"Grandiloquent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... doing it before. A sufficiently inane story, and by no means certainly true; but there is enough character in this little feat, ponderous, deliberate, pompous, ostentatious, and at bottom a trick and deceitful quibble, to make it accord with the grandiloquent public manner of Columbus, and to make it easily believable of one who chose to show himself in his speech and writings so much more meanly and pretentiously than he showed himself in the true acts and business ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... Master made this elaborate announcement in his most grandiloquent manner, the boys responded laughingly, clapping their hands appreciatively, but uttering ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Geological Survey • Robert Shaler
... to send envoys to the revolted provinces as to a free and independent people. Universal monarchy, brought to such a pass as this, was hardly what had been expected after the tremendous designs and the grandiloquent language on which the world had so long been feeding as its daily bread. The spectacle of anointed monarchs thus far humbling themselves to the people of rebellion dictating terms, instead of writhing in dust at the foot of the throne—was something new in history. The heavens and earth might soon ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... insulting laugh, and he knew it. But the contrast between the grandiloquent words and the ridiculous figure which uttered them was too much for him. Besides, though the most courteous of men, he deliberately wished to be insulting. He couldn't help it. There rose up in him, suddenly, a ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... merit which shall most attract your admiration in favour of the great emporium, as the grandiloquent writers term the capital of your own state, I think I can venture to predict it will be neither of those just mentioned. Of society, indeed, New York has positively none: like London, it has plenty ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... Northern papers to-day, containing Gen. Hooker's grandiloquent address to his army, a few days after his flight. I preserve it here for the inspection of the future generation, and to deter other generals from the bad policy ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... Appallacheosmocommetico has vouchsafed to stop here and confer his blessings upon the inhabitants of this town." Hereupon Num again blew the trumpet till he was black in the face; and Timothy, dropping on his donkey, rode away to other parts of the town, where he repeated his grandiloquent announcement, followed, as may be supposed, by a numerous cortege of ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... Thayer Sluss, whose attitude in this instance was to prove crucial, was a tall, shapely, somewhat grandiloquent person who took himself and his social and commercial opportunities and doings in the most serious and, as it were, elevated light. You know, perhaps, the type of man or woman who, raised in an atmosphere of comparative ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... serious criticism; and were it not for the fact that they afforded an opportunity of making some remarks—which seemed to me to be worth making—about the influence of photography in modern art, I should have left the public to find for itself the value of this attempt, in the grandiloquent words of the catalogue, "to bring before my countrymen the aesthetic and artistic capabilities, and the beauty in various forms, that are to be found in our great Indian Empire." To criticise the ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... Hasfeld's letters to Borrow were preserved by him. Three of them are in my possession. Others were secured by Dr. Knapp, who made far too little use of them. They are all written in Danish on foreign notepaper: flowery, grandiloquent productions we may admit, but if we may judge a man by his correspondents, we have a revelation of a more human Borrow than the correspondence with the ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... request that Mr Quiverful would wait upon his lordship the next morning at 11 A.M.; and that from the lady was as simply a request that Mrs Quiverful would do the same by her, though it was couched in somewhat longer and more grandiloquent phraseology. ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... of manners has fallen into disrepute. Sir Charles Grandison is a comical rather than a courtly figure to this generation; and the man whose manners may be described as Grandisonian is usually called a pompous and grandiloquent old prig. Certainly the elaborately dressed gentleman speaking to a lady only with polished courtesy of phrase, and avoiding in her presence all coarse words and acts, handing her in the minuet with inexpressible ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... am studying," answered the young man, somewhat surprised at the grandiloquent style of the speaker and also at being so directly addressed. In spite of the momentary desire he had just been feeling for company of any sort, on being actually spoken to he felt immediately his habitual irritable and uneasy aversion for any stranger ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... got immense accumulations of the wealth of the ages—ingots of Emerson and Whitman, for example, gems of Voltaire, and I can't tell what other superfluous coinage!" (And I waved my hand in the most grandiloquent manner.) "I've also quite a store of knowledge of corn and calves and cucumbers, and I've a boundless domain of exceedingly valuable landscapes. I am prepared to give bountifully of all these varied riches (for I shall still have plenty ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... to come to any decision. For, as you know by this, it was the colonel's besetting infirmity to shrink from making changes; instinctively he balked—under shelter of whatever grandiloquent excuse—against commission of any action which would alter his relations with accustomed circumstances or persons. To guide events was never his forte, as he forlornly knew; and here he was condemned perforce to ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... never necessary to summon Joe into the presence of an attractive member of the opposite sex. He came without being called. Barbara had a closer and closer view of him, until he stopped at last directly in front of them and bowed. She wanted to laugh at that wide face—at the grandiloquent flourish with which he removed his hat—and would have had she not recalled the grave respect with which the man beside her had referred to him a moment before. His eyes were palest blue, his nose a smooth pink mound in an expanse of pink, pink ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... this speech of the instant that playlet dialogue needs— the short, sharp, seemingly thoughtless but vividly pulsating words of everyday life. If today men talked in long speeches filled with grandiloquent periods, the playlet would mimic their length and tone, but men today do not speak that way and the playlet must mimic today's shortness and crispness. As Alexander Black says, "The language of the moment is the bridge; that carries ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... of the National treasury, diverted from the regular channels of trade by an ignorant set of legislators who have not gumption enough to reduce unnecessary and burdensome taxation without upsetting the industries of the country—with all its grandiloquent exhibition of happiness and prosperity, the laboring classes of the country starve to death, or eke out ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... three, Lady Sligo the most reminiscent and, in the proper, not the derived sense, the most woman-of-the-worldly. I mean by this that she dealt most with the figures of the great world, but by no means in a grandiloquent, consequential, or Beaconsfieldian sense. She had travelled a great deal and seen an enormous number of people in every country of Europe as well as in England, and, therefore, she was and is more cosmopolitan in her talk than were ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... boys," said grandiloquent twenty-five, "but they are quite amusing, and they will be proud of it all their lives if they can say they once had Lorraine Vivian at the flat ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... comprehending it rather by his sensibilities and affections than his intellect,—that child is the only student that ever gets the sort of intimacy which I am now thinking of, with a literary personage. I do not remember, indeed, ever caring much about any of the stalwart Doctor's grandiloquent productions, except his two stern and masculine poems, "London," and "The Vanity of Human Wishes"; it was as a man, a talker, and a humorist, that I knew and loved him, appreciating many of his qualities perhaps more thoroughly than I do now, ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... foreign news three months old, the proceedings of Congress in from ten to twelve days after their occurrence, and news from the Connecticut elections three weeks late. Subjects relating to religion and politics were heard pro and con in articles, or rather letters, signed with grandiloquent pseudonyms and frequently marked "Papers, please copy" in order to secure for them a larger public. Fantastic bits of natural science, or what purported to be such, and stilted admonitions to virtue, as well as poems, eulogies, and ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... Igi-dug-gu,[312] all emphasizing his skill, he is the artificer who aids the kings in their building operations. The similarity of the roles of Nabu and Ea, as gods of wisdom and the arts, might easily have led to a confusion. Fortunately, the grandiloquent and all-embracing titles accorded to the former did not alter his character as essentially the god who presides over the art of writing, while Ea retains the control over the architectural achievements,—the great colossi, in the ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... knew nothing of the English character, but Cardinal Wiseman, at least, could not plead ignorance of the real issues at stake; and therefore his grandiloquent and, under all the circumstances, ridiculous pastoral letter, which he dated 'From out of the Flaminian Gate at Rome,' was justly regarded as an insult to the religious convictions of the vast majority of the English people. Anglicans and Nonconformists alike resented such an authoritative ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... he to Mrs. Triplet, "this family is on the eve of a great triumph!" Then, inverting that order of the grandiloquent and the homely which he invented in our first chapter, he proceeded to say: "I have reared in a single day a new avenue by which histrionic greatness, hitherto obstructed, may become accessible. Wife, I think I have done ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... vogue among the Highlanders. I see no reason, therefore, to doubt the general authenticity of this speech. Exactly as it stands in the Nairne Papers probably Dundee did not deliver it; the style being somewhat more grandiloquent than he was in the habit of employing. But its general purpose, which I have endeavoured to give in a paraphrase, seems to be very much what such a man would have said at such a moment. The authority for Mackay's speech ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... present, for which they loudly implore the blessings of Allah on my head, and for the third or fourth time impress upon the caravanseraijes the necessity of making my comfort for the night his special consideration. They fill that humble individual's mind with grandiloquent ideas of my personal importance by dwelling impressively on the circumstance of my having eaten with the Governor, a fact they likewise have lost no opportunity of heralding throughout the bazaar ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... Sir Peter. Adelaide could, despite the whip and rein with which he held her, exasperate and irritate him—by no means more thoroughly than by pretending that she did not understand his grandiloquent allusions, and the vague grandness of the commands which he sometimes gave. "I mean you to go, and your little sister here, and Arkwright too. I don't know about myself. Now, I am going ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... enjoyment of sunshine and air. She recalled drearily the clock-like revolutions of the year which brought bull-fights, races, rodeos, church celebrations; her mother's anecdotes of the Indians; her father's manifold interests, ever the theme of his tongue; Reinaldo's grandiloquent accounts of his exploits and intentions; Prudencia's infinite nothings. She hated the balls of which she was La Favorita, the everlasting serenades, the whole life of pleasure which made that period of California the most perfected Arcadia the modern world has known. Some time ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... introduced to his notice. John Clare instinctively comprehended the meaning of all this, and went home and made a silent vow never more to seek patronage in cotton gloves, with a white necktie, and never more to trust his grandiloquent ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... curse of Koorotora had proved a blessing; his prophet and descendant, Pereo, the mayordomo, moved in an atmosphere of superstitious adulation and respect among the domestics and common people. This recognition of his power he received at times with a certain exaltation of grandiloquent pride beyond the conception of any but a Spanish servant, and at times with a certain dull, pained vacancy of perception and an expression of frightened bewilderment which also went far to establish his reputation as an unconscious ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... them, but I could not do that. So long as I was able to keep a roof over my head, I remained silent. I was in the world and I intended to keep going without asking a cent from anyone. Besides, the grandiloquent plans for travel and success which I had so confidently outlined to Burton must ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... "Here's fun!" or "Cheero!" or a non-committal "Wow-wow!" Ten years back it was: "Well, Laddie, here's doing it again!" or "Good health, old boy, and may we get all we ask for!" And ten years before that it was something even more grandiloquent. ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... in most of his present habitatory and anatomical peculiarities, it now remains to magnify him in an archaeological, fossiliferous, and antediluvian point of view. Applied to any other creature than the Leviathan —to an ant or a flea —such portly terms might justly be deemed unwarrantably grandiloquent. But when Leviathan is the text, the case is altered. Fain am I to stagger to this emprise under the weightiest words of the dictionary. And here be it said, that whenever it has been convenient ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... hare and tortillas. We were officers and caballeros and could not be ignored. After turning our horses to grass, at his invitation we joined him at supper. The allowance, though ample for one, was rather short for three, and I thought the Spanish grandiloquent politeness of Gomez, who was fat and old, was not over-cordial. However, down we sat, and I was helped to a dish of rabbit, with what I thought to be an abundant sauce of tomato. Taking a good mouthful, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... slight and unimpressive figure in somewhat worn field-grey, the German khaki. The "debate" having begun, I noticed how he listened eagerly to every word spoken, jotting down notes incessantly for the evident purpose of replying to the grandiloquent utterances about our "glorious army of Kultur-bearers" which were falling from the lips of "patriotic" party orators. Liebknecht had earned the displeasure of the House a few days before by asking some embarrassing questions about Turkish massacres ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... you to know that in this country, during the early years of our leading universities, Hebrew not only formed, a subject of instruction, but also appeared upon the Commencement programs. Upon such grandiloquent occasions you will find that side by side with a poem in Greek there figured a speech in Hebrew. What the Hebrew was like that was poured out there I have difficulty in imagining. But that the instruction was of much use to the student, I have grave reasons to doubt. Will you allow me to ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... use that very vague, grandiloquent word 'Ambrosial' know that it has reference to the 'ambrosia' ([Greek: ambrotos], immortal), the food of the gods! It has, however, a secondary signification, namely, that of an unguent, or perfume, hence fragrant; and this is probably the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... charming they seem on paper, how fascinating as depicted by Watteau! Yet one wonders how in such an atmosphere any new plants of art managed to shoot at all. The punctilious etiquette, the wigs, the powder, the patches, the grandiloquent speechifyings, the stately bows and graceful curtsies, the prevalence—nay, the domination—of taste, what a business it all was! The small electors, seigneurs, dukes and what not imitated the archducal courts; the archdukes mimicked the imperial courts: all was stiff, stilted, ...
— Haydn • John F. Runciman
... Riemann even changes the arrangement of the bars. This prelude is dramatic almost to an operatic degree. Sonorous, rather grandiloquent, it is a study in declamation, the declamation of the slow movement in the F minor concerto. Schumann may have had the first phrase in his mind when he wrote his Aufschwung. This page of Chopin's, the torso of a larger ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... contented with pollution unless served up in a new, piquant, and unnatural manner. Our poet understood this movement of his time right well, and determined to conform to it. He knew that he could, better than any man living, pander to the popular appetite for the melodramatic, for the grandiloquent, and for the obscene. He knew the taste of Charles, and that he, above all cooks, could dress up a ragout of that putrid perfection which his king relished. And he set himself with his whole might so to do, and for thirty years and ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... to his chosen friends. These voyageurs are professional canoe-men; adventurers extending, sparsely, from the waters of French Canada to those of Oregon,—and sometimes back. Honest old Quatreaux! I mentioned his "residence" just now, and the term is truly grandiloquent in its application. The residence of old Quatreaux was a log cabane, about twenty feet square. Planks, laid loosely upon the cross-ties of the rafters, formed the up-stairs of the building: up-ladder would be a term more in accordance with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... des habitants; Madame d'Ailleboust, widow of a former governor; Madame Couillard, widow of Guillaume Couillard and daughter of Louis Hebert, the first tiller of the soil; Madame de Repentigny, widow of 'Admiral' de Repentigny, to use the grandiloquent expression of old chroniclers; Nicolas Marsollet, Louis Couillard de l'Espinay, Charles Roger de Colombiers, Francois Bissot, Charles Amiot, Le Gardeur de Repentigny, Dupont de Neuville, Pierre Denis de la Ronde, all men of high standing. ...
— The Great Intendant - A Chronicle of Jean Talon in Canada 1665-1672 • Thomas Chapais
... permitted to "raise without fear the veil of the future, and to assure the municipal council a place in the memory of the world for having been the first to endow their country with one more great name." Grandiloquent promise has often been made without result; but one must admire the hard-headed Norman councillors who, representing a little provincial city which in 1884 had but thirty-six thousand inhabitants, gave ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... rapidly and carelessly. He makes mistakes in grammar and construction, and is often stilted and grandiloquent. All of his romances are stories of adventure which are enjoyed by boys, but not much read by others. Nevertheless, his best works fill a large place in southern literature and history. They tell in an interesting way the life of the ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... his victorious general with the honorable designation of Italienski, or the Italian, and, in his grandiloquent fashion, issued a ukase commanding all people to regard Suwarrow as the greatest commander the world had ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... you," I said, "that my pilgrimage this morning has no other object than to find one. I begin to fear that I have written too much lately. At any rate, the well of my inspiration, if I may use so grandiloquent a ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... professions—and every one of them a devotee, so to speak, of Bacchus. Sure, the finer the intellect, the greater the sup of drink appeals to them, if it does at all. One of the greatest frequenters of the club was a man whose inventions," with a grandiloquent gesture, "revolutionized the industries of the world. And when he was mellow with it, boys o' boys, but he could discourse! His name was Morris," added the speaker, "and he was the father of the young man whose name has been mixed up with this Hume affair which is so ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... go eat and afterwards I'll drive you home to bed," the attorney said. "The fresh air will give you an appetite. Behold, you're already becoming a famous man! I shall preserve these documents safely as they are tremendously important to our town, our state, our country!" And a grandiloquent gesture accompanied the words. "Come back in a little while, my friend, then we'll see how much food you ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... with all the teachings of Nature? Or, suppose for a moment we admit the explanation, and then seriously ask ourselves how much the wiser are we; what does the explanation explain? Is it any more than a grandiloquent way of announcing the fact, that we really know nothing about the matter? A phenomenon is explained when it is shown to be a case of some general law of Nature; but the supernatural interposition of the Creator can, by the nature of the case, exemplify no law, and if species have ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... displays his wounds and sores, proudly, so Wilson Avenue throws open its one-room front door with a grandiloquent gesture as it boasts, "Two hundred and fifty a month!" Shylock, purchasing a paper-thin slice of pinky ham in Wilson Avenue, would know his own early Venetian transaction ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... Tom with his broad white shirt front, his white, pointed beard, and his grandiloquent flow of talk; at Sue's side sat Jack Prince, pausing in his open admiration of Sue to cast an eye on the handsome New York girl at Sam's end of the table or to puncture, with a flash of his terse common sense, some balloon of theory launched by Williams of ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... the handsomest of the three, was marked by his big lion-like head and well whiskered cheeks, by his muscular shoulders, his long back, and his splendid tail, fluffy as a feather duster. There was something theatrical and grandiloquent about him, and he seemed to pose like an actor who attracts admiration. His motions were slow, undulating, and full of majesty; he seemed to be always stepping on a table covered with china ornaments and Venetian glass, so circumspectly did he select the place where ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... but extremely disagreeable, duty. St. Jerome, on the contrary, always liked to emphasise his part as JUDGE when correcting us, and clearly did it as much for his own satisfaction as for our good. He loved authority. Nevertheless, I always found his grandiloquent French phrases (which he pronounced with a strong emphasis on all the final syllables) inexpressibly disgusting, whereas Karl, when angry, had never said anything beyond, "What a foolish puppet-comedy it is!" or "You boys ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... the belt gnaws more potently than conscience," said Pike, with a grandiloquent gesture. "I had sought alms and been refused at that mill. Lurking about I saw you leave the summer-house and spied the gold pen. I can give you a pawn ticket for that," said Mr. Pike sadly. "But I saw, too, the ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... He took much of his material from a Saxon Chronicle, like that of Winchester, but he has also matter peculiar to himself; and this raises a question whether he took such matter from a Saxon Chronicle now lost. He is grandiloquent and turgid to an extent which often obscures his meaning. In him we perceive all the word-eloquence of Saxon poetry, striving to utter itself through the medium of a Latinity ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... quickly in justice to me, knowing, as you must know, that a badge gives courage to the wearer, putting a conviction into the heart that one is not alone, but a soldier in a great army walking in step towards a definite end. This sounds somewhat grandiloquent, but it seems to me somewhat like the truth. Trying to get into step is interesting and instructive, and the novitiate, though hardly bearable at times, is better than sitting in the lonely guest-room. Mother Hilda's ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... he, in a grandiloquent tone when I had completed my examination of the beetle, "I sent for you, that I might have your counsel and assistance in furthering the views of Fate and of ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... the usual, to become less simple, less direct. In this temptation for the speaker lies a second danger quite as grave as the one just indicated. In an attempt to wax eloquent he is likely to become grandiloquent, bombastic, ridiculous. Many an experienced speaker makes an unworthy exhibition of himself under such circumstances. One specimen of such nonsense will serve as ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... wrong at this parting of the ways, just as did Obadiah German and other friends of Clinton; but Van Buren never needed a guide-post to point out to him the safest political road to travel. The better to prove his party loyalty, he consented to draft the usual grandiloquent address issued by the legislative caucus to Republican electors, always a sophomoric appeal, but quite in accord with the rhetoric of the time. If any doubt existed as to the orthodoxy of Van Buren's Republicanism, this address must have dissipated it. It ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... meaning of many words which are too "bookish" for daily use by them. Edward Everett Hale might use expressions which would not be suitable for a freshman's composition. Taste and good judgment will help you to avoid the unsuitable or grandiloquent. ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... the supernatural world are communicated to Manbodom. These ceremonial chants are performed not only during religious celebrations but more commonly at night. The greater part of the night is often worn away with a protracted diffuse narration in which is described, with grandiloquent circumlocution and copious imagery, the doings ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... as if I could be grandiloquent on this interesting occasion," twisting his scalp round, "but raley I must forego any such exertions. It is spelling you want. Spelling is the corner-stone, the grand, underlying subterfuge, of a good eddication. I put the spellin'-book prepared by ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... his own and of Jersey) in the Contemplations—he had now got in prose, by that of the smaller, more isolated, and less contaminated[109] island, into his own proper country, the dominion of the Angel of the Visions of the Sea. He has told us in his own grandiloquent way, which so often led him wrong, that when he settled to exile in the Channel Islands, his son Francois observed, "Je traduirai Shakespeare," and he said, "Je contemplerai l'ocean." He did; and good came of it. Students of his biography may know that in the dwelling which ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... allow me to detail. In execution the novel has grave defects: it lacks unity; the characters talk as learnedly as Lanier afterward wrote of music; and at times, as in the oft-quoted picture of the war,*1* the style is grandiloquent; owing to which blemishes the author wisely discouraged its republication. But, in spite of these defects, the book has one very strongly put scene,*2* the interview between Smallin and his deserter brother, and several beautiful passages*3* ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... an eye at Monsieur's grandiloquent outburst—which seemed to me the absolute frustration of our plan, "we don't know this man. He's a tramp we picked up at Key West. Do you recognize his credentials, or ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... whence they came whither they were going, the object of their journey, and the adventures they had experienced. All these, of course, were ample and eloquently set forth by the communicative old chief. To all his grandiloquent account of the bald-headed chief and his countrymen, the Big Hearts of the East, his cousin listened with great attention, and replied in the customary style of Indian welcome. He then desired the party to await his return, ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... difficulties and objections were overthrown by make-believe answers; an unnatural position both in speaker and hearers, an unreal state of feeling and view of facts, a systematic conventional exaggeration, seemed almost impossible to be avoided; and those who tried to escape being laboured and grandiloquent only escaped it, for the most part, by being vulgar or slovenly. The strong severe thinkers, jealous for accuracy, and loathing clap-trap as they loathed loose argument, addressed and influenced intelligence; but sermons are meant for heart and souls as well as minds, and ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... shouted the marshals with grandiloquent gestures of their be-ribboned rods, the band blared out again and the teams began to move toward the west. The men stood up to look ahead, while the boys in the back end of the wagons craned perilously over the edge of the box to see how long the line was. It seemed ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... consideration. Something might have been inserted with the view of producing ready money, something which might have had a flavour of yielding, but which could not have been shown to Emily as an offer on his part to abandon her; and then he had a general feeling that his letter had been too grandiloquent,—all arising, no doubt, from a fall in courage incidental ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... life, to which I wish to call attention, namely, through its value as a tonic. No operatic manager has ever thought of advertising his performances as a tonic, yet he might do so with more propriety than the patent medicine venders whose grandiloquent advertisements take up so much space in our newspapers. Plato, in the "Laws," says that "The Gods, pitying the toils which our race is born to undergo, have appointed holy festivals in which men rest from their labors." Lucentio, in "The Taming of the Shrew," advances the ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... trivial appellations. Among Anglo-American hunters, it is called the panther—in their patois, "painter." In most parts of South America, as well as in Mexico, it receives the grandiloquent title of "lion" (leon), and in the Peruvian countries is called the "puma," or "poma." The absence of stripes, such as those of the tiger—or spots, as upon the leopard—or rosettes, as upon the jaguar, have suggested the name of the ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... calculated to sway a popular assembly which yet had none of the characteristics of a mob. A sonorous voice; a figure and bearing which, though stiff and ungainly, were singularly dignified; an inexhaustible copiousness of grandiloquent phrase; a peculiar vein of sarcasm which froze like ice and cut like steel—these were some of the characteristics of the oratory which from 1782 to 1806 at once awed and fascinated ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... all well, quite gay; in excellent quarters; plenty of provisions; that we travelled in great style; received everywhere with congratulations; and that I had almost completed the repose of Europe" (a favourite expression of his). By way of contrast to these grandiloquent phrases, the eye is attracted to the surroundings. The ground is thickly coated with snow; in the foreground, two famished wretches cut and devour raw flesh from a dead horse. On all sides lie dead and dying men ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... she was sixteen. Her earliest stories are of a slight and flimsy texture, and are generally intended to be nonsensical, but the nonsense has much spirit in it. They are usually preceded by a dedication of mock solemnity to some one of her family. It would seem that the grandiloquent dedications prevalent in those days had not escaped her youthful penetration. Perhaps the most characteristic feature in these early productions is that, however puerile the matter, they are always composed in pure simple English, quite free from the over- ornamented ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... Will never touched cider again; and never again could he lord it over his still admiring but no longer docile sisters. If he undertook to boss or tease us more than to our fancy, we would subdue him with an imitation of his grandiloquent, "You forget that I am to be President of the United States." Indeed, so severe was this retaliation that we seldom saw him the rest ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... short, stout, red-faced old gentleman, with a bald head and a somewhat pompous manner, came forward and welcomed me warmly, saying 119all sorts of complimentary things to me in extremely high-flown and grandiloquent language, and referring to my having saved his son's life, in doing which, however, he quite won my heart by the evident pride and affection with which he spoke of Freddy. The lady of the house was a little, round, merry-looking woman, chiefly remarkable (as I soon discovered) for ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... made in an energetic tone, with the evident intention of assuring me that the speaker was himself "a man of the right sort"; but I did not attribute much importance to it, for I have occasionally heard henpecked husbands talk in this grandiloquent way when their wives were out of hearing. Altogether I was by no means convinced that the system of providing for the widows and orphans of the clergy by means of mariages de convenance was a good one, but I determined to suspend my judgment until ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... knew the weapon, a curved simitar inlaid with gold, and reposing in a scabbard of gilt metal and purple velvet. In its wrapping of brown paper and twine it suspiciously resembled a child's toy, and Prince Michael's grandiloquent manner added a touch of buffoonery to a farewell scene made poignant by a ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... me with doubt and a sort of fear for him. He seemed to me a lost little creature, too silly to be silent, in a vast implacable condemnation. I was full of pity and a sort of tenderness for my aunt Susan, who was doomed to follow his erratic fortunes mocked by his grandiloquent promises. ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... Henley, a clergyman and clergyman's son, and a member of St. John's, Cambridge. He had come to London about this time, and instituted a series of lectures on universal knowledge and primitive Christianity. He styled himself a Rationalist, a title then more honourable than it is now; and in grandiloquent language, 'spouted' on religious subjects to an audience admitted at a shilling a-head. On one occasion he announced a disputation among any two of his hearers, offering to give an impartial hearing and judgment to both. Selwyn and the ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... is true that during these seventy years various edicts claiming the country we issued by Louis XIV.; but as the French during all that time did not attempt to occupy a single foot of territory in Madagascar, these grandiloquent proclamations can hardly be considered as of much value. As has been remarked, French pretensions were greatest when their actual authority ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... the house, tried every door, peeped in the windows, pounded and rapped, while I watched them through the blind-slats. Presently the fattest one, a real Falstaffian man, came back to the front door and rung a thundering peal. I saw the chance for fun and for putting on their own grandiloquent style. Stealing on tiptoe to the door, I turned the key and bolt noiselessly, and suddenly threw wide back the door, and appeared behind it. He had been leaning on it, and nearly pitched forward with an "Oh! what's this?" Then seeing me as he straightened up, "Ah, ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... the locked room for two hours; he had kept his word as long as he could endure it. Senor Don Diego had had time to come back unless he had been captured. Now he, Yaqui Juan, whom the young master had once saved, would go to him, to bring him back, or to die with him. The solemn, grandiloquent words had nothing of melodrama in them, falling from his grave lips. He took no pains to conceal his deep scorn ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... on the lookout for humbug in any quarter, but they had their pet aversions, Sam Adams and the Jacobins being oftenest pilloried. A bombastic account of a thunder-storm in Boston appears to have given occasion for the first skit, and it was scarcely necessary to do more than parody the grandiloquent newspaper language. "The clouds soon dissipated, and the appearance of the azure vault left trivial hopes of further needful supplies from the uncorked bottles of heaven. In a few moments the horizon was again ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... years of his life from Lord Rolle. During this period he dictated his memoirs for publication in Sidmouth, to an editor who unconsciously gave the book a delicious touch of humour by putting into the mouth of this son of a Devon shoemaker the grandiloquent phrases ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... to show me over the church. Among the monuments was one that interested me; it was erected to commemorate the very Squire Bowes from whom my two old maids had inherited the house and estate of Barwyke. It spoke of him in terms of grandiloquent eulogy, and informed the Christian reader that he had died, in the bosom of the Church of England, at the age ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Soloviev. "It may be even grandiloquent, but still that makes no difference! As an elder of our garret commune, I declare Liuba an honourable member with full rights!" He got up, made a sweeping gesture with his ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... was the perfect flower of Douglas's vaunted experiment of "popular sovereignty"—a result they professed fully to appreciate. "Hitherto," said the Judiciary Committee of the House in a long and grandiloquent report, "Congress have retained to themselves the power to mold and shape all the territorial governments according to their own peculiar notions, and to restrict within very limited and contracted bounds both the natural as well as the political rights of the bold and daring pioneer and ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... "revolt," which some fiery spirits among these young men are to raise before I dare express my real opinions concerning questions about which we older men had to fight in the teeth of fierce public opposition and obloquy—of something which might almost justify even the grandiloquent epithet of a Reign of Terror—before our ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... same Imoko was deputed to accompany him, bearing a despatch* in which, to China's simple "greeting," Japan returned a "respectful address;" to China's expression of ineffable superiority Japan replied that the coming of the embassy had "dissolved her long-harboured cares;" and to China's grandiloquent prolixity Japan made answer with half a dozen brief lines. Imoko was now accompanied by eight students four of literature and four of religion. Thus was established, and for long afterwards maintained, a bridge over which the literature, arts, ethics, and philosophies of China ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... for you," said he, in a grandiloquent tone, when I had completed my examination of the beetle, "I sent for you that I might have your counsel and assistance in furthering the views of Fate and ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... With this grandiloquent subterfuge Carteret turned to his next article on white supremacy. Jerry did not delude himself with any fine-spun sophistry. He knew perfectly well that he held his job upon the condition that he stayed away from the polls at the approaching election. ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... much of physical sensation always clinging to his thoughts. At present, however, she was not inclined to judge him too hardly; although visibly unstrung, unwise in his sweeping condemnation, coarse in his anger, and somewhat grandiloquent in his pose, there was still much of real heroism in his mental attitude. Braced by the fiercest party spirit, he stood staunch in his loyalty to Smith and the cause, with no thought of yielding an inch ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... would occur anon—not just now, not at the very moment when her heart ached with an intolerable pain at thought of the sorrow which she had caused to her one friend. Presently, no doubt, when she met her husband, when his usual grandiloquent phrases had once more succeeded in arousing her enthusiasm for the cause which he pleaded, she would once more feel serene and happy at thought of the help which she, with her great wealth, would be giving him; for the nonce the whole transaction grated on her sense of romance; money passing from ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... referred to Conkling's "haughty disdain, his grandiloquent swell, his majestic, supereminent, overpowering, turkey-gobbler strut." Accordingly when Garfield disregarded Conkling's wishes in regard to the representation which New York should have in the cabinet, Conkling laid the blame ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... out over the icy pavement, and the filthy rags that barely cover their bodies. Two men stumble out of a wineshop arm in arm, poor men in corduroy, who walk along unsteadily in their worn canvas shoes, making grandiloquent gestures of pity, tearing down the cold hard facades with drunken generous phrases, buoyed up by the warmth of ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... looked on. The old Faust appeared, heavy with the years and with the trouble of useless thought, and Julian felt that he could sneer at him for his venerable age. As he watched the philosopher's grandiloquent pantomime of gesture, like a mist there floated over him the keen imagination of the hell of regret in which the old age, that never used to the full its irrevocable youth, must move, and a passion of desire to use his ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... being guided by fate. He then became confused in mind—dazed, as it were. In odd vagary, as his ice-raft floated on down the river, he peopled the darkness about him with imaginary foes, and "squared off" at them pugnaciously. His blood warming with this exercise, he began delivering in grandiloquent tones the address which he had declaimed at school, when a voice from the darkness near at hand brought him back to ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... their parole nor impose a restriction of any sort upon them. The Spaniards' astonishment on being captured had been very great, but it was greater still when they received this information. I did not hear what the Admiral said, but I know he made a very long speech, full of grandiloquent words, that he pressed his hands to his heart very often, and in other ways endeavoured to show his sense of British magnanimity. Evening coming on, he and his countrymen took their departure in their respective boats, some of which were rather overcrowded, as, of course, they had to carry ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... was the consciousness that he was using rather grandiloquent language in the wording of this enigmatical little speech, that caused the good professor to look so red and embarrassed. Abbie drew her hand away, and laid her finger on ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... bellow; and ended in a whisper. The retainers looked in each other's faces. Who was the maddest—their lord or the shabby bo[u]zu? A long silence followed. Jubei no longer stood in grandiloquent pose. He squatted down before the ideographs. At last he said—"The poem contains much matter. Deign to allow time for the solution." His voice was gentle and courteous to this future victim of his ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... After some years spent in France, where her husband had obtained employment, she returned to England and pub. her last novel, The Wanderer, which fell flat. Her only remaining work was a life of her father, written in an extraordinarily grandiloquent style. She ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... the demand, Moessard took back his proof and began to read aloud the WORK OF BETHLEHEM AND M. BERNARD JANSOULET, a long deliverance in favor of artificial nursing, written from Jenkins' notes, which were recognizable by certain grandiloquent phrases of the sort that the Irishman affected: "the long martyrology of infancy—the venality of the breast—the goat, the beneficent nurse,"—and concluding, after a turgid description of the magnificent establishment at Nanterre, with ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... book of theory—or rather the characteristic most likely to give cause for attack—is the tendency to verbosity. Philosophy, especially in the hands of a writer of German, presents inexhaustible opportunities for vague and grandiloquent language. Partly for this reason, partly from incompetence, I have not primarily attempted to deal with the philosophical basis of Kandinsky's art. Some, probably, will find in this aspect of the book its chief interest, but better service will be done to the author's ideas by leaving ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... date of that day. She said she had written before and torn the confession up ... it was so difficult to be just to him and true to herself.... It was a roundabout, involved, youthfully grandiloquent epistle in which Mildred announced that her love for Owen was dead, that nothing could ever resuscitate it; that she could not, would not, ever marry him, and that she had returned in an accompanying packet his ring, and presents, and letters, and would ever ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... private desires. And when people blame Bernard Shaw for his pitiless and prosaic coldness, his cutting refusal to reverence or admire, I think they should remember this riff-raff of lawless sentimentalism against which his commonsense had to strive, all the grandiloquent "comrades" and all the gushing "affinities," all the sweetstuff sensuality and senseless sulking against law. If Bernard Shaw became a little too fond of throwing cold water upon prophecies or ideals, remember that he must have ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... speeches in the dining-room I think the whole room becomes transformed for him into the banquet room of a palace, and the cheap bracket lamps against the wall turn into a blaze of light and the boarders are all courtiers, and he becomes more and more grandiloquent. He waves his hand towards Uncle Henry and refers to him as "my brother the Admiral," and to me as "the Princess at my side." Some of the people, the meaner ones, begin to laugh and to whisper, and others look uncomfortable ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... which Mr. Hammerstein published for his second season was magnificently grandiloquent in its promises, but the season itself marvelous in its achievements. Eight operas "never produced in this city or country," "masterpieces of the most celebrated composers," which were his "sole property," were to be brought forward, in addition to many familiar works. He announced the engagement ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... belongings from the back of the beast, and the old fellow whose grandiloquent title was "Master of ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... political activities at the first low murmur heralding the muck-raking cyclone which was to devastate public life as men of his type understood it. But every inhabitant of the State, including his enemies, took an odd pride in his fiercely debonair defiance to old age, in his grandiloquent, too fluent public addresses, and in the manner in which, despite his dubious private reputation, he held open to him, by sheer will-power, sanctimonious doors which were closed to other less robust bad examples ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... earnest aspirations; and, surrounded by the noon-tide radiance of the blessings which have resulted from that act, we can not appreciate the glory of the morning star of our destiny as a nation. Let us henceforth aim to be less superficial in our views of the National Anniversary. Let orators cease grandiloquent displays of bombastic rhetoric, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing," and discourse with the sober earnestness of true philosophy upon the antecedents—the remote springs—of that event, every where visible in the history ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... "Bullying goes for nothing (Bange machen gilt nicht),"—the thing covenanted for will need to be done! Poor Louis the Great, whom we now call "BANKRUPT-Great," died while these affairs were pending; while Charles, his ally, was arguing and battling against all the world, with only a grandiloquent Ambassador to help him from Louis. "J'ai trop aime la guerre," said Louis at his death, addressing a new small Louis (five years old), his great-grandson and successor: "I have been too fond of war; do not imitate me in that, ne m'imitez ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... against principles, but of men against men. And as we stand on this silent hill, the prize of so many struggles, our own hearts swell with the hopes and sink with the fears that its green old bluffs have roused. Up from yon water-side came stealing the Green-Mountain Boys, with their grand and grandiloquent leader, and, at the very gateway where we stand, as tradition says, (et potius Dii numine firment,) he thundered out, with brave, barbaric voice, the imperious summons, "In the name of the great Jehovah and the Continental Congress." No wonder the startled, half-dressed commander is confounded, ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... to hear his judgment of my Greek dialect; he called it 'very beautiful and very funny'; that is, no doubt, because I am apt to mix up too much of the old Greek, which seems grandiloquent on trifling subjects.... ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... mind the thought that you're the only servant, who has followed me as an attendant out of town, and you give way to fear that you will, on your return, have to bear the consequences. You hence have recourse to these grandiloquent arguments to shove words of counsel down my throat! I've come here now with the sole object of satisfying certain rites, and then going to partake of the banquet and be a spectator of the plays; and I never mentioned one single word about any intention ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... foresaw a shortening of his stature in her eyes by comparison with Tommy Ashe—who had become a doer, a creator in the common need, while he remained a gleaner in the field of self-interest. Thompson rather resented that imputation. Privately he considered Tommy's speech a trifle grandiloquent. He began to think he had underestimated Tommy, in ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... that in spite of its complex inflections, when once a vocabulary is acquired, it is more easy and natural for a modern than his ancestral Latin itself. Latin is the stiffer tongue; it is by nature at once laconic and grandiloquent, and the exceptional condensation and transposition of which it is capable make its effects entirely foreign to a modern, scarcely inflected, tongue. Take, for ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... preparing to flee to foreign countries or at least to the Foreign Settlements for safety. The cautious work quietly and do not desire to earn merit but merely try to avoid giving offence. The scholars and politicians are grandiloquent and discourse upon their subjects in a sublime vein, but they are no better than the corrupt officials. As for our President, he can remain at the head of the State for a few years. At most he may hold ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... fall, Sir, out of heaven! Now, would you credit it, that as I fell I saw that Sirius wears a nightcap? True! (Confidentially): The other Bear is still too small to bite. (Laughing): I went through the Lyre, but I snapped a cord; (Grandiloquent): I mean to write the whole thing in a book; The small gold stars, that, wrapped up in my cloak, I carried safe away at no small risks, Will serve for asterisks i' ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... of the fight, he was not a whit less than a general in his own eyes. Having been enjoined what to say by his commander, this good man and valiant soldier betook himself to the preparation of these grandiloquent articles. As for the commander, he busied himself writing ponderous dispatches to Glenmoregain, who, satisfied that he had a perfect pearl of a Commander, as well as the kingdom of Kalorama safe between his thumbs, forthwith ordered the ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... startled pheasant. Aetion, the painter of Alexander's Marriage to Roxana, was not able to turn the aim of painting from this deceptive illusion. After Alexander, painting passed still further into the imitative and the theatrical, and when not grandiloquent was infinitely little over cobbler-shops and huckster-stalls. Landscape for purposes of decorative composition, and floor painting, done in mosaic, came in during the time of the Diadochi. There were no great names in the latter days, and such painters as still flourished passed ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... contrast between all this poetry and the real prose fact of going to sea! No man, the proverb says, is a hero to his valet de chambre. Certainly, no poet, no hero, no inspired prophet, ever lost so much on near acquaintance as this same mystic, grandiloquent old Ocean. The one step from the sublime to the ridiculous is never taken with such alacrity ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... of colour. Many a much-belauded brush is but a fumbling and ineffective tool, compared with the ink-charged crowquill handled by CHARLES KEENE. Look at "Grandiloquence!" (No. 220) There's composition! There's effect! Stretch of sea, schooner, PAT's petty craft, grandiloquent PAT himself, a nautical Colossus astride on his own cock-boat, with stable sea-legs firmly dispread, the swirl of the sea, the swish of the waves, the very whiff of the wind so vividly suggested!—and all in some ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... received and reluctantly accepted a challenge, and selected broadswords as the weapons! "Friends," however, brought about an "explanation," and the conflict was avoided. But ink flowed in place of blood, and the newspapers were filled with a mass of silly, grandiloquent, blustering, insolent, and altogether pitiable stuff. All the parties concerned were placed in a most humiliating light, and it is gratifying to hear that Lincoln had at least the good feeling to be heartily ashamed of the affair, so that he ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... "I delight in doing so. It is from envy. By all the standards that you know he is the most egregious and grandiloquent and gorgeous fool in all the world. That's why you want to ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... takes your choice," I said, with an intended grandiloquent sweep of my hand towards the dozen derelict beds. We selected two that lay in an alcove at the end of the room farthest from the door, and turned in. In a few minutes ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... friendship. For the poor man is compelled to be the friend of the rich, and the weak requires the aid of the strong, and the sick man of the physician; and every one who is ignorant, has to love and court him who knows.' And indeed he went on to say in grandiloquent language, that the idea of friendship existing between similars is not the truth, but the very reverse of the truth, and that the most opposed are the most friendly; for that everything desires not like but that which is most unlike: ...
— Lysis • Plato
... armament of fourteen ships of the line. On this the national assembly voted that it had the right to decide on questions of war, and on May 22 declared that the French nation renounced wars of conquest. This grandiloquent decree destroyed the effect of the armament. Nevertheless, Spain was set on war; fleets were gathered at Ferrol and Cadiz, and a loan of L4,000,000 was arranged. Florida Blanca seems to have relied on help from the United ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... Kentucky, and now a prosperous gold miner) had a learned discussion as to the formation of the membranes of the human stomach, in which they used words that were over a foot long by actual measurement. I have never heard such splendid words in my life; but such were their grandiloquent profundity, and their far-reaching lucidity, that I understood rather less about it when they had finished than I ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... company, followed her when I was down at the old place, like her shadow (her shadow, indeed!). I had elected her my confidante and adviser, and poured all my precious opinions and plans—my very scrapes—into her curious, patient ears. Mad, have you forgotten how once, like an old-fashioned, grandiloquent muff, I showed you the picture of a perfect woman in a book of poetry—'Paradise Lost' it might have been, and 'Eve' for any special appropriateness in the picture—and broadly hinted my private idea that the perfect woman was fulfilled in Mad!—lively, faulty Mad! Your ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... church to which the Rev. Bruno Leathwaite Chilvers ministered. Everybody knows Mr. Chilvers; at least everybody who loves George Gissing knows that very excellent gentleman. Mr. Chilvers loved to adorn his dainty discourses with certain words of strangely grandiloquent sound. '"Nullifidian," "morbific," "renascent"—these were among his favourites. Once or twice he spoke of "psychogenesis" with an emphatic enunciation which seemed to invite respectful wonder. In using Latin words ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... could think of more grandiloquent words to express him, I'd use them," said Marise defiantly, launching out into yet more outrageous flights of rhetoric. "I could stand for hours on a street corner, admiring the completeness with which he is transfigured out of the human limitations ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... wit, is the true explanation of the paradox—that a poet who is often inopportunely witty has the opposite vice of bombastic absurdity. The source of all grandiloquence is the want of taking for a criterion the true qualities of the object described or the emotion expressed. The grandiloquent man is never bent on saying what he feels or what he sees, but on producing a certain effect on his audience; hence he may float away into utter inanity without meeting any criterion to arrest him. ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... the seat, sat down astride it, and, bending forward a little, proceeded to observe the artist with very keen eyes. Hilary Vance, who was very busy, fell to work again, and after his manner, grew grandiloquent about the pleasures of the day before, which he had ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... Almost supernatural charm In glowing and exaggerated phrases Somewhat rich and austere An inexhaustible theme Grave and undeniable faults Perfectly chosen language All the characteristics of a mob Given to grandiloquent phrase Peculiar vein of sarcasm Froze like ice and cut like steel A generous tribute to an eminent rival Cold and stately composure Fiery and passionate enthusiasm Extraordinary violence of nature A brilliant and delightful play Rare and striking combination Preeminently qualified for the part ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... the criminal blush to own that quizzing his fellow-creatures used at one time to form part of his youthful amusement) that F. B. was the son of a gentleman of most ancient family and vast landed possessions, and as Bayham was particularly attentive to the widow, and grandiloquent in his remarks, she was greatly pleased by his politeness, and pronounced him a most distinque man—reminding her, indeed, of General Hopkirk, who commanded in Canada. And she bade Rosey sing for Mr. Bayham, who was in a rapture ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... don't worry about that," he mumbled vaguely. "What a grandiloquent kid you are! I hope you'll have a better time than you think, if you do go to visit ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... went to bed pondering on the strange attitude of the newspaper mind toward so matter-of-fact a quality as honesty; and he dreamed of a roomful of advertisers listening in sodden silence to his own grandiloquent announcement, "Gentlemen: honesty is the best policy," while, in a corner, McGuire Ellis and Max Veltman clasped each other in ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... salaaming and genuflecting and using grandiloquent phrases the bally leopard got loose, somehow. Maybe some one let him loose; I don't know. Anyhow, he made for the king, who was too thunderstruck to dodge. The rest of 'em took to their heels, you may lay odds on that. Now, I had an honest liking for ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... gives this name and address in full, which is his way of showing contempt), would be sure to have some relevant matter, and that he would have him written to on the subject. This he did. The Chancellor wrote him in his most grandiloquent style. Mr. E. R. H. Melton, of H., S., replied by return post. His letter is a ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... short; he felt that he could not bear one of the old man's grandiloquent speeches now. "There is one other thing that must be mentioned," he said in a tired voice. "You understand, of course, that I can ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... cremation. Let's have her believe in cremation. And Captain Jack; oh! he's got a terrible voice, like this, ROW-ROW-ROW see? and whiskers, very fierce; and he says, 'Belay there!' and 'Avast!' and is very grandiloquent and orotund and gallant when it comes to women. Oh, he's the devil of a man when it comes to women, is ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... well," replied Frank, who was falling into a trick of addressing the stately Krooman in the same grandiloquent fashion as the latter was in the habit of using, "I place ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... speeches, uttered in British colonies, in the presence of American officials, and hope-inspiring expressions which fell from their lips before Aguinaldo's return to Cavite from exile, strengthened that conviction. Sympathetic avowals and grandiloquent phrases, such as "for the sake of humanity," and "the cause of civilization," which were so freely bandied about at the time by unauthorized Americans, drew Aguinaldo into the error of believing that some sort of ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... President, and with his views of the efficiency of legislative restrictions upon banks, we do not see how he could consistently avoid recommending the instant action of Congress. On the heel of his grandiloquent description of the evils of redundant paper money,—evils which are felt all over the country,— it is a lamentably impotent conclusion to say, "After all, we can't do much to help it! Yes, let us confide piously in 'the wisdom and patriotism of the State legislatures,'"—which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... with his usual modesty; for this man, who was often so grandiloquent on the subject of his country, was very meek on the subject of himself. To give his own words would be to assign a very unimportant part to the chief actor in a very remarkable affair, so that the facts themselves may be ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... take callow writing too seriously, but I reproduce from an oratorical contest the following bit of premature pragmatism, doubtless due much more to temperament than to perception, because I am still ready to subscribe to it, although the grandiloquent style is, I hope, a thing of the past: "Those who believe that Justice is but a poetical longing within us, the enthusiast who thinks it will come in the form of a millennium, those who see it established by the strong arm of a hero, are not those who have comprehended the vast ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... origin. Now and then we encountered a sentence, like Prof. Owens "axiom of the continuous operation of the ordained becoming of living things," which haunted us like an apparition. For, dim as our conception must needs be as to what such oracular and grandiloquent phrases might really mean, we felt confident that they presaged no good to old beliefs. Foreseeing, yet deprecating, the coming time of trouble, we still hoped that, with some repairs and makeshifts, the old views might last out our days. Apres nous le deluge. Still, ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... quiescent nowadays as to be satisfied with reels of flax and yards of Hannah More? Give us Hannah's company, but not—not her writings!' It is only fair to say that Mrs. Walford has thoroughly carried out the views she expresses in this passage, for she gives us nothing of Hannah More's grandiloquent literary productions, and yet succeeds in making us know her thoroughly. The whole book is well written, but the biography of Hannah More is a wonderfully brilliant ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... Angeli, in Borso's day, was to be found a huddle of tenements—fungus-growth upon the city wall—single-storied, single-roomed affairs, mostly the lodging of artificers in the lesser crafts. Among them all there was but one of two floors, a substantial red-brick little house with a most grandiloquent chimney-stack. And very rightly it was so, for it belonged to ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... unperceived by its occupants, and were upon the point of entering, but we luckily discovered in time that we should be altogether de trop. Langley was on his knees before the coquettish Mary, making love in his most grandiloquent style. ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... Little Rivers, I expected you in a gondola of state!" said Jack, with a playfully grandiloquent gesture, as Jasper's abundance filled the doorway. "But it is all the more compliment to me that you ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... of Walt Whitman and Artemas Ward. Yet it is not burlesque. It appears to have been written in good faith, and for this reason the incongruity of such a grandiloquent rhapsody on such a prosaic subject is all the more noticeable. As an example of "fine writing" it has seldom been surpassed, and for sheer nonsense it is ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various |
