"Diction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Homer would have said, on the contrary, being simple and true, might have grown, as we dwelt upon it, always more noble, pathetic, and poetical. Shakespeare, too, beneath his occasional absurdities of plot and diction, ennobles his stage with actual history, with life painted to the quick, with genuine human characters, politics, and wisdom; and surely these are not the elements that do least credit to his genius. In every poet, indeed, there is some fidelity to nature, mixed with that ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... topic is his really famous "obscurity." This obscurity is variously ascribed to a diction unduly learned, or almost unintelligibly colloquial, or grotesquely inventive; to figures of speech drawn from sources too unfamiliar or elaborated to the point of confusion; to sentences complicated by startling inversions, by double parentheses, by broken constructions, or by a grammatical ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... honored me, or rather the Society of which I am the humblest member. But I considered the great debt we have been under to you for the loan of many of your most accomplished speakers: of Curtis, whose diction is chaste as the snows of his own New England, while his zeal for justice is as fervid as her July sun; of Depew, who, as I listen to him, makes me believe that the doctrine of transmigration is true, and that in a former day his soul occupied ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... whose footsteps turn inwards rather than outwards, to borrow the language of AEsop.[267] For as Sophocles said he had first toned down the pompous style of AEschylus, then his harsh and over-artificial method, and had in the third place changed his manner of diction, a most important point and one that is most intimately connected with the character, so those who go in for philosophy, when they have passed from flattering and artificial discourses to such as deal with character and emotion, are beginning to make ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... is still young—not more than thirty; his stature is tall, his figure slender. His manner of speaking displeases. He has an outlandish accent, which, notwithstanding a studied carelessness of pronunciation and diction, grates on a British, and especially on a ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... almost certain that Θ must have had the Ο´ text before him, since the coincidences of diction, though not so continuous as in the Song of the Three, are still far too numerous to be accidental. Bissell (p. 443) says of all the three pieces, "Θ simply recast the version of LXX." This dictum, however true of ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... for his whole life except this sutra."[15] The title of the book, when literally translated, is Great-square-wide-Buddha-flower-adornment-teaching—a title sufficiently indicative of its rhetoric. The age of hard or bold thinking was giving way to flowery diction, and the Law was to be ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... in this age of squeamishness as yet unparalleled in the world. To avoid offence a few little modifications of words have been made; but rather than give a false impression by tampering with any of the narrative, I have omitted the sequel of the last tale and given only an outline of it. The diction adopted has been the oldest that could be used without affectation when dealing with the early times. It has been purposely modified in the later tales; and in the last—which is of Ptolemaic authorship—a modern style has been followed as more compatible ...
— Egyptian Tales, First Series • ed. by W. M. Flinders Petrie
... has been already reviewed by the English critics, who are always appreciative of Browning's merits, and tender to his faults. It is as wilful as its predecessors, as unintelligible, as fragmentary, its rhythm as distorted and broken, its diction as peculiar, its sequences as disconnected. Yet we think it shows gleams of higher poetic talent than anything he has yet published. It contains eighteen poems. 'A Death in the Desert' is an imaginary portrayal of the death of St. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... it from most books of its class is its distinction of manner, its unusual grace of diction, its delicacy of touch, and the fervent charm of its love passages. It is a very attractive piece of romantic fiction relying for its effect upon character rather than incident, and upon vivid dramatic presentation."—The Dial. "A stirring, ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... could have been further in person, voice, and temperament from Dumas' appealing heroine than the veteran actress who first acquainted me with her. Her conception of the character was as heavy and uncompromising as her diction; she bore hard on the idea and on the consonants. At all times she was highly tragic, devoured by remorse. Lightness of stress or behavior was far from her. Her voice was heavy and deep: "Ar-r-r-mond!" she would begin, as if she were summoning him to the bar of Judgment. But the lines were ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... his queer diction somehow was not unbecoming or grotesque. I suppose George Fox and Savonarola did not use quite the ordinary language of their ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... period, although now little read, have been praised by Mr. James Ford Rhodes as an exact estimate of public sentiment, as voicing in energetic diction the mass of the common people of the North. Lincoln wrote to thank him for one of them, adding, "I fear I am not quite worthy of all which is therein kindly said of me personally." Luckily Lincoln never saw ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... scarcely intelligible to the untravelled English reader; for it must be remembered that, with the exception of the Adventures of Raja Rasâlu, all these stories are strictly folk-tales passing current among a people who can neither read nor write, and whose diction is full of colloquialisms, and, if we choose to call them so, vulgarisms. It would be manifestly unfair, for instance, to compare the literary standard of such tales with that of the Arabian Nights, ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... interested in the poetic diction of Milton and Thomson, and a few of his verses are remotely inspired by Shakespeare and Gray. To say, however, that he studied English literature would be an exaggeration. The events of 1789 and the startling success of his younger brother, Marie-Joseph, as political playwright and pamphleteer, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... theatrical;" his "quaint, delicate, delightful humour;" his "broader humour, that is not afraid to provoke the wholesome laughter of mankind by dealing with common and familiar ways and manners and men;" his "choiceness of diction;" his "lightness and grace of touch, that lend a charm even to" his "ordinary ...
— Goody Two-Shoes - A Facsimile Reproduction Of The Edition Of 1766 • Anonymous
... was very popular in her section of the country, is a bit of evidence that the tale has been known in the Philippines for decades, probably. Whether or not her form of the story was derived from a printed account, I am unable to say; but I suspect that it was; the diction sounds "bookish." Nevertheless I have found no external evidence of a Tagalog corrido treating the ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... rebelled against rhetoric and unreality and found for himself a director and truer voice, "I have proposed to myself to imitate and, as far as is possible, to adopt the very language of men.... I have taken as much pains to avoid what is usually called poetic diction as others ordinarily take to produce it." And he erected this practice into a general principle in the ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... unfortunate question. The best reply that was made to Miss Hobhouse, and to the lack of prudence which spoiled her good intentions, was a letter which Mrs. Henry Fawcett addressed to the Westminster Gazette. In clear, lucid diction this letter re-established facts on their basis of reality, and explained with self-respect and self-control the inner details of a situation which the malcontents had not given ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... of actual life, the nearer the spirit of it will approach to the ideal. An unwarrantable assumption, if there ever was one; and an assumption, as will be seen, that contains the seeds of the whole eighteenth-century theory of poetic diction. In the second place—but this is, in truth, only the deeper aspect of the former plea—Dryden comes perilously near to an acceptance of the doctrine that idealization in a work of art depends purely on the outward form and has little or nothing to do with the conception or ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... giving the approximate meaning where the literal was impossible, to turn all this into fairly smooth English. But in such a process all the strength and individual character of the original would inevitably have been lost. What I have endeavoured to do is to indicate the diction which a man of Wagner's peculiar turn of mind would have used, if he had written in ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... Jason had heard given Gray Pendleton, for Burnham had been a mighty foot-ball player in his college days. The old president rose, and the tumult sank to reverential silence while a silver tongue sent its beautiful diction on high in a prayer for the bodies, the minds, and the souls of the whole buoyant throng in the race for which they were about to be let loose. And that was just what the tense uplifted faces suggested ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... first criticism, polished numbers, if you mean melodious versification, this perhaps the general ear will not deny me. If you mean classical, chaste diction, free from tautologous repetitions of the same thoughts in different expressions; free from bad rhymes, unnecessary epithets, and incongruous metaphors, I believe you may be safely challenged to produce many ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... is that Mr Carlyle deals. To speak in our own plain common-place diction, it is to the elements of all religious feeling, to the broad unalterable principles of morality, that he addresses himself; stirring up in the minds of his readers those sentiments of reverence to the Highest, and of justice to all, even to the lowest, which can never ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... virtues. To them she gave a language different from that of actual use, a language full of resonant music and sweet rhythm, made stately by solemn cadence, or made delicate by fanciful rhyme, jewelled with wonderful words, and enriched with lofty diction. She clothed her children in strange raiment and gave them masks, and at her bidding the antique world rose from its marble tomb. A new Caesar stalked through the streets of risen Rome, and with purple sail and flute-led oars another Cleopatra passed up the river to Antioch. Old myth ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... 'Life of Byron.' I don't think I like this style of biography, half-way between ordinary narrative and self-delineation in the shape of letters, diary, &c. Moore's part is agreeably and feelingly written, and in a very different style from the 'Life of Sheridan'—no turgid diction and brilliant antitheses. It is, however, very amusing; the letters are exceedingly clever, full of wit, humour, and point, abounding in illustration, imagination, and information, but not the most agreeable sort of letters. They are joined together ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... in question is quoted and critical comment is made on a particular line or a particular image, rhyme, word, etc. In short, as so often in Johnson, we are confronted with the large general statement in so much of the criticism in the Lives. The "diction" of Lycidas is "harsh." "Some philosophical notions [in Paradise Lost], especially when the philosophy is false, might have been better omitted." The plays of Nicholas Rowe are marked by "elegance ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... Mood; but I will record the one point upon which the two persons emerged in some agreement. It was that there is such a thing as an atheistic literary style; that materialism may appear in the mere diction of a man, though he be speaking of clocks or cats or anything quite remote from theology. The mark of the atheistic style is that it instinctively chooses the word which suggests that things are dead ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... of a sound diction, combining the characteristics of every Greek dialect, from which it is plain that he travelled over the whole of Greece and among every people in it. He uses the ellipse of the Dorians, due to their practice of shortening their speech, saying for [Greek omitted], as (O. ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... proceed to a regular examination of the tragedy before us, in which I shall treat separately of the Fable, the Moral, the Characters, the Sentiments, and the Diction. And ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... rending aside of the curtain, which hung like a shroud before the grim horrors of that seething lower world of misery. In his earlier work there had been a certain delicate fancifulness, an airy grace of diction and description, a very curious heritage of a man brought up in the narrowest of lines, where every influence had been a constraint. There was nothing of that in the words which were leaping now hot from his heart. Yet he ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... the speech, mark you, the professor said, of a finished orator, full of courteous haughtiness and pouring in chastened diction I will not say the vials of his wrath but pouring the proud man's contumely upon the new movement. It was then a new movement. We ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... others"). It is a masterly piece of writing. Coleridge scribbled in the copy that now lies on the shelves of the British Museum this tribute to its author: "I remember few passages in ancient or modern authors that contain more just philosophy in appropriate, chaste or beautiful diction than the fine following pages. They reflect equal honour on Godwin's head and heart. Though I did it in the zenith of his reputation, yet I feel remorse even to have only spoken unkindly of such a man.—S. ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... and language, and often so much wit and humour, that one could not help being interested and attentive.' On matters of business, he adds, 'the talk could not be of the same quality and was of the same continuity.' He gives one specimen of the 'richness of conversational diction' which I may quote. My father mentioned to Taylor an illness from which the son of Lord Derby was suffering. He explained his knowledge by saying that Lord Derby had spoken of the case to him in a tone for which he was unprepared. 'In all the time when I saw him daily I cannot recollect that ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... and prose began early. In 1783 came forth the charming collection 'Poetical Sketches,' juvenile as the fancies of his boyish days, but full of a sensitive appreciation of nature worthy of a mature heart, and expressed with a diction often exquisite. The volume was not really public nor published, but printed by the kindly liberality of two friends, one of them Flaxman. In 1787, "under the direction of the spirit of his dead brother," Robert, he decided on publishing a new group of lyrics and fancies, 'Songs ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... loves to know, Nor dreads the North's inclement snow: Who bids her polish'd accent wear The British diction's harsher air; Shall read her praise in every clime Where types ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... in the masks and operas of the sixteenth century; and it required little invention to paint the duchess of York as Venus, or to represent her husband protected by Neptune, and Charles consulting with Proteus. But though the device be trite, the lyrical diction of the opera is most beautifully sweet and flowing. The reader finds none of these harsh inversions, and awkward constructions, by which ordinary poets are obliged to screw their verses into the fetters of musical time. Notwithstanding the obstacles stated by Dryden himself, every line seems to ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... IS WELL WRITTEN. Such books as this should be read slowly and pondered well; but this book by its fascination will tempt one to read too rapidly. Its line of argument is logical; its diction is as pure as the bubbling stream; its truths are evident and compelling. It presents the purest psychology stripped of all mystifying technicalities, and clothed in language which even a child can understand. ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... mere decoration. We often deceive ourselves in this matter, for what we call decoration has often a new and genuinely poetic content of its own; but wherever there is mere decoration, we judge the poetry to be not wholly poetic. And so when Wordsworth inveighed against poetic diction, though he hurled his darts rather wildly, what he was rightly aiming at was a phraseology, not the living body of a new content, but the mere worn-out body of ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... is perfumed with affectation. A toilet is described with the solemnity of an altar raised to the goddess of vanity, and the history of a silver bodkin is given with all the pomp of heraldry. No pains are spared, no profusion of ornament, no splendour of poetic diction to set off the meanest things. . . . It is the perfection of ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... this 'picture of Ireland' was given by some half Anglicised, half Protestantised Celt, who wrote what he had seen around him, careless of political philosophy, or of fine phrases with which to embellish his diction. But if he was a Celt, I think his description clearly proves that he must have been a Celt of some other country than the one upon whose state he reports. Judging from internal evidence, I should say that he could not be a native; for an Irishman, even though a ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... that the Second book of Mr. Southey's "Joan of Arc," to line 452, as acknowledged, was written by Mr. Coleridge, with the intermixture of 97 lines, written by Mr. Southey, in which there are noble sentiments, expressed in the loftiest poetical diction; and in which also there is a tutelary spirit introduced to instruct and counsel the Maid of Orleans. In the second edition of "Joan of Arc," Mr. Southey omitted the whole of these lines, and intimated to Mr. C. his intention so to do, as early as the ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... stumble in good diction there, Mr. Forsythe," muttered the listening Denman. "Otherwise, very ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... the narrative of missionary work, life, and incident is maintained throughout by a charming felicity of diction, and the plea for increased missionary effort is ...
— Children of Borneo • Edwin Herbert Gomes
... ugly, the poor, the unworthy and the villanous, should be the greater, and, in short, it ought not to be otherwise than as it is. The long life of Archimedes, of Euclid, of Priscian, of Donato, and others, who were found up to their death occupied with numbers, lines, diction, concordances, writings, dialectics, syllogisms, forms, methods, systems of science, organs, and other preambles, is ordained for the service of youth, so that they may learn to receive the fruits of the mature age of those (sages) and be full of the same even in their green age, so that when they ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... barons, took ship for Lundy, but was driven back to Wales by contrary winds. And of this event a poem was made in the reign of James I, which is quoted by Westcote as written by a "modern poet," though he does not give us the name. The verse still retains a smack of the Elizabethan diction—not the Shakespeare magic, indeed, but the euphuistic, antithetical, fantastic ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... because they have inadvertently dipped their brush in their own experience, some of its color having fallen accidentally on the bare ideal outline which they wished to trace. We have simply a contour, a general sketch, filled up with the harmonious gray tone of correct diction.—Even in comedy, necessarily employing current habits, even with Moliere, so frank and so bold, the model is unfinished, all individual peculiarities being suppressed, the face becoming for a moment a theatrical mask, and the personage, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... it is, with the simplicity of the grand style, like the "Chanson de Roland" the verse of Milton does not quite destroy the charm of thirteenth-century diction:— ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... effect of confusion and obscurity, not of energy; and if each separately be examined under the light of criticism, what seemed terrible gradually sinks into absurdity. Since then, even in tragedy, where the natural dignity of the subject makes a swelling diction allowable, we cannot pardon a tasteless grandiloquence, how much more incongruous must it seem ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... clearness. On the sporting page slang has been accepted because there one is writing to a narrow circle of masculine Goths who understand the patois of the gridiron, the diamond, and the padded ropes and prefer it to the language of civilization. But such diction is always limited in its range of acquaintances and followers. A current bit of slang in Memphis may be unintelligible in Pittsburg. A colloquial ephemeralism in a city may be undecipherable in the country districts ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... but also because in language Herodotus is not archaic. His style is the "best canon of the Ionic speech," marked, however, not so much by primitive purity as by eclectic variety. At the same time it is characterised largely by the poetic diction of the Epic and Tragic writers; and while the translator is free to employ all the resources of modern English, so far as he has them at his command, he must carefully retain this poetical colouring and by all means avoid the courtier phrase by which ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... opinions, whether for their learning, logic, or diction, will compare favorably, in the judgment of some of our best lawyers, with those of any judge upon the Supreme Bench of the Union. It is true what he has accomplished has been done with labor; but ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... by Humphrey James; a volume written in the familiar diction of the Ulster people themselves, with perfect realism and very remarkable ability.... For genuine human nature and human relations, and humour of an indescribable kind, we are unable to cite a ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... by reference to another of the copies, he arrived by degrees at a clear understanding of the whole matter. The story was set forth in rhyming doggerel. The poet was not blessed with a gift of melody or of style. Absence of scansion tortured the ear. Coarseness of diction offended the taste. And yet, as he read on, Julius reluctantly admitted that the cruel tale gained credibility and moral force from the very homeliness of the language in which it ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... the "Cylchgrawn," or Circle of Grapes, another magazine, under the auspices of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. The subjects of this poet's compositions were patriotic, sentimental and religious, and his poems are characterised by deep pathos, and great sweetness of diction.] ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... put Toombs' visit to Grant, "crawling at the seat of power," against his eulogy of a dead enemy. I have never heard such a scoring from one man to another. It was magisterial in its dignity, deadly in its diction. Nothing short of a duel could have settled it in the olden time. But when Lamar, white with rage, had finished, Toombs without a ruffle said, "Lamar, you surprise me," and the host, with the rest of us, took it as a signal to ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... Dr. Francis's Translation of Select Speeches from Demosthenes, which Lord Brougham naturally used a little in his own labors on that theme, there may be traced several peculiarities of diction that startle us in Junius. Sir P. had them from his father. And Lord Brougham ought not to have overlooked them. The same thing may be seen in the notes to Dr. Francis's translation of Horace. These points, though not independently ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... conclude that we, young priests, should go in for high, flowery diction, long phrases, etc.? I could hardly imagine any man, least of all you, sir, holding such ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... intellectualizing, refining, and inspiring with the passion for perfection. This need accordingly determines the choice in most cases. So Milton presents an example of "sure and flawless perfection of rhythm and diction"; Joubert is characterized by his intense care of "perfecting himself"; Falkland is "our martyr of sweetness and light, of lucidity of mind and largeness of temper"; George Sand is admirable because of her desire to make the ideal life the normal one; Emerson ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... clear, and the volume of a convenient and attractive size.... In reading this elegantly executed work, it has seemed to us that a passage or two might have been retrenched with advantage, and that the general style of diction was susceptible of a higher polish.... On the whole, we may safely leave the ungrateful task of criticism to the reader. We will barely suggest, that in volumes intended, as this is, for the illustration of a provincial dialect ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... this case it is not mistaken diction. Foreboding suggests coming evil; the laughter of boys is wholehearted. It was merely that things were not exactly as they should be; it was not natural that age should be so youthful. The fates were playing, and in this case ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... do," retorted Bob, "but I'm not obliged to say what I mean now. I'm an alum. I can use as bad diction as I please and the long arm of the English department can't reach out and spatter my mistakes ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... exchange and give up some degree of rough sense, for a good degree of pleasing sound. I will freely and truly own to you, without either vanity or false modesty, that whatever reputation I have acquired as a speaker, is more owing to my constant attention to my diction than to my matter, which was necessarily just the same as other people's. When you come into parliament, your reputation as a speaker will depend much more upon your words, and your periods than upon the subject. The same matter occurs equally to everybody of common sense, ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... Castelar, the celebrated Spanish author and statesman, in his most able series of articles on Columbus in the Century Magazine, derides the fact of an actual mutiny as a convenient fable which authors and dramatists have clothed with much choice diction.] ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... and execution! The former, in all respects perfect—the latter, in design common-place, and but little enlarged from the old ballad tales of Robin Hood, and histories of the Crusaders; very slovenly in diction, and lengthened out by tiresome repetitions; the same things being told in protracted dialogues which had been previously narrated in the historic course. Then there are very ill-timed interruptions, and wearisome disquisitions, just where they should not be. Yet are there passages of perfect excellence, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... which is an original composition and not a translation of Valmiki's work is one of the great religious poems of the world and not unworthy to be set beside Paradise Lost. The sustained majesty of diction and exuberance of ornament are accompanied by a spontaneity and vigour rare in any literature, especially in Asia. The poet is not embellishing a laboured theme: he goes on and on because his emotion bursts forth again and again, diversifying the same topic with an inexhaustible variety ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... only take anecdotes for what they are worth, and that may perhaps be considered slight when they are anonymous. This anecdote, however, in the original Florentine diction, although it betrays a partiality for Lionardo, bears the aspect of truth to fact. Moreover, even Michelangelo's