"Conversational" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... though one man may take the mare to the water, no given number of men can make her drink; so, having accepted my place, I determined my complaisance should end there, and, in spite of all Lady Holland's conversational efforts, and her final exclamation, "Allen! do get Mrs. Butler to talk! We really must make her talk!" I held my peace, and kept the peace, which I could have done upon no other conditions; but the unnatural and unwholesome ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... Tom's conversational powers were never very brilliant, and when in the subduing presence of his father they always dwindled down to nothing. It was, therefore, somewhat difficult, under the circumstances, to keep the talk going, but the Doctor did his best. Tom answered in ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... a laugh, "it's probably because I like to hear myself talk to you. Besides, I've always the hope that you'll suddenly become conversational, and that's a possibility exciting enough to give anybody ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... bandits they could scarcely be out banditting, for the two horsemen were talking in ordinary, conversational tones as they rode leisurely down to the ford. When they passed Lorraine, the horse nearest her shied against the other and was sworn at parenthetically for a fool. Against the skyline Lorraine saw the rider's ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... a pity that young men nowadays cannot contain themselves without quarreling," sighed the senora, acting upon the theory that anger is most dangerous when it is silent, and so giving the conversational ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... studied for the ministry! How did I savey that Simpson aimed to be a sharp on doctrine?" A cow-puncher with a squint addressed the table in general. "I scents the aroma of dogma about Simpson in the way he throwed his conversational lariat at the yearling. He urbanes at her, and then comes his 'firstly,' it being a speculation as to her late grazing-ground, which he concludes to be the East. His 'secondly' ain't nothing startling, words familiar to us all from our mother's knee—'nice ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... pleasure, my friend Dr. Baird was the preacher. His text was, "Let thy kingdom come;" and the object for which he had to plead was the Foreign Evangelical Society, of which he was the Secretary. His sermon was exceedingly simple, and the delivery quite in an off-hand conversational style. There ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... certain anecdotes as to her temper, and perhaps the influence lasted into later years. I have, however, heard her lecture. She was a very clever woman, and Mr. Henry James, in Temple Bar for March, 1893, thus does justice to her conversational power: ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... comparatively tranquil state of Spain afforded no scope for his restless activity, since 1823 this political Proteus had lived in retirement, eschewing apparently all plots and intrigues; although he was frequently seen in the very highest circles of the capital, where his great experience, his conversational powers, and social qualities sufficiently accounted for the welcome he ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... at Vivey, the person whose name excited the curiosity and the conversational powers of the villagers—Marie-Julien de Buxieres—ensconced in his unpretentious apartment in the Rue Stanislaus, Nancy, still pondered over the astonishing news contained in the Auberive notary's first letter. The announcement of his inheritance, dropping ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... obstinate cases, as the advertisements say) be taught. Let us suppose therefore, that she dances well, that she has a certain degree of looks, that she is fairly intelligent. The next most important thing, after dancing well, is to be unafraid, and to look as though she were having a good time. Conversational cleverness is of no account in a ballroom; some of the greatest belles ever known have been as stupid as sheep, but they have had happy dispositions and charming and un-self-conscious manners. There is one thing every girl who would really be popular should learn, in fact, she must learn—self-unconsciousness! ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... mitten, to avoid listening and the necessity of reply; it was too evident that the conversational tone was becoming profane. But Mrs. Page's eyes were gleaming with pure dramatic joy, ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... tired. At night I usually went to some theatre, but always ended up at the big cafe on the Grands Boulevards. I wish the reader to know that it was not alone the gaiety which drew me there; aside from that I had a laudable purpose. I had purchased an English-French conversational dictionary, and I went there every night to take a language lesson. I used to get three or four of the young women who frequented the place at a table and buy beer and cigarettes for them. In return I received my lesson. I got more ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... be the idea of the wood-touching superstition, that a malignant spirit dogs one's conversational footsteps, listening eagerly for the complacent word. "I have never had the mumps," you say airily. "Ha, ha!" says the spirit, "haven't you? Just you wait till next Tuesday, my boy." Unconsciously we are crediting Fate with our own human weaknesses. If a man standing on the ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... Leonard's words was a thing she prized beyond count. It made Mrs. Morris nervous, drained her mind's treasury, and sent her conversational powers borrowing and begging; Isabel it awed; Arthur it tantalized; to Godfrey it was an appetizing drollery; but to Ruth it was dearer and clearer ...
— Bylow Hill • George Washington Cable
... in a mild and conversational tone, sitting up and touching one paw to his head, as if he saluted ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various
... The monkey house at the Zoo. One spot of clear gray light falls on the front of one cage so that the interior can be seen. The other cages are vague, shrouded in shadow from which chatterings pitched in a conversational tone can be heard. On the one cage a sign from which the word "gorilla" stands out. The gigantic animal himself is seen squatting on his haunches on a bench in much the same attitude as Rodin's "Thinker." YANK enters from the left. Immediately a ...
