"Rhetoric" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seek invitations to the tables of the rich, have in mind nothing except what will, in their opinion, be most acceptable to their audience —for in no other way can they secure their ends, save by setting snares for the ears—so it is with the teachers of rhetoric, they might be compared with the fisherman, who, unless he baits his hook with what he knows is most appetizing to the little fish, may wait all day upon some rock, without the hope ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... bodies moving in the same direction, and under the impulse of the same force, cannot come into collision, and since 'all things work together,' according to the counsel of His will, 'all things work together for good' to His lovers. The triumphant words of my text are no piece of empty rhetoric, but the plain result of two facts—Christ's rule and the Christian's submission. 'All things are yours, and ye are Christ's,' so the stars in their courses fight against those who fight against Him, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... The Athenians and Megarians, contending for the possession of the island of Salamis, the home of the hero Aias, are said to have laid their differences before the Spartans (cir. 600-580 B.C.). Each party quoted Homer as evidence. Aristotle, who, as we saw, mentions the tale (Rhetoric, i. 15), merely says that the Athenians cited Iliad, II. 558: "Aias led and stationed his men where the phalanxes of the Athenians were posted." Aristarchus condemned this line, not (as far as evidence goes) because ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... to the jury began. It was very long, and the first half of it was taken up with windy rhetoric in which the Almighty was invoked at every turn. It degenerated at one time into a sermon upon the text of "render unto Caesar," inveighing against the Presbyterian religion. And the dull length of his lordship's periods, combined with the monotone in which he spoke, lulled ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... consecutive years, dating from his entrance into the third class. If he had got beyond the third class when he secured his nomination the difference was to run against him. For example, a scholar ready to enter the class of rhetoric who received a nomination was to hold his scholarship for six years only; if he was ready to enter upon the study of theology, law or medicine, for three years only; after the expiration of which another must be appointed to enjoy it. Provisions were also made to secure the good conduct ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... from all bravuras of rhetoric, Mr Bennett seriously presses the question regarding Paradise as a question in geography, we are sorry that we must vote against Ceylon, for the reason that heretofore we have pledged ourselves in print to vote ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... felt that he was no common boy. Was he not a sophomore, or rather a junior-elect, of Euclid college? Did he not possess a knowledge more or less extensive of Latin, Greek and mathematics, with a smattering of French and German, not to speak of logic, rhetoric, etc.? For one of his age he considered himself quite accomplished, and he persuaded himself that the world would receive him at his own estimate. It would be very strange if he could not earn a living, when hundreds and thousands of his age, without a tithe ...
— Walter Sherwood's Probation • Horatio Alger
... congratulated him on having such a pretty young gentleman to his son. He answered, sighing, that the boy had talents, but did not put them to a proper use—"Long before I attained his age (said he) I had finished my rhetoric." Captain B—, who had eaten himself black in the face, and, with the napkin under his chin, was no bad representation of Sancho Panza in the suds, with the dishclout about his neck, when the duke's scullions ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... between his friend and his groom, and which inferred in its consequences, which of the litter should be drowned, which saved. Besides, the Laird himself delayed our young lover's departure for a considerable time, endeavouring, with long and superfluous rhetoric, to insinuate to Sir Robert Hazlewood, through the medium of his son, his own particular ideas respecting the line of a meditated turnpike road. It is greatly to the shame of our young lover's apprehension, that after the tenth reiterated account of the matter, he could ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... animated him was but too well proved by the cruel penances and vigils under which his macerated frame sank into an early grave. His spirit was the spirit of Saint Bernard: but the delicacy of his wit, the purity, the energy, the simplicity of his rhetoric, had never been equalled, except by the great masters of Attic eloquence. All Europe read and admired, laughed and wept. The Jesuits attempted to reply: but their feeble answers were received by the public with shouts of mockery. They wanted, it is true, no talent or accomplishment into which men ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... less important than the manner of presenting it. And even when the manner is playful or impassioned, the law of Economy still presides, and insists on the rejection of whatever is superfluous. Only a delicate susceptibility can discriminate a superfluity in passages of humour or rhetoric; but elsewhere a very ordinary understanding can recognise the clauses and the epithets which are out of place, and in excess, retarding or confusing the direct appreciation of the thought. If we have written a clumsy or confused sentence, we shall often find that the ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... on his wife, and the significant speech passed him as unheeded as had the colonel's rhetoric. She was looking very handsome and slightly flushed, with a proud light in her eyes that he had never seen before. Absorbed in the discussion, she seemed to be paying little attention to Captain Pinckney as she rose ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... was very well; but the drive next day from Bellinzona to Como is to my mind what gives its supreme beauty to this great pass. One can't describe the beauty of the Italian lakes, nor would one try if one could; the floweriest rhetoric can recall it only as a picture on a fireboard recalls a Claude. But it lay spread before me for a whole perfect day: in the long gleam of the Major, from whose head the diligence swerves away and begins to climb the bosky hills ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... the thrust of a broken bayonet was his speech, unskilled in rhetoric his tongue, his periods unrounded as flying fragments of shrapnel shell; yet all who listened knew that every word came from the speaker's soul, from the magazine of truth. Some London slum had been his cradle, the gutters ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... it smell of the pines and resound with the hum of insects than to have it sound of the rules that a smaller type of man gets by studying the works of a few great, fearless writers like yourself, and formulating from what he thus gains a handbook of rhetoric. "Of no use are the men who study to do exactly as was done before, who can never understand that today ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... the right moment he was to clothe the head of the President with it; and—Bless thee, Bottom, how art thou translated! In that woolly panoply, if one could not allow for Cato and the balanced antitheses of the grand manner, or condone rhetoric infinitely remote from life past, present or to come—well, one would never understand Addison, or forgive him. This, ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... end of a different bench, and rather stiffly sat gazing into the shadowy severity of the big room. Sounding from the front of the Court House they heard rather vaguely the deep-chested, sonorous rhetoric of ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... College de France, and to the outside world as the author of a number of scholarly books of essays, most of them on Roman subjects. Born at Nimes in 1823, his life has been devoted entirely to literature. Soon after his graduation from the Ecole Normale he was made professor of rhetoric at Angouleme, and later held the same position at Nimes. He has received the degree of Doctor, and occupied a number of high positions, culminating in that of professor of Latin poetry in the College de France, which he still holds. His works have a high value in the world of scholars, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... President of the United States, and they made every sacrifice to fit him for his coming position. He was a prime favorite with all, and being a born leader, he was ungrudgingly accorded that position by his playmates at school and his fellows at the university. He wrestled with rhetoric, and logic, and political economy, and geometry, and came off an easy victor; he put new life into the dead languages, dug among the Greek roots by day and soared up among the stars by night. None could outstrip him as a student, and he easily held ...
— The Children's Portion • Various
... become for some time mere figures of rhetoric," replied Petronius, carelessly. "But since Greek rhetoricians taught us, it is easier for me even to say ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... great, remarkable orator and preacher of the Lady Huntingdon Connexion. (The paper is so greasy that I am forced to try several pens and manners of handwriting, but none will do.) We had a fine lecture, with brilliant Irish metaphors and outbursts of rhetoric, addressed to an assembly of mechanics, shopboys, and young women, who could not, and perhaps had best not, understand that flashy speaker. It was about the origin of nations he spoke, one of those big themes on which a man may ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... went through Watts' 'Logic' last winter, but having no taste for that study, or rather an aversion to it, he is not so well skilled in that as in some other parts of learning. About a year ago he went through so much of rhetoric as is contained in the 'Preceptor,' but suppose he has forgot the most of it. Upon the whole, though he may not, perhaps, be so well versed in some parts of learning as the class which he proposes to enter, yet if he applies ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... Proficiency in the use of these apparently troublesome words must be sought in text-books on grammar and rhetoric, where the subject will be found treated with a more particular attention, and at greater length, than is possible in a book of the character of this. Briefly and generally, in the first person, a mere intention is indicated by shall, as, I shall go; whereas will denotes some ...
— Write It Right - A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults • Ambrose Bierce
... restlessly, and, to avoid the awkwardness of the question, replied, like a Parliamentary orator, by a flow of rhetoric. ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... The professors taught rhetoric and three languages,—Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. There were present there at a given time 2107 students, 300 in theology. The most eminent professors filled the chairs: theologians like Suarez and Vasquez; ...
— The Autobiography of St. Ignatius • Saint Ignatius Loyola
... last few pages of When Valmond Came to Pontiac. It was practically my only experience of dictation of fiction. I had never been able to do it, and have not been able to do it since, and I am glad that it is so, for I should have a fear of being led into mere rhetoric. It did not, however, seem to matter with this book. It wrote itself anywhere. The proofs of the first quarter of the book were in my hands before I had finished writing the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... from the tip of one wing to the other, and is more suggestive of the warbling of a locomotive in his speech than any other Eagle in Philadelphia, which is saying a great deal. DANIEL is a Giant of Rhetoric, and would remind us of the Big Gentleman from Cardiff, only that mysterious personage is too heavy to Soar; for which reason he usually occupies the ground floor, which Mr. DOUGHERTY does not do by any ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... figure of rhetoric, which he had learned from a famous preacher in Manila, Padre Damaso wished to startle his audience, and in fact his holy ghost was so fascinated with such great truths that it was necessary to kick him to remind him of ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... masterpieces, as for weighty matter and trenchant observations. Having the latter, we can dispense at need with the former. The Italians of the Renaissance, under the sway of the fine arts, sought after form, and satisfied themselves with rhetoric. Therefore we condemn their moral disquisitions and their criticisms as the flimsy playthings of intellectual voluptuaries. Yet the right way of doing justice to these stylistic trifles is to regard them as products of an all-embracing ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... made for what is said in the gaiety or ambition of rhetoric. We cannot suppose that any one can really mean to exclude all imitation of others. A position so wild would scarce deserve a serious answer, for it is apparent, if we were forbid to make use of the advantages which our predecessors ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... always read and disputed in Greek. Many Greek schools of philosophy of an elementary nature were established temporarily at Rome, while the large number of students of philosophy went to Athens, and those of rhetoric to Rhodes, for the completion of their education. The philosophy of Greece that came into Rome was something of a degenerate Epicureanism, fragments of a broken-down system, which ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... of words and their uses is indispensable to correct proofreading which is itself a branch of the printer's craft. A working knowledge of words and their relations, that is, of rhetoric and grammar is therefore a tool and a very important ...
— Word Study and English Grammar - A Primer of Information about Words, Their Relations and Their Uses • Frederick W. Hamilton
... but with the state of our political debate regarding Iraq. Our political leaders must build a bipartisan approach to bring a responsible conclusion to what is now a lengthy and costly war. Our country deserves a debate that prizes substance over rhetoric, and a policy that is adequately funded and sustainable. The President and Congress must work together. Our leaders must be candid and forthright with the American people in order to ...
— The Iraq Study Group Report • United States Institute for Peace
... teachers are not necessary to our instruction and welfare. We can learn all we need to know, and all we need to do, from books and teachers that are not perfect. We have no absolutely perfect books on Grammar, Rhetoric, or Logic. Yet men learn those sciences readily enough when they study them heartily and diligently. We have no perfect systems of Arithmetic, Geometry, or Algebra; of Geography, Astronomy, or Geology; of Anatomy, Physiology, or Chemistry; of Botany, Natural History, or Physical Geography. Yet on ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... temperament and, call it if you like, humour, if it is not wit. And what is the difference? My readers need not be afraid that they are to be led through a labyrinth of metaphysical distinctions between wit and humour. I have read Dr. Campbell's dissertation on the difference, in his Philosophy of Rhetoric; I have read Sydney Smith's own two lectures; but I confess I am not much the wiser. Professors of rhetoric, no doubt, must have such discussions; but when you wish to be amused by the thing itself, it is somewhat disappointing to be presented with metaphysical ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... while he and his wife often read philosophy together.[136] Fithian speaks of him as a good scholar, even in classical learning, and a remarkable one in English grammar. Frequently the gentlemen of this period spent much time in the study of such matters as astronomy, the ancient languages, rhetoric, ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... restored, and the man was made to understand, by the use of forcible figures and rhetoric, that Tennessee's offense could not be condoned by money, his face took a more serious and sanguinary hue, and those who were nearest to him noticed that his rough hand trembled slightly on the table. He hesitated a moment as he slowly returned the gold to ...
— Tennessee's Partner • Bret Harte
... of type; and I suppose we may take the capitals as a mere substitute for the great voice with which he would have given it forth, had we heard it from his own lips. Indeed, as it is, in this little strain of rhetoric about the trumpet, this current allusion to the fall of Jericho, that alone distinguishes his bitter and hasty production, he was probably right, according to all artistic canon, thus to support and accentuate in conclusion the sustained metaphor of a hostile proclamation. It is curious, by the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... received from her gifted lover had been her undoing in Breton eyes, for the simple folk of the duchy at the period the ballad gained currency could scarcely be expected to discriminate between a training in rhetoric and philosophy and a schooling in the grimoires and other ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... eloquent. She forbade and invited in the same breath. It was wonderful, and it made me Buckingham. And Buckingham it brought to her feet. Little wonder. It would have brought a cardinal. In the passionate rhetoric of my lines I wooed her, sitting there on the tree trunk, her head thrown back, eyes closed, lips parted, and always the faint smile that sends a man mad. I never had to tell her to rise. To the line she swayed towards me. To the line she slipped ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... brought before the House of Commons on a motion by Mr. Cobden, condemnatory of 'the violent measures resorted to at Canton in the late affair of the "Arrow."' The motion, supported by Mr. Gladstone in one of his splendid bursts of rhetoric, was carried against the Government by a majority of sixteen, in a full and excited house, on the morning of February 26, 1857. But Lord Palmerston refused to accept the adverse vote as expressing the will ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... rare in the history of an author that his books after fifty years of writing have the freshness, lucidity, and charm that Mr. Burroughs's later books have. A critic in 1876 speaks of his "quiet, believing style, free from passion or the glitter of rhetoric, and giving one the sense of simple eyesight"; and now, concerning one of his later books, "Time and Change," Mr. Brander Matthews writes: "In these pellucid pages—so easy to read because they are the result of hard thinking—he brings ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... the Colour Bill. The uproar being at once converted to applause, he invited Chromatistes, the leader of the Sedition, into the centre of the hall, to receive in the name of his followers the submission of the Hierarchy. Then followed a speech, a masterpiece of rhetoric, which occupied nearly a day in the delivery, and to which no ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... the pursuits of happiness? Let these questions be answered by the admirers of Dr. Channing; and it will be found that they have overthrown all the plausible logic, and blown away all the splendid rhetoric, which has been reared, on the ground of equal rights, against the institution of slavery at ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... the original rule; and that all poets ought to study her, as well as Aristotle and Horace, her interpreters. But then this also undeniably follows, that those things, which delight all ages, must have been an imitation of nature; which is all I contend. Therefore is rhetoric made an art; therefore the names of so many tropes and figures were invented; because it was observed they had such and such effect upon the audience. Therefore catachreses and hyperboles have found their place amongst them; not that they ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... lore, Reading the stars and signs of rain, Noting each tree and herb and grain; Each bird that flutters through the leaves, Each beast, each fish that green lake cleaves, The curious deeds Devotion paints In missals and in lives of saints, And every olden subtle trick Of grammar, logic, rhetoric. But most on chivalry I turned A torrent eagerness, and burned To hear of wrong repaired, or read The working of some famous deed, Like those I dreamt that I could do When what I set myself was through: Vexed lest the inward clock of fate That ticked "Too soon!" might tick "Too late!" But ...
— Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure • W.D. Lighthall
... handed down from the ancient fathers to the modern fathers: and he had written bulky commentaries, exhausting all that tongue of man has to say, upon the obscure text of some old philosopher whose works upon ethics, poetry, and rhetoric were supposed by the sages of Gaur to contain the germs of everything knowable. His fame went over all the country; yea, from country to country. He was a sea of excellent qualities, the father and mother of Brahmans, cows, and women, and the horror of loose persons, cut-throats, ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... that principles were to be considered, he has undertaken to designate the character of this proposed amendment. I have already stated who the men were who were in favor of it. What does the Senator call it? I have chosen a few, and but a few, flowers of rhetoric from the speech of the honorable Senator: 'Compromise of human rights,' 'violating the national faith,' 'dishonoring the name of there public,' 'bad mutton,' 'new muscipular abortion,' 'a new anathema maranatha,' 'abomination,' 'paragon and masterpiece of ingratitude,' ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... spoke to an audience of five or ten thousand as he would have talked to a party of three or six. His style was simple, natural, unstrained; the lucid statement and cogent argument now and again irradiated by a salient passage of satire or a burst of not too eloquent rhetoric. ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... object. Thus, if a man should go to see the place where (as they say) St. Peter met our Lord on the Appian Way at dawn, he will not care very much for the niggling of pedants about this or that building, or for the rhetoric of posers about this or that beautiful picture. If a thing in his way seem to him frankly ugly he will easily treat it as a neutral, forget it and pass it by. If, on the contrary, he find a beautiful thing, whether done by God or by man, he will remember and love it. This is what ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... to attack with united vigor, the original rights of their clergy and people. The prelates of the third century imperceptibly changed the language of exhortation into that of command, scattered the seeds of future usurpations, and supplied, by scripture allegories and declamatory rhetoric, their deficiency of force and of reason. They exalted the unity and power of the church, as it was represented in the Episcopal Office, of which every bishop enjoyed an equal and undivided portion. [117] Princes and magistrates, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... rhetoric and your politeness are thrown away; your apology avails nothing. If your situation in life is a sedentary one, your amusements, your recreations, at least, should be active. You ought to walk or ride; or, if the weather prevents that, play at billiards. But let us examine your ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... not pretend to unfold the scheme. I did not attempt any rhetoric. But I did not make any apologies. I told them simply of the dangers of lee-shores. I told them when they were most dangerous,— when seamen came upon them unawares. I explained to them that, though the ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... dirtiness of the Scotch churches is taken off in The Tale of a Tub, sect. xi:—'Neither was it possible for the united rhetoric of mankind to prevail with Jack to make himself clean again.' In Humphry Clinker (Letter of Aug. 8) we are told that 'the good people of Edinburgh no longer think dirt and cobwebs essential to the house of God.' Bishop Horne (Essays and Thoughts, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... well, could have accused him of 'speaking of foreign travel with the fierce and boisterous contempt of ignorance' would be a puzzle indeed, did we not know how often this great rhetorician was by the stream of his own mighty rhetoric swept far away from the unadorned strand of naked truth. To his unjust and insulting attack I shall content myself with opposing the following extracts which with some ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... his whole string of phrases, and Monsieur Vernier let him go the length of his tether, listening with apparent interest which completely deceived him. But after the word "guarantee" Vernier paid no further attention to our traveller's rhetoric, and turned over in his mind how to play him some malicious trick and deliver a land, justly considered half-savage by speculators unable to get a bite of it, from the inroads of ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... confound the plainest truths, and with arguments to color the most unjustifiable pretensions. The splendid and popular class was composed of the advocates, who filled the Forum with the sound of their turgid and loquacious rhetoric. Careless of fame and of justice, they are described, for the most part, as ignorant and rapacious guides, who conducted their clients through a maze of expense, of delay, and of disappointment; from whence, after a tedious series of years, they ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... mould, even when it takes the outward form of prose. Of this class India is a conspicuous example. In the opposite category stand those nations which, lacking imaginative power, supply its place by the rich colouring of rhetoric, but whose poetry, judged by the highest standard, does not rise above the sphere of prose. Modern France is perhaps the best example of this. The same is so far true of ancient Rome that she was unquestionably more ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... with these dismantled stories of Rome, and we should be presented with the spectacle of one continuous city, stretching its labyrinthine pomp to the shores of the Adriatic." This is so far from being meant as a piece of rhetoric, that, on the very contrary, the whole purpose is to substitute for a vague and rhetorical expression of the Roman grandeur one of a more definite character—viz., by presenting its dimensions in a new form, and supposing the ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... the characters of Byron and Shelley, and is amusing reading. The high-flown language incrusted with the gems of rhetoric excites our risibilities, but it is not safe to laugh at Disraeli; in his most diverting aspects he has a deep sense of humor, and he who would mock at him is apt to get a whip across the face at an unguarded moment. Mr. Disraeli laughs ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... above referred to, but in another part of his compilation, termed Natalis invicti solis, or birthday of the unconquered Sun. Cyprian (de orat. dom. 35) calls Christ Sol verus, Ambrose Sol novus noster (Sermo vii. 13), and such rhetoric was widespread. The Syrians and Armenians, who clung to the 6th of January, accused the Romans of sun-worship and idolatry, contending with great probability that the feast of the 25th of December had been ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... old Eddy to preach to us in rhetoric? 'Before you attempt composition, be sure that you have a rounded thought.' This isn't round, it's elliptical. Big Olaf is a friend useful. He's a shrewd fellow, who's been looking stupid for some time. The 'bunch' hasn't been treating him square. ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... would perhaps be well if those persons who write criticisms upon the stage would come to a definite conclusion upon this point and finally understand that an actor must produce his effects on the instant by something that he does and is, and not by rhetoric and elocution, and therefore that he should not be expected to repeat every word of every part, or to be a translator of somebody else, but that he must be himself. If we want the full, literal text of Shakespeare ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... party which, despite its many political blunders, has at least a record for honourable if mistaken statesmanship in the past, has now stooped to the final and abysmal folly. Disguise the fact with what specious rhetoric they may, the truth remains that our opponents have deliberately endeavoured to tamper with a great national possession, and to make the British Army a tool ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various
... means a man who is ignorant of those two languages. You are by this time, I hope, pretty near master of both, so that a small part of the day dedicated to them, for two years more, will make you perfect in that study. Rhetoric, logic, a little geometry, and a general notion of astronomy, must, in their turns, have their hours too; not that I desire you should be deep in any one of these; but it is fit you should know something of them all. The knowledge more particularly useful ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... painfully resolute not to have dust thrown in her eyes! Mrs. Harold Smith had commenced with a mind fixed upon avoiding what she called humbug; but this sort of humbug had become so prominent a part of her usual rhetoric, that she found it very hard to abandon it. "And that's what I wish," said she. "Of course my chief object is to secure ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... example of his uncle and adoptive father, Antoninus Pius, and he has recorded in his work (I. 16; VI. 30) the virtues of this excellent man and prudent ruler. Like many young Romans he tried his hand at poetry and studied rhetoric. There are letters extant showing the great affection of the pupil for the master, and the master's great hopes of his ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius
... vested in the hands of the Corporation of London and the Mercers' Company. These public bodies were jointly to nominate seven professors, who should lecture successively, one on every day of the week, on the seven sciences of Divinity, Astronomy, Music, Geometry, Law, Medicine, and Rhetoric. The salaries of the lecturers were defrayed by the profits arising from the Royal Exchange, and were very liberal. The wisdom of my patron is shown by the sciences he directed should be taught. He considered Divinity to be the ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... accurate to a scientific reasoner, but which have as much truth as one can demand from an epigram. And besides many sayings which share in some degree their merit, there are occasional passages which rise, at least, to the height of graceful rhetoric if they are scarcely to be called poetical. One simile was long famous, and was called by Johnson the best in the language. It is that in which the sanguine youth, overwhelmed by a growing perception of the boundlessness of possible ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... father than for that of her children; and they afterwards erected a statue of brass in honor of her, with this inscription, Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi. There are several expressions recorded, in which he used her name perhaps with too much rhetoric, and too little self-respect, in his attacks upon his adversaries. "How," said he, "dare you presume to reflect upon Cornelia, the mother of Tiberius?" And because the person who made the redactions ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... hope of awakening us to a proper sense of our insignificance, pulpit orators sometimes make an unfair use of the grave and its worms. Let us put no faith in their doleful rhetoric. The chemistry of man's final dissolution is eloquent enough of our emptiness: there is no need to add imaginary horrors. The worm of the sepulchre is an invention of cantankerous minds, incapable of seeing things as they are. Covered by but a few inches ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... mythology to supply what in the technical language was called his 'machinery'; converted the legends into philosophical allegory, and introduced 'strokes of knowledge from his whole circle of arts and sciences.' This 'circle' includes for example geography, rhetoric, and history; and the whole poem is intended to inculcate the political moral that many evils sprang from the want of union among the Greeks. Not a doubt of it! Homer was in the sphere of poetry what ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... heard no more. The scandalous spectacle of that political mountebank, who sacrificed eternal principles to the interests of the day, recalled to my memory the tent of the acrobats. The cold rhetoric of that harangue, vibrating with neither truth nor emotion, recalled to me the patter, learned by heart, of the powdered clown on the stage. The superb air which the orator assumed under the rain of reproaches and insults singularly resembled the ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... leaves his geology and botany, his grammar and rhetoric on the shelf when he makes his word picture. After he has expressed his thought however he may have occasion to call on the books of science, the grammar and rhetoric and these may very seriously interfere with the spontaneous product. So do the sentries posted on the boundary of the painter's ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... Lord Northcliffe has informed the Washington Red Cross Committee, has only just begun. Whether this utterance be regarded as a statement of fact or an explosion of rhetoric, it has at least one merit. The United States cannot but regard it as a happy coincidence that their entry into the War synchronises with the initial operations. The dog-days are always busy times for the Dogs of ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... vindicate your consistency?" Surely my honourable friend cannot but know that nothing is easier than to write a theme for severity, for clemency, for order, for liberty, for a contemplative life, for a active life, and so on. It was a common exercise in the ancient schools of rhetoric to take an abstract question, and to harangue first on one side and then on the other. The question, Ought popular discontents to be quieted by concession or coercion? would have been a very good subject for oratory of this kind. There is no lack of commonplaces on either ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... accused, he resolved to retire to Rhodes [13], with the view not only of avoiding the public odium (4) which he had incurred, but of prosecuting his studies with leisure and tranquillity, under Apollonius, the son of Molon, at that time the most celebrated master of rhetoric. While on his voyage thither, in the winter season, he was taken by pirates near the island of Pharmacusa [14], and detained by them, burning with indignation, for nearly forty days; his only attendants being a physician and two chamberlains. For he had instantly dispatched ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... likeness, can easily find a way into them. The word that God speaks, having found a way into the soul, imprints itself there, as with the point of a diamond, and becomes (to borrow Plato's expression) 'a word written in the Soul of the learner.' Men may teach the grammar and rhetoric; but God teaches the divinity. Thus it is God alone that acquaints the soul with the ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume II (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... realism of the unconcerned St. Sebastian in the S. Niccolo altar-piece. Here, as later on with the St. Peter Martyr, those who admire in Venetian art in general, and in that of Titian in particular, its freedom from mere rhetoric and the deep root that it has in Nature, must protest that in this case moderation and truth are offended by a conception in its very essence artificial. Yet, brought face to face with the work itself, they will ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... Fathers. But he was far from confining himself to theology. In treatises compiled as textbooks for his scholars, Baeda threw together all that the world had then accumulated in astronomy and meteorology, in physics and music, in philosophy, grammar, rhetoric, arithmetic, medicine. But the encyclopaedic character of his researches left him in heart a simple Englishman. He loved his own English tongue, he was skilled in English song, his last work was a translation into English of the Gospel of St. ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... than her 'stylish' appearance. For her language, flowery and grandiloquent, was excruciatingly genteel, one moment conveyed by minced words through a pursed mouth, and the next carried away on a turgid tide of rhetoric—the swimmer in this sea of sentiment flinging out braceleted arms, and bawling appeals to the 'Wim—men—nof—Vinglund!' The crowd howled with ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... read these last words, he seemed to rise before me, pale as the night when the camellias told their story and he knew his offering was accepted. These words, in their humility, were clearly something quite different from the usual flowery rhetoric of lovers, and a wave of feeling broke over me; it was the breath ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... was finishing brilliantly his last year of rhetoric, when John Baptist Rousseau, already famous, saw him at the distribution of prizes at the college. "Later on," wrote Rousseau, in the thick of his quarrels with Voltaire, "some ladies of my acquaintance had taken me to see a tragedy at the Jesuits ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... vapoury spectre? The God in whom we live and move and have our being must be far more all-pervasive, more incognisable by the souls of men, who doubt not for one moment of His presence and His power. Except for purposes of rhetoric the metaphor that seemed so clever fails. Nor, when once such thoughts have been stirred in us by such a sight, can we do better than repeat Goethe's sublime profession of a philosophic mysticism. This translation I made ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... who seemed to be something between a master of rhetoric and a business agent, was of ordinary height, plump, but active withal. His face had the jovial expression which characterizes those of lawyers ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... porticoes, eagerly discussing the questions of the day, were the philosophers, in the garb of their several sects, ready for any new question on which they might exercise their subtlety or display their rhetoric." If there were any in that motley group who cherished the principles and retained the spirit of the true Platonic school, we may presume they felt an inward intellectual sympathy with the doctrine enounced by Paul. With Plato, "philosophy was only another name for religion: ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... they could be together for these classes, but the rest was not so easy, for Nora, who loathed history, was obliged to take ancient history to complete her history group, the other girls having wisely completed theirs the previous year. Jessica wanted to take physical geography, Anne rhetoric, and Grace boldly announced ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... with these gentlemen is interesting, as a model of what once passed for fine letter-writing. Every nerve was strained to outdo each other in carving all thoughts into a fillagree work of rhetoric; and the amoebaean contest was like that between two village cocks from neighboring farms endeavoring to overcrow each other. To us, in this age of purer and more masculine taste, the whole scene takes the ludicrous ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... not get to Chicago in twenty-four hours at this rate," said Mr. Whippleton, when he had wasted all his vituperative rhetoric upon me. ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... to be informed of the person of the hero of whom they are reading is so natural, we should be guilty of a great neglect, were we to omit satisfying our readers in this respect, more particularly as we can, without making use of a figure in rhetoric, (which is of very great service to many authors,) called amplification; or, in plain English, enlarging, present our readers with a ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... style of the gentleman who composes the War Office placards that one sees at railway stations in the north. These are meant to allure country labourers to join the army, but the following piece of fatuous rhetoric must surely act rather as a deterrent than otherwise:—"Are you, the descendants of those who conquered India and carried the colours of the Gordon Highlanders through the Peninsula and at Waterloo, content ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... darned precise you are getting, Crocker! One would think you were going to write a rhetoric. What put Miss Thorn ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... indulged in excessive ornamentation. His taste was almost austerely chaste. His style was perspicuous, energetic, concise, and withal highly elegant. He never loaded his sentences with meretricious finery, or high-sounding, supernumerary words. When he did use the jewelry of rhetoric, he would quietly set a metaphor in his page or throw a comparison into his speech which would serve to light up with startling distinctness the colossal proportions of his argument. Of humor he had none; but his wit and sarcasm at times would ...
— Oration on the Life and Character of Henry Winter Davis • John A. J. Creswell
... "So much rhetoric for the pigs," says the stranger, "is well enough, and likely to please them. But come, is there not some girl or another to whom you should be saying good-bye with ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... reverence, and the most confiding affection. Their language is extravagant, but there is no reason to think that it was not genuine. E. Kirke, the editor of Spenser's first venture, the Shepherd's Calendar, commends the "new poet" to his patronage, and to the protection of his "mighty rhetoric," and exhorts Harvey himself to seize the poetical "garland which to him alone is due." Spenser speaks in the same terms; "veruntamen te sequor solum; nunquam vero assequar." Portions of the early correspondence between Harvey and Spenser have been ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... by virtue of his genial, ironical temperament, eminently clear brain, and undying achievements, belongs to the great poets of the ages. We to-day do not approve the timbre of his epoch: that impertinent, somewhat irritant mask, that redundant rhetoric, that occasional disdain for the metre. Yet he remains the greatest poete de l'amour, the most spontaneous, the most sincere, the most emotional singer of the tender passion that modern times ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... rouse her to any corresponding rhetoric. She smiled merely, and began to question him about his travels. She did it with great deftness, so that after an answer or two both his temper and manner insensibly softened, and he found himself talking with ease and success. ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the college student to assert his independence of both teacher and book. One of the greatest surprises that the writer received in a two years' college course was produced in a rhetoric class. The students were ordinarily assigned about twenty pages of advance text per day, which was reproduced in the recitation. On one occasion a student who was called upon did very well until he was interrupted ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... medieval curriculum in Arts is to be found in the Seven Liberal Arts of the Dark Ages, divided into the Trivium (Grammar, Rhetoric and Dialectic) and the Quadrivium (Music, Arithmetic, Geometry and Astronomy). The Quadrivium was of comparatively little importance; Geometry and Music received small attention; and Arithmetic, and Astronomy were at first chiefly ...
— Life in the Medieval University • Robert S. Rait
... their own opinions—the very right which each insists upon claiming for itself. It has been held 'dangerous' to discuss questions which, though in one sense pertaining only to particular States, nevertheless bear upon the whole country. It has been considered 'heresy' to urge with rhetoric and declamation, even in our halls of Congress, certain principles for and against Slavery, for example, lest mischief result from the agitation of those topics. But in such remonstrance we have forgotten ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... philosophy at Issy. The first time that my fellow pupils heard me argue in Latin they were surprised. They saw at once that I was of a different race from themselves, and that I should still be marching forward when they had reached the bounds set for them. But in rhetoric I did not stand so well. I looked upon it as a pure waste of time and ingenuity to write when one has no thoughts ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... a villain not by habit or by passion, but by principle; a cool-blooded, systematic villain; yet she will give him affluence and the means of depraving thousands by his example and his rhetoric, on condition that he refuses to marry the woman whom he has made an adulteress; who has imbibed, from the contagion of his discourse, all the practical and speculative turpitude which ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... Kosciuszko is linked, not with victory but with a defeat more noble than material triumph. The watchword he had chosen for the Rising, "Death or Victory," was no empty rhetoric; it was stern reality. The spring of 1794 saw the insurrection opening in its brilliant promise. From May the success of an enterprise that could have won through with foreign help, and not without it, declined Kosciuszko ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner |
