"Debater" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Charles James Fox, the most resourceful debater the British Parliament has ever seen, was so fond of his home and his wife that he would actually absent himself from Parliament for the sheer pleasure of her presence and conversation. Lord Beaconsfield, who, we are told, married for the mere purpose of ambition, ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... more earnest and more impressive than ever; the true description would have been, more imperial. He spoke, less like a debater, than like one who held the sceptre in his hand; and one who also felt that he was transmitting his wisdom as a parting legacy to a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... at large watched Lincoln with astonishment. When the debates began there were Republicans in Illinois of wider national reputation. Judge Lyman Trumbull, then Senator; was better known. He was an able debater, and a speech which he made in August against Douglas's record called from the New York "Evening Post" the remark: "This is the heaviest blow struck at Senator Douglas since he took the field in Illinois; it is ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... Yet Burnet, though open in many respects to ridicule, and even to serious censure, was no contemptible man. His parts were quick, his industry unwearied, his reading various and most extensive. He was at once a historian, an antiquary, a theologian, a preacher, a pamphleteer, a debater, and an active political leader; and in every one of these characters made himself conspicuous among able competitors. The many spirited tracts which he wrote on passing events are now known only to the curious: ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and cons; a newspaper reader's and debater's guide to the leading controversies of the day, political, social, religious, etc.; ed. by A.M. ...
— Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh Debate Index - Second Edition • Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh
... the animal reconstructed, as Bret Harte relates, before "The Society on the Stanislaw," are "extremely rare." This is because the great debater must have a number of accomplishments any one of which requires something very ...
— The Art of Lecturing - Revised Edition • Arthur M. (Arthur Morrow) Lewis
... not me," he replied. "You—Sir Julien Portel, caricatured as the best-dressed man in the House of Commons, member of the most fashionable clubs, brilliant debater, successful politician, future Prime Minister, and all that sort of twaddle. You were living too far up in the clouds, my friend, to come down here. You see, I am not offering you much sympathy, Julien. I don't think you need it. You were soaring up to the ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... named Massey, one of its redoubtable debaters, though a little, slim, insignificant-looking person, sent a messenger up into this county and challenged the opposition to debate with him. They didn't quite like the idea, but they were too proud to decline, so they put up their best debater, a big, good-natured man whom everybody was familiar with as "Tom," and it was arranged that Massey should have the first hour and that Tom Whatever-his-name-was should succeed him the next hour. When the occasion came, Massey, with his characteristic shrewdness, began to get underneath ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... lava torrent of burning words.” He possessed many of the qualities necessary to debate: concentration, the power of pouncing upon the weak spot in his adversary’s argument, and above all a wonderful memory. What he lacked was that calm and calculating frigidity so necessary to the successful debater. Instead of freezing his opponent to silence with deliberate logic, he would strive rather by the tempestuous quality of his rhetoric to hurl ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... Nothing could be more dismal than these discourses, except perhaps the contemporaneous and interminable orations of Grotius to the states of Holland, to the magistrates of Amsterdam, to the states of Utrecht; yet Carleton was a man of the world, a good debater, a ready writer, while Hugo Grotius was one of the great lights of that age and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of many attacks in the newspapers and in Congress. After his retirement he became a member of the House of Representatives, and it was a noticeable fact, that from that day the attacks in Congress ceased. As a debater he was well equipped, and in reference to his administration of the Navy Department, he was always prepared with an answer or an ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... The masterly debater never rose to heights of eloquence. His thorough and practical mind enabled him to study, sift, and give form and substance to the broad political and economic conceptions of more idealistic men. Inheriting the narrow political creed of his father, he can scarcely be blamed if his mind came ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... ordeal. After DON JOSE'S withdrawal from the scene his son's advance to a leading place in the councils of his party and the estimation of the House was rapid. Within limits of present Session he has shown increased power as a debater, promising attainment of still loftier heights. Ever courteous in manner, untainted by the "new style" deplored by PREMIER, he, though an uncompromising party man, has made no personal enemies among any section ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 22, 1914 • Various
... history of Buddhism in Japan, prolonged public discussions were all the fashion. Priests traveled from temple to temple to engage in public debate. The ablest debater was the abbot, and he had to be ready to face any opponent who might appear. If a stranger won, the abbot yielded his place and his living to the victor. Many an interesting story is told of those times, and of the crowds that would gather to hear the debates. But our point is that this incident ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... matchless dying speech of which it was the prelude and the occasion. This young gentleman was in his 20th year when expelled with nineteen others from Trinity College, in 1798, by order of the visitors, Lord Clare and Dr. Duigenan. His reputation as a scholar and debater was already established within the college walls, and the highest expectations were naturally entertained of him, by his friends. One of his early college companions —Thomas Moore—who lived to know all the leading men of his age, declares that of all he had ever known, he ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... cents more than the market admitted, by shrewdly playing on his hot temper. A third was a tall gaunt old man of New England type, obstinate, honest, but of sanguine temperament. He was always on the bull side of the market and a loud debater.