admirers are bound to acknowledge that he had a rasping tongue, and was not incapable of showing his bad temper by rudeness. From the period of his boyhood, when Torrigiano ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... injurious with the moral ones. All natural clearness and distinctness of intellect becomes gradually obscured; the memory becomes perplexed; the very style of writing acquires the taint of the perverted mind. Truth is impressed upon every line of Dr. Arnold's vigorous diction, while other writers of equal, perhaps, but less respectable eminence, betray, even in their mode of expression, the habitual want of honesty in their character and ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... of the Cato Maior have generally assumed that Cicero attempted to give an antique coloring to the diction of the dialogue in order to remind readers of Cato's own style. It is only necessary to read a page or two of Cato's De Re Rustica to have this illusion dispelled. The only things actually alleged to be archaisms are (1) the use of deponent participles as passives in Sec.Sec. ...
— Cato Maior de Senectute • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... and Pastor, says to the same effect, that "the inaccuracy of diction, the inelegance, poverty, and lowness of expression, which is commonly observed in extempore discourses, will not fail to offend every ...
— Hints on Extemporaneous Preaching • Henry Ware
... "how careless you are in your diction. 'Dumped ink!' One can only dump a powdered or granulated substance. By the way I've joined a new club. It's a Society for the Improvement of Advertisers' English, and we work in such a novel and efficacious way. To-day Miss White ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... the hands of such trumpery scribblers to a post, and scourge their bare backs with thorny rods to cure them of their insolence! Nay, even my fool Zabastes hath found place in these narrow columns, to write his carping diatribes against me,— me, the King's Laureate! ... As I live, his cumbersome diction hath caused me infinite mirth, and I have laughed at his crabbed and feeble wit till my sides have ached most potently! Now get thee gone, fellow!—thou and thy news!"—and he nodded a good- humored dismissal to the deferential Zibya, who with his woolly gray head very much on one side ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... above those faults of style which are the fruits of self-consciousness and ambition. Whether we read the Old Testament story of Abraham's servant seeking a bride for Isaac, or the New Testament narrative of the walk of the risen Christ with his disciples to Emmaus, the inimitable simplicity of the diction would make us think that we were listening to the dialect of the angels who never sinned in thought, and therefore cannot sin in style, did we not know rather that it is the phraseology of ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon
... important questions and people, whereas the one aim which proper education should most zealously strive to achieve would be the suppression of all ridiculous claims to independent judgment, and the inculcation upon young men of obedience to the sceptre of genius. Here a pompous form of diction is taught in an age when every spoken or written word is a piece of barbarism. Now let us consider, besides, the danger of arousing the self-complacency which is so easily awakened in youths; let us think how their vanity must be ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... patient hearing. A slow and faltering rehearsal of words clearly prescribed, yet neither fairly remembered nor understandingly applied, is as foreign from parsing or correcting, as it is from elegance of diction. Divide and conquer, is the rule here, as in many other cases. Begin with what is simple; practise it till it becomes familiar; and then proceed. No child ever learned to speak by any other process. Hard things become easy by use; and skill is gained by little and little. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... other heroes, and in songs whose existence can rather be inferred than proved,—was never better. It produced the lyrico-epic romances (see Notes, p. 253), which, as far as one may judge from their diction and from contemporary testimony, received their final form at about this time, though in many cases of older origin. It produced charming little songs which some of the later court poets admired sufficiently ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... thought, given with sententious brevity, the poetical allusion that enlivened the discourse, and the dazzling imagery, are sure to be transmitted to their respective colonies and provinces. The ornaments of poetic diction are now required, not, indeed, copied from the rude obsolete style of Accius [e] and Pacuvius, but embellished with the graces of Horace, Virgil, and [f] Lucan. The public judgement has raised a demand for harmonious periods, ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... exercise his powers. They are often humorous, almost always light, and have the qualities which recommend such compositions, easiness and gaiety. They are, for the most part, what their author intended. The diction is correct, the numbers are smooth, and the rhymes exact. There seldom occurs a hard laboured expression or a redundant epithet; all his verses exemplify his own definition of a good style—they consist of ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... smoothly casing brown silks, as she entered hotel dining-rooms, and the severity with which she frowned over her fan down the length of the hotel drawing-rooms, betrayed more than her husband the commonness of their origin. She could not help talking, and her accent and her diction gave her away for a middle-class New England person of village birth and unfashionable sojourn in Boston. He, on the contrary, lurked about the hotels where they passed their days in a silence so dignified that when his verbs and nominatives ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... belong to the first rank. He is both eclectic and individual. He brought to his pen the reminiscences of varied reading, and a wholly original touch of fantasy. He was literally steeped in the gorgeous Gothic diction of the seventeenth century, but he realised that such a prose style as illumines the pages of William Drummond's Cypress Grove and Browne's Urn Burial was a lost art. He attempted to imitate such writing only in his youthful exercises, for his own genius was forced ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... deficient high moral thought or action. If there be present the accomplishment of verse, we shall have a Byron; or, the other poetic gifts in full measure, with lack of this accomplishment, and we may get a Beckford, who builds Fonthill Abbeys, and with purity and richness of diction describes palaces, actual or feigned, and natural scenery with picturesqueness and genial glow; or, the intellectual endowments being mediocre, we shall have merely a man of superficial taste; or, the moral regents being ineffective, an intellectual sybarite, ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... progress of children in reading and in knowledge of language; for the diction of the stories is intended to be often in advance of the natural language of the reader, and yet so used as to be explained ...
— Rollo at Work • Jacob Abbott
... music to which he moves. Hence his humor often seems forced in motion, while always fine in spirit. The contrast between the slow march of his sentences, the frequent gravity of his spirit, the recondite masses of his lore, the logical severity of his diction, and his determination, at times, to be desperately witty, produces a ludicrous effect, but somewhat different from what he had intended. It is "Laughter" lame, and only able to hold one of his sides, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... who read but little, "The Messiah," as soon as it appeared, made a powerful impression. Those pious feelings, so naturally expressed, and yet so beautifully elevated; that pleasant diction, even if considered merely as harmonious prose,—had so won the otherwise dry man of business, that he regarded the first ten cantos, of which alone we are properly speaking, as the finest book of devotion, ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... was gifted with a rare judicial mind, and a remarkable capacity for the lucid expression of his thoughts, which captivated his hearers even when they were not convinced by arguments clothed in the choicest diction. His remains were brought across the Atlantic by a British frigate, and interred in his native city of Halifax with all the stately ceremony of a national funeral. The governor-general, Lord Stanley of Preston, now the ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... illustrations, strong and expressive in manner. There are exceptions to this statement, it is true, and she is sometimes turgid and dry, again gaudy and verbose. Sententious in her didactic passages, she is pure and noble in her sentiment, poetical and impressive in her descriptions of nature. Her diction is choice, her range of expression large, and she admirably suits her words to the thought she would present. There is a rich, teeming fulness of life in her books, the canvas is crowded, there is movement and action. An ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... the flower of her youth, and by what we call a violent death, the one child Richard Hardie loved; member of a religious party whose diction now and then offends one to the soul: but the root of the matter is in them; allowance made for those passions, foibles, and infirmities of the flesh, even you and I are not entirely free from, they live fearing God, and ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... from high up in the beech tree—the second fork from the top. There he had built what he called a nest, but what humans, with greater nicety of diction, call a drey. Speak not of squirrel's "nest" to sportsmen; to speak of fox's "burrow" were hardly less heinous. The drey was eminently satisfactory, for, in the summer months, it was completely hidden. ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... was my own laborious choice also, and Adele's corroboration strengthened me wonderfully. "Jo, it is the simplicity of the style that is its greatest recommendation. You know how Professor Whitcomb has drummed into us the beauty of Anglo-Saxon diction. It's beautiful—it's charming—it's perfect. Why, a six-year-old could understand it. Fifteen is far too sensational for good art. ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... had the peculiar disadvantage of having been put into our language by a German—of course it came to me in broken English. It was no slight misfortune to have an example of bad grammar, false metaphors and similes, with all the usual errors of feminine diction, placed before a female writer. But if, disdaining the construction of sentences,—the precise decorum of the cold grammarian,—she has caught the spirit of her author,—if, in every altered scene,—still ...
— Lover's Vows • Mrs. Inchbald
... word that has the poetic aroma about it, and is an example (of which we might adduce additional cases from the domain of 'poetic diction') of a word set aside from a prose use and devoted exclusively to poetry. It is, as we know, Saxon, signifying old or old age, and was formerly in constant use in this sense; as, for instance, in Chaucer's ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of expression. In transcribing his notes and fortifying their claim to attention by giving them something of an orderly arrangement, I have conscientiously refrained from embellishing them with such small ornaments of diction as I may have felt myself able to bestow, which would not only have been impertinent, even if pleasing, but would have given me a somewhat closer relation to the work than I should care to have and to ...
— Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories • Ambrose Bierce
... Professor Brierly over the wire had a break in it. In the voice it was difficult to recognize the finely modulated diction ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... paper, a model of incisive diction and of moving prose, conceived in the best Oxford manner, drew a terrible picture of what might occur in withdrawing troops from a foreshore in presence of a ferocious foe. Its polished periods portrayed a scene of horror and despair, of ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... development. According to the all-pervading law of evolution, the less complex form must have preceded the more complex. Still, the book does bear the stamp of one master-mind. Its style is as easily recognized as that of Deutero-Isaiah, being as remarkable for its copious diction as for its depths of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... species of slang, into Carlylisms, into vague generalities about infinitudes and eternities. At all times the interspersed commentary—written in that peculiar, fantastic, jingling manner which, illegitimate as it is, disorderly and scandalous to all lovers of propriety in style and diction, is at all events the very opposite to dulness—forms perhaps the most fortunate contrast that could have been devised with the Cromwellian period, so arid and colourless, so lengthy and so tortuous, tinged often with such a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... Unhappily this test is seldom applied to the work of teaching. We judge the teacher by the process rather than by the product, and we introduce a number of extraneous criteria to hide the absence of a real criterion. We watch the way in which he conducts a recitation, how many slips he makes in his diction and syntax, inspect his personal appearance, ask of what school he is a graduate and how many degrees he possesses, inquire into his moral character, determine his church membership, and judge him to be a good or a poor teacher according to our findings. All of these queries may ...
— Twenty-Five Years in the Black Belt • William James Edwards
... disparage his memory by citing them is a preposterous use of scholarship. Jonson's prose, both in his dramas, in the descriptive comments of his masques, and in the "Discoveries," is characterised by clarity and vigorous directness, nor is it wanting in a fine sense of form or in the subtler graces of diction. ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... this unattractive matter, Milton's manner is always and unmistakably "the grand manner." His imagination is lofty, his diction noble, and the epic of Paradise Lost is so filled with memorable lines, with gorgeous descriptions, with passages of unexampled majesty or harmony or eloquence, that the crude material which he injects into the Bible narrative ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... system is very common in North America. See Carey in J. S. Mill's Principles, V, ch. 9, 7. In heathen Iceland, mariners were always paid a certain quota of the profits. Leo, in Raumer's historischem Taschenbuch, 1835, 524. The same was often the case in China. McCulloch, Comm. Diction. v. Canton. In England, its employment was rendered very difficult by the laws of partnership, which made each individual, except in great chartered societies, responsible for all kinds of debts contracted by the rest ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... debt for importing into it so much of the highest scientific habit of mind; for showing that truthfulness need not be bald, and that real power lies more in exact accuracy than in luxuriance of diction. ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley |
