"Fluent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... these nations are reflected also in their methods of presentation. The style of the English philosopher is sober, comprehensible, diffuse, and slightly wearisome. The French use a fluent, elegant, lucid style which entertains and dazzles by its epigrammatic phrases, in which not infrequently the epigram rules the thought. The German expresses his solid, thoughtful positions in a form which is at once ponderous and not easily understood; each writer constructs ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... or two she was badly frightened. Then, watching him, she suddenly came to the conclusion that she had nothing to fear—that he was telling her something he wanted her to know. She listened, trying hard to catch some word in the flood of fluent foreign speech, and twice she thought she made out the name of Ram Das. Then he finished abruptly with almost the one word of Hindustani she knew, since it was one the old hawker had taught her. "SUMJA," ("Do you understand?") ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... kneel down, Peace began a prayer that lasted twenty minutes. He prayed for himself, his family, his victims, Mr. Littlewood, society generally, and all classes of the community. Mr. Littlewood described the prayer as earnest, fervent and fluent. At the end Peace asked Mr. Littlewood if he ought to see Mrs. Dyson and beg her forgiveness for having killed her husband. Mr. Littlewood, believing erroneously that Mrs. Dyson had already left the country, told Peace that he should direct ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... also well known from practical life that some men can easily go on dictating to a stenographer while they are affixing their signature to several hundred circular letters, or can continue their fluent lecture while they are performing experimental demonstrations. With others such a side activity continually interrupts the chief function. Then some succeed better than others in securing a certain automatism of the ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg
... others lay in a trundle-bed across the room; and the three were getting out of sleep all that there is in it for tired, healthy children. In the room below, her father and the eldest boy were resting; and through the rafters of the flooring she could hear them both: her father a large, fluent, well-seasoned, self-comforting bassoon; and her brother a sappy, inexperienced bassoon trying to imitate it. Wakefulness was a novel state for Pansy herself, who was always tired when bedtime came and as full of ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... Pietro indulged in some rather emphatic language, but being in the Italian language, in which he was more fluent, it fell unregarded upon the ears ...
— Phil the Fiddler • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... deputation, one after another. Learned princes who had the gift of speech were themselves fond of discoursing in Latin or Italian. The children of the House of Sforza were trained to this exercise. The boy Galeazzo Maria delivered in 1455 a fluent speech before the Great Council at Venice, and his sister Ippolita saluted Pope Pius II with a graceful address at the Congress of Mantua (1459). Pius himself through all his life did much by his oratory to prepare the way for his final elevation to the Papal chair. Great as he was both as scholar ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... {C}, {LISP}, and {Perl}. Nearly every hacker knows one of C or LISP, and most good ones are fluent in both. C, despite some serious drawbacks, is generally preferred to other object-oriented languages (though in 1996 it looks as though Java may soon displace it in the affections of hackers, if not everywhere). Since ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... smile, she seated herself; and, discovering that I was an American, began to talk bad English to me. I may say execrable English; for it is a habit your Frenchwoman often has, to abandon her own facile and fluent vernacular, which she speaks so charmingly, in order to show off a wretched smattering she may have acquired of your language,—from politeness, possibly, but I rather think from vanity. In the mean time Arachne busied her long agile fingers with some very appropriate ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... TheNavalChronicle does not give many details of the volunteering for the navy in 1803, though he alludes to it in fluent terms more than once. On the 11th October, however, he reports that, 'So many volunteer seamen have arrived here this last week that upwards of L4000 bounty is to be paid them afloat by the Paying Commissioner, Rear-Admiral ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... attitude, and minimizing the change in present angle or point of view. His fertile mind played about it, strengthening it, building it up, polishing and perfecting; and in time he began to write, at first slowly, but soon with fluent ease. ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... remained a mystery to the rest. Nevertheless an old story now and then well told by Mr. Ormsby, a new joke now and then well introduced by Mr. Gay, some dashing assertion by Mr. Rigby, which, though wrong, was startling; this agreeable blending of anecdote, jest, and paradox, kept everything fluent, and produced that degree of mild excitation which is desirable. Lord Monmouth sometimes summed up with an epigrammatic sentence, and turned the conversation by a question, in case it dwelt too much on the same ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... and the daily exhibition of his strength caused him to grow handsome in her eyes because most of those feats were performed for her comfort or pleasure. In the meantime he talked incessantly, and to his admiration, he presently found her manner of speech wonderfully like his own, both fluent and ungrammatical. ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... reigns of Claudius and Nero. He is author of an agricultural work, "De Re Rustica," in which he gives, in smooth and fluent, though somewhat too diffuse a style, the fullest and completest information on practical agriculture among the Romans in the first century of the ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... and with Dick and Henry for audience made an impassioned speech in defence of vested interests and the sacred rights of property. Never in his life had he been so fluent or so inventive, and when he wound up a noble passage on the rights of the individual, in which he alluded to Sam as a fat sharper, he felt ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... true of the most fluent talkers on occasions when the exact vocal formula desired does not at once suggest itself, or is unsatisfactory without assistance from the physical machinery not embraced in the oral apparatus. The command of a copious vocabulary ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... Herr Schulz—and this time his English was faultless and fluent—"Shut that door behind you, Mr. Greve, and shoot the bolt—that's it just below the knob! Sit down, sit down, and while I mix you a drink, you shall ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... lady, of commanding presence and sternly handsome, entered the room. She wore robes—robes; not clothes—ample and fluent. In her eye could be perceived the lambent flame of genius and soul. In her hand was a green bag of the capacity of a bushel, and an umbrella that also seemed to wear a robe, ample and fluent. ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... we speak of the Misses Hernandez, with whom you scarcely exchanged a word at dinner, and whom I invited for you and your fluent Spanish. They are charming girls, even if they are a little stupid. But what can I do? If I am to live here, I must have a few young people around me, if only to make the place cheerful for others. Do you know I have taken a great fancy to Miss Rogers, and have asked her ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... at her mother, and in the momentary silence Lucie came in and asked what madame wanted for the evening, and Adelaide in her fluent French began explaining that what she really desired most was that Lucie should not make so much noise in her room that monsieur could not sleep. In the midst of it she stopped ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... glad to see the noble Athenian in his own city. His fame for eloquence and prudence is already in Tyre and Babylon," spoke the stranger, never taking his steel-blue eyes from the orator's face. The accent was Oriental, but the Greek was fluent. The prince—for prince he was, whatever his nation—pressed his hand closer. Almost involuntarily Democrates's hand responded. They clasped tightly; then, as if Lycon feared a word too much, the unknown released his hold, bowed with inimitable though silent courtesy, ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... a penetration of mind altogether unique." The children of the fanatics of the Cevennes, while in their supposed prophetic ecstacies, spoke the purest dialect of French, and expressed themselves with singular propriety. The same facility of speaking in a fluent and exalted style while in the divinatory ecstacy, was remarked of old in the case of the Pythian priestess. "Though it cannot be divined," says Plutarch, in his "Inquiry," "why the Pythian priestess ceases to deliver her oracles in ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... mind is fluent and uncertain there is no describing it. He thought he had come to a decision last week; he found that the decision was shattered as soon as made. He had talked to the priest; he had resisted Marjorie; and yet to neither of them ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... them, and floating with the coming and going tides as he drops his inhibitory hand and speeds them in the continuous current. That is, of course, something you get in greater quantity, though not such intense quality, in a London 'block,' but there is something more fluent, more mercurially impatient, in a New York street jam, which our nerves more vividly partake. Don't ask me to explain! I would rather not!" he said, and ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... from fluent lips, and mirth distract the breast, Through midnight hours that yield no more their former hope of rest; 'Tis but as ivy-leaves around the ruin'd turret wreathe, All green and wildly fresh without, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... all the fluent conversation and compliments, the gossip and jokes he had been saving up to tell her, died away on his lips. He saw she had been crying. He sat down further away than ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... of that day, Peter and myself sat alone beneath the oak. We fell into conversation; Peter was at first melancholy, but he soon became more cheerful, fluent, and entertaining. I spoke but little; but I observed that sometimes what I said surprised the good Methodist. We had been silent some time. At length, lifting up my eyes to the broad and leafy canopy of the trees, I said, having ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... liar, and a fluent liar therewith— He spoke of the heat of India as the "Asian Solar Myth"; Came on a four months' visit, to "study the East," in November, And I got him to sign an agreement vowing to stay ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... Mahbub Ali had incautiously driven home the sharp-edged stirrup. (He was not the new sort of fluent horse-dealer who wears English boots and spurs.) Kim drew his own conclusions from ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... has better served—it has served all: Served the fluent-tongued and subtle-sensed Greek, and long ere the Greek; Served in building the buildings that last longer than any; Served the Hebrew, the Persian, the most ancient Hindostanee; Served the mound-raiser on the Mississippi—served those whose relics remain ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... on a new guise. He affected to be enraptured with Spartan manners, cropped his hair, lived on black broth, exercised diligently, and by his fluent tongue made himself a favorite in that austere city. But at length, by an idle boast, he roused Spartan enmity, and had to fly again. Now he sought Asia Minor, became a friend of Tissaphernes, the Persian satrap, adopted the excesses of Persian luxury, ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... man in New England is a theologian." I have already intimated that Webster dissipated his strength, and it is only fair to state the facts in the light of the conditions under which he lived. In the unorganized and fluent state of society there was little room for a specialist; or, to change the phrase for a more exact one, there was too much room. Every educated man was called upon to occupy himself with a great variety of tasks. The demand made by the republican experiment was very great. People had ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... thoughts did not long hold their place. She was an honest young woman, and she readily confessed that fluent manners and the air of the cavaliere servente were things she did not love. Carelessness suited well with a frayed jacket and the companionship of a hill burn and two ragged boys. So, comforting her pride with proverbs, she returned to Glenavelin to find the place deserted ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... work of all kinds "et voila tout." Every generation, every country, has its Catulle Mendes. Robert Buchanan is ours, only in the adaptation Scotch gruel has been substituted for perfumed white wine. No more delightful talker than Mendes, no more accomplished litterateur, no more fluent and translucid critic. I remember the great moonlights of the Place Pigale, when, on leaving the cafe, he would take me by the arm, and expound Hugo's or Zola's last book, thinking as he spoke of the Greek sophists. There were for contrast Mallarme's ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... who acknowledged the honour in fluent Melanesian, was understood to say that he had only done his duty, that he was speechless with gratitude and that he would always regard Lord READING as a brother. A recherche vegetarian luncheon was then ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 4, 1919. • Various
... Miss Mary C. Francis (O.) from the standpoint of a practical newspaper woman. Mrs. Chapman Catt, chairman of the national organization committee, made the last address, taking for a subject Eternal Justice. The Constitution said: "As a rapid, logical and fluent speaker it is doubtful if America ever has produced one more gifted, and the suffrage movement is fortunate in having so brilliant a woman for ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... were realised by the archdeacon's speech, which went round in a circle, as if he could not find his way out of it. Lord Cosham was fluent, but a great many words went to very small substance; and no wonder, thought Ethel, when all they had to propose and second was the obvious fact that ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... equal eminence; and his enthusiastic friends insisted that never, either in single conflict or when receiving the assault of the senatorial leaders of a whole party, had he been discomfited. His style was bold, vigorous, and aggressive; at times even defiant. He was ready, fluent, fertile in resources, familiar with national and party history, severe in denunciation, and he handled with skill nearly all the weapons of debate. His iron will and restless energy, together with great personal magnetism, made him ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... and disturbing to him because he could not remember the time or occasion when the knack of fluent ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... all one, so any thing is to be got by it. Yet, after all, thin, speculative Jonathan is more like the Englishman of two centuries ago than John Bull himself is. He has lost somewhat in solidity, has become fluent and adaptable, but more of the original groundwork of character remains. He feels more at home with Fulke Greville, Herbert of Cherbury, Quarles, George Herbert, and Browne, than with his modern English cousins. He is nearer than John, by at least a hundred years, ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... under their escort, stiff and perspiring in his full official regalia, before Mr. Brewster; then before his daughter, whose solemnity, presently breaking down before his painfully rehearsed English, dissolved in fluent French, setting him at ease and making him her slave. Poor penitent Von Plaanden even apologized to Carroll, fortunately not having heard of the American's threat, and made a most favorable impression ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... explain this Mr. Clinton. He was a speculator, and above all a setter on foot of rotten speculations, and a keeper on foot a little while of lame ones. No man exceeded him in the art of rose-tinting bad paper or parchment. He was sanguine and fluent. His mind had two eyes, an eagle's and a bat's; with the first he looked at the "pros," and with the second at the "cons" ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... he has dreamed out at last the troubled dream of life. Sighs of unavailing grief ascend to Heaven. Panegyric, fluent in long-stifled praise, performs its office. The army and the navy pay conventional honors, with the pomp of national woe, and then the hearse moves onward. It rests appropriately, on its way, in the hall where independence was proclaimed, and again under the dome where ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... role, and, choosing a few passages, read into them all of their hidden meaning, with the fluent ease and clearness which had gained for him the reputation of a fascinating reader. Silvia listened with ever increasing surprise, and at last exclaimed: "Ah, sir, you are the author of the piece, or else the devil." He assured her with a smile that he was not ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... come to that period of wo, let me say one word on the temper of mind which so fluent and serene a current of prosperity may be thought to have generated. Too common a course I know it is, when the stream of life flows with absolute tranquillity, and ruffled by no menace of a breeze—the azure overhead never dimmed by a passing cloud, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... at the apex of the spit, the sand as it sinks tints the verge of the sea, while the lighter spoil, leaves and wisps of seaweed, trip off on independent voyage. The current from the south pares the spit, preserving its shapeliness. The ebb from the bay maintains the fluent inner curve. The dry wind, the current with its northerly set, and the ebb in conjunction, push the spit to the north, and as the sand advances, vegetation consolidates the work. Then comes the season of northerly winds, ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... often united the functions of solicitor and counsel. As a result of this double life, the attorney acquired the peculiar intellectual defects of the barrister, and retained the heavy responsibilities of the attorney. He grew talkative and fluent, and lost his lucidity of judgment, the first necessity for the conduct of affairs. If a man of more than ordinary ability tries to do the work of two men, he is apt to find that the two men are mediocrities. The Paris attorney ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... by a cheerful smile to be extremely prepossessing. The same remark might apply to the figure, which—thanks to the same pensiveness—lost all the undulating grace which movement and animation bestow on the fluent curves of the feminine form. The figure was a good figure, examined in detail—a little thin, perhaps, but by no means emaciated—with just and elegant proportions, and naturally light and flexible. But that same unfortunate pensiveness gave the whole a character of inertness and languor; ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... develop as had been hoped, the temper of mind fostered was not entirely what had been desired. The conscientious accuracy that was to come of measuring a millimetre and weighing a milligramme was disappointing, and also the fluent readiness to give an account of observations made, the desired accuracy of expression, the caution in drawing inferences. The links between this teaching and after life did not seem to be satisfactorily established. The Board of Education showed the first ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... did more: for he wrote two solid quarto volumes, published at Paris in 1756—"avec approbation et privilege du Roy," as the title page says—in which he related all that he could learn about previous voyages to the south, and pointed out, with generous amplitude, in limpid, fluent French, the desirableness of pursuing further discoveries there. Incidentally he coined a useful word: to Monsieur le President Charles de Brosses we owe the name "Australasia."* (* De Brosses, Histoire des Navigations aux Terres ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... never saw a look in the face of one of them which indicated that he was not profoundly interested. I was in their meeting last Sunday, and I told them about Sui Chung. Most of these Chinese can read. Some of them are very fluent talkers, and some are very intelligent. I suppose we have a thousand or fifteen hundred in this city, and a very large proportion of them, they tell me, can read the ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... was easy and his tongue fluent. Beatrice had only to lean her head back and smile faintly from time to time. The General suddenly paused—so suddenly that Beatrice looked up and noticed the sudden pallor of his ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... consonant evaded after the Polynesian habit) was sent by Bishop Dordillon to South America, and there educated by the fathers. His French is fluent, his talk sensible and spirited, and in his capacity of ganger-in-chief, he is of excellent service to the French. With the prestige of his name and family, and with the stick when needful, he keeps the natives working and ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... honour. During his course he had managed to read an amazing amount of English literature, and no man was readier or had a keener taste in such things than he. He had a pleasing personal appearance, a fluent and persuasive manner, an unblemished character. Every morning he came to his office from one of the most pleasant little cottage homes in the world; and if you had opened the little front gate, and gone up through the shrubbery to the house, you would have seen a ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... was of so ultra a quality; his revenge was so fiery, and his tongue so fluent; that I began to suspect he had other motives than the insulted laws of hospitality. I reached this discovery, too, in time. The declining health of his partner had made him speculate on the chances of survivorship. He certainly was no longer young, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... indicated, when I had become a young practitioner at the bar, a certain vixenish old beldam was put upon trial for the offence of maintaining this ill reputed establishment. Her demeanor was singularly exceptional; for she did not scruple to interrupt the proceedings with the most fluent billingsgate, and upon receiving sentence berated the presiding judge in language betokening an extraordinary depth of desperate hardihood. Inquiry revealed the fact, that her solitary house, standing ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... He had been sent down alone. Hence there had been great scrambling to gather together on the Zone men enough who spoke Spanish—and with no striking success. Most noticeable of my fellow-enumerators, being in uniform, were three Marines from Bas Obispo, fluent with the working Spanish they had picked up from Mindanao to Puerto Rico, and flush-cheeked with the prospect of a full month on "pass," to say nothing of the $4.40 a day that would be added to their daily military income of $.60. ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... cannot all your fluent witt interpret Why she procastinatts your promisd match? By this light, her daughter would be married tomorrow If her mother and I had concluded ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... of determination I kept on bearing up toward the top, but it was always quite labour in vain, through my want of skill, as the smaller stones being more fluent, I found myself still sinking down more and more with every step, till, mingled with the peculiar rattle of the gliding stones, came the roar of the river foaming and dashing amongst the rocks, and into which I expected to ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... could believe myself necessary to you at any time!" Philip is beginning, with fluent sentimentality, when, catching sight of Tedcastle, he stops abruptly. "Here is Luttrell," he says, in an injured tone, and seeing no further prospect of a ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... mind was alert it was a sensitive medium. He dropped with crossed knees into his chair and glanced reflectively at Bernard Clowes, heu quantum mutatus. . . . When the body was wrecked, was there not nine times out of ten some corresponding mental warp? Bernard's fluent geniality struck him as too good to be true—it was not in Bernard's line: and why translate a close friendship into "meeting once or twice"? Was Bernard misled or mistaken, or was he laying a trap?—Not misled: ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... discovered before 1730 appears in volume two (1711) of a three-volume translation of Boileau's works. This, however, is not the same translation as the one accompanying Harte's Essay; it is noticeably less fluent and lacks (as does the French) the subtitle "arraigning persons ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... falls fainting; another halts for love or pleasure or indifference. Some stop to lift or help the fallen, others press by unheeding. The certain sad fatality of the concept is relieved of its pang by the light and fluent beauty of treatment. The idea is perhaps a little grim, but the handling is pleasant and the impression agreeable. The beauty of both the colonnade fountains is enhanced by the lines of the water in the cascade stairway. In the Fountain of El Dorado this effect is increased by a line of ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... scoffed Dick. "How fluent your year of journalism has made you! What a great thing it is to be a serious-minded young man with eye-glasses, engaged, while yet in youth, in molding public opinion through the mighty agent of the press! And Madeline is another of the ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... Mr Ernest to deliver an address: 'Women in Politics,'" I said, "that is his particular subject. He is a most fluent speaker, and loves speaking in public, ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... was there, with his lady. He is a young-looking man, of agreeable manners, and fluent in conversation. This I gather from Mr. S., with whom he conversed very freely on our historians, Prescott, Bancroft, and especially Dr. Sparks, his sharp controversy with whom he seems to ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... may have been caused simply by his unfortunate constitution; for everybody sees in the disease of his own liver a disorder of the universe; but it was also intensified by the natural reaction of a powerful nature against the fluent optimism of the time, which expressed itself in Pope's aphorism, Whatever is, is right. The strongest men of the time revolted against that attempt to cure a deep-seated disease by a few fine speeches. The form taken by Johnson's revolt is characteristic. His nature was too tender ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... addle-witted crew Conceded by the Hangman's League to you, The fool (his dam's acquainted with a knave) Whose fluent pen, of his no-brain the slave, Strews notes of introduction o'er the land And calls it hospitality—his hand May palsy seize ere he again consign To me his friend, as I to Hades mine! Pity the wretch, his faults howe'er you see, Whom A ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... none of them properly qualified," said the Bishop. "If there be any superiority among them your son has it. He is not without natural talent, Mr. Finnerty; his translations are strong and fluent, but ridiculously pedantic. That, however, is perhaps less his fault than the fault of those who ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... was merely this—that she had been writing to an old friend, and her manner for the time, as well as her expression, was affected by her mental proximity to that friend;—so plastic—so fluent even—was her whole nature. Indeed Alec was not long in finding out that one of her witcheries was, that she was never the same. But on this the first occasion, the alteration in her ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... disinterested in his friendships. To friend and foe he was alike cordial and generous. He possessed an open mind, not so eloquent as Van Ness, and less brilliant, perhaps, in conversation; but the fluent splendour of his speech and the beauty of his person and manners went as far toward the attainment of his ambition. He had been elected clerk of the Assembly continuously since 1803, until his popularity among the members, whom he served with uniform politeness and zeal, seemed proof ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... the Kaiser's blue-and-white-uniformed gunner in every function of his body and every corner of his soul, waking and sleeping, dying and dead, with fluent Scriptural curses. The crowded faces about her went white. Some of the women were crying, others shook ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... here: he kept up with the rest by dint of solid hard work. Harry flung scholarship to the winds of course, but made a special career for himself which won him more admiration from everybody except the faculty than any amount of legitimate industry. He was a fluent and ready debater; he wrote for the college journal; his high animal spirits brought everybody about him, and his mind seemed ever eager and poised for flight: he was ready in wit; decried trifling subjects, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... festivities. A true Christian he translates the Psalms of David; a tender and passionate heart, he rhymes the sonnets of Astrophel to Stella; enamoured of chivalry and great exploits, he writes, with fluent pen, his "Arcadia," where he imitates the style made fashionable in Europe by Montemayor in his "Diana"; a lover of belles lettres, he defends the poet's art in an argument charming from its youthfulness, vibrating with enthusiasm, which holds in English literature the place filled in French ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... interpreter. I had a case the other night when a man I know brought in a friend for consultation—a youth of the round-headed, flaxen, Teutonic type, rather rare here, who came from a village still more remote from the world than this one. Not one word of his fluent and frequent speeches could I understand. It was largely a question of intonation I believe—but ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... men make of us,' she replied. 'How you fool us to the top of our bent; and of all men you clergymen are the most fluent of your honeyed caressing words. Now look me in the face, ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... balcony was maintained an evenly sonorous monotone of drubbing, as if innumerable fairy carpenters were nailing on the shingles. The invalid water-spout had a hard time of it; it was racked, shaken, and bullied, and continually choked itself with the volubility of its fluent utterances, which were instantly swallowed up in the bottomless depths of the waste-barrel. A strong, cool, earthy odor rose from the garden, and was wafted past the professor's nostrils, and into the heated house. The moist ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... intent may be imagined. Again, a man who has sincerely devoted himself to gaining the esteem of his charges does not like to hear himself described, even at a distance, as "Popularity Prout" by a dark and scowling Celt with a fluent tongue. A rumor that stories—unusual stories—are told in the form-rooms, between the lights, by a boy who does not command his confidence, agitates such a man; and even elaborate and tender politeness—for the courtesy wise-grown men offer to a bewildered child was the courtesy ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... now, in a moment's pause, only to find, too late, that all warmth and naturalness had left her with the effort. Fluent dream-practice is only too apt to make one uncomfortably crude and conscious ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... and flutter and fascinate! Faith, it's so killing you are, you assassinate— Murder's the word for you, Barney McGee! Bold when they're sunny, and smooth when they're showery— Oh, but the style of you, fluent and flowery! Chesterfield's way, with a touch of the Bowery! How, would they silence you, Barney machree? Naught can your gab allay, Learned as Rabelais (You in his abbey lay Once on the spree). Here's to the smile of you, (Oh, but the guile of ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... as his good angel had prophesied, his one word of English met every requirement and he got the assignment. Since that time, I might add, he has acquired a fluent command of the English language. Francqui has always been willing to take a chance ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... village tailor, is taken in our part of the country by the hemp-dresser and the wool-carder, two professions which are unusually combined in one. He is present at all ceremonies, sad or gay, for he is very learned and a fluent talker, and on these occasions he must always figure as spokesman, in order to fulfil with exactitude certain formalities used from time immemorial. Traveling occupations, which bring a man into the midst of other ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... European clothes and turbans, surrounded Domini with offers of assistance. One, the dirtiest of the group, with a gaping eye-socket, in which there was no eye, succeeded by his passionate volubility and impudence in attaching himself to her in a sort of official capacity. He spoke fluent, but faulty, French, which attracted Suzanne, and, being abnormally muscular and active, in an amazingly short time got hold of all their boxes and bags and ranged them on the counter. He then indulged in a dramatic performance, which he apparently considered likely to ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... who had been listening open-mouthed to the other's fluent and tranquil speech, reddened at the allusion to himself and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... the other happened to be deficient. Tall, slender, elderly, with a fine bald head, a mild countenance, a most insinuating address, and a general air of faded gentility, Mr. Thomas Long was exactly the foreman to give respectability to his employer; whilst bold, fluent, rapid, loud, dashing in aspect and manner, with a great fund of animal spirits, and a prodigious stock of assurance and conceit, respectability was, to say the truth, the precise qualification which Mr. Joseph ...
— Mr. Joseph Hanson, The Haberdasher • Mary Russell Mitford
... Mahony's periods were fluent and florid, and the words chosen occasionally rather for their grandeur and melody than for their exact connexion with the context or bearing upon his meaning. The consequence was a certain gorgeous haziness and bewilderment, which made the task of translating his harangues ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... been men of affairs first, with large practical ability, but with a deep strain of the man of letters which in this generation has outshone the other faculties; strong-headed and hard-working students, with powerful memories and fluent ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... grades of probation and preparation by which the Jesuit is trained for his arduous work, and was ordained priest in the year 1825. Being a ripe scholar, well versed in literature, ancient and modern, an able theologian, a fluent and impressive speaker, he soon took a foremost place amongst the ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... afterwards of the Jacobite's Journal; "Tom Jones," his masterpiece, appeared in 1749, and three years later "Amelia"; journalism and his duties as a justice of the peace occupied him till 1754, when ill-health forced him abroad to Lisbon, where he died and was buried. Fielding is a master of a fluent, virile, and attractive style; his stories move with an easy and natural vigour, and are brimful of humour and kindly satire, while his characters in their lifelike humanness, with all their foibles and frailties, are ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Perhaps he went a little too far when he claimed to have found inaccuracies in Froude's transcripts from the Simancas manuscripts without knowing a word of Spanish. But he was seldom so frank as that. It was not often that he forgot his two objects of holding up Froude as the fluent, facile ignoramus, and himself as ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... table plentifully furnished[470], the satisfaction of which was heightened by a numerous and cheerful company; and we for the first time had a specimen of the joyous social manners of the inhabitants of the Highlands. They talked in their own ancient language, with fluent vivacity, and sung many Erse songs with such spirit, that, though Dr. Johnson was treated with the greatest respect and attention, there were moments in which he seemed to be forgotten. For myself, though but a Lowlander, having picked up a few words of the language, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... what you would call an eloquent or fluent speaker: his Somersetshire brogue was at times difficult of comprehension. He certainly was not fluent when he said to Mrs. Oldtimes: "Why thic—there—damn un Mrs. Oldtimes if he beant gwine and never zeed zich a thing in ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... manners—one of those beings of whom people say the hand of God is upon them. He had the same business as my father and Nastasa: he was also a private "agent" and commissioner, but as he had neither an imposing exterior nor a fluent tongue, nor much self-confidence, he could not make up his mind to act independently, and so formed a partnership with my father. His handwriting was wonderful, he had a thorough knowledge of law, and was perfectly at home in all the ins and outs of lawsuits and office-practice. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... liked to stand, One leg before him, leaning on one hand, Pour forth two hundred verses in an hour, And think such readiness a proof of power. When like a torrent he bore down, you'd find He left a load of refuse still behind: Fluent, yet indolent, he would rebel Against the toil of writing, writing WELL, Not writing MUCH; for that I grant you. See, Here comes Crispinus, wants to bet with me, And offers odds: "A meeting, if you please: Take we our tablets ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... that there has never been in Europe a fluent script so beautiful and legible as that of our very best English writers of to-day. But their aesthetic mastery has come from loving study of the forms that conscious artistry had perfected, and through a constant practice ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... the wainscot; even were it still intact, I have done well on the Stock Exchange, and should more likely add to it than otherwise, and my errand to-day is simplicity itself. I seek a Christmas present for a lady," he continued, waxing more fluent as he struck into the speech he had prepared; "and certainly I owe you every excuse for thus disturbing you upon so small a matter. But the thing was neglected yesterday; I must produce my little compliment at dinner; ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... the ambition—it was one of several ambitions—to become a courier. The Morning Post advertisements of couriers who professed to be fluent in a number of languages and were at the disposal of invalid aristocrats desiring to take extensive (and expensive) trips abroad, aroused the most romantic visions in my mind. A courier's was the life for me. I saw ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... beautiful body, and, thus disguised, wins the love of Juliet, and all ends happily. Mrs. Shelley's short stories[124] reveal a stronger sense of proportion than her novels, and are written in a more graceful, fluent style than the books on ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... anything which is not true, you may interrupt me if you will, and say 'that is a lie,' though my intention is to speak the truth. But you must not wonder if I speak any how as things come into my mind; for the fluent and orderly enumeration of all your singularities is not a task which is easy to a man in ...
— Symposium • Plato
... struggling upon the arched hump of the back. Here they tore and gorged and quarreled till, some fifteen minutes later, their last foothold sank beneath them. Then, with dripping beaks and talons, they all flapped back to their cliffs; and slowly the fluent sand smoothed itself to shining complacency over the tomb of the diplodocus, hiding and sealing away the stupendous skeleton for half a ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... more; although, why it should do so, he could not really understand, for it was no affair of his. He heard that Mayor Brenchfield had been invited—and had accepted the invitation—to attach himself to the Royce Pederstone party in order to give the candidate the support of his fluent tongue ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... Mac, suitably adorned, sitting on a bench at Helmeih Station having his boots and bandolier polished by four jabbering, disreputable "Gyppie" youngsters, who swore glibly the while the most lurid English oaths. Incidentally, they often terminated an exceptionally fluent flow with "Eh, Mistah Mickkenzie?" the usual mode of native address to New Zealanders after the High Commissioner's visit, which sometimes ruffled Mac's dignity, but more often amused him. His toilet was cut short by the arrival of the train, so, seizing bandolier and spurs and dropping ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... With all his incisive thought and fine command of language, Addison could not think on his feet. And as if aware of his limitations, in one of the "Spectator" essays he said, with more or less truth, "The fluent orator, ready to speak on any topic, is never profound, and when once his thought is cold it will seldom repay examination—it was only ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... Prince of Wales, now openly hostile to the "great man," was the titular head of an Opposition numbering almost all the men of wit and genius in the kingdom. Lyttelton, Fielding's warmest friend, had become secretary to the Prince, and was recognised as a fluent leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons. Another friend, John Duke of Argyll, had joined the ranks of the Opposition in the Lords. On the whole the author of Pasquin, may well have hoped for a speedy fall of the "Colossos," with "its Brains ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... ballad, and we feel that it gives but a faint and discordant echo of the music welling in Toru's brain. For it must frankly be confessed that in the brief May-day of her existence she had not time to master our language as Blanco White did, or as Chamisso mastered German. To the end of her days, fluent and graceful as she was, she was not entirely conversant with English, especially with the colloquial turns of modern speech. Often a very fine thought is spoiled for hypercritical ears by the queer turn of expression which she has innocently given to it. These faults are found ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... replied my friend, "that your confidence in smooth features and fluent accents should have ended long ago. Till I gained from my present profession some knowledge of the world, a knowledge which was not gained in a moment, and has not cost a trifle, I was equally wise in my own conceit; and, in order to decide upon the truth of any one's pretensions, ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... Cape Colony. He died at Richmond in that colony on the 9th of December 1881, and in the following year a volume of short stories, Tooneelen uit ons dorp, originally written by him for the Cape Volksblad, was published at the Hague for the benefit of his family. A patriot, a fluent speaker both in Dutch and in English, and possessed of unbounded energy, the failure of Burgers was due to his fondness for large visionary plans, which he attempted to carry out with insufficient ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... strong upon him. His face was sufficiently made up to baffle recognition; but there remained his voice. To dissemble this he had availed himself of the fact that Figaro was a Spaniard. He had known a Spaniard at Louis le Grand who spoke a fluent but most extraordinary French, with a grotesque excess of sibilant sounds. It was an accent that he had often imitated, as youths will imitate characteristics that excite their mirth. Opportunely he had bethought him of that Spanish student, and it was upon his speech that to-night ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... yet once more, for "St. Raphael," who spoke fluent Finnish, at once secured the only cart to take our things over the ferry to the railway station about ...
— Field Hospital and Flying Column - Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia • Violetta Thurstan
... Billet-doux that should be understood at the Bank, than in gross Money; But as to stubborn People, who are so surly as to accept of neither Note or Cash, having formerly dabbled in Chymistry, I can only say that one part of Matter asks one thing, and another another, to make it fluent; but there is nothing but may be dissolved by a proper Mean: Thus the Virtue which is too obdurate for Gold or Paper, shall melt away very kindly in a Liquid. The Island of Barbadoes (a shrewd People) manage all their Appeals to Great-Britain, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... have,... and it is one which will be properly appreciated by any student of languages. They are, by common consent of all competent authorities, the genuine productions of native minds, cast in the idiomatic forms of the native tongue by those born to its use. No matter how fluent a foreigner becomes in a language not his own, he can never use it as does one who has been familiar with it from childhood. This general maxim is tenfold true when we apply it to a European learning an American ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... to observe that very few men of science are unacquainted with the literature of their country, whether for seeking in it pleasing relaxation, or for borrowing from it a magic style, a fluent elocution, a harmony, a pomp of expression, with which the most abstract meditations can no longer dispense to be received favourably by philosophers and men of taste. Very few literati, on the other hand, are unacquainted with philosophy and the sciences, ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... warpaint of soot and vermilion wore thinner, to thaw into what (for an Indian) might pass for geniality. After a successful rat-hunt he would even grow loquacious, seating himself on the bank and jabbering while he skinned his spoils, using for the most part a jargon of broken French (in which he was fluent) and native words of which Barboux understood very few and John none at all. When he fell back on Ojibway pure and simple, it was to address Muskingon, who answered in monosyllables, and was sparing of these. Muskingon ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... being done, the watch below was called, came on deck, and received a greeting unequalled in every sense, but especially in its spirituous effusiveness. The faithful James was in great demand, and after a prolonged search he was found coiled up under the long-boat; an outburst of fluent profanity indicated that his condition did not warrant him being entrusted with any commission of grave, secret intricacy, so he was expeditiously stowed away in the galley for the remainder of the night, and the port watch that had just come on deck were ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... No, a very clever and, interesting novel from the pen of Lord Normanby. His writings evince great knowledge of the world, the work-o'-day world, as well as the beau monde; yet there is no bitterness in his satire, which is always just and happily pointed. His style, too, is easy, fluent, and polished, without being disfigured by ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... of many tongues, (All over tongues, like rumor) This tributary verse belongs To paint his learned humor. All kinds of gab he knows, I wis, From Latin down to Scottish— As fluent as a parrot is, But far more Polly-glottish. No grammar too abstruse he meets, However dark and verby; He gossips Greek about the streets And often Russ—in urbe. Strange tongues—whate'er you do them call; In short, the man is able To tell you what o'clock in all The dialects ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... on, happy and fluent with wine and figs. A ripe black fig, gaping to show its scarlet maw—what could be more lovely, and more ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... said Lucian, in reply to the fluent, incorrect English of the Italian, "appearances are against you. However, you can prove yourself innocent, ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... Lovinggood is a good scholar, a fluent speaker, and an earnest Christian. He was a delegate to the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Chicago in 1900. He is quite popular with the preachers and the people wherever he goes. A bright future is before him and the young school of which ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... out comes the ghost and prowling about espies the heap of yams and taro. At sight of the devastation wrought in his field he flies into a passion, and curses and swears in the feeble wheezy whisper in which ghosts always speak. In the course of his fluent imprecations he expresses a wish that the miscreants who have wasted his substance may suffer so and so at the hands of the sorcerer. That is just what the men in hiding have been waiting for. No sooner do they hear the name of the sorcerer ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... bitter ingredients are good to imbalm and preserve dead bodies, yet these were such as might indanger to kill a living name, if Malice be not brought in with an Antidote. And the tongues of those times, more fluent than my Pen, made every little miscarriage (being not able to discover their true operations, like smal seeds hid in earthy Darknesse) grow up, and spread into such exuberant branches, that ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... wretch, Cold and yet cheerful: messenger of grief Perhaps to thousands, and of joy to some; To him indifferent whether grief or joy. Houses in ashes, and the fall of stocks, Births, deaths, and marriages, epistles wet With tears that trickled down the writer's cheeks Fast as the periods from his fluent quill, Or charged with amorous sighs of absent swains, Or nymphs responsive, equally affect His horse and him, ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... the three towns of Villoria in Castilla, and professed in the Dominican convent of San Pablo at Valladolid. On going to the Philippines he was sent first to the mission of Bataan, where his labors were uninterrupted and severe. He became fluent in the Tagil language, after Which he was assigned to the Chinese mission near Manila; and he composed and published several devotional treatises in both those languages. He was elected prior of Manila, but before ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... my situation were soon disclosed to the father and daughter; and the former seeing how entranced we were with each other's company, like a prudent parent, left us to ourselves. My French was much purer and more grammatical than hers, hers much more fluent than mine. Yet, notwithstanding this deficiency on both sides, we understood each other perfectly, and we had not been above two hours together alone, before I told her that I loved her for her very ignorance, and ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... limit the work at first to melodies which do not modulate to the relative major. Later on, when the children are fairly fluent, they can take these. At first they will have to make use of 'bridge-notes' at the modulation, but, with a little practice, they will soon be able to sing ...
— Music As A Language - Lectures to Music Students • Ethel Home
... hurried to occupy his seat. In the wings there was no one save the author and three or four of his friends. The opening scenes were received as usual with indifference; the following ones with a little more cordiality; the versification was fluent and polished, and, as you know, the public appreciates sugar-coated phrases. At last the moment arrived for Clotilde's entrance, and a faint murmur of curiosity and expectation ran through the audience. She spoke her lines discreetly, but without much warmth; it was easy ...
— First Love (Little Blue Book #1195) - And Other Fascinating Stories of Spanish Life • Various
... developed, was a fluent and persuasive talker, a man of the broadest worldly experiences and wit. He was younger than Calvin, but older than Wilmer Deakon, and a little fat. He had a small mustache cut above his lip, and closely shaved ruddy cheeks with a tinge of purple about his ears. Drawing ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... things, however, in this work which we could have wished somewhat different from what they are. Mr. Parton's fluent and forcible style sometimes degenerates into flippancy. We could cite many instances of felicitous expression, some, also, of bad taste, and some of hasty assertion. "Clubable" is hardly a good enough word to bear frequent repetition. "This question was a complete baffler" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... down beside her. His friends anticipated a distinguished Parliamentary career for John; he could make anything sound reasonable. Miss Bussey was fascinated by his suave and fluent narrative of what had befallen Mary and himself; she could not but admire his just remarks on the providential disclosure of the true state of the case before it was too late, and sympathized with the picture ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... bench, to enforce that very liturgy which they condemned. He was the chief speaker for the Presbyterians at the famous Savoy Conference, summoned to advise and consult upon the Book of Common Prayer. His antagonist was Dr. Gunning, ready, fluent, and impassioned. "They spent," as Gilbert Burnet says, "several days in logical arguing, to the diversion of the town, who looked upon them as a couple of fencers, engaged in a discussion which could not be brought to an end." In themselves considered, many of the points at issue seem ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... principle," remarked Doctor Hilary approvingly, "and one I should advise you to adhere to. Your accent is all right, but your—your speech is a trifle fluent, if I may make ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... love rather than from convenience, a wife puts kindred before husband, her affection remaining chiefly where it was before marriage. But if the moralist desires yet more solid virtues, he need only inquire of the first Sevillan he meets, who will give at shortest notice, in choice and fluent language, a far more impressive list than ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... conversation altogether light and mirthful. There were at times bursts of high enthusiasm, at which he would himself laugh heartily a moment afterward—there were touches of passing romance and poetry blending in an under-current with his fluent mirth; and, above all, there was an evident strain of right feeling, of appreciation of all that was great and generous and good, predominant above romance and wit, perceptible ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... in fluent and perfect French, is one of the best that we have of Gibbon. Deyverdun answered promptly, and met his friend's advances with at least equal warmth. The few letters that have been preserved of his connected with this subject give a highly favourable idea of his mind ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... so mysteriously in Dizful—and refusing to call on me, but occasionally calling on nomad chiefs. I confess that you don't look to me like a spy. Spies are generally older men than you, more cooked, as Gaston would say, more fluent in languages. It does not seem to me, either, that even an English spy would go about his affairs quite as you have done. Still, I regret to have to repeat that I dislike your idea of a lark. And not only because you upset nomad chiefs. You upset other people ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various |