—The fourth, a quiet little man of smooth ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... horns of a dilemma, argumentum ad hominem [Lat.], comprehensive argument; empirema[obs3], epagoge[obs3]. [person who reasons] reasoner, logician, dialectician; disputant; controversialist, controvertist[obs3]; wrangler, arguer, debater polemic, casuist, rationalist; scientist; eristic[obs3]. logical sequence; good case; correct just reasoning, sound reasoning, valid reasoning, cogent reasoning, logical reasoning, forcible reasoning, persuasive reasoning, persuasory reasoning[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... and the weak; in manhood, he was always protecting the fugitive from an angry mob; as a lawyer, saving the widow's son from the gallows, and declining the rich fee of an unrighteous cause; as a public debater, the fairest ever met in the political arena; and as president of the republic, honest in his convictions and kind to his ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3 • Various
... capital, to study the legal profession. Here he entered the office of a notary, and began gradually to make himself known by his liberal opinions and the fervid eloquence with which he set forth and maintained them; and men began to see in him the promise of a powerful public writer, orator, and debater. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... that among his contemporary admirers Dale was credited with an intellect of unusual clarity, for the examination of any of his plays impresses one with the number and mutual destructiveness of his motives for artistic expression. A noted debater, he made frequent use of the device of attacking the weakness of the other man's speech, rather than the weakness of the other man's argument. His prose was good, though at its best so impersonal that it recalled the manner of an exceptionally well-written leading ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... about twenty-five years, he made a mark indeed, but rendered no memorable services to the State and won no especial fame. Had he died at the age of forty-three, his name would probably not have descended to our times, except as a leading citizen, a good lawyer, and powerful debater. He saw military service, almost as a matter of course; but he was not particularly distinguished as a general, nor did he select the military profession. He was eloquent, aspiring, and able, as a young patrician; but, like Cicero, it would seem that ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... vary indefinitely in size; but the danger is that they will be too small. A minister who reaches his thirteenthly is not likely to be a means of converting many sinners. A debater who makes fifteen points will hardly find his judges enthusiastic in his favor, no matter how weak his opponents may be. A chapter that contains twenty or thirty paragraphs should not be remembered ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... Man. He settled there as an exciseman in 1768, married Elizabeth Ollive of the same town at St. Michael's Church in 1771, and succeeded to her father's business as a tobacconist and grocer. Paine was more successful as a debater than a business man. As a member of the White Hart evening club he was more often than any other the winner of the Headstrong Book—an old Greek Homer despatched the next morning to the most obstinate haranguer of the preceding night. It was at Lewes that Tom Paine's ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... very grateful to him and gave him, in memory of the efforts he made on their behalf, a fine group in bronze of a female figure—"Greece" throwing off the bonds of Turkey. Some of the speakers were very interesting. He found Schouvaloff always a brilliant debater—he spoke French perfectly, was always good-humoured and courteous, and defended his cause well. One felt there was a latent animosity between the English and the Russians. Lord Beaconsfield made one or two strong speeches—very ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... aid or encourage a runaway slave. The slavery question was being sharply discussed in all quarters, and began to color and modify the politics of the day. Anderson was a sharp, ready, and formidable debater, and was the most prominent Colored man in that section of the country. He was gifted in the use of good English, had an easy flow of language, was master of the most galling satire, quick in repartee, prompt to see a weak point and use it to the best advantage. He was a pungent ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... the path of tyranny. The times grew darker and more troubled. Public service, perilous, arduous, delicate, was required, and to every service the intellect and the courage of this wonderful man were found fully equal. He became a debater of the first order, a most dexterous manager of the House of Commons, a negotiator, a soldier. He governed a fierce and turbulent assembly, abounding in able men, as easily as he had governed his family. He showed himself as competent to direct a campaign as to conduct the business ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Lamar went with the more confidence to the House on the appointed evening, and was placed under the gallery, on the right, where he listened to Roebuck and followed the debate with such enjoyment as an experienced debater feels in these contests, until, as he said, he became aware that a man, with a singularly rich voice and imposing manner, had taken the floor, and was giving Roebuck the most deliberate and tremendous pounding he ever witnessed, "until at last," concluded Lamar, "it dawned ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... entitled her, in theory at any rate, to demand, not merely colonial, but national autonomy. On the contrary, Mr. Chamberlain went out of his way to argue, with all the force and fire of an accomplished debater, that the Bill was a highly dangerous measure precisely because, while granting Ireland a measure of autonomy, it denied her some of the elementary powers, not only of colonial, but of national States; for instance, the full ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... the Mexican government, Douglas retorted that he was unaware of any treaty ever made by a Mexican government which was not either violated or repudiated. Adams came finally to acknowledge the unusual powers of the Western "homunculus" as a debater. ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... the power to see clearly through that which is difficult or involved. We speak of the acuteness of an observer or a reasoner, the insight and discernment of a student, a clergyman, or a merchant, the sagacity of a hound, the keenness of a debater, the shrewdness of a usurer, the penetration, perspicacity, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... that you neither said all, nor perhaps what you intended. Upon the whole, you have set out very well, and have sufficient encouragement to go on. Attend; therefore, assiduously, and observe carefully all that passes in the House; for it is only knowledge and experience that can make a debater. But if you still want comfort, Mrs.———-I hope, will administer it to you; for, in my opinion she may, if she will, be very comfortable; and with women, as with speaking in parliament, perseverance will most certainly prevail sooner ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... American Navy. Mr. Rice did not often partake in the general debates of Congress, but he had the confidence of its members to an unusual degree, and the measures which he presented were seldom successfully opposed. When occasion called, however, he distinguished himself as a debater of first-class ability, as was shown in his notable reply to the Honorable Henry Winter Davis, of Maryland, one of the most brilliant speakers in Congress, in defence of the navy, and especially of its ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume I, No. 2, February, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... epigram; and to open the doors of the official hierarchy to George Canning. Trained by Pitt, and in many gifts and graces his superior, Canning first displayed his full greatness after the death of his illustrious master. For twenty years he was the most accomplished debater in the House of Commons, and yet he never succeeded in winning the full confidence of the nation, nor, except in foreign affairs, in leaving his mark upon our national policy. "The English are afraid of genius," and when genius ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... wealth, no fashion, no fame can wipe out that blot? They call me a parvenu, and borrow my money. They call our friend, the wit, a parvenu, and submit to all his insolence—if they condescend to regard his birth at all—provided they can but get him to dinner. They call the best debater in the Parliament of England a parvenu, and will entreat him, some day or other, to be prime minister, and ask him for stars and garters. A droll world, and no wonder the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... subterranean thunder roared around the Althing. "Listen!" cried an orator of the Pagan party; "how angry is Odin that we should even consider the subject of a new religion. His fires will consume us." To which a ready debater on the other side replied, by "begging leave to ask the honourable gentleman,—with whom were the gods angry when these rocks were melted?"—pointing to the devastated plain around him. Taking advantage of so ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... the typical man of that generation, both the victim and the hero of his time—a man who is almost a Titan in word and a pigmy in deed. He is eloquent as a young Demosthenes. An irresistible debater, he carries everything before him the moment he appears. But he fails ignominiously when put to the hard test of action. Yet he is not an impostor. His enthusiasm is contagious because it is sincere, and his ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... heard any one who fulfilled my ideal of an orator. Grattan would have been near it, but for his harlequin delivery. Pitt I never heard. Fox but once, and then he struck me as a debater, which to me seems as different from an orator as an improvisatore, or a versifier, from a poet. Grey is great, but it is not oratory. Canning is sometimes very like one. Windham I did not admire, though all the world did; it seemed sad ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... saw her. Noo, I pit it till ye, gin ye were crossin' a desert place, an' ye saw the Rose o' Sharon afore ye, wad ye no' pluck it gin ye micht, and pluck it quick? I pit it till ye." And they answered him not a word, for there is no debater like ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... being chosen one of the three speakers on one side of a subject so decidedly in their favor that the question should never have been selected as offering a negative, Bill had so completely overcome the opposition led by Siebold, who especially prided himself as a debater, that his opponent and his mates were held up to much ridicule. Whereupon the breach widened, and Siebold took many occasions to show a paltry spite against Bill and even toward Gus because ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... of forty thousand Irish bayonets, of having made a speech of two hours long to prove that my former conduct was founded upon no one right principle, either of policy, justice, or commerce. I never heard a more elaborate, more able, more convincing, and more shameful speech. The debater obtained credit, but the statesman was disgraced forever. Amends were made for having refused small, but timely concessions, by an unlimited and untimely surrender, not only of every one of the objects of former restraints, but virtually of the whole legislative power itself which ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Mackenzie's high-minded but mistaken idea of his duty. Somewhat lacking in imagination though he was, Alexander Mackenzie had in him the stuff out of which party leaders are made. He was a man of vigour and ability, a hard-hitting debater, a thoroughgoing democrat, and he had a well-earned reputation for downright frankness and unswerving honesty which could easily have rallied the country's trust and affection. But while prime minister he gave to ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... his way through a mass of obscure reasoning. Absolute clearness of expression is essential. The method of arriving at a conclusion should be so plain that no one can avoid seeing what is proved and how it is proved. Lincoln's great success as a debater was due largely to his clearness of presentation. In the third place, the person who would control his fellow men must assume qualities of leadership. Remembering that men can be led, but seldom be driven, he must ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... of these Northern parties were Stephen H. Douglas and William H. Seward. Mr. Douglas was the best practical politician, popular debater, and magnetizer of the masses, the North has yet produced. He was the representative of the blind power of the North, and stood up all his life, in his better hours, for the right of the people to make the republic what they would. But the representative statesman of the era is the Secretary ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... rules of order have been mainly condensed from that excellent work, "The American Debater," by James N. McElligott, LL.D., to which the reader is referred for a complete exposition of the whole subject of debating. Published by Ivison and Phinney, New York, and for ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... Oubril. This news arrived at Paris on the 3rd of September, 1806. On the 13th of the same month Fox expired in London, amiable and beloved to the last day of his life; ardently devoted to his friends, to freedom, to all noble and generous causes; a great orator and a great debater; feeble in his political conduct even in opposition, incapable of governing and of sustaining the great struggle which for so long agitated Europe. At his death the party of resistance resumed power in England. In Germany the secret of the ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... were so maturely thought out, debate was no mere exercitation; his education was fast passing into apprenticeship for public life; and in February, 1865, his father, Sir Wentworth Dilke, coming forward at a by-election in the Liberal interest for Wallingford, gave the Union debater his first ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... as a debater is less, perhaps, in the matter than in the manner. His delivery is good and his gestures cannot fail to convince the most skeptical. Striking in appearance, aggressive in his nature, and happy in his gestures, ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... Lumley, burning with resentment, longed to decline the offer; but, alas! he was poor, and, what was worse, in debt; "his poverty, but not his will, consented." He was reinstated; but though prodigiously improved as a debater, he felt that he had not advanced as a public man. His ambition inflamed by his discontent, he had, since his return to office, strained every nerve to strengthen his position. He met the sarcasms on his poverty ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... legislature. A few weeks after carrying these measures Townshend died of a fever, and his place was taken by Lord North, eldest son of the Earl of Guilford. North was thirty-five years of age. He was amiable and witty, and an excellent debater, but without force of will. He let the king rule him, and was at the same time able to show a strong hand in the House of Commons, so that the king soon came to regard him as a real treasure. Soon after ...
— The War of Independence • John Fiske
... lawyer, acted closely with Lord Midleton. Sir Bertram Windle, President of University College, was another of Government's choices—a man of science who was also very much a man of affairs. Another, far less of a debater, far more of a power, was Mr. William Martin Murphy, Chairman of the Dublin Tramways, a powerful employer of labour who had headed the fight against Larkin in 1913, and had been mainly responsible for the ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... subtle knowledge of the world against Vergniaud, the romantic Girondist, but the most Ciceronian of orators. Talleyrand, already known as the most sarcastic of men, and Maury, by far the most powerful debater of France since Mirabeau—figured among the chief ornaments of the salons of De Stael. Roland, and the showy and witty Theresa Cabarrus, and even the flutter of La Fayette, the most tinsel of heroes, and the sullen sententiousness of Robespierre, then known only as a provincial ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... even an occasional unfairness for his companions, who find themselves one day giving too much, and the next, when they are wary out of season, giving perhaps too little. Purcel[25] is in another class from any I have mentioned. He is no debater, but appears in conversation, as occasion rises, in two distinct characters, one of which I admire and fear, and the other love. In the first, he is radiantly civil and rather silent, sits on a high, courtly hilltop, and from that vantage-ground drops you ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Darrow with his head bowed yielded the platform to his inarticulate and vanquished friend and debater. ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... Douglas and Lincoln was memorable. As a dexterous debater, Douglas had no equal in the Union. He was strong on the stump and incomparable in a popular assembly. Without grace or imagination, he was yet a plausible, versatile man, quick and ingenious, resolute and ready, with a rare faculty for convincing men. He was small and sinewy, with smooth face, ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... life, probably, Washington never heard praise more genuine or more deserved. He had just passed his twenty-seventh year. In the House of Burgesses he had the reputation of being the silent member. He never acquired the art of a debater. He was neither quick at rebuttal nor at repartee, but so surely did his character impress itself on every one that when he spoke the Assembly almost took it for granted that he had said the final word on the subject under discussion. How careful ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... is that Secretaries of State, Managers of Colonial Establishments, of Home and Foreign Government interests, have really and truly to do in Parliament, might admit of various estimate in these times. An apt debater in Parliament is by no means certain to be an able administrator of Colonies, of Home or Foreign Affairs; nay, rather quite the contrary is to be presumed of him; for in order to become a "brilliant ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... Often his voice alone was raised in objection to laws or regulations which to him seemed unfair. Even when no one shared his ideas, however, he forced the government and the people to listen to him, such a keen and stirring debater was he. For years he continued, as an editor of a newspaper, to struggle for justice for the common people. So unpopular was the "Old Tiger" with his cries of freedom for all, that he had to "tear and claw and bite" his way into society and ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... He was a demagogue, after an Indian fashion; and this is a class of men that ever "make capital" of abuses, as we Americans say, in our money-getting habits. Instead of being frightened off the ground, he arose to answer as promptly as if a practised debater, though with an air of humility so profound, that no one could take ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... following his practice of showing Jesus's skill as a debater, makes him play a less passive part at his trial, he still gives substantially the same account of it as all the rest. And the question that would occur to any modern reader never occurs to him, any more than it occurred to Matthew, ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... Charles Tupper, who was first minister of the Conservative government, and Mr., later Sir, Adams G. Archibald, who was leader of the Liberal opposition in the assembly. The former was then as now distinguished for his great power as a debater and for the forcible expression of his opinions on the public questions on which he had made up his mind. When he had a great end in view he followed it with a tenacity of purpose that generally gave him success. Ever ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... impatient Republicans. A scathing criticism of the President's position by Henry Winter Davis, which was signed by himself and Senator Wade, fitly echoed their feelings. Mr. Davis was a man of genius. Among the famous men in the Thirty- eighth Congress he had no superior as a writer, debater and orator. He was a brilliant man, whose devotion to his country in this crisis was a passion, while his hostility to the President's policy was as sincere as it was intense; but the passage of the somewhat incongruous bill vetoed ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... says a correspondent, "an unusual interest taken in the two literary societies, and once a year a challenge is passed between them, to meet in an open literary contest upon an appointed evening, usually that preceding the close of the second session. The contestors are a Debater, an Orator, an Essayist, and a Declaimer, elected from each society by the majority, some time previous to their public appearance. An umpire and two associate judges, selected either by the societies or ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... cabinet as chief secretary for Ireland. Spencer Perceval was a half-brother of the Earl of Egmont and brother of Lord Arden. He enjoyed a large practice at the bar and had made his mark as a parliamentary debater when filling the offices, first of solicitor-general, and then of attorney-general under Addington. He had held the latter office again under Pitt. Not the least source of his influence was his steady and determined opposition to the Roman ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... their chairs closer, some wearing that smile of superiority which to us is the Englishman's most maddening trait. I did not stop to think twice, or to remember that I was pitted against the greatest debater in all England. I was to speak that of which I was full, and the heart's argument needs no logic to defend it. If it were my last word, I would ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... sympathy with Mr. Lincoln or his opinions. Judge Douglas, however, had taken the edge off my hostility. He had said to me upon his return in triumph to Washington after the famous Illinois campaign of 1868: "Lincoln is a good man; in fact, a great man, and by far the ablest debater I have ever met," and now the newcomer began to verify this opinion both in his private conversation and in ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... heat, too much speed, especially in speaking against time, a loss of poise in the bearing, a halting or jumbling in speech, nervous tenseness in action, an overcontentious or bumptious spirit. Bodily control, restraint, good temper, balance, are the saving qualities. A debater must remember that he need not be always in a heat. Urbanity and graciousness have their place, and the relief afforded by humor is often ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... is inclined to run when he walks alone, and to be stately, slow, regal, and precise when, like Fadladeen, he is in charge of Lalla Rookh. Is a man of determination, and never sleeps with his clothes on. Is a sharp debater, a briskly-pompous, eloquent talker, has had a good deal of trouble at time and time in putting on his kid gloves, which used to fit so mortally tight that he couldn't stir his thumbs in them; stands with a fine commanding air in the pulpit, as ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... participate—teachers, preachers, and lawyers. In these I took a deep interest. My reading enabled me to become well posted on most of the questions discussed; and by careful preparation I soon came to be recognized as a good debater for one of my age. These discussions were of great advantage to me, and I am clearly of opinion that debating societies, when properly conducted, can be made useful ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... Peel occupied. Anecdotes innumerable might be recorded to show the extraordinary influence in Parliament which made him "the great commoner" of the age; for Sir Robert Peel was not only a skillful and adroit debater, but by many degrees the most able and one of the most eloquent men in either house of parliament. Nothing could be more stately or imposing than the long array of sounding periods in which he expounded ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... witchcraft, and considered very offensive to the Lord. Such was the doctrine of my old contemporary at Cincinnati, Dr. Wilson, at the head of the leading orthodox congregation; and it was equally offensive to the champion debater of Presbyterian orthodoxy, the Rev. N. L. Rice, whom I arraigned before a vast audience for his antiquated falsehoods. If the church and the college are getting a little more enlightened now, I cannot forget the condition in which I found them, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... Even so skillful a debater as Douglas soon found himself hard put to it to answer Lincoln's arguments, without offending one or the other of the powerful factions whose support he must have to reach the presidency. At the beginning, his experience and adroitness gave him an advantage, which, however, Lincoln's ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... to a workingman, when a new customer entered the shop. Sam looked up at him and saw Reynolds Bartram. He offered a short, spasmodic, disjointed prayer to heaven, for he remembered what the judge's wife had said, and he had known Reynolds Bartram as a young man of keen wit and high standing as a debater before Sam's enforced retirement; now, he knew, Bartram had become ...
— All He Knew - A Story • John Habberton
... credit in 1804, he repaired to the famous Law School at Litchfield in Connecticut, where he remained a year and a half, and won general esteem. Tradition reports him a diligent student and an admirable debater there. As to his moral conduct, that was always irreproachable. That is to say, he was at every period of his life continent, temperate, orderly, and out of debt. In 1806, being then twenty-four years of age, he returned ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... face from here, for he wears his hat and at the moment hangs his head. A little later on I both saw and heard him speak and a splendid speech he made, going right to the heart of the matter, laying it bare. His success as a debater is a marvellous triumph of mind over material influences. It would be hard to conceive a man having fewer of the outward graces of oratory than Mr Lowe. His utterance is hesitating, sometimes even to stuttering, ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... of a character self-absorbed and contemplative. He was short and sturdy in build, and in his sober dress and grave deportments, suggested rather the dissenting preacher than the prophet of philosophic anarchism. He was not a ready debater or a fluent talker. His genius was not spontaneous or intuitive. It was rather an elaborate effort of the will, which deliberately used the fruits of his accumulative study and incessant activity of mind. He resembled, says Hazlitt, ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... advanced in esteem, in good report, and in usefulness, and Abelard as rapidly lost ground. The Pope so honored her that he made her the head of her order. Abelard, a man of splendid talents, and ranking as the first debater of his time, became timid, irresolute, and distrustful of his powers. He only needed a great misfortune to topple him from the high position he held in the world of intellectual excellence, and it came. Urged by kings and princes to meet the subtle St. Bernard ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... elected to Parliament before he was twenty years old. During the American Revolution, he favored the colonies; later, he was a friend and fellow-partisan both with Burke and Wilberforce. Burke said of him, "He is the most brilliant and successful debater the world ever saw." In his later years, Mr. Fox was as remarkable for carelessness in dress and personal appearance, as he had been for the opposite in his youth. He possessed many pleasing traits of character, but his morals were not commendable; he was a gambler and ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... General Assembly, he has not in the more circumscribed sphere of the local Presbytery, a single rival who is in any sense his match. The late Dr. Gibson was frequently accustomed to tackle him, and perhaps he sometimes did so successfully; but while the latter was undoubtedly an able debater, he lost ground from his impetuosity of temper—an infirmity to which Dr. Buchanan never gives way. In all circumstances he is cool, calculating, unruffled; he measures the full meaning and effect of every sentence; ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... the minority, had been for twelve years a member of the House, having been first elected at the age of thirty-three. He was a brilliant debater, well versed in parliamentary law, and at all points fully equipped for the conflict. With the exception of Henry Clay, the House of Representatives has probably never known his equal as a party leader. That ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... doctrinaire; a profound lawyer, not a splitter of legal hairs; a political economist, not an egotistical theorist; a practical politician, who constructs, modifies, restrains, without disturbance and destruction; a resistless debater and consummate master of statement, not a mere sophist; a humanitarian, not a defamer of characters and lives; a man whose mind is at once cosmopolitan and composite of America; a gentleman of unpretentious habits, with the fear of God in his heart and the love of mankind exhibited in every ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... the undisputed leader of the plantation interests of the South, and few men were better fitted for the great commission. A keen and able debater and an enthusiastic Southerner, a combination in himself of the up-country ideals and the low-country purposes, he had become the idol of South Carolina. Conciliatory in manner and pure in all his public ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... made to put evidence into different classes and to give tests of good evidence. There is but one rule that the debater needs to use: In judging evidence for a debate consider what the effect will be on the audience and the judges. Will it be convincing to them? In other words, will it make their own experience quickly and strongly ...
— Elements of Debating • Leverett S. Lyon
... man; he talks earnestly and fluently, and his argument is clear and comprehensive, so far as it goes. He thinks readily and speaks aptly. As a debater, he far excels his opponent Mr. Green, and with a good cause would be an opponent difficult to conquer. But few, we think, expected so much of the metaphysics of gambling as he gave, but after he had constructed his argument, and presented the justification ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... high praise, for the veteran statesman had little patience with the style of oratory affected by this "homunculus."[168] A correspondent of a Richmond newspaper wrote that this effort had given Douglas high rank as a debater.[169] Evidence on every hand confirms the impression that by a single, happy stroke the young Illinoisan had achieved enviable distinction; but whether he had qualities which would secure an enduring reputation, was ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... He entered parliament almost immediately after, became an active member, sat on several committees, and soon distinguished himself for his industry and ability. He was not eloquent, but acquired considerable skill as a debater. In 1705, Lord Godolphin, the prime minister of Anne, made him one of the council to Prince George of Denmark; in 1706, Marlborough selected him as secretary of war; in 1709, he was made treasurer of the navy; and in 1710, he was the acknowledged leader of the House of Commons. He lost office, ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... Kleiser offers no panacea (as the title might seem to imply). Logic will not make a dunce a philosopher, neither will it insure success where success is not deserved. But what he does offer the honest debater in this practical book, is to put him in possession of those laws of argumentation which lie at the bottom of sound reasoning, based on fact."—Times-Dispatch, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... various—that he had an analytical capacity of considerable compass; was bold in opinion, ingenious in solution, and with a tendency to metaphysical speculation, which, modified by the active wants and duties of a large city-practice, would have made him a subtle lawyer, and a very logical debater. But the blush kept heightening on the youth's cheeks as the examination proceeded. He had answered, but he felt all the while how much his answer had sprung from his own conjectures and how little ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... only by degrees that he acquires the ability to utter a phrase, and at last a short sentence, without interruption. Nature prompts the child to this exercise, which from the first attempt, to the full flow of eloquence in the extemporaneous debater, consists simply in commanding and managing one set of ideas in the mind, at the moment the person is giving utterance to others. This cannot be done by the child, but it is gradually acquired by the man; and we shall see in its proper place, that this acquisition is entirely the result ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... present passages that could be quoted, without tearing them forcibly, as it were, out of the context, and thus mangling the fragments which we might offer to the reader. As we have already remarked, he seems, as a debater, to revive the old type of the Revolutionary Congress, or to bring back the noble days of the Long Parliament of England, before eloquence had become what it is now, a knack, and a thing valued for itself. Like those ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... I didn't." Miss Loder, who at Cambridge had been known as an excellent debater, closed the subject by her tone; and Barry smiled quietly ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... than any I had previously possessed, of measuring the intellectual stature of Abraham Lincoln. He was then about twenty-seven years old—my own age. Douglas was four years our junior; consequently he could not have been over twenty-three years old. Yet he was a very ready and expert debater, even at that early period of his life. He and Lincoln were very frequently pitted against each other, being of different politics. They both commanded marked attention ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... respectfully towards his opponent, and with the dignity becoming his position, and the solemnity and importance of the question. We regret that we cannot say the same of Dr. Berg, who at times seemed to forget the obligations of the gentleman in his zeal as a controversialist. He is an able and skillful debater, though less logical than Mr. Barker, but he wasted his time and strength too often on personalities and irrelevant matters. His personal inuendoes and epithets, his coarse witticisms, and a bearing that seemed to us more arrogant than ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... a fine platform speaker, but as yet he is not nearly as good a debater as Mr. Chamberlain. He stumbles, hesitates, finds it hard often to get the exact word he wants. And yet who cannot listen to him for ten minutes without a sense of a great mind—and what to me is better, a fine character behind it all? This man has thought out—possibly ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... powers, and that, in an assembly of which the debates were frequent and animated, he would have attained a very high order of excellence. It was, indeed, impossible to listen to his conversation without seeing that he was born a debater. To him, as to his uncle, the exercise of the mind in discussion was a positive pleasure. With the greatest good nature and good breeding, he was the very opposite to an assenter. The word "disputatious" is generally used as a word of reproach; but we can ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... monk had the privilege of remaining densely ignorant, or he could become learned. Life in a monastery was not so very different from what it was outside—a monk gravitated to where he belonged. The young man showed such skill as a debater, and such commendable industry at all of his tasks, from scrubbing the floor to expounding Scripture, that he was sent to the neighboring University of Erfurt. From there he was transferred to the University of Wittenberg. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... indulged, if he did indulge, his bachelor mal-practices. Speaking of them as a set, the chief offender was Mr. Harold Smith, or perhaps his wife. He also was a member of Parliament, and, as many thought, a rising man. His father had been for many years a debater in the House, and had held high office. Harold, in early life, had intended himself for the Cabinet; and if working hard at his trade could ensure success, he ought to obtain it sooner or later. He ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... much to him as speechifying. He was not a diplomatist such as Beaconsfield, a tactician like Mr. Gladstone, a fearless, dashing debater like Lord Derby the elder, "The Rupert of Debate"; nor had he the weight of Lord Salisbury, nor the aestheticism of Mr. Balfour. But as a mere voice in the political opera he had a charm above them all. In appearance he was commonplace compared with these others I ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... of commencement of each debate, that they might hear the comprehensive statement of the opener, and remain at least through the chief speech in reply. They might not attend all through the inferior and desultory speaking, but they would be ready to pop in when an able debater was on his legs, and they would hear the leaders wind up at the close. Such, however, is not the theory acted on by the whips. They are satisfied if they can procure attendance at the division, and look upon the many hours spent in the debate as an insignificant accessory, which could ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... his legislative functions. The same spirit and temper appeared in the speech on the Habeas Corpus Suspension (Ireland) Bill, which he delivered on the 17th of February; but his full strength as a debater was first manifested during the discussion on Mr. Gladstone's Reform Bill of 1866, which was brought on for second reading on the 12th of April. His famous speech on that occasion, containing the most powerful ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other
... round it in a tavern hard by, where the club, lopped of its most respectable members, kept the blinds down and talked openly of Shakespeare. It was a low-roofed room, with pieces of lime hanging from the ceiling and peeling walls. The floor had a slope that tended to fling the debater forward, and its boards, lying loose on an uneven foundation, rose and looked at you as you crossed the room. In winter, when the meetings were held regularly every fortnight, a fire of peat, sod, and dross lit up the curious company who sat round the table shaking their ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... to my lot at this period were numerous suffrage debates with prominent opponents of the Cause. I have already referred to the debate in Kansas with Senator Ingalls. Equaling this in importance was a bout with Dr. Buckley, the distinguished Methodist debater, which had been arranged for us at Chautauqua by Bishop Vincent of the Methodist Church. The bishop was not a believer in suffrage, nor was he one of my admirers. I had once aroused his ire by replying to a sermon he had delivered on "God's Women," and by proving, to my own satisfaction ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... working at theology, with a view to taking Orders. He managed to secure a Third in the Tripos; he showed no intellectual promise whatever; he was a very lively and amusing companion and a keen debater; I think he wrote a little poetry; but he had no very pronounced tastes. I remember his pointing out to me the windows of an extremely unattractive set of ground-floor rooms in Whewell's Court as those which he had occupied till he migrated to the Bishop's Hostel, eventually moving to the Great ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the most are those whom he has been voting with and assisting to ruin this country for the last ten years at least." Selwyn underrated the need for Fox's great abilities in office; so powerful a debater could not be used by a party in opposition only. But he certainly expressed a feeling which existed ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... legal arguments of a genial and generous man like Danton. In his wonderfully courageous public speaking, he rather preferred being a debator to being an orator; in a sense he maintained that no man had a right to be an orator without first being a debater. Eloquence, he said, had its proper place when reason had proved a thing to be right, and it was necessary to give men the courage to do what was right. I think he never needed any man's eloquence to give him that. But the substitution of sentiment for ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... speaker is he who unfolds the whole of a question in its affirmative aspects, who presents these aspects in their just proportions, and according to their orderly and symmetrical deductions from each other. But the good debater is he who faces the negative aspects of the question, who meets sudden objections, has an answer for any momentary summons of doubt or difficulty, dissipates seeming inconsistencies, and reconciles the geometrical smoothness ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... said Larry, rather impatiently. He was bewildered by this grave, young debater, and was trying to reconcile her with the child he had left behind him last year, or even with the child who, five minutes ago, had wished to impress a comprehensive kiss on all the hounds at once. Moreover, a young gentleman on the imminent verge of official manhood, ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... attributable to Cuffy. If you had done with Cuffy what you ought to have done when he first came into Parliament, and had prevented him from going over to Duffy, you would have got him into alliance with Fuffy, you would have had with you the weight attaching as a smart debater to Guffy, you would have brought to bear upon the elections the wealth of Huffy, you would have got in for three counties Juffy, Kuffy, and Luffy, and you would have strengthened your administration by the official knowledge and the ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... Piracy bill of Mr. Monroe's administration; and in a speech on that measure, which he defeated, displayed such extraordinary resources of argument and learning as threw all his associates of that epoch in the shade, and established his own reputation as the greatest debater of his age. ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby |
