth, the quiet, homely verity of her scenes is a closer approximation to life, realizes life more vitally than the most veracious ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... exordium I had assumed a sitting posture but at her coarse rejoinder I fell back, inexpressibly shocked, and lay staring upon the dark, tingling with mortification that I should have wasted myself in such vain ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... determined by physical structure. We must face the fact of the negro's present degraded condition; and we must accept the equal fact of his being a man, with a soul as precious, in the sight of God, as the soul of his white brother. For the day when the sublime exordium of the Declaration of Independence could be stigmatized as a 'glittering generality,' is gone by. The basis of our American system of government, it is no longer doubted, is the equality of all men before the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... preface, proem, exordium, prelude, prolegomenon, prologue, foreword; presentation; interpolation ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... Great with his Nephew the Heir-Apparent, every line of which betrays itself as false and spurious to a reader who has made any direct or effectual study of Frederick or his manners or affairs,—it is set forth, in the way of exordium to these pretended royal confessions, that 'notre maison,' our Family of Hohenzollern, ever since the first origin of it among the Swabian mountains, or its first descent therefrom into the Castle and Imperial Wardenship ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... affection of the lungs. The fame of Cardan as a physician had spread as far as Scotland, and the Archbishop had set his heart on consulting him. Cassanate's letter is of prodigious length. After a diffuse exordium he proceeds to praise in somewhat fulsome terms the De Libris Propriis and the treatises De Sapientia[137] and De Consolatione, which had been given to him by a friend when he was studying at Toulouse in 1549. He had just read the De Subtilitate, and was inflamed ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... exordium?—Why, just now, In taking up this paltry sheet of paper, My bosom underwent a glorious glow, And my internal spirit cut a caper: And though so much inferior, as I know, To those who, by the dint of glass and vapour, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... the people that I like!" is an exordium which has served for a manifesto in most homes. This phrase, with all the ideas that are concomitant, is oftenest employed by vain ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... Moses in those Books from whence our Author drew his Subject, and to the Holy Spirit who is therein represented as operating after a particular manner in the first Production of Nature. This whole Exordium rises very happily into noble Language and Sentiment, as I think the Transition to the Fable is exquisitely beautiful ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... course the meaning, though it would spoil the effect of this curiously elaborate exordium if spies were actually mentioned ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... like this exordium; he replied, stepping into the road at the same time, "I've no money, and the bundle contains ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... in the assemblies of the people, if any important affair come to be debated there, he will not fail to give his judgment of it; and in my opinion he would introduce his harangue by a very pleasant exordium, if he should begin with giving them to understand that he had never learnt anything of any man whatsoever; he must address himself to them in words to ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon
... is not likely that I have a long Time to act on the Stage of this Life, for what with Head-Aches, hard Labour, Storms and broken Spectacles I feel my Blood chilling, and Time, that greedy Tyrant, devouring my whole Constitution," etc.,—an exordium which is certainly well adapted to excite our sympathy for Jonathan, even if it fail to inspire confidence in his "Prognostications," and leave us a little in the dark as to the necessary connection between "broken spectacles" and the "chilling of the blood." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... words were clearly cut, simply and perfectly articulated. "It is often said that the day for speaking has passed, and that of action has arrived." It was a direct, plain introduction; not a florid exordium. The voice was clear and cold and distinct; not especially musical, not at all magnetic. The orator was incessantly moving; not rushing vehemently forward or stepping defiantly backward, with that quaint planting of the foot, ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... pieces. I envy his death." The deep serenity of a powerful mind was felt in his every tone—a mind resolute to contend against factions unto death. He then read a memorial relating to the ministry of war. His exordium was an attack upon the Jacobins, and a claim for the respect due to the ministers of the executive power. "Do you hear Cromwell!" exclaimed Guadet, in a voice of thunder. "He thinks himself already so sure ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... rarely spoken of as a whole, but in three portions, as if each were a complete work. The first is the long exordium, exhausting the pessimistic title (contempt of the world), and passing on to the second, where begins the real "Laus Patriae Coelestis." This being cut in two, making a third portion, has enriched the Christian world with two ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... After a brief exordium, containing some general proposition on the subject of human testimony, which meant no more than to suggest the propriety of giving to the prisoner the benefit of what was doubtful and obscure in the testimony which had been taken against him—I proceeded to compare and contrast ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... exordium, Mr Ralph Nickleby took a newspaper from his pocket, and after unfolding it, and looking for a short time among the advertisements, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... led off in his favor was California; and it was a representative of California who first sounded the charge for Douglas's cohorts in the House. In any other place and at any other time, Marshall's exordium would have overshot the mark. Indeed, in indorsing the attack of the Review on the old fogies in the party, he tore open wounds which it were best to let heal; but gauged by the prevailing standard of taste in politics, the speech was acceptable. It so far commended ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... promote order, it may, as some writers on epistolary composition recommend, occasionally be of use to make, in the mind, a division of a letter into three parts, the beginning, middle, and end; or, in other words, the exordium or introduction, the narration or proposition, and the conclusion. The exordium, or introduction, should be employed, not indeed with the formality of rhetoric, but with the ease of genuine politeness and benevolence, in conciliating favor and attention; the narration or proposition, in stating the ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... the characters in our representation of the life and history of the great Macedonian, of the 'Marriage of Alexander and Roxana,' and I hereby request those among you to come upon the stage whom our artists have selected to take part in this scene in the procession." After this exordium he shouted in a deep and resonant voice a long list of names, and while this was going on every other sound was hushed ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... appearance was so remarkable, as to excite the wonder of all present. At length on the third or fourth day of the council, he arose with great dignity, and solemnity of air, and commenced speaking. His exordium was for the most part a beautiful and highly wrought enconium on the character and history of the Indians; particularly of his own people, in the past. They were taken back, as by a magic spell, to primitive times. The days of their renown, when the name and glory ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... some time after this amiable exordium to make the stranger understand the right a Capuchin had to ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... way of exordium, the powerful skirmish line of the address. Assuming the existence of the evil, he advanced boldly to his theme, viz., the duty of abolishing it. To this end he laid down four propositions, as a skillful general plants his cannon ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... at present. He had undoubtedly an excellent ear, and we must conclude he must have succeeded considerably in erotic or pastoral poetry, from the following stanza's, in his Defiance to Envy, which may be considered as an exordium to his poetical writings. ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... discretion—now declare it, and save yourself from the infamy, and the fatal consequences, which may attend a breach of your oath;—if, on the contrary, you believe yourself capable of a strict integrity—now accept the terms, and receive the secret I offer.' Ferdinand was awed by this exordium—the impatience of curiosity was for a while suspended, and he hesitated whether he should receive the secret upon such terms. At length he signified his consent, and the marquis arising, drew his sword from the scabbard.—'Here,' said he, offering it to Ferdinand, ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... amazed speculation as to whither the orator was being led by this extraordinary exordium, but Mr ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... The exordium in chap. i. and ii., and the close in vi. and vii., are distinguished by the generality of the threatening and promise which prevails in them. They have this in common with the first five chapters of Isaiah, and thus certainly ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... step or two, in front of his curule chair, and in a clear slow voice gave utterance to the solemn words, which formed the exordium to all senatorial business. ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... Newton." His hit at the present Chief Secretary for Ireland,[22] when he was a junior Fellow of Trinity, is classical—"We are none of us infallible—not even the youngest of us." But it requires an eye-witness of the scene to do justice to the exordium of the Master's sermon on the Parable of the Talents, addressed in Trinity Chapel to what considers itself, and not without justice, the cleverest congregation in the world. "It would be obviously superfluous in a congregation such as ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... new, that it is not the whole Trojan war, but that episode in the Trojan war (otherwise unimportant) illustrated by the wrath of Achilles, which awakens the inspiration of the poet. In fact, if under the exordium of the Iliad there lurk no typical signification, the exordium is scarce appropriate to the subject. For the wrath of Achilles did not bring upon the Greeks woes more mighty than the ordinary course of war would have destined them to endure. But if the Grecian ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in singularity; and dread a refinement of wisdom as a deviation into folly." Thus she dogmatically addresses a new married man; and to elucidate this pompous exordium, she adds, "I said that the person of your lady would not grow more pleasing to you, but pray let her never suspect that it grows less so: that a woman will pardon an affront to her understanding much sooner than one to her person, is well known; ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... after my last public exordium, a contemptible fellow sought a quarrel with me, and obliged me to draw in my own defence, whom, on this occasion, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... During this exordium I had noticed a venerable man in a fine blue surtout and a wide-brimmed hat, who sat upon the shaft of a cart and puffed slowly at a great pipe. And as he puffed, he listened intently to the quack-salver's address, and from time to time his eyes would twinkle ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... and state that he could not credit the existence of a Being whose power was said to extend everywhere but whom he had not yet seen, although he was now an old man. The aged sceptic is not a little conceited as the following exordium to one of his speeches evinces: "It is very strange that I never meet with anyone who is equal in sense to myself." The same old man in one of his communicative moods related to us the following tradition: The earth had been formed but continued enveloped in total darkness, when a bear and a ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... unto my Leader, who said only, 'Look that from me thou be not separated.' Voices I heard, and every one appeared To supplicate for peace and misericord The Lamb of God who takes away our sins. Still Agnus Dei their exordium was; One word there was in all, and metre one, So that all harmony appeared among them. 'Master,' I said, 'are spirits those I hear?' And he to me: 'Thou apprehendest truly, And they the knot of anger go unloosing.'" ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... on which my conclusions were founded, or showing, by one or two cases, at least, that I had made a mistake or offended against the strict rules of logic, there appears the following sweeping exordium, which has done service before in many an opening address of the counsel for ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... laying bare a great gash in the upper arm—"a little blood, but simple—simple!" and he fell to work a-sponging and bandaging, with a running exordium upon the humanity of the sword as opposed to the more deadly bullet—until at length, the dressing in place, Mr. Tawnish ...
— The Honourable Mr. Tawnish • Jeffery Farnol
... into the bosom of the fold. So far from manifesting an outward hostility, the papal demeanor was conciliating. The letters of invitation from the Pope to the princes were sent by a legate, each commencing with the exordium, "To my beloved son," and were all sent back to his Holiness, contemptuously, with the coarse jest for answer, "We believe our mothers to have been honest women, and hope that we had better fathers." The great council had not yet given its decisions. Marriages ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... sarcasms, and his sneers at the young warriors for want of ardour in resisting Gudabirsi encroachments, were quoted as models of the "withering." Stimulated by the present of a Tobe, he composed a song in honor of the pilgrim: I will offer a literal translation of the exordium, though sentient of the fact that ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... after all, the same as that which we have found less directly phrased in Crevecoeur. But let us quote the lines that follow the exordium—now we should find the poet unconstrained ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... place designated for the lecture; and Captain de Banyan betrayed his interest in that memorable battle, where he had served on the staff of General Fremont, by going to sleep before the eloquent "participant" had got half-way through the exordium. Lieutenant Somers listened attentively until he was satisfied that Colonel Staggerback either was not in the battle, or that he had escorted "Bull ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic |
