"Demosthenes" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... face of such an argument who can help suspecting Macaulay's artistic faculty? 'The Life of Johnson,' he says, 'is assuredly a great, a very great, book. Homer is not more decidedly the first of heroic poets, Shakespeare is not more decidedly the first of dramatists, Demosthenes is not more decidedly the first of orators, than Boswell is the first of biographers . . . Eclipse is first, and the rest nowhere.' That is hearty and exact enough. But, as I have hinted, Macaulay, furious with Croker's ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... art thou calling names for?"—roared Lavretzky, in his turn.—"Work ... act ... Tell me, rather, what to do, but don't call names, you Poltava Demosthenes!" ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... in some regards he was what we are accustomed to designate as a fool; but to connect the two as cause and effect is like saying that a man was a great athlete because he was lame, or that Lord Byron had a beautiful face because he had a club-foot, or that Demosthenes was a great orator because he stammered. Men have been made by their foibles, but in those cases weakness in some directions has been more than compensated for by strength in others. Boswell lacked some of the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... decided on giving up the Aeschylus, it became more imperative to make sure of the Tacitus and Demosthenes, and he therefore went to Mr Grayson's rooms to get a library order which should entitle him to take from the Saint Werner's library any books that would be most likely to give ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... You see, we of to-day are rather ahead of Demosthenes and Cicero, and those old fellows. I suppose Rome was quite a ...
— Walter Sherwood's Probation • Horatio Alger
... men may lerne to beare them well and valyantly for drede of reproche. Better is it with worshyp to dye than with shame to lyue, albe hit that Demosthenes sayde: he that fleethe ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown
... some grandeur of design no man ever displayed such a countenance and port, handsome and sublime. In his intentness and earnestness, he did not suspect the liability of his expressions to the charge of a vindictiveness he was unconscious of in his own breast. It was like a philippic of Demosthenes; it was a Ciceronian oration against some Catiline, real or supposed. A poetic sort of revenge was all he meant to take, although his language to opponents, whom perhaps he sometimes mistook, may be subject to blame. Pity he was so devoid of humor to recommend ...
— Senatorial Character - A Sermon in West Church, Boston, Sunday, 15th of March, - After the Decease of Charles Sumner. • C. A. Bartol
... a fine Genius, and as one fears the Dreadful Character of a laborious Plodder: But notwithstanding this, the greatest Wits any Age has produced thought far otherwise; for who can think either Socrates or Demosthenes lost any Reputation, by their continual Pains both in overcoming the Defects and improving the Gifts of Nature. All are acquainted with the Labour and Assiduity with which ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Athenian General, Nikias, had suffered disaster at Syracuse, and had given himself up, with all his army, to the Sicilians. But the assurances of safety which he had received were quickly proved false. He was no sooner in the hands of the enemy than he was shamefully put to death with his naval ally, Demosthenes; and his troops were sent to the quarries, where the plague and the hard labour lessened their numbers and increased their miseries. When this bad news reached Rhodes, the islanders rose in revolt against the supremacy of Athens, and resolved ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... but twenty-seven years of age when he began his official career, but he seemed one who had leaped into life full-armed. He absorbed knowledge on every hand. Demosthenes was his idol, and he, too, declaimed by the seashore with his mouth full of pebbles. His splendid command of language was acquired by the practise of translation and retranslation. Whether Greek or Latin ever helped any man to become ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... the French the historical explanations in Mingault's notes. In Greek I read the Iliad and Odyssey through; one or two plays of Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes, though by these I profited little; all Thucydides; the Hellenics of Xenophon; a great part of Demosthenes, Aeschines, and Lysias; Theocritus; Anacreon; part of the Anthology; a little of Dionysius; several books of Polybius; and lastly Aristotle's Rhetoric, which, as the first expressly scientific treatise on any moral or psychological subject which I had read, and containing many of ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... I should regret a good many things; first, I suppose, that I did not realize sooner that we must be going back, instead of letting myself be utterly overwhelmed. Then I think I should be sorry that I didn't practise, a la Demosthenes, when I had a whole coast to myself, and most of all I should regret that we have not kept a record of our lives from day to day. There is other writing I should want to do,—but there is no paper, and I don't know how ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... 1841, I read Locke, Say's Political Economy, Smith's Wealth of Nations, Plutarch, Josephus, Herodotus, Lingard, Hume and Smollett, Cicero, Demosthenes, Homer, Pope, Byron, Shakespeare, Boswell's Johnson, Junius, The Tattler, The Rambler, the English Reviews, French from text-books without a teacher and Rhetoric (Blair's full edition). Much of Blair's Rhetoric I studied carefully and with great benefit. ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... Stirring events and great names are still to come; the romantic enterprise of Cyrus and the retreat of the Ten Thousand, the elective trust of Thebes, and the chivalrous glories of her one great man. Demosthenes has yet to prove how vain is the divinest eloquence when poured to degenerate hearts. Agis and Cleomenes have yet to exhibit the spectacle, ever fraught with melancholy interest, of noble natures out of harmony with the present, and spending their energies in the vain ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... which the great Father Spirit acts. Laws are rules by which agents act, and they always imply agents. Men of olden times are often spoken of as great metaphysicians. Who has not heard of Homer, Herodotus, Pindar, Demosthenes, Aristotle, Plato and many others. But those ancient men, here as in physics, dealt so much in fancy that they were not disposed to enter into the simple examination of their own minds or spirits. Entangled in the doctrines of chance, fate and destiny they robbed ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 10. October, 1880 • Various
... us a higher conception of Mr. Whittier's powers. We already valued as they deserved his force of faith, his earnestness, the glow and hurry of his thought, and the (if every third stump-speaker among us were not a Demosthenes, we should have said Demosthenean) eloquence of his verse; but here we meet him in a softer and more meditative mood. He seems a Berserker turned Carthusian. The half-mystic tone of "The Shadow and the Light" contrasts strangely, and, we think, pleasantly, ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... been saved, in spite of its inefficient armament, was accepted as the finest possible compliment to the guest of the evening. The note of all the other speeches was their exquisite impersonality. They got further and further from the occasion of the evening, until the effort of Demosthenes closed the speaking with a scathing denunciation of the machine politicians who had involved the Athenians in a war with Persia to further the interests of Sparta. It was held that this was the noblest tribute which could be paid to the genius ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... desire of acquiring power, genius flags of itself. Genius in the midst of society is a pain, an internal fever which would require to be treated as a real disease, if the records of glory did not soften the sufferings it produces."—"Athenians! what troubles have you not cost me," exclaimed DEMOSTHENES, "that I may ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... see the young man standing before the footlights on the stage of secular history, too. At twelve Remenyi was making his violin tremulous with melody, and Caesar delivered an oration at Rome; at thirteen Henry M. Stanley was a teacher; at fourteen Demosthenes was known as an orator; at fifteen Robert Burns was a great poet, Rossini composed an opera, and Liszt was a wizard in music. At the age of sixteen Victor Hugo was known throughout France; at seventeen Mozart had made a name in Germany, and Michael Angelo was a rising ...
— A Fleece of Gold - Five Lessons from the Fable of Jason and the Golden Fleece • Charles Stewart Given
... it hinted, though I have forgotten where, that Jefferson, and not Logan, was the author of this speech; but the extravagant manner in which Jefferson himself praises it, seems to exclude the suspicion. "I may challenge the whole orations of Demosthenes and Cicero," he says, "and of any other more eminent orator, if Europe has furnished more eminent, to produce a single passage superior to the speech of Logan!" Praise certainly quite high enough, for a mixture ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... in reality a republic. Athens and Thebes were administered in accordance with the laws of Aragon and its code was "The book of Usages and Customs of the City of Barcelona." The Catalan tongue ruled as the official language in the country of Demosthenes, and the rude Almogavars married with the highest ladies of ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... to rank Shrewsbury School among the "private schools?" I am not old enough to recollect what it was in the times of Taylor, J., the civilian, and the editor of Demosthenes. Its celebrity, however, in our own day, and through a long term of preceding years, is confessed. Dr. Parr's judgement in this case might be somewhat influenced by his prepossessions as ...
— Notes & Queries No. 29, Saturday, May 18, 1850 • Various
... of the world are the heroes, like Paul and Demosthenes; the martyrs who were burned with Savonarola in Florence or poisoned with ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis
... "Demosthenes, I know thee by the pebble thou secretest in thy golden mouth!" said Bilibin, and the mop of hair on ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... career closes with the fourteen speeches against Antony, called Philippics, after the speeches of Demosthenes. This title was suggested by the author himself; cf. the letter of Brutus (ad Brut. ii. 5, 4), 'iam concedo ut vel Philippicae vocentur, quod tu quadam epistula iocans scripsisti.' It was the usual title in antiquity, though Gellius (xiii. 1, 1) uses the alternative Antonianae. ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... discover the causes which produced revolutions, and show that, generally, in the world, virtue is rewarded and vice punished. Later, he can learn a short course of logic, free from all pedantry; then study the orations of Cicero and Demosthenes, and read the tragedies of Racine. When older, he should have some knowledge of the opinions of philosophers, and the different religious sects, without inspiring him with dislike for any one sect. Make it clear to him that we all worship God—only in different ways. It is not necessary ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... them from the three great ages and the three great nations: from the Greeks, from the Romans, from France and her rivals. From the Greeks he chose Alexander and Demosthenes; the genius of conquest and the genius of eloquence. From the Romans he chose Scipio, Cicero, Cato, Brutus and Caesar, placing the great victim side by side with the murderer, as great almost as himself. From the modern world he chose Gustavus Adolphus, Turenne, the ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... says, "And a better and nearer example herein may be our most noble Queen Elizabeth, who never took yet Greek nor Latin grammar in her hand after the first declining of a noun and a verb; but only by this double translating of Demosthenes and Isocrates daily, without missing, every forenoon, and likewise some part of Tully every afternoon, for the space of a year or two, hath attained to such a perfect understanding in both tongues, and to such a ready utterance of the Latin, and ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... very clever work), declares that for four hundred years there has not been a generation in which some Leland (or Leyland) of the old Bussli de Leland stock has not written a work on antiquity or allied to antiquarianism, though in one case it is a translation of Demosthenes, and in another a work on Deistical Writers. He traces the connection with his own family of the Henry Leland, my ancestor, a rather prominent political Puritan character in his time, who first went to America in 1636, and acquired land ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... orators as a means of influence over the people,—it will be found that though particular points may be gained in this way, yet wherever the influence of an orator has been steady and long-continued (like that of Perikles or Demosthenes) it is owing in part to the fact that he has an opinion of his own, and is not willing to accommodate himself constantly to the prepossessions of his hearers. Without the oratory of Xenophon, there would have existed no engine for kindling or sustaining the common sense or feeling of the ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... scandal, aroused by some personal jealousy or party enmity, may have converted the innocent friendship of a great man for a noble youth into a connexion of another kind. Such accusations were brought against several of the leading men of Hellas, e.g. Cimon, Alcibiades, Critias, Demosthenes, Epaminondas: several of the Roman emperors were assailed by similar weapons which have been used even in our own day against statesmen of the highest character. (3) While we know that in this matter there is a ...
— Symposium • Plato
... a turbulent person called George Neville, who died Archbishop of York in 1476. It is evident, though not, I think, from anything that he wrote, that he was interested in Greek learning, and not only theological learning. A MS. of some orations of Demosthenes now at Leyden contains a statement by the scribe that he wrote it for Archbishop Neville in 1472. This is our starting-point. Now, the scribe in question—Emmanuel of Constantinople—generally writes ...
— The Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts - Helps for Students of History, No. 17. • M. R. James
... wealthier than you and me, have accepted the offers of those who came forward to indemnify the persecuted for the demolition of their property. Ask yourself if Demosthenes or Milton, the two most illustrious defenders of liberty, by speech and pen, would have thrust aside the tribute which is due to such men alone. Would you dash out the signature of one who declares you his trustee for a legacy to your children? No, you would not. Neither will you reject the proofs ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... legal term, and signified the line of defense adopted by the accused, when he transferred the charge brought against himself to some other person.—See Demosthenes in Timocr. ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... action—instead of acting the ideas themselves—when, the sound of words being unknown, they remain still as they originated, but another kind of sign, even after the art of reading is acquired, and do not become entities as with us. The "action, action, action," of Demosthenes is their only oratory, not the mere heightening of ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... dared to declare their love to one woman; that all Sterne's sentiment was perfectly ideal, and proceeded always from the head and never from the heart; that Seneca's morality was no barrier to his practicing usury; and that, according to Plutarch, Demosthenes was a very questionable moralist in practice. Why, then, necessarily conclude that a moralist is a moral man, or a sarcastic satirist a deceitful one, or the man who describes scenes of blood and carnage a ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... text, but yet worthy a wise man's consideration. Question was asked of Demosthenes, what was the chief part of an orator? he answered, action; what next? action; what next again? action. He said it, that knew it best, and had, by nature, himself no advantage in that he commended. A strange thing, that that part of an orator, which is but superficial, ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... The merit of the latter is, perhaps, rather oratorical than poetical; nor can I recollect anything in the great Athenian speeches which equals it in force of invective and bitterness of sarcasm. I have heard the most eloquent statesman of the age remark that, next to Demosthenes, Dante is the writer who ought to be most attentively studied by every man who desires ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... which appear conspicuous on the page of history, and have been praised by the united voices of successive generations. We cannot hear, without an instinctive glow, of the cities of Rome, Athens, Sparta, Syracuse, and others which respectively produced a Cæsar, a Demosthenes, a Lycurgus, and an Archimedes; of the islands of Samos and Ægina, whence emanated the resplendent genius of a Pythagoras and a Plato; of the villages of Alopece and Andes, immortalized as having produced a Socrates and ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... mother are not congenial to those hermaphrodite spirits who thirst to win the title of champion of one sex and victor over the other. What is the love and submission of one manly heart to the woman whose ambition it is to sway the minds of multitudes as did a Demosthenes or a Cicero? What are the tender affections and childish prattle of the family circle, to women whose ears itch for the loud laugh and boisterous cheer of ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... to farm by modern rule; Professor Walter fills the chair, But teaches in the open air. And by his side we tend the stock, Or swing the scythe, or bind the shock. Nor miss we academic lore, We walk where Plato walked before, And eloquent Demosthenes, Who taught their youth beneath the trees; Here with sharp eyes we love to scan The rules that point Dame Nature's plan, We mark the track of bear and deer, And long to see them reft of fear.— Though well they shun our changeful moods, Taught by our rifle in the woods. Yet we may ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... must attract your attention. His person, it is to be confessed, is no slight recommendation; but he is to be highly commended for not losing that advantage, and adding to a propriety of speech which might pass the criticism of Longinus, an action which would have been approved by Demosthenes. He has a peculiar force in his way, and has many of his audience who could not be intelligent hearers of his discourse were there not explanation as well as grace in his action. This art of his is used with the most exact and honest ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... he is obliged to reckon with an element independent of human efforts, he calls it Tyche and not "the immortal gods." A somewhat similar view we find in another great political author of the stage of transition to our period, namely, Demosthenes. Demosthenes of course employs the official apparatus of gods: he invokes them on solemn occasions; he quotes their authority in support of his assertions (once he even reported a revelation which he had in a dream); he calls his opponents enemies of the gods, etc. But ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... in this respect than that of all the ancient systems of philosophy; though even in these, in point of theory, we might trace great liberality and consideration for human rights. Where could be found finer sentiments of liberty than in Demosthenes and Cicero? Where bolder assertions of the rights of mankind, than in Tacitus and Thucydides? But, alas! these were the holders of slaves! It was not so with those who had been converted to Christianity. He knew, however, that what he had been ascribing to Christianity had ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... Demosthenes (385-322 B.C.), especially famous for his Philippics, a series of twelve orations directed against Philip of Macedon, the tirano macedonio here alluded to. All these classical allusions seem to show that Espronceda, like most of the leaders of ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... had not as large possession among prose printers: and, which is to be marvelled, among many scholars, and, which is to be pitied, among some preachers. Truly, I could wish (if at least I might be so bold to wish, in a thing beyond the reach of my capacity) the diligent imitators of Tully and Demosthenes, most worthy to be imitated, did not so much keep Nizolian paper-books {92} of their figures and phrases, as by attentive translation, as it were, devour them whole, and make them wholly theirs. For now they cast sugar and ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... great treatise, referring to what was all-essential in oratorical delivery, according to Demosthenes, Tully, by a bold and luminous phrase, declares Action to be, as it were, the speech of the body,—"quasi sermo corporis." Voice, eyes, bearing, gesture, countenance, each in turn, all of them together, are to the spoken ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... strongly through the period between the battle of Marathon and the battle of Chaeronea, and has left its monuments in such plays as the Persae and Eumeuides of AEschylus, the Antigone of Sophocles, the Clouds of Aristophanes, the History of Thucydides and the Orations of Demosthenes, its last embodiment being perhaps the famous oath of that orator on the souls of those who risked their lives at Marathon."—History of English Poetry, ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... same time a certain Emmanuel of Constantinople seems to have been employed in England as a copyist. For Archbishop Neville he produced a Greek manuscript containing some sermones judiciales of Demosthenes, and letters of Aeschines, Plato, and Chion (1468).[1] Dr. Montague James has shown that this manuscript of Emmanuel is by the same hand as the manuscripts known as the "Ferrar group," which comprises "a Plato and Aristotle now at Durham, two psalters in Cambridge ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... "Spectator" is an "easily imitated style"; for, of the hundreds who have tried, how many, besides Franklin, have really succeeded in imitating it? We do not believe that Latin and Greek are an "obstructing nuisance," or that the student of Homer and Thucydides and Demosthenes and Plato and Aristotle and Caesar and Cicero and Tacitus is merely studying "the prattle of infant man," or "adding the ignorance of the ancients to the ignorance he was born with." We believe, on the contrary, that it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... TO THE PEACE OF NICIAS (421 B.C.).—Soon after the affair at Mytilene and the destruction of Plataea, an enterprising general of the Athenians, named Demosthenes, seized and fortified a point of land (Pylos) on the coast of Messenia. The Spartans made every effort to dislodge the enemy. In the course of the siege, four hundred Spartans under Brasidas, having landed upon a little island (Sphacteria), were so unfortunate as to be cut off from the ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... indifferently applied to the language and the religion of the Greeks: he contemptuously observes, that the men who exalt the merit of implicit faith are unfit to claim or to enjoy the advantages of science; and he vainly contends, that if they refuse to adore the gods of Homer and Demosthenes, they ought to content themselves with expounding Luke and Matthew in the church of the Galilaeans. In all the cities of the Roman world, the education of the youth was intrusted to masters of grammar and rhetoric; who were elected ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... people most thoroughly, and understood their operation upon the social relations of society, and the character and minds of the people. He was wont to say there was no hereditary transmission of mind; that this was democratic, and a Caesar, a Solon, or a Demosthenes was as likely to come from a cottage and penury as from a palace and wealth; that virtue more frequently wore a smock-frock than a laced coat, and that the institutions of every government should be so modelled as to afford opportunity to ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... with your toe?) And the receipts which thence might flow, We could divide between us; Still more attractions to combine, Beside these services of mine, I will throw in a very fine (It would do nicely for a sign) 600 Original Titian's Venus.' Another offered handsome fees If Knott would get Demosthenes (Nay, his mere knuckles, for more ease) To rap a few short sentences; Or if, for want of proper keys, His Greek might make confusion, Then just to get a rap from Burke, To recommend a little work On Public Elocution. 610 Meanwhile, the spirits made replies ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... rare fun for the other side. I was not an orator—never claimed to be one—and of course they made the most of it. I spoke my little piece as well as I could, but my opponent was known as 'The Silver-tongued Demosthenes of Illinois'—or something like that—so where did I come in? And how those newspaper fellows did enjoy it all! God bless them! They have proven good friends of mine since, but their sharpened quills were fiery darts to me in ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... I," writes he to Sturmius, "are reading together in Greek the Orations of AEschines and Demosthenes. She reads before me, and at first sight she so learnedly comprehends not only the idiom of the language and the meaning of the orator, but the whole grounds of contention, the decrees of the people, and the customs and ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... is 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 eloquence is convincing because devotion to his ideals ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... you both those you ask for and some more also, since what I write to satisfy the studious youth finds favour, it seems, with you also. [For it suited my purpose[147]—both because it was in his Philippics that your fellow citizen Demosthenes gained his reputation, and because it was by withdrawing from the mere controversial and forensic style of oratory that he acquired the character of a serious politician—to see that I too should have speeches that may properly be called consular. Of these are, first, ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... behold the statues of Phidias and the pictures of Zeuxis; they could listen to the wisdom of Socrates, or they might form part of the crowd, hushed in raptured silence, round the rhapsodist, as he recited the immortal lines of Homer—or round Demosthenes, as he poured upon a rival, worthy of himself, the burning torrent of his more than ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... Demosthenes, the great Athenian orator, in a desperate effort to save his people from this man, delivered a set of orations denouncing Philip. These are the famous "Philippics," of which ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 25, April 29, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... in Parliament who gie us any credible portraiture of the facts." He looked up at the portrait of Oliver Cromwell behind him, and exclaimed with great vehemence: "I ha' gone doon to the verra bottom of Oliver's speeches, and naething in Demosthenes or in any other mon will compare wi' Cromwell in penetrating into the veritable core of the fact. Noo, Parliament, as they ca' it, is joost everlasting babblement and lies." We led him to discuss the labor question and the condition ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... is struck by the weakness of a democracy in war time as compared with an autocracy like the German. It is a complaint as old as Demosthenes. But it does not shake my faith in democracy as the best form of Government, because mere strength and efficiency is not my ideal. If a magician were to offer to change us to-morrow into a state on the German model, I shouldn't ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... accomplished scholar, and may be of great real advantage in our progress through human life. Cicero deserves to be studied still more for his talents than for the improvement in language to be derived from reading him. He was unquestionably, with the single exception of Demosthenes, the greatest orator among the ancients. He was too a profound Philosopher. His 'de ofiiciis' is among the most valuable treatises I have ever seen ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... they grow old they refuse to acknowledge the faults acquired by their education.' Study is necessary, and above all the study of good models. Sophocles, Euripides, Pindar, the great lyricists, Plato, Demosthenes, Thucydides, Hyperides, all the great classics, these are the true models for the young orator. Agamemnon cannot restrain himself and even bursts into verse in the course of this disquisition ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... sketch of a system of Philosophy of the Human Mind." The work of the third or final year was in Physics, Astronomy, and Ethics, principally "Butler's Analogy." In the Classics course selections from Homer, Virgil, Euripides and Horace were read in the first year; selections from Cicero, Horace, Demosthenes and Sophocles in the second year; and selections from Herodotus, AEschylus, Thucydides, and Tacitus in the third year. In the first and second years the students were "exercised in Greek and Latin Composition, and they were also given a few lectures in Ancient History and Geography." In ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... containing the best collection extant, of Pieces for Declamation, New Dialogues, &c. Illustrated with excellent likenesses of Chatham, Mirabeau, Webster, Demosthenes, Cicero, Grattan, Patrick Henry, Curran, Sheridan, Madame Roland, Victor Hugo, Calhoun, Hayne, Everett, Tennyson, Longfellow, O. W. Holmes, Bret Harte, Epes Sargent, Thackeray, Dickens, and ...
— The Nursery, No. 109, January, 1876, Vol. XIX. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Unknown
... consistent of any" of the deputies were the gentlemen from Virginia, among whom were Mr. Henry and Mr. R. H. Lee, said to be the Demosthenes and the Cicero of America. The latter, Mr. Adams liked much, a "masterly man" who was very strong for the most vigorous measures. But it seemed that even Mr. Lee was strong for vigorous measures only because he was "absolutely certain that the same ship which carries hence the resolutions ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... school at Andover, Mass., when he was seven years old, and showed himself an eager pupil. Among other books, he was delighted with Plutarch's LIVES, and at thirteen he composed a biography of Demosthenes, long preserved by his family. A year later he entered Yale College as ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... pre-eminence between the Ancients and Moderns is reducible to another. Were trees in ancient times greater than to-day? If they were, then Homer, Plato, and Demosthenes cannot be equalled in modern times; if ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... seemed to have recovered almost its pristine force and strength, that the attention of its rulers was called to a small cloud on the distant horizon, which some were wise enough to see portended storm and tempest. The growing power of Macedon, against which Demosthenes was at this time in vain warning the careless Athenians, attracted the consideration of Ochus or of his counsellors; and orders went forth from the Court that Persian influence was to be used to check and depress the rising kingdom. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... elocution that in less than four hours I had filled eight pages of paper; two of which at least were Greek and Latin quotations, from Aristotle, Demosthenes, and Cicero. I meant to astonish mankind with my erudition! All shall acknowledge, said I, that a writer of wit, energy, and genius is at last sprung up; one who is profoundly skilled too in classical learning. My whole soul was bent on saying ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... Englishmen among the honoured score were Marlborough and Dampier.* (* Aulard, Paris sous le Consulat 1 267.) It is curious to find the adventurous ex-buccaneer in such noble company as that of Cicero, Cato, Caesar, Demosthenes, Frederick the Great, and George Washington, but the fact that he was among the selected heroes may be taken as another evidence of Bonaparte's interest in the men who helped to find out what the world was like. Perhaps if somebody had seen him reading Dampier's Voyages, ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... the Acropolis and placed there the masterpieces of Greece and other countries. The city is said to have had a population of three hundred thousand in his day, two-thirds of them being slaves. The names of Socrates, Demosthenes, and Lycurgus also belong to the list of great Athenians. In 1040 the Normans captured Piraeus, the seaport of Athens, and in 1455 the Turks, commanded by Omar, captured the city. The Acropolis was occupied by the Turks in ...
— A Trip Abroad • Don Carlos Janes
... spite of the absence of these two distinguished members of the Lower House, the box in which the managers stood contained an array of speakers such as perhaps had not appeared together since the great age of Athenian eloquence. There were Fox and Sheridan, the English Demosthenes and the English Hyperides. There was Burke—ignorant indeed, or negligent, of the art of adapting his reasonings and his style to the capacity and taste of his hearers, but in amplitude of comprehension and richness of imagination ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... in peaceful times, of which we now speak, will not produce orators like Patrick Henry and James Otis at the opening of our Revolutionary struggle, like Mirabeau in France, or Cicero in Rome, pleading for a dying republic, or Demosthenes in Athens contending hopelessly against the domination of ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... forms of purification which one does not know whether to describe as ablutions or anointings. Thus Demosthenes in his speech "On the crown', accused Aeschines of having "purified the initiated and wiped them clean with (not from) mud and pitch.'' Smearing with gypsum (titanos. titanos) had a similar purifying effect, and it has been suggested i that the Titans were no more than old-world ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... him down, the old button-maker sleeps with his father (to pluralize his ancestors would be a grave historical error), and Joseph II. reigns in his stead, exercising, I doubt not, over his factory-people the same ingenuity of torture which in old times nearly drove the fags to rebellion. He is a Demosthenes, they say, at vestries, and a Draco at the Board of Guardians; but in the centre of his broad face, marring the platitude of its smooth-shaven respectability, still burns angrily a dark red scar—Guy's sign-manual—which he will carry to ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... except what the consent of the learned had made; an expression borrowed from Quintilian. A plausible and a consolatory argument for the greater part of mankind! It, however, roused the indignation of Leland, the eloquent translator of Demosthenes, and the rhetorical professor at Trinity College, in Dublin, who has nobly defended the cause of classical taste and feeling by profounder principles. His classic anger produced his "Dissertation on the Principles of Human Eloquence;" a volume so much esteemed ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... tender, and lofty mind, full of thoughtfulness, full of devotion, has herein left his legacy to his country. It is not rhetoric or any vulgar excitement of eloquence that charms so many readers to the book, so many hearers to this preacher's feet. It is not with the action of a Demosthenes, with outstretched arms and countenance of flame, that he presses his gospel upon his audience. On the contrary, when we read those calm and lofty utterances, this preacher seems seated, like his Master, with the multitude ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... so far from denying the overwhelming social and civil influence of women, we are fully aware of its vast extent; aware, with Demosthenes, that "measures which the statesman has meditated a whole year may be overturned in a day by a woman"; and for this very reason we proclaim it the very highest expediency to endow her with full civil rights, since only then will she exercise this mighty influence under ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... industry reached the age of fourteen he had studied the following formidable list: Virgil, Horace, Phaedrus, Livy, Sallust, the Metamorphoses, Terence, Cicero, Homer, Thucydides, the Hellenica, Demosthenes, AEschines, Lysias, Theocritus, Anacreon, Aristotle's Rhetoric; Euclid, Algebra, the higher mathematics, Joyce's Scientific Dialogues, and various treatises on Chemistry; and in addition to all this he had read parts of other Greek and Latin authors, ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... of woman, considered after Demosthenes in her three-fold character, prostitute for pleasure, concubine for ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... aides, and muttered to his lieutenant, "If Old Brassbottom came down here to observe the exercise, then why the devil doesn't he go over to the hill and observe instead of hanging around here like a sword of Demosthenes?" ...
— I Was a Teen-Age Secret Weapon • Richard Sabia
... at an alleged fact on all sides, and turning it over and over in his mind; we know that he must have meditated long on ideas, opinions, and events; and the result is a brief, pithy narrative. Tradition hath it that Demosthenes copied out this history eight times, or even learned it by heart. Chatham, urging the removal of the forces from Boston, had reason to refer to the history of Greece, and, that he might impress it upon the lords that he knew whereof he spoke, ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... namely, that Bacon, though he took gifts, did not take bribes, seems to us as futile as that which we have considered. Indeed, we might be content to leave it to be answered by the plainest man among our readers. Demosthenes noticed it with contempt more than two thousand years ago. Latimer, we have seen, treated this sophistry with similar disdain. "Leave colouring," said he, "and call these things by their Christian name, bribes." Mr. Montagu attempts, somewhat unfairly, we must say, to represent ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... knack at making converts, being probably not unacquainted with that grand system of persuasion which is adopted by the greatest personages of the age, and fraught with maxims much more effectual than all the eloquence of Tully or Demosthenes, even when supported by the demonstrations of truth; besides, Mr. Hatchway's fidelity to his new ally was confirmed by his foreseeing, in his captain's marriage, an infinite fund of gratification for his own cynical disposition. Thus, therefore, converted and properly cautioned, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... fall into great disproportion and repetition, whereas a well considered speech preserves its due proportions. It is recorded by tradition that Pericles, when called on by the people for a speech, frequently refused on the plea that he was unprepared. Similarly Demosthenes, his state-rival, when the Athenians called upon him for his advice, refused to give it, saying, "I am not prepared." But this you will say, perhaps, is mere tradition without authority. But in his speech against Midias he plainly sets forth ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... older and wiser. He applied himself in old age to the study of Greek literature, with which in youth he had no acquaintance, although he was not ignorant of the Greek language. Himself an historian and orator, the excellences of Demosthenes and Thucydides made a deep impression upon his kindred mind. But throughout life his conduct was guided by prejudices against classes and nations whose influence he deemed to be hostile to the simplicity ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... mistake, into which men are perpetually falling, of the means for the end. There are people to whom the tragedies of Sophocles are less precious than the Scholiast on Lycophron, and who prize the speeches of Demosthenes chiefly because they may fling light on the dress of an Athenian citizen. The same tendency discovers itself in other pursuits. Oxen are fattened into plethoras to encourage agriculture, and men of station dress like grooms, and bet like blacklegs, to keep up ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... that any country or age produces a Demosthenes, a Pitt, a Thomson, or a Brougham; and such persons have hitherto been considered as gifts of Nature, rather than the legitimate production of educational exercises. But this we conceive to be a mistake. They may perhaps have ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... the Torrent Prophet, An inspired Demosthenes, To the Doubter's soul appealing, Louder than the preacher-seas: Dreamer! wouldst have nature spurn thee For a dumb, insensate clod? Dare to doubt! and these shall teach thee Of a truth there ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... of Great Britain rests, in no small degree, on the refined taste and classical education of her politicians; and the portion of her oratory acknowledged to be the most energetic, bears the greatest resemblance to the spirit of Demosthenes.—North American Review. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 357 - Vol. XIII, No. 357., Saturday, February 21, 1829 • Various
... Horsemanship by Xenophon," p. 119 foll. A fragment of the work referred to, {peri eidous kai ekloges ippon}, exists. The MS. is in the library of Emmanual Coll. Cant. It so happens that one of the hipparchs (?) appealed to by Demosthenes in ...
— On Horsemanship • Xenophon
... at the door. We had been heard. If I had suddenly been endowed with the eloquence of Demosthenes, the gift would have come too late. The door was thrown open, not by servants, but by a merry, curious crowd of ladies and gentlemen, anxious to see the arrival of the belated, no doubt much talked ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... found in inducing strangers to withdraw during a division of the House. This responsible office could not have been conferred upon any one so capable of discharging its onerous duties as the Colonel. We will stake our hump, that half-a-dozen words of the gallant Demosthenes would, at any time have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 5, 1841 • Various
... fields. His Tour created a type; no better volume of travels has ever been written than the Journal; and the critic who has dealt at the reputation of Boswell its heaviest blow has yet to confess, that Homer is no more the first of poets, Shakespeare the first of dramatists, Demosthenes the first of orators, than Boswell is the first ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... schoolmaster have done worse, who got his living by it? If the acts of Xenophon and Caesar had not far transcended their eloquence, I don't believe they would ever have taken the pains to write them. They made it their business to recommend not their saying, but their doing. The companions of Demosthenes in the embassy to Philip, extolling that prince as handsome, eloquent, and a stout drinker, Demosthenes said that those were commendations more proper for a woman, an advocate, or a sponge. 'Tis not his profession to know either how to hunt, or to ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... compelled the besiegers to retreat. The patriots characterized this storm as Providential. Had the weather remained fair, the patriots would have been beaten, the democracy would not have been restored, and we should never have had the orations of Demosthenes; and perhaps even Plato might not have written and thought for all ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... who would excuse the sudden wheel, Upon his courser might the blame bestow: But, after, he so ill his strokes did deal, Demosthenes his cause might well forego. With paper armed he seems, and not with steel, So shrinks he at the wind of every blow: At length he breaks the ordered champions through, Amid loud ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... discourse or their silence. In them would be seen beauty, proportion in greatness, and that perfect harmony which appears but once in the full youth of the world. Their three names have become the ideal of art—Plato, Sophocles, and Demosthenes. Those demi-gods honoured, we see a numerous and familiar company of choice spirits who follow, the Cervantes and Molieres, practical painters of life, indulgent friends who are still the first of benefactors, who laughingly embrace all mankind, turn man's experience ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... recorded as having been adopted by Demosthenes (p. 103) will remind some readers of a passage in the life of St. Francis of Assisi. "He had given up," says Mrs. Oliphant, "without hesitation, as would appear, all the indefinite sweetness of youthful hopes. But, nevertheless, he was still young, still a man, with human instincts and wishes, ...
— Game and Playe of the Chesse - A Verbatim Reprint Of The First Edition, 1474 • Caxton
... was felt. Old men, who had become settled in their ways and who had begun to pass their days in a sort of sleepy submission to the idea of the gradual passing away of their lives, awoke and went into Main Street in the evening to argue with skeptical farmers. Beside Ed Hall, who had become a Demosthenes on the subject of progress and the duty of the town to awake and stick to Steve Hunter and the machine, a dozen other men held forth on the street corners. Oratorical ability awoke in the most unexpected ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... lived in ancient Scribbletown a wise old writer-man, Whose name was Homer Cicero Demosthenes McCann. He'd written treatises and themes till, "For a change," he said, "I think I'll write a children's book before I go ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... as gay, although Carnaby does his dear, cubbish best. If ever you desire your mental jewels to shine at their brightest; if ever you wish a tolerably good disposition to seem like that of an angel; if ever, in a fit of vanity, you would like to appear as a blend of Apollo, Lancelot, Demosthenes, Prince Charlie, Ajax, and Solomon, just fly to Stoke Revel and become part of the household. Assume nothing; simply appear, and the surroundings will do the rest; like the penny-in-the-slot arrangements. Seen upon a background of Bates, William, Benson, Big Cummins, the Curate, ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... noble deeds of bravery or glory Are much enhanced if they're declaimed with stirring oratory. I love sonorous words that roll like billows o'er the seas; These I recite like Cicero or like Demosthenes. ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells
... is indicated by coarseness of language." By language he meant not only words and phrases, but coarseness of voice. There can be nothing more characteristic of good breeding than a soft, well modulated, pleasing voice. This quotation from Demosthenes is only another way of saying it: "As a vessel is known by the sound whether it is cracked or not, so men are proved by their speeches whether they be ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... spunkie Norland billie; True Campbells, Frederick an' Hay; An' Livingstone, the bauld Sir Willie: An' monie ithers, Whom auld Demosthenes or Tully Might ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... even the lofty flights of the Greeks and Romans. The noted Red jacket, perhaps the greatest orator and philosopher of primitive America, was declared by the late Governor Clinton of New York to be the equal of Demosthenes. President Jefferson called the best-known speech of Logan, the Mingo chief, the "height ...
— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman
... polish of Art is wanted to mould the original materials into elegant proportion. He who possesseth the former in the highest degree may be a Shakespear or an AEschylus; but both were united in forming the more perfect characters of Demosthenes and Homer. ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... voice should be our first aim in a course of vocal culture. So important was this element of elocutionary training considered by the Athenians, that they had a class of teachers who were wholly devoted to it as a specialty. The zeal and perseverance of Demosthenes in correcting the natural deficiencies of his voice, have passed into a proverb. How he was accustomed to run up the steepest hills, and to declaim on the sea-shore, when the waves were violently agitated, in order to acquire strength of voice and force of utterance ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... Apollo, as a symbol of whatever is filled with light, high, beautiful and noble; Heracles for what is strength, energy, organization, life as it should be lived by human beings. Leonidas stands for us as a symbol of heroic deeds; Demosthenes as a symbol of the convincing powers of oratory and Pericles as the crystallization of Grecian life in its totality of beauty, learning and social and civic life. Greece is a type, is an attitude, is a protest against oppression, ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... Seneca; and Demosthenes, called by Cicero the prince of orators, has, according to Hermippus, more of art than of nature. To Demades, his orations appear too much laboured; others have thought him too dry; and, if we may trust AEschines, his language is by no ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Mr. James Fawsyde in Cokenie, Baronius annalls compendized in two tomes, 3 shills. st. Summa Conciliorum et Pontificum per Carranzam 2 shil. st. Maximi Tyrii sermones, a shilling. Benzonis Historia novi orbis seu Americae, a shilling. Dansaei Antiquitates mundi Antediluviani, a shilling. Demosthenes orationes olynthicae Graece et Latine, 6 pence. Bucholzeri Index cronologicus, 3 shil's st. Apulei Madaurensis opera omnia, 6 pence. S.G. Mckeinzie's plaidings, 3 shil's st. Acts of the session of parlia' held ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... EVEN ENEMIES ARE SO GENEROUS! Virtue, though in an enemy, here pleased him: And we also give it the just tribute of praise and approbation; nor do we retract these sentiments, when we hear, that the action passed at Athens, about two thousand years ago, and that the persons' names were Eschines and Demosthenes. ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... them mystic, contemplationist, fanatic. George Fox, sitting about in lonely places, reading his Bible in hollow trees, is hard to understand. But if it were anything but religion that was in quest, people would not laugh. Tell them of Demosthenes living in a cellar, with head half shaved to prevent his appearing in public, and there will be admiration; was it any wonder that he became an orator? But let a man be as bent on becoming a saint; let him give up one hour's frivolous talk in order to commune ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris
... of various Grammar Schools, were all candidates. One Isaac Cook—Headmaster of Ripon—explained as shewing the high value of his Classical attainments that when he was elected to Ripon he was examined "with another candidate in Terence, Cicero, Tacitus, the Greek Testament and Demosthenes, and wrote a ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell
... improved by bequests from his father, and his uncle the earl of Bath, he was chosen into parliament for Fowey. He soon after engaged in a joint translation of the Invectives against Philip, with a design, surely weak and puerile, of turning the thunder of Demosthenes upon the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... you or one of your learned correspondents, tell me the origin or first user of the literary "smelling of the lamp?" I know that it is commonly attributed to Demosthenes? but if it is his, I want chapter ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.03.23 • Various
... has told me an extraordinary fact. Catherine Slay-Czar sent for Mr. Fawkener(816) and desired he will order for her a bust of Charles Fox; and she will place it between Demosthenes and Cicero (pedantry she learnt from her French authors, and which our schoolboys would be above using); for his eloquence has saved two great nations from a war—by his opposition to it, s'entend: so the peace is no doubt made. She could ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... generals of the Athenians; among mathematicians, those leading stars of science, Eudoxus, Archimedes[16] and Euclid; among biographers, the inimitable Plutarch; among physicians, the admirable Galen; among rhetoricians, those unrivaled orators Demosthenes and Cicero; among critics, that prince of philologists, Longinus; and among poets, the most learned and majestic Virgil. Instances, though not equally illustrious, yet approximating to these in splendour, may doubtless be adduced after the fall of ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... the Thessalian Cineas, the confidential minister of Pyrrhus, went to Rome. That dexterous negotiator, whom his contemporaries compared to Demosthenes so far as a rhetorician might be compared to a statesman and the minister of a sovereign to a popular leader, had orders to display by every means the respect which the victor of Heraclea really felt for his vanquished opponents, to make ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... of all times coming; and how, whenever there should be any restlessness against the tyranny of materialism and dogma, a cry should go up for Plato.—So let Isocrates, the 'old man eloquent,'—let a many-worded not unpeculant patriotic Demosthenes who knew nothing of the God-world—attend to an Athens wherein the Gods were no longer greatly interested;—the great Star Plato should rise up into mid-heaven, and shine not in, but high over Athens and quite apart from her; drawing from her indeed the external elements ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... Donnithorne, as he carefully filled his pipe with precious weed, "your oratorical powers are uncommon! Surely thy talents had been better bestowed in the Church or at the Bar than in the sickroom or the hospital. Demosthenes himself would have paled before thee, lad—though, if truth must be told, there is a dash more sound than ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... hights—almost to count its columns—then coasted along the rugged shores of Argolis, which we eagerly studied with the aid of a map. Here was the peninsula Methana, and half hiding it, the island Calauria, where Demosthenes put an end to his life, once the seat of a famous Amphictyony. Then the bold promontory which shuts in the fertile valley of Troezer, then the territory of Hermione, stretching between the mountains and the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... in regulating his course. He took up the fight for the black man's freedom as one who was himself absolutely free. Most wonderfully did he conduct that fight. There was nothing in the eloquence of Demosthenes in Athens, of Cicero in Rome, of Mirabeau in France, of Pitt or Gladstone in England, that surpassed the force and grandeur of the philippics of Adams against American slavery. Alone, for the greater ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... Statesmen who flourished in the Time of George the Third;" in 1845-6, "Lives of Men of Letters and Science who flourished in the Time of George the Third;" and he has since given to the world works on "The French Revolution," on "Instinct," "Demosthenes' Oration on the Crown," &c., &c. Collections of his Speeches and Forensic Arguments, and of his Critical Essays, as well as the other works above referred to, have been republished in ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... of the Dionysiac mysteries at which the toys of the child Dionysus were exhibited, and during which (as it seems) the [Greek], or bull-roarer, was whirred, the performers daubed themselves all over with clay. This we learn from a passage in which Demosthenes describes the youth of his hated adversary, AEschines. The mother of AEschines, he says, was a kind of 'wise woman,' and dabbler in mysteries. AEschines used to aid her by bedaubing the initiate over with ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... through every department. In one room an Arabic Professor was engaged at the black-board, instructing a class in studies pursued in that language. In another part of the same room, young ladies were reading to a lady-teacher an oration of Demosthenes in classic Greek. Another class was reading critically a portion of Milton's "Paradise Lost," and yet another was engaged in preparing a French lesson. With all these classes the lady sister spoke in the language under study or recitation, as did ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... it happen that Athens, after having recovered an equality with Sparta, should be forced to submit to the dominion of Macedon when she had two such great men as Phocion and Demosthenes at the ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... Boswell. Johnson's Life by Boswell is without a rival among biographies: in the words of Macaulay: "Homer is not more decidedly the first of heroic poets; Shakspeare is not more decidedly the first of dramatists; Demosthenes is not more decidedly the first of orators, than Boswell is the first of biographers;" and Burke has said that Johnson appears far greater in Boswell's book than in his own. We thus know everything about Johnson, as we do not know about any other literary man, and this knowledge, due ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... Numa, a nailsmith. Tarquin, a porter. Piso, a clownish swain. Sylla, a ferryman. Cyrus, a cowherd. Themistocles, a glass-maker. Epaminondas, a maker of mirrors or looking-glasses. Brutus and Cassius, surveyors or measurers of land. Demosthenes, a vine-dresser. Cicero, a fire-kindler. Fabius, a threader of beads. Artaxerxes, a rope-maker. Aeneas, a miller. Achilles was a scaldpated maker of hay-bundles. Agamemnon, a lick-box. Ulysses, a hay-mower. ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... Patrick Henry, "the forest-born Demosthenes," as Lord Byron called him, was defending an army commissary, who, during the distress of the American army in 1781, had seized some bullocks belonging to John Hook, a wealthy Scottish settler. The seizure was not quite legal, but Henry, defending, painted the hardships the patriotic ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... concessions were being made, roused himself angrily; and, to show us that he at least was no Anglo-maniac, shot at us a look fierce as any bonassus; while he asked, abruptly, what we thought in England of one whom he styled the "Demosthenes of Ireland"—looked at us for an answer. As it would have been unsafe to have answered him in the downright, offhand manner, in which we like both to deal and to be dealt by, we professed that we knew but one Demosthenes, and he not an Irishman, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... great or small, noble or ignoble, as the time is eventful or otherwise. All depends upon the time, and you might as well have expected a Low Dutch epic poet in the time of the great herring fishery, as a Napoleon, a Demosthenes, a Cicero in this, by some called the nineteenth, but which we take leave to designate the "dot-and-carry-one" century. If a Napoleon were to arise at any corner of any London street, not five seconds would ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... Black Sea and the Maeotis or Sea of Azoff. Bosporus was also a name of Pantikapaeum, one of the chief towns of the Bosporus. There was a series of Greek kings of the Bosporus, extending from B.C. 430 to B.C. 304, whose names are known; and there may have been others. In the time of Demosthenes, in the fourth century before the Christian aera, the Athenians imported annually a large quantity of corn from the Bosporus. This was the country that now belonged to Mithridates. (Penny ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... be great and grand in morals and in intellect, and perhaps strove all the more earnestly for this on account of the decline they saw about them. Few countries in any age have had more splendid men than Socrates, Plato, Euripides, Aristophanes, Pelopidas, Epaminondas, Demosthenes, Dion, and Timoleon, and these all lived between the Peloponnesian and the Macedonian wars. And while the arts were less grand than before, they did not fall into decline for some years, though they took on new features. The gods who had been mostly represented were less often the subjects of the ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... of Greek wine I have met with, sir, in my travels; it is the same that Demosthenes usually drunk, in the composure of all his exquisite and ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... connected with their city was classic ground. Here it was that Socrates had discoursed so sagely; and that Plato had illustrated, with so much felicity and genius, the precepts of his great master; and that Demosthenes, by addresses of unrivalled eloquence, had roused and agitated the assemblies of his countrymen. As the stranger passed through Athens, artistic productions of superior excellence everywhere met his eye. Its statues, its public ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... there was Bouffon Le Grand—another extraordinary personage in his way. He grew deranged through love, and fancied himself possessed of two heads. One of these he maintained to be the head of Cicero; the other he imagined a composite one, being Demosthenes' from the top of the forehead to the mouth, and Lord Brougham's from the mouth to the chin. It is not impossible that he was wrong; but he would have convinced you of his being in the right; for he was a man of great eloquence. He had an absolute passion for ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... ground of Epipolae upon the southern side from the plain, so very gradual is the line of ascent and so comparatively even is the rocky surface of the hill. Thucydides, in narrating the night attack of Demosthenes upon the lines of Gylippus (book vii. 43-45), lays stress upon the necessity of approaching Epipolae from the western side by Euryalus, and again asserts that during the hurried retreat of the Athenians great numbers died by leaping from the cliffs, while still more had to throw away ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... born in 389 B.C., six years before his lifelong rival Demosthenes. If we may trust that rival's elaborate details of his early life, his father taught a primary school and his mother was overseer of certain initiatory rites, to both of which occupations Aeschines gave his youthful hand and assistance. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... had a race, which the Count lost; and that, as his horse died the following night, surgeons were employed to open the body, and they declared he had been poisoned. "The English," says Walpole, "suspect that a groom, who, I suppose, had been reading Livy or Demosthenes, poisoned it on patriotic principles to secure victory to his country. The French, on the contrary, think poison as common as oats or beans in the stables at Newmarket. In short, there is no impertinence which they have not uttered; and it has gone so far that two nights ago it was said ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... remarkable than his dexterity in presenting his case. James Mill used to point out to his son among other skilful arts of Demosthenes, these two: first, that he said everything important to his purpose at the exact moment when he had brought the minds of his hearers into the state most fitted to receive it; second, that he insinuated gradually and indirectly ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... till noon, but the faithful Leggatt had intrigued his way down to the dock-edge, and beside him sat Malachi, wearing his collar of gold, or Leggatt makes it look so, as eloquent as Demosthenes. Shend flinched a little when he saw him. We packed Mrs. Godfrey and Milly into Attley's car—they were going with him to Mittleham, of course—and drew clear across the railway lines to find England all lit and perfumed for spring. Shend sighed ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... Rhetoric, and of which the Sophists were the chief masters. Moreover, as Rhetoric was especially political in its nature, it presupposed or introduced the cultivation of History; and thus the pages of Thucydides became one of the special studies by which Demosthenes rose to be the ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... statement, which otherwise might have passed unnoticed, by whistling the first bar of the song. Mr. Bispham faced the tittering like a man, and endeavored to rehabilitate himself. But his hands had slipped on the handle of the audience, and the forensic rosin of Demosthenes would not have enabled him to regain his grip. He was cruelly assured of the fact by the hostile and ready-witted whistler. Again Mr. Bispham absurded. This time the tune broke out in all parts of the hall and was itself punctuated by catcalls and sotto-voce ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... of September, 1776, all the troops in Charleston were ordered to rendezvous without the gates of the city, to hear, as we were told, "Some great news." Soon as we were paraded, governor Rutledge ascended a stage, and in the forcible manner of a Demosthenes, informed, that Congress had dissolved all relation with England, by an ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... from his own works that he was a young student at Delphi, in the thirteenth year of the reign of the Emperor Nero, A.D. 66. He visited both Italy and Rome, and probably resided at Rome for some time. He wrote his Life of Demosthenes, at least after his return to Chaeroneia: he says (Life of Demosthenes, c. 2), that he had not time to exercise himself in the Latin Language during his residence at Rome, being much occupied with public business, and giving lessons in philosophy. Accordingly it was ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... therefore is called necessary, it ought also to promove them unto good, and therefore is called profitable. Human laws, in Mr Hooker's judgment,(33) must teach what is good, and be made for the benefit of men. Demosthenes(34) describeth a law to be such a thing cui convenit omnibus parere which it is convenient for every one to obey. Camero(35) not only alloweth us to seek a reason of the church's laws (Non enim saith he, verae ecclesiae libet leges ferre ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... returned with an empty skin but a full budget. I will offer you, dear L., a specimen of the "palaver" [6] which is supposed to prove the aphorism that all barbarians are orators. Demosthenes leisurely dismounts, advances, stands for a moment cross-legged—the favourite posture in this region—supporting each hand with a spear planted in the ground: thence he slips to squat, looks around, ejects saliva, shifts his quid to behind his ear, places his weapons ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... Rainsforth liked me so well as to suggest to me a seat in the House of Commons. A member of Parliament might rise to anything, and Lord Rainsforth had sufficient influence to effect my return. Dazzling prospect this to a young scholar fresh from Thucydides, and with Demosthenes fresh at his tongue's end! My dear boy, I was not then, you see, quite what I am now: in a word, I loved Ellinor Compton, and therefore I was ambitious. You know how ambitious she is still. But I could not mould my ambition to ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... {atimia} the loss of civil rights, either total or partial. See C. R. Kennedy, "Select Speeches of Demosthenes," Note 13, Disenfranchisement. ...
— The Polity of the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians • Xenophon
... rugged, direct, strong. He had but a scanty vocabulary. It contained no word for treason but "treason." He described a lie by a word of three letters. The character of his speech was that which Plutarch ascribes to Demosthenes. He was strongly stirred by simple and great emotions—love of country, love of freedom, love of justice, love of honesty. He ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... It would, however, be but a sorry toil for the most cynical critic to illustrate these vagaries otherwise than so many slips and trippings of the tongue and pen, to which all men are liable in their unguarded moments—from Homer to Anacreon Moore, or Demosthenes to Mr. Brougham. Our course is rather that of a good-humoured expose, the worst effect of which will be to raise a laugh at the expense of poor humanity, or a merited smile at our own dulness and mistaken sense ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various
... admirable monuments were intended to represent. But it is not in the city of Constantine, nor in the declining period of an empire, when the human mind was depressed by civil and religious slavery, that we should seek for the souls of Homer and of Demosthenes. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... of an argument by insistence and is especially "appropriate in perorations and digressions, and in all passages written for the style and for display, in writings of historical and scientific nature." Yet Demosthenes when moved by passion attains the sublimity of intensity and strikes like lightning.[31] Both in oratory and in poetry sublimity is attained by image-making, as when "moved by enthusiasm and passion, you seem to see the things of which you speak, and place them under the ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... So he was married in spite of himself to his nun, and showed his disposition to make the best of it by making her a wedding-present of his new Latin treatise, just finished, on The Origin of Evil, and receiving in tender return a Greek copy of the Philippics of Demosthenes. Three years later the wretched woman was accused of adultery, and being put to the torture confessed her crime and was drowned in a sack, while her paramour was beheaded. Bonivard, being questioned, declared his belief of her innocence, and that her worst faults were ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... whole matter was a mixture of cowardice and meanness. Recollecting his poetical temperament, and the well-known stories of Demosthenes at Cheronea, and Horace at Philippi, we are not disposed to be harsh on his cowardice, but we have no excuse for his meanness. It discovers a want of heart, and an infinite littleness of soul. We can hardly conceive him to have possessed a drop of ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... Testament sold for 48 cents, a Latin Testament for half that amount, a Latin folio Bible published in 1532 for $4, Luther's first New Testament at 84 cents. One might get a copy of the Pandects for $1.60, of Vergil for 10 cents, a Greek grammar for 8 cents, Demosthenes and Aeschines in one volume at 20 cents, one of Luther's more important tracts for 30 cents and the condemnation of him by the universities in a small pamphlet at 6 cents. One of the things that has gone down most in price since that day is postage. Duerer while in the Netherlands ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... metrical, since this would be poetry (Orator, 220). Greek writers relied for metrical effect in prose on those feet which were not much used in poetry. Aristotle recommended the paean [uuu-]. Cicero preferred the cretic [-u-] which he says is the metrical equivalent of the paean. Demosthenes was especially fond of the cretic. Rhythm pervades the whole sentence but is most important at the end or clausula, where the swell of the period sinks to rest. The ears of the Romans were incredibly sensitive to such points. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... Protagoras; (2) that the bad sense was imprinted on the word by the genius of Plato; (3) that the principal Sophists were not the corrupters of youth (for the Athenian youth were no more corrupted in the age of Demosthenes than in the age of Pericles), but honourable and estimable persons, who supplied a training in literature which was generally wanted at the time. We will briefly consider how far these statements appear to be justified by facts: and, 1, about ...
— Sophist • Plato |