— The Hairy Ape • Eugene O'Neill
... and went to hear him out of curiosity were swung by his personality into being supporters. He had always his own natural style of talk. Possessing a musical and clear voice, he never strained for effect, rarely used a rotund sentence, but talked to his audiences in a red-hot conversational kind of way, his heightened feelings finding expression in a sibilance which always touched the nerves of his hearers. He seldom interrupted interrupters, finding it more effective to let them speak and then to deal with them in his own special manner when they ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... Lady Ella a mere conversational stop-gap, to be dropped now that the real business could be commenced. She turned her pretty profile to that lady, and obliged the bishop with a compact summary of all that had preceded his arrival. ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... that he has been able to use the railroad track for conversational purposes in place of a telegraph wire, and he further states that when only one telephone was connected with the track the sounds of Morse operating were distinctly audible in the telephone, although the nearest telegraph wires were at least fifty ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... acquaintanceship—became more sensible of the pleasures that her refined and elegant intellect could derive from art and talent, and the communion of friendship. She drew around her the most cultivated minds of her time and country. Her abilities, her wit, and her conversational graces enabled her not only to mix on equal terms with the most eminent, but to amalgamate and blend the varieties of talent into harmony. The same persons, when met elsewhere, seemed to have lost their ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... to marry you?" asked Clifford. This idea occurred to him as being conversational, but he was still ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... whose perambulations of their native place are in marked contrast to the silent, ruthless hurry in the streets of our large towns. The good burghers of foreign towns seem to have plenty of their own and other people's time to spare; they also possess the gift of unlimited conversational powers. I have known many a pleasant chat rudely interrupted by a group of British or American travellers who, with nose well inside a book, blue or red but obviously "guide," push their way, ruthless as Juggernaut, through bunches ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... older lawyer, Jeremiah Mason, who graduated at Yale about the time Webster was born. Mason, who was frequently Webster's opponent, took pleasure in ridiculing all ornate efforts and in pricking rhetorical bubbles. Webster says that Mason talked to the jury "in a plain conversational way, in short sentences, and using no word that was not level to the comprehension of the least educated man on the panel. This led me to examine my own style, and I set about reforming it altogether." Note the simplicity in the following sentences from Webster's ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... hastening to be the first to speak, in order to have any conversational chance at all with her, "it is not the least mysterious part of this Mystery of ours, that keeps us all out of doors so much in the unseasonable winter month of December,[1] and now I am peculiarly a ...
— Punchinello Vol. 1, No. 21, August 20, 1870 • Various
... ordinary folk in other parts of the world, except that unseemly allusions are freely admitted into general conversation in a way which would not be tolerated in a Christian country. The absurd, high-flown conversational rhapsodies in the average Anglo-Indian novel are purely imaginary. "Kim's" talk fairly represents the ordinary talk of the Indian, although he was ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... John Rastell, Wilfred Holme, and Charles Bansley, all writers of minor and forgotten poems. John Heywood, called the Epigrammatist, was of a somewhat higher order. He was the favourite of Sir Thomas More and the pensioner of Henry VIII. He gained favour partly through his conversational humour, and partly through his writings. He is the author of various comedies; of six hundred epigrams, most of them very poor; of a dialogue, in verse, containing all the proverbs then afloat in the language; ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... all at ease that came near him, and Anne, though never a conversational person, was a quietly kind hostess, much beloved by all who had experienced her gentleness, and she had Frank and Lena to give distinction in their different ways to her London parties, as at Compton, Rosamond never ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... eating alone in an atmosphere of observant criticism. And he did not like talking with his mouth full to an unembarrassed interlocutor who made no conversational leads of her own. After a few mouthfuls he pushed his plate away from him. "Then let's have up the ice pudding," he said with a faint note ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... different from what I had expected. Not a "pious" atmosphere at all! I saw a very tall and heavy gentleman, dressed in black, who sat, wholly at ease, on the table! One hand was in his pocket, one foot swung clear of the ground; and he was not preaching, but talking in an easy, conversational tone to some forty young men who sat intent on his words. I was too excited to listen to what he was saying, I was making a vain attempt to classify him. But I remember the thought, for it struck me with force,—that if Christianity were so thoroughly discredited by evolution, as Ralph Hambleton ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... jealousy and friction which the Souls caused, I must relate a conversational scrap I had at this time with Lady Londonderry,[Footnote: The late Marchioness of Londonderry.] which caused some talk ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... at the Chinese Junk, you would have entered into conversation with the lady's-maid, and told her it was a rise you took out of the old fellow to get her along-side of you, and she would enjoy the joke, and you would have found her a thousand times more handsome and more conversational and agreeable than ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... first conversational exchanges, was entirely that of the butler. From what I came to know of him later, I think he took an artistic pride in throwing himself into whatever role he had ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... before supper time, and Biah Carter, the deacon's hired man, was leaning against a fence, waiting for his evening meal; indulging the while in a stream of conversational wisdom which seemed to flow all the more freely from having been dammed up through ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Springfield to Harrisburg, over much of which I passed. Then he left home and became an inhabitant of history. His face was solid and healthy, his step young, his speech and manner bold and kindly. I saw him at Trenton stand in the Legislature, and say, in his conversational intonation: ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... organs are not over-acute, tells me that he shudders at what is forced on his notice. The perfect absence of publicity, the silence of the press and of the tribune, and even of the bar—for no speeches, except on the most trivial subjects, are allowed to be reported—give full room for conversational exaggeration. Bad as things are, they are made still worse. Now this we cannot bear. It hurts our strongest passion—our vanity. We feel that we are exploites by Persigny, Fould, and Abbattucci, and a swarm of other adventurers. The injury ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... him:—'This Mr. Hamilton is extremely tall and handsome; has an air of haughty and fashionable superiority; is intelligent, dry, sarcastic, and clever. I should have received much pleasure from his conversational powers, had I not previously been prejudiced against him, by hearing that he is infinitely artful, double, and crafty.' (Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... possession of the latchkey, Dr. Bagby tells us, did not argue an intimate personal relation, as the fancy of the brilliant editor of the Examiner was apparently changeable, and wavered when he discovered that his assistant neither played chess nor talked sufficiently to inspire him to conversational excellence. But the key opened to the younger man, whenever he so willed, the pleasant three-storied brick house on Broad Street where the valiant editor kept bachelor's hall in a manner that would suggest the superfluity of complicating ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... example set the world by the use of property for purposes which were destructive to all true society, and a shame to civilization and Christianity. Philip controlled his voice and his manner admirably, but he drove the truth home and spared not. His voice at no time rose above a quiet conversational tone, but it was clear and distinct. The audience sat hushed in the spell of a genuine sensation, which deepened when, at the close of a tremendous sentence, which swept through the church like a red-hot flame, Mr. Winter suddenly arose in his pew, passed out into the aisle, ...
— The Crucifixion of Philip Strong • Charles M. Sheldon
... of thought and language, and often so much wit and humour, that one could not help being interested and attentive.' On matters of business, he adds, 'the talk could not be of the same quality and was of the same continuity.' He gives one specimen of the 'richness of conversational diction' which I may quote. My father mentioned to Taylor an illness from which the son of Lord Derby was suffering. He explained his knowledge by saying that Lord Derby had spoken of the case to him in a tone for which he was unprepared. 'In all the time when I saw him daily I cannot recollect ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... misfortunes. What would Miss Martha say if she knew what had been the subject of our conversation? Would that that excellent rule which had been the guide of her young ladyhood had curtailed the conversational propensities of mine! I thought of the three degrees of intimacy with a shudder. Why had we not been satisfied with discussing the merits ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the subject were altogether pleasant. I by no means wished to monopolise the delights of all those cushions, nor would it be to me a cause of sorrow that there should be some one to share with me the conversational powers of that interpreter. Should another guest be found, he might also be an Englishman, and I might thus form an acquaintance which would be desirable. Thinking of these things, I walked the quay for ...
— George Walker At Suez • Anthony Trollope
... disconnected words, tantalised without enlightening us; and the less we understood, the more gallantly, the more copiously, and with still the more explanatory gestures, Mapiao returned to the assault. We could see his vanity was on the rack; being come to a place where that fine jewel of his conversational talent could earn him no respect; and he had times of despair when he desisted from the endeavour, and instants of irritation when he regarded us with unconcealed contempt. Yet for me, as the practitioner of some kindred ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Lawyer Ed saw conversational rocks ahead once more and piloted around them. "What is this I hear about Leslie?" he asked. "Is she going to be ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... conversational ruthlessness. "Fifteen dollars! Why, I'd give that myself an' set it up out there at the cross-roads for autos to bid on while they run. Its wuth—well, I wouldn't say what 'twas wuth. Maybe you'd laugh, an' I ain't goin' to be laughed at, if I ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... Premier, grey-bearded, dignified, and responsible in bearing and speech, conversationally reasonable in tone. There was Mr Schreiner, the Premier, almost boyish with plump, smooth cheeks and a dark moustache. He looks capable, and looks as if he knows it: he, too, is conversational, almost jerky, in speech, but with a flavour of bitterness added to ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... Poetry. It is taken from a collection entitled "Rhymes of the Ropes" These Rhymes are intended to illustrate the everyday life of the British prize-fighter, his simple joys, his manly sorrows, his conversational excellences, and his indomitable pluck. The author has never been a prize-fighter himself, but he claims for these Rhymes the merit of absolute truth in every detail. In any case it is quite certain that every critic who reviews the volume will say of it, that no previous book has ever presented ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Volume 103, July 16, 1892 • Various
... window' on the strength of his success with 'John Bull,' and spent much more than he had. He mingled freely in all the London circles of thirty years ago, whose glory is still fresh in the minds of most of us, and everywhere his talent as an improvisatore, and his conversational powers, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... did get to know Major Stone well. He was dignified, tiresome, conversational, gentle mannered and, I think, rather lonely. By driblets, a scrap here and a scrap there, I learned something about his private life. He came from the extreme eastern end of the state. He belonged ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... memoria technica, which could easily be remembered, and would recall the fuller expositions that had been based upon them. Shortly after the Buddha's time the Brahmins had their s[u]tras in Sanskrit, already a dead language. He purposely put his into the ordinary conversational idiom of the day, that is to say, into P[a]li. When the Buddha died these sayings were collected together by his disciples into what they call the Four Nik[a]yas, or "collections." These cannot have reached their final form till about fifty or sixty ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... which you speak?" inquired the Marquess, in a conversational tone. "Pardon me if I seem intrusive—it is your affair and yours only—but you have excited my curiosity. The portrait is that ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... was finished in silence after this, for Luke had disburthened himself of thoughts to an extent that left his conversational resources quite barren, and Mr. Tulliver had relapsed from his recollections into a painful meditation on the choice of hardships before him. Maggie noticed that he was unusually absent that evening at tea; and afterward he sat leaning forward ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... had made him the great moralist of the age, and his Dictionary and History of the English Language, that stupendous monument of individual labor, had excited the admiration of the learned world. He was now at the head of intellectual society; and had become as distinguished by his conversational as his literary powers. He had become as much an autocrat in his sphere as his fellow-wayfarer and adventurer Garrick had become of the stage, and had been humorously dubbed by Smollett, "The Great Cham ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... rapidly gained in public esteem for his integrity, his sagacity, and his unrivalled good sense. His humor, wit, and conversational ability caused his society to be universally sought. He was a good judge of books for his infant library, and he took a great interest in everything connected with education. He was the life of his literary club, and made ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... Blair made to the invitation sent him several months after his arrival in Manhattan, by Pig-iron Dunham, is still verbal currency upon the Tenderloin. Conversational small change, to be sure, but still ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... Lamb's room or of his meeting with Coleridge, in which high themes and spirited eloquence find spontaneous and unaffected expression through the same medium as might be employed in a deliberate definition of the nature of poetry. The various sets of lectures are pitched in the same conversational key and are found adequate to conveying a notion of the grandeur of Milton as well as ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... the lesson should be, not only to lead the pupils to enjoy the humour of the poem, but also to appreciate the lesson it teaches. It affords a fine opportunity for the development of conversational powers ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... Therefore, sir, a Jacobite is neither an Atheist nor a Deist. That cannot be said of a Whig: for Whiggism is a negation of all principle." But it was not often that his Toryism expressed itself in anything so like a chain of reasoning as this. As a rule, it appears rather in those conversational sallies, so pleasantly compounded of wrath, humour, and contempt, which are the most remembered thing about him. It provides some of the most characteristic; as the dry answer to Boswell who expressed his ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... this ship runs on an atomic pile," he said in a conversational tone of voice. "The cables are just under the floor in the control room and they can be reached ...
— The Stutterer • R.R. Merliss
... something to say—it is called "making conversation." But Carpenter evidently did not know about this custom, and neither of us instructed him. Once or twice I stole a glance at Mary, marvelling at her. All her life she had been a conversational volcano, in a state of perpetual eruption; but now, apparently she passed judgment on her own remarks, and found them ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... midst of any conversation, so that often no sound could be heard but the noise of their hoofs. Of the number and kind of these hobbies there is no need here to speak, but when there were so many gathered into a single place, the neighing and snorting, the champing of conversational bits, and the pounding of huge and heavy feet were curious ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... MacRae and Betty Gower slid away in the one-step, that most conversational of dances. But Jack couldn't find himself chatty with Betty Gower. She was graceful and clear-eyed, a vigorously healthy girl with a touch of color in her cheeks that came out of Nature's rouge pot. But MacRae was subtly conscious of ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... repast there was much lively chatting among the islanders, in which their conversational powers quite exceeded ours. The young ladies, too, showed themselves very expert in the use of their tongues, and contributed much to ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... and instructors of young or old people." But this is not in accord with my observation. I should say it was rather the sin of dilettanti who are ambitious of that high-stepping accomplishment which is called "conversational ability." ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... Dan Gallaher, in a pleasant conversational tone, "that it's to be yourself, James McNiece, that's to be the head of the Orangemen in the parish now ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... relapsed into Shakespeare's tongue, for their Italian, though firm and perfect as far as it went, could not be considered as going far, and was useless for conversational purposes, unless they merely wanted to greet each other, or to know the time. But it was interesting to talk Italian, however ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... people who have just escaped with their lives from some menacing calamity, they were very philosophical in spirit; and having got aboard of their own motion, and being neither of them apparently the worse for the ordeal they had passed through, were of a light, conversational temper. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... conversational or descriptive art which, in a large and mixed society, would, even if possible, be hardly so much as perceptible. I may take as two other examples Sophy, Lady Roden, and Lady Dorothy Nevill. Unlike Lady Dorothy, whose chronicled sayings have ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... have had terms, destination, day and hour of starting definitely arranged before that miraculously-produced tea of Felicite's had turned to tannin. But man may not walk through a solid wall, or strive against such conversational gifts as those of ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... to my conversational efforts, Blenheim had snatched the papers, torn them hungrily open, and run them through. He was bristling with suspicion; but he evidently knew his business. It did not take him long to conclude that he ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... Irish and conversational. He had as usual talked too much, unaware that Adam, with fiendish insight, was reading steadily between the lines, ready ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... book is more of a descriptive than conversational style, as it is presumed that the pupil, after having finished the previous books of the series, will have formed the habit of ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... are said to have been the vainest men of their time. At a dinner some years since, Dr. Parr, in ecstasies with the conversational powers of Lord Erskine, called out to him, though his junior, "My Lord, I mean to write your epitaph." "Dr. Parr," replied the noble lawyer, "it is a temptation to ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... shore made them gravely happy. As they tramped briskly off, atop the cliffs, toward the ferry to New York, five miles away, they talked with a quiet, quick seriousness which discovered them to each other. It was too cold for conversational fencing. It was too splendidly open for them not to rejoice in the freedom from New York streets and feel like ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... been formed by the selection of chance daubs of paint." The remark of Herschel's, quoted in "Life and Letters," II., page 241, that the "Origin" illustrates the "law of higgledy-piggledy," is probably a conversational variant of the Laputan comparison which gave rise to the passage in the "Descent of ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... he had wiped the conversational slate, and the baffled Tims dismissed him. He opened the door a little and slipped out; put his dark head in again with an engaging smile, said politely, "I sha'n't be away very long," and closed the door softly ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... with a warning cantankerous inflection, firmly and almost brutally reproving this conversational delinquency of George's. "Rule it out, young man! We don't want any of that sort of mountebanking in England. We ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... had faint lines absent from Linda's flawless countenance. Her children, and Arnaud, were immensely proud of her beauty; it had become a part—in the form of her ridiculously young air—of the family conversational resources. She was increasingly aware of its supreme significance ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... addressing a bench of judges he would not have been more impassive in his manner. He was an animate, but not an animated, bean-pole. He poured out a steady flow of words—three to Douglas's two—in a simple and semi-conversational tone. He attempted no witticisms and indulged in no oratorical claptrap. His address was pure argument. Douglas's manner was one of excitement, and accompanied and emphasized by almost continuous bodily ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... graphic, throws the whole party up in a dry light. One can see the rhapsodist talking interminably, involving himself ever deeplier in a web of his own spinning; the great lady gazing in wonder. It is one of the very few impartial witnesses we have to his conversational feats. Nearly all the evidence is tainted either by predisposition in his favour or the reverse. Hazlitt, a mainly hostile witness, says that he talked well on every subject; Godwin on none. One suspects antithesis there. He reports Holcroft ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... conversation between Sir John Herschel and Sir David Brewster, is one of the most cleverly conceived (though also one of the absurdest) passages in the pamphlet. 'About three years ago, in the course of a conversational discussion with Sir David Brewster upon the merits of some ingenious suggestions by the latter, in his article on Optics in the "Edinburgh Encyclopaedia," p. 644, for improvements in Newtonian reflectors, Sir John Herschel adverted to the convenient simplicity ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... glad to see him that he began to suspect that his own inner gloom had darkened their faces after his father's misfortune. Day after day found him in his favorite corner at the club, watching the passing pageant and listening eagerly to the conversational froth of the town-the gossip of club, theatre, and society. His ascetic life in the mountains gave to every pleasure the taste of inexperience. His early youth seemed renewed, so keen and fresh were his emotions. He felt, too, that he was recovering a lost identity, and still the new ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... existence. 'Who has got a piece of steel in his eye?'—'Who has gone to the hospital?'—'How many came to-day in the carry-all?' were almost the only questions we could ask. A man falling from the new prison, and breaking his bones in a fashion not to be approved, was a conversational godsend. One day the retiring tide left a small box on the sands at the bottom of the house of correction wharf, which was picked up by a convict, and found to contain the bequest of some woman who had 'loved not wisely, but too well,' namely, a pair of new-born ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... wind blows. He is always sure of a 'fine day', and the promise of a few genial showers he hails with pleasure. There is never any of that 'remarkable weather' on the islands which from time immemorial has been experienced in America, and still continues to call forth the wondering conversational exclamations of its elderly citizens. Nor do there even occur any of those eccentric meteorological changes which elsewhere surprise us. In the valley of Typee ice-creams would never be rendered less acceptable by sudden frosts, nor would picnic parties be deferred on ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... former inmates of the Home, their wives, children and friends. Every evening, at half-past nine o'clock, there is family prayer in the chapel, and every Sunday afternoon the president, Mr. S.P. Godwin, has a class for Bible study and instruction in the same place. On Tuesday evenings there is a conversational temperance meeting; and on Thursday evening of each week the Godwin Association, organized for mutual help and encouragement, holds a meeting in ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... explanation is not wholly convincing, for they have the lighting arrangements in their own hands, and could easily afford the outlay. It may be that they like to remain close to the shops and to each other's doors for conversational purposes, since it is a fact that, socially speaking, the more restricted the area, the more expansive one grows. We broaden out, in proportion as the environment contracts. A ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... you were able to lay your hand on forty-two shillings. Judging from your conversational style, I should think you must spend at least a shilling a ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... adapted to all kinds of subjects that English versification possesses. Its powers range through the tragedy and comedy of Shakespeare, the dignity of the sonnet, and the grandeur of Milton, to the satire of Pope and the informal conversational verse of Mr. Robert Frost. The 4-stress line is too short, the 6-stress is too long (when it does not split into two equal parts); the 5-stress seems to hit the golden average. It is less inclined to 'go' by itself, and therefore ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... real surprise to me," she began, in a conversational tone, "to hear Mr. Steadman make a speech. I am sure his colleagues in the House would have been surprised to have heard him today. He is a very quiet man there—he never speaks. The first night I went to the House with a crowd of Normalites, I pointed out our member, ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... time she took part in every amusement with her wonted affability and without the slightest indication of alarm. She dined with the rest of the company, and enlivened the whole court with those conversational charms for which she was distinguished. The disease proved light, and she was carried through it very successfully. Soon after, ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... and called to the man, who had stopped pitching hay and now stood leaning on the handle of his fork. At the signs and sounds she made, he came actively forward to the road, bringing his fork with him. When he arrived within easy conversational distance, he planted the tines in the ground and braced himself at an opposite incline from the long smooth handle, and waited ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... remarkable. But to-day he whistled falsely and shrilly between his teeth. At last he met my eye. He winced slightly, but recovered himself, and going to the fence, stood for a few moments on his hands, with his bare feet quivering in the air. Then he turned toward me and threw out a conversational preliminary. ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... seat and Stanford's conversational cue, and began discussing politics, until Rose got up ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... of ten years, though this was nearly balanced by the very early age at which Lawrence obtained many of his successes. Hoppner was also a handsome man, of refined address and polished manner; he, too, possessed great conversational powers, while in the matter of wit and humour he was probably in advance of his antagonist. He was well read—'one of the best-informed painters of his time,' Mr. Cunningham informs us—frank, out-spoken, open-hearted, gay, and whimsical. He had all the qualifications ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... properties of the language in which the books of the Bible were written, and in which their authors were, accustomed to speak. (24) We shall thus be able to investigate every expression by comparison with common conversational usages. ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part II] • Benedict de Spinoza
... and the Irishman," began the Skeptic, in a conversational tone, "being about to be hanged, were given their choice of a tree. 'The oak for me,' says the Englishman. 'The Scotch elm for mine,' says the Scotsman. 'Faith,' says the Irishman, 'I'll be afther takin' a gooseberry bush.' 'That's ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... you've finished. I'll do the talking, if it's all the same to you. But you needn't answer—needn't listen, for that matter. I've no pride in my conversational powers, and you mustn't ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... a lawyer, and I will speak with you. I believe you just said that we are all under arrest," reminded Elfreda in an ordinary conversational tone. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... on other days it had always been Brandon who had thrown back the ball for the Bishop to catch. Whoever the other guest might be, it was always Brandon who took the lead, and although he might be a little ponderous and slow in movement, he supplied the Bishop's conversational needs quite adequately. ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... The Alf Laylah. "On that night (we read in Chap. vi. 1) could not the King sleep, and he commanded to bring the book of records of the chronicles; and they were read before the King." The Rawi would declaim the recitative somewhat in conversational style; he would intone the Saj'a or prose-rhyme and he would chant to the twanging of the Rabab, a one-stringed viol, the poetical parts. Dr. Scott[FN301] borrows from the historian of Aleppo a life-like picture of the Story-teller. "He recites ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... at the wedding, ma'am," she said presently, in a purely conversational style, sitting in our little kitchen, and scrubbing the potatoes; "and such a lovely day for them." She proceeded to numerous other details, clearly avoiding some ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... and women for a few moments in silence, as though he would give them time to realise the tremendous solemnity of the words they had just heard. There was dead, breathless silence at first, and then came a rustling sound, mingled with one of deep breathing. Then he began again in the same direct, conversational tone in which he had asked ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... masterpieces of their kind. Easy and conversational, they touch upon no subject without leaving an indelible impression of the writer's originality; and the myriad matters of universal interest with which many of them are teeming will render them a precious legacy ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... Blackwood's Magazine, which work owes its establishment and much of its early success to Mr. Hogg's co-operation. We believe it to be pretty well known that the offensive language attributed to the Shepherd in the "Noctes" has no more to do with Mr. Hogg than by attempting to imitate his conversational style. This impropriety, which is beyond a literary joke, was reprobated some months since by the Quarterly Review, but here the offending parties are properly visited with a burst of honest indignation which may not ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 543, Saturday, April 21, 1832. • Various
... flowering bushes insisted on making it almost a hidden retreat. The spot could not be more gemuetlich—that familiar expressive word which Kirtley soon learned to rely on amid the scant artillery of his defensive weapons of conversational German. ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... life had suddenly become vested with new charms for Mr. Blake. He had found his conversational affinity. "For years," said he, "I have been like Pyramus, peeking and scratching at a wall for Thisbe,—only my Thisbe was never there." But Pyramus Blake had found his mate, he swore, and with huge delight he began devoting hours ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... miles around, used to congregate. Banneker often called at the post-office, where, after overcoming his natural modesty and diffidence, he was frequently called out in conversations covering a variety of topics. His conversational powers, his inexhaustible fund of information, and his broad learning (for those times and considering his circumstances), made him the connoisseur of that section. At times he related, in modest ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... many of them already well known to the public from various causes. it may, however, be permitted to observe, that, they were, for the most part, persons distinguished either by their taste in the fine arts, their love of antiquities, their literary attainments, or their conversational talents. To the friends already mentioned, but with whom Walpole did not habitually correspond, must be added, Mason the poet, George Selwyn, Richard second Lord Edgecumbe, George James Williams, Esq. Lady Suffolk, and Mrs. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... he asked, scarcely raising his voice above the ordinary conversational tone, though a hard fifteen-minutes' climb up and down separated the two; "they never came up the arroyo, if you ask ME. My side don't show a hoof track from where we left the ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... in a conversational tone, mezzo voce, and accompanied with smiles. No one could have guessed what these two men were saying to each other. Only, Guy was very pale and his somewhat haughty glance around him seemed to indicate that he was seeking ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... is my business," returned Calumet gruffly. Betty's voice had been quietly conversational, but it had carried a subtle sting with its direct mockery, and Calumet felt again as he had felt the night before, like an unruly scholar being rebuked by his teacher. Last night, though, the situation had been a novel one; now the ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... colleague. He is, in short, the vigorous, racy prosateur of that human comedy of which Mr. Abbey is the poet. He illustrates the modern sketch of travel, the modern tale—the poor little "quiet," psychological, conversational modern tale, which I often think the artist invited to represent it to the eye must hate, unless he be a very intelligent master, little, on a superficial view, would there appear to be in it to represent. The superficial view is, after all, the natural one ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... be largely "conversational in style," to cultivate flexibility of voice and to break up the dreary monotone so frequently heard ...
— New National First Reader • Charles J. Barnes, et al.
... answered that she believed they were taking a motor trip just at the moment, but she would forward a note, if Amy liked. Madame Carter did not come out for tea; they were very quiet on the terrace. But Richard was there, and Amy and Nina were developing their youthful conversational arts upon him, when a maid came to stand respectfully beside Harriet. "If you please, Miss Field, Mr. Bottomley would like to know if you are to have your dinner downstairs to-night, please," said Pauline, incidentally feeling as if she was in a dream of bliss. Her last position had been in a well-to-do ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... seat again on the car after leading the mare up the river. He spoke in a cheery, conversational tone. Dr. Lovaway thought of Manchester and the surrounding district, thought of trams, ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham
... looked blank; and Mr. Arbuton, having quite forgotten what he had said to provoke this comment now, looked puzzled and answered nothing: for he had this trait also in common with the sort of Englishman for whom he was taken, that he never helped out your conversational venture, but if he failed to respond inwardly, left you with your unaccepted remark upon your hands, as it were. In his silence, Kitty fell a prey to very evil thoughts of him, for it made her harmless sally look like a blundering ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... behind the seats, with his hands in his trousers pockets, with seeming listlessness, while another senator was speaking, and then ask to be heard, and, without changing his attitude, make an argument in a calm conversational tone, unmixed with the slightest oratorical flourish, so solid and complete that little more remained to be said on the subject in question. He gave the impression of having at his disposal a rich and perfectly ordered store of thought and knowledge ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... down at Henry's little table and ordered drink; a bright, neat, brisk young man, with an alert manner. Glancing at the British Bolshevist, he made a conversational opening which elicited the fact that Henry represented this journal at Geneva. For himself, he was, it transpired, correspondent of the Daily Sale, a paper to which the British Bolshevist was politically opposed but temperamentally sympathetic; they had ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... not her only method of doubling her diligence. Her experience and wisdom brought her many inquirers after the truth, and demands upon her conversational powers were many and imperative. Yet those busy, provident hands, long acquainted with needles, seemed to make them fly and click in about even race, with the mind and the tongue, "Diligence in business," "singing with grace in the heart," and "conversation ...
— Elizabeth: The Disinherited Daugheter • E. Ben Ez-er
... seeds or from cuttings?" I asked him. He scratched his head and appeared in doubt. "Are your plants self-supporting," I went on, "or do you train them on twigs? What would be the diameter of your finest specimen?" He continued in doubt. I adopted a conversational manner. "I suppose you'll be potting off soon? You must get very fond of your mushrooms. I think one always gets fond of anything which demands one's whole care and attention. I wonder if I might have a peep at ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... said the burglar in conversational tone. Burglars of the third type do not hiss. The citizen in the bed looked at the round end of the burglar's pistol and ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... walking at a quick pace up the valley, Antoine, observing that his young charge was now in a conversational frame of mind, commented on the magnificent scenery, and drew attention to points of interest as ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... knelt down on the floor, while the old preacher made a short, heart-touching prayer. It was a simple, humble acknowledgment of the dependence of the creature on the Creator—of His right to give and to take away, and was uttered in a free, conversational tone, as if long communion with his Maker had placed the old negro on a footing of friendly familiarity with Him, and given the black slave the right to talk with the Deity as one man talks ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... Man who recovered his conversational interest first. "So you think I'm a fool?" he ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... know that there may be much ability Shown in this sort of desultory rhyme; But there's a conversational facility, Which may round off an hour upon a time. Of this I'm sure at least, there's no servility In mine irregularity of chime, Which rings what's uppermost of new or hoary,[nn] Just ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... her lips and turned her face away. "I was glad to come," she answered, after a pause. For a moment she trembled upon the verge of a confidence, then summoned all her conversational powers to ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... an opportunity for an argument with an opponent worthy of his steel. The Scotchman's alert intelligence pined sometimes, in those intellectually desolate wastes, for exercise in the keen give-and-take of debate. The average cowboy was not noted for his conversational powers, and Gregor Lang clutched avidly at every possibility of talk. It was said of him that he loved a good argument so much that it did not always make much difference to him which side of the argument he took. On one occasion he was spending the night at ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... he longed for—some hint that it had come over her that after all she had better have married a man who was not a by-word for the most contemptible, the least heroic, of vices. Had she not seen—had she not felt—the smile go round when her husband executed some especially characteristic conversational caper? How could a woman of her quality endure that day after day, year after year, except by her quality's altering? But he would believe in the alteration only when he should have heard her ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... Poetry." Within four months of his first contribution Mr. Lehmann was promoted to the Table—an unprecedentedly rapid promotion—and he has ever since been one of the most diligent of contributors. Literary merit apart, Mr. Lehmann's "Conversational Hints for Young Shooters" has probably been received with greater favour throughout the country, on account of its subject and its felicitous treatment, than any of the young author's works. Country ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... upon her story. He only sat in the doorway, looking down the road where he had watched her approach a few weeks ago, and when she said, noting his abstraction, "A penny for your thoughts, papa!" he asked, in a purely conversational tone, "Elizabeth,"—she always loved to hear him say "Elizabeth,"—"Elizabeth, do you think it would make Nick very mad indeed if we were ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... some one and the chattering begins, furioso. "Oh, Nietzsche? why of course,"—"Tolstoi's What is Art? certainly, he ought to be electrocuted"—"Nordau! isn't he terrible?" And the cacophonous conversational symphony rages, and when it is spent, the man who asked the ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... had to go through the tobacco chewer's pre-conversational rite before replying to my question gave it as: "Pfst!—They ain't nothin' in Europe ner Switzerland ner nowheres else, I reckon', to ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... start, and quickly lay down his fork. She watched in vain through the rest of that dinner for a conversational sensation at his end of the table. When they were in the carriage and on the way home ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... and inspiring discourses. The building accommodates eighteen hundred worshippers, and in emergencies, twenty-five hundred. It is a model of cheerfulness and convenience, and is so felicitous in its acoustics that an ordinary conversational tone can be heard at the opposite end of the auditorium. The picture of the Church in this volume gives no adequate idea of the size of the edifice; for the Sunday School Hall and lecture-room and social parlors are situated in the rear, ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... the clear conversational impulse, born of the need to keep something going, but Lulu was ...
— Miss Lulu Bett • Zona Gale
... Somehow Geoffrey's conversational powers failed him. Where was Beatrice? she ought to be back from school. It was holiday time indeed. Could she ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... three or four minutes Mrs. Drainger did not speak. I could not, of course, see her face; but once or twice her hands shifted in her lap, and I thought she was perturbed. My own conversational efforts had been so uniformly unfortunate that ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... one who went far and frequently out of his conversational way to assure you that he was a gentleman. Though he did no more than just recount how he gave his seat to a woman in a car, or passed the salt at dinner, or made a morning call, somewhere in the narrative you were sure to hear that he ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... beyond and above the pleading of the uncertainty of death to arouse fear in the hearts of his congregation. Instead, to him, the great clock of time was actually ticking off an opportunity which the unconverted could not permit to pass. In his earnest pleading his voice would rise from a conversational tone until it rang penetratingly through the hall, and he would emphasize his words with a startling resound from his ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan
... the conservation of energy is one of the greatest importance, for all beings have but a limited supply of energy and our problem must ever be how best to husband this as a wise man should study how best to spend his limited income. One must not only consider what is called for in ordinary conversational speaking, or in singing in a small room, but also when the greatest possible efforts are demanded. In all cases when movements are concerned, indeed whenever activity of any kind psychic or physiological ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... half a dozen different leaves every minute, hopping here and there and changing places with his fellows, glancing their bright little eyes this way and that, and all the time uttering gratulatory notes in the canary's conversational tone. And their language is not altogether untranslatable. I listen to one, a pretty pure yellow bird, but slightly tyrannical in his treatment of the others, and he says, or seems to say: "This is good, I like it, only the old leaf ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... utterance staccato, and he had no knowledge of those conversational arts whereby nouns and verbs are amazingly transfigured into a gracious frolic or an intellectual pleasure. To snatch the chatter from its holder, toss and keep it playing in the air until another snatched it from him; to pluck a theory hot from the stating, ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... it," inquired Grandfather, "that there is no record nor tradition of your conversational abilities? It is an uncommon thing to meet with a chair that ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne |
