"Fluent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... coasted, and for hours now they went on past cocoa-nut groves, park-like flat, lovely ravines running upward, and down which tiny rills of water came cascading; past three huge black buttresses of lava, the ends that had cooled in the water of as many streams of fluent stone; and above all, grey, strange, dotted with masses of rock, seamed, scored, and wrinkled, rose from out of the dense forest, which rail up its flanks, the great truncated cone, above whose summit floated a faint grey cloud of smoke ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... of the head, and the Olympian majesty with which a mane, or rather a huge wisp, of hazel colored hair is thrown back from an imposing brow, suggest Jupiter rather than Apollo. He is prodigiously fluent of speech, restless, excitable (mark the snorting nostril and the restless blue eye, just the thirty-secondth of an inch too wide open), possibly a little mad. He is carefully dressed, not from the vanity that cannot resist finery, but from a sense of the importance of everything he does ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... dreamed out at last the troubled dream of life. Sighs of unavailing grief ascend to Heaven. Panegyric, fluent in long-stifled praise, performs its office. The army and the navy pay conventional honors, with the pomp of national woe, and then the hearse moves onward. It rests appropriately, on its way, in the hall where independence was proclaimed, ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... on, happy and fluent with wine and figs. A ripe black fig, gaping to show its scarlet maw—what could be more lovely, and more ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... to." And then she proceeded to discuss the subject of terms. She was very cautious, quite on her guard; she did not absolutely bargain, but she warily sounded me to find out what my expectations might be; and when she could not get me to name a sum, she reasoned and reasoned with a fluent yet quiet circumlocution of speech, and at last nailed me down to five hundred francs per annum—not too much, but I agreed. Before the negotiation was completed, it began to grow a little dusk. I did not hasten it, for I liked well enough to sit and hear ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... unveiling of a tablet, on the wall of the little Inn of the Anchor, to the memory of Giammaria Ghedini, the founder of the art-schools of Cortina. There was music by the band; and an oration by a native Demosthenes (who spoke in Italian so fluent that it ran through one's senses like water through a sluice, leaving nothing behind), and an original Canto sung by the village choir, with a general chorus, in which they called upon the various mountains to "re-echo the name of the beloved master John-Mary as a model of modesty ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... apparently set apart for their reception, they were embarrassed at not finding their host present. But they were still more disconcerted when a tall full-bearded stranger, with a shrewd amused-looking face, rose from a chair by the window, and stepping forward, saluted them in fluent Spanish with a slight ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... "We must send Mr. Thompson himself word of our intentions; let's write a proper, tradesman-like letter! Vickers, you're the fluent, flowery one. Bottle up your metaphors and give us a page of business-like fluency! ...
— Jack of Both Sides - The Story of a School War • Florence Coombe
... December 1881, and in the following year a volume of short stories, Tooneelen uit ons dorp, originally written by him for the Cape Volksblad, was published at the Hague for the benefit of his family. A patriot, a fluent speaker both in Dutch and in English, and possessed of unbounded energy, the failure of Burgers was due to his fondness for large visionary plans, which he attempted to carry out with ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... the purpose of extorting money from the passengers, which he regularly spent every night in the wine-shops of Badajoz. To those who gave him money he returned blessings, and to those who refused, curses; being equally skilled and fluent in ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... saluted him and sat down by him. Presently up came the lady as usual, followed by a slave girl and wearing a dress more sumptuous than before; and she saluted me without noticing Badr al-Din and said in fluent graceful speech (never heard I voice softer or sweeter), "Send one with me to take the thousand and two hundred dirhams, the price of the piece." "Why this hurry?" asked I and she answered, "May we never lose thee!"[FN524] and handed me the money. Then I sat talking with her and presently I ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... Queen's English. Now of late there had come up a notion that the small party required to make up for the thinness of their members by the strength of their eloquence. Practice makes perfect, and it is not to be wondered at therefore if a large proportion of The Twenty had become fluent. But more were wanted, and of our friend O'Mahony's fluency there could be no doubt. Therefore he was sent for, and on the very day of his arrival he proved to the patriotic spirits of Dublin that he was the man for Cavan. Three days afterwards he went down, and Cavan ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... would listen to a sweet song. He became so deeply interested, too, in the subject about which he happened to be speaking, that his auditors could not help becoming interested also. He had no powers of eloquence, neither was he gifted with an unusually bright fancy. But he was fluent in speech, and his words, though not chosen, were usually appropriate. The captain had no powers of invention whatever. He used to say, when asked to tell a story, that he "might as well try to ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... time been singularly able and judicious. Although Dr. Macleod never aspired to rank as a theological writer, he has in his way been a prolific and successful author. His works may be said to have merits peculiarly their own. His graceful, easy, fluent style; his admirable capacity for illustration; his graphic delineations of scenery and character; and, above all, his unfailing use of simple, terse, homely Saxon, have combined to place him in the front rank of living writers. Among his more notable publications we may mention "The ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... sensitive, physically, that he had "a tremulous motion of the head when speaking," his intellectual force was such that he easily became a leader of popular opposition to royal authority in New England. Unlike Jefferson in being a fluent public speaker, he resembled him in being the intellectual heir of Sidney and Locke. He showed very early in life the bent which afterwards forced him, as it did the naturally timid and retiring Jefferson, to take the leadership of ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... Vowel-Sounds are soft, fluent, changeful, and evanescent. One passes easily into another by slight deviations of pronunciation, resulting from trivial differences in National and Individual condition and culture; like the Flesh of the animal, which readily decays from the Bony Skeleton, while the last remains ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... His muscular and well-proportioned frame was invigorated by the toils of war, and by the chivalrous exercises in which he delighted. He was one of the best horsemen in his court, and excelled in field sports of every kind. His voice was somewhat sharp, but he possessed a fluent eloquence; and, when he had a point to carry, his address was courteous and even insinuating. He secured his health by extreme temperance in his diet, and by such habits of activity, that it was said he seemed to find repose in business. ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... his fluent Spanish, in a few brief statements, he laid before her the main fact that Mr. Hampton, whom she doubtless knew, was his father, and that he had come to the rescue in ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... Under-Secretary of State, later a Minister, and finally President of the Republic. True, as he himself knows, and readily admits, he is no orator; but then orators are not always the men who get on in France. Thiers was a ready and fluent speaker, but MacMahon could scarcely say (or learn by heart) twenty consecutive words. Grevy, it is true, could be long-winded, prosy, and didactic; but the powers of elocution which Carnot and Felix Faure possessed were infinitesimal. And so the idea of Emile ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... such a reassuring conversation with Sir Sydney Shippard this evening. He is a most intelligent man, and speaks with such fluent decisiveness that all he says carries conviction. I am told that Sir Jacobus's speech was a rambling, poor affair and weak; the crowd showed a restlessness that at one time threatened to become dangerous. He was fortunately pulled down by his ...
— A Woman's Part in a Revolution • Natalie Harris Hammond
... may only be biding his time, waiting an excuse to deliver you over to their insatiable maw, to be dealt with according to the rules of their society. Or, perhaps the lady who in the first flush of your acquaintance quite dazzles you with her fluent chat upon multitudinous topics, suddenly, upon finding you unguardedly expressing opinions not approved by the high priests of mediocrity, lets fall her mask, and shows herself to your astonished gaze a ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... Menelaus was taller, when they sat down Odysseus was more stately. But when they spake, Menelaus' words were fluent, clear but few; Odysseus when he spoke, fixed his eyes on the ground, turning his sceptre neither backwards nor forward, standing still like a man devoid of wit; one would have deemed him a churl ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... with a persistency that was maddening. A young French sailor who did not look more than seventeen, and was splashed all over with blood from having fallen in one of the worst places, kept striking them two and three at a time, and cursing them in fluent Breton, in the hope of bringing them to reason. "Eh bien, mes belles! Vous ne finissez pas," he ended despairingly, and rushed off again to see whether he ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... fluent manner, the foregoing affidavit, which existed only in his own brain, my brother Downright desired the court to take my deposition to ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... a rambling statement. He spoke the Kosnovian language with the fluent inaccuracy of his class; but Alec's alert ears had no difficulty in following his meaning. His story was that several customers of the cafe had denounced him to the proprietor as a spy in the King's service, while some ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... I sat down on a bench on which was an old European. He was reading a tattered number of "Simplicissimus," and held the paper close to his watery eyes. I said, "Good morning" and he replied in fluent though accented English. ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... in black ink—the characteristic blue ink, which he was so fond of using in later years, not appearing until Hard Times was written (1854), and this continued to be (with one exception, Little Dorrit) his favourite writing medium, for the reason, it is said, that it was fluent to write ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... TheNavalChronicle does not give many details of the volunteering for the navy in 1803, though he alludes to it in fluent terms more than once. On the 11th October, however, he reports that, 'So many volunteer seamen have arrived here this last week that upwards of L4000 bounty is to be paid them afloat by the Paying Commissioner, Rear-Admiral Dacres.' At the time the bounty was L2 10s. for an A.B., ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... Princess, in exactly the same way you love Roy Garnett, and immeasurably less than you love Berkeley. That isn't what I wanted, dear. I'm a dull fellow, slow at understanding things, and I can't put my thoughts into graceful, fluent language; but I know what love is, and what I wanted you to feel is very different. Don't be unhappy about it—or me. I'll worry through the pain in time, or grow accustomed to it. It's tough, just at first, but I'll pull through somehow. It shall not spoil my life either, ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... to happiness in private, life." He was tall, well-proportioned, graceful; his features were clean-cut and expressive of both intelligence and amiability; his manner was cordial and unaffected; his mind was vigorous and his industry unremitting. Furthermore, he was an able lawyer, a fluent orator, a persuasive debater, an adroit parliamentarian. Upon entering the Senate at the early age of thirty-two, he had won prompt recognition by a powerful speech in opposition to the tariff of 1824; and by 1828, when he was reelected, he was known as the South's ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... Penn appears the greatest, usefullest of God's instruments. Firm and unbending when the exigency requires it—soft and yielding when rigid inflexibility is not a desideratum—fluent and flowing, at need, for eloquent rapidity—slow and retentive in cases of deliberation—never spluttering or by amplification going wide of the mark—never splitting, if it can be helped, with any one, but ready to wear itself out rather in their service—all things as it were with all men—ready ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... Brumley became aware of an effect away between the white-stemmed trees towards the house as if the Cambridge boat-race crew was indulging in a vigorous scrimmage. Drawing nearer this resolved itself into the fluent contours of Lady Beach-Mandarin, dressed in sky-blue and with a black summer straw hat larger than ever ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... at the pictures an alcoholic breath assailed me from the region of my left ear, and a voice said in thick but fluent French, "I see, by the way you admire the paintings, that you are foreigners." He was a short, puffy man with a baldish head as ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... was peculiar to himself, much after the haranguing way; he was no stranger to the rules of art, and knew well how to make his matter subservient to the subject he handled. His diction and language was easy and fluent, void of all affectation and bombast, and has a kind of undesigned negligent elegance which arrests the reader's attention. Considering the time he lived in, it might be said, that he carried the orator's prize from his contemporaries in Scotland, and was not at that time inferior ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... speak of the Misses Hernandez, with whom you scarcely exchanged a word at dinner, and whom I invited for you and your fluent Spanish. They are charming girls, even if they are a little stupid. But what can I do? If I am to live here, I must have a few young people around me, if only to make the place cheerful for others. Do you know I have taken a great fancy to Miss ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... "To a pleasing, fluent, narrative style, Miss corner unites a nice discrimination, and never suffers matters which sully the mind to appear in ...
— The World's Fair • Anonymous
... half an hour he returned, and reported that he was unable to find a single person who could speak a word of French. Doubtless many of the officers, who were of higher grade than any on board of the Chateaugay, were fluent enough in the language, but they were not to be found in the smaller vessels of the navy; for, whatever their rank before the war, they had all been advanced to the higher positions. Every one of the officers ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... ease of manner was a striking and agreeable-looking young man, about eight and twenty, whom Miss Belvoir introduced as Mr. Bevan Fairfield. He was fair and good-looking, very dandified in dress, and with a rather humorously turned-up nose and an excessively fluent way of speaking. ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... appears to have had little ambition, and was content throughout his career to fit his saccharine melodies to whatever words the librettists of the day chose to supply. No one can deny him the possession of fluent and commonplace melody, but there ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... and fathering of little Prudence was a work by no means colourless or uneventful. The child had displayed a grievous capacity for remaining unimpressed by even the best-weighed opinions of her protector. She was also appallingly fluent in and partial to the idioms and metaphors of revealed religion,—a circumstance that would not infrequently cause the sensitive ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... to the United States in the year Eighteen Hundred Seventy-two, and lectured in most of the principal cities, and at all the great colleges. He was a most fascinating speaker, fluent, direct, easy, and his whole discourse was well ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... Howell, Esq. are well known as fluent examples of the best style of writing of his day, and as repositories of many curious facts and intelligent remarks. The following letter appears to be addressed to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... details, little touches of local colour, revision of choice of words, heart-rending erasions. And here, my child," I concluded, bringing out the beautiful, clean, smooth typed copy—"here is the finished work itself, light, pleasant, fluent, humorous and, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 8, 1919 • Various
... no sooner landed in Cubia than it become nicessry f'r me to take command iv th' ar-rmy which I did at wanst. A number of days was spint be me in reconnoitring, attinded on'y be me brave an' fluent body guard, Richard Harding Davis. I discovered that th' inimy was heavily inthrenched on th' top iv San Juon hill immejiately in front iv me. At this time it become apparent that I was handicapped be th' prisence iv th' ar-rmy,' he says. 'Wan day whin I was about to charge a block house sturdily ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... nine hundred sixty-three against the Conservative total of one thousand nine hundred forty-five. Lloyd George was twenty-seven at the time of this triumph and became known as "the boy politician." There were many sneers among his opponents, who pointed out that this fluent young demagogue had now reached the end of his tether. In the environment of the House of Commons, among really clever men, he would sink to the natural inconsequence from which a series of fortunate accidents had lifted him. And indeed it was not unnatural for even the sympathetic ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... contrast in the two boys. The elder, who was about fifteen, seemed older than he was, not only from his height, but from the darkness of his complexion, and a certain proud, nay, imperious, expression upon features that, without having the soft and fluent graces of childhood, were yet regular and striking. His dark-green shooting-dress, with the belt and pouch, the cap, with its gold tassel set upon his luxuriant curls, which had the purple gloss of the raven's plume, blended perhaps something prematurely manly in his own tastes, with ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and going tides as he drops his inhibitory hand and speeds them in the continuous current. That is, of course, something you get in greater quantity, though not such intense quality, in a London 'block,' but there is something more fluent, more mercurially impatient, in a New York street jam, which our nerves more vividly partake. Don't ask me to explain! I would rather not!" ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... of its early monopoly of talent, the Edinburgh Review still retained Jeffrey and Sydney Smith, and it was abundantly compensated for the loss of Scott by the acquisition in 1825 of the fluent pen of Macaulay. Born in 1800, the son of Zachary Macaulay, who like many other philanthropists was on the tory side, he was early converted to the whig party. He was well fitted to be a popular writer. ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... chiefly for his huge grey mustachios and for his silence. He has been willing but laconic,—taciturn, in fact. But I have felt sure he has a "glib" side. Can I find it? The stillest of men are fluent on their loved topics; there is some key to unlock every one's reserve. Can I hit upon the key to his? Which of possible interests in common will bring us ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... alert it was a sensitive medium. He dropped with crossed knees into his chair and glanced reflectively at Bernard Clowes, heu quantum mutatus. . . . When the body was wrecked, was there not nine times out of ten some corresponding mental warp? Bernard's fluent geniality struck him as too good to be true—it was not in Bernard's line: and why translate a close friendship into "meeting once or twice"? Was Bernard misled or mistaken, or was he laying a trap?—Not misled: the Laura Selincourt of Hyde's recollection was not one to stoop ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... were few abolitionists. Rufus Saxton told me that Lyon was the only one of any distinction who could be so classed among the men he knew. T.W. Sherman was like his fellows and listened impatiently to what he felt was fanaticism gone mad, but the fluent old farmer drove home his radicalism undauntedly. T.W. Sherman before the war had been a well-known figure as commander of Sherman's flying artillery, which was perhaps the most famous organisation of the regular ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... Divinity her Pipe, While proud philosophy repines to shew, Dishonest sight! his breeches rent below; Imbrown'd with native bronze, lo! Henley stands, Tuning his voice and balancing his hands. How fluent nonsense trickles from his tongue! How sweet the periods, neither said nor sung! Still break the benches, Henley! with thy strain, While SHERLOCK, HARE, and GIBSON, preach in vain. Oh great restorer of the good old stage, Preacher at once, and zany of thy ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... understand our language well, for he immediately turned with gentle urbanity, and discerning, perhaps, something in my face which assured him of my sympathy and respect, entered into a fluent conversation with me that at once increased my admiration and awakened my pity. For I saw that his nature was strong and his feelings deep, and as the future could have nothing but shame and misery, I instinctively felt oppressed by the fate which ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... countenance so common in the Irish peasant- priest—the priest one sees every day in the streets of Dublin. He was, perhaps, of a better class, as his features were all good. A heavy man as well as a big one, he was not so amusing and so fluent a talker out of school as his predecessor, nor, as we were delighted to discover, so exacting and tyrannical in school. On the contrary, in and out of school he was always the same, mild and placid in temper, with a gentle sort of humour, and he was also very absent-minded. ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... of Dryden, further crossed and dashed slightly with the peculiar music of the followers of Spenser, especially Browne and Wither) had a very strong influence both on Keats and on Shelley, and that it drew from them music much better than itself. This fluent, musical, many-coloured verse was a capital medium for tale-telling, and Leigh Hunt is always at his best when he employs it. The more varied measures and the more ambitious aim of "Captain Sword and Captain Pen" seem to me ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... point of the entertainment the Reporter of the "Oceanic Miscellany" was introduced, and to his fluent and indefatigable pen we owe the further account of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... took the advice of Suetonius Paulinus and Marius Celsus, so too in political matters he employed the talents of Galerius Trachalus.[200] Some people even thought they could recognize Trachalus' style of oratory, fluent and sonorous, well adapted to tickle the ears of the crowd: and as he was a popular pleader his style was well known. The crowd's loud shouts of applause were in the best style of flattery, excessive and insincere. Men vied with ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... quality and the amateur dilettanti bought and bound his volumes of careful poetry and cadenced prose. But Cleveland had high birth and a handsome competence—his manners were delightful, his conversation fluent—and his disposition was as amiable as his mind was cultured. He became, therefore, a man greatly sought after in society both respected and beloved. If he had not genius, he had great good sense; he did ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... magnificently soldierly, with much of manner and rich colour, magnanimously forgetful this morning of "other important duties" and affably debonair though his eyelids dropped for want of sleep, came gradually to halt in his fluent speech.—"Weally, you can't talk forever to a potht! If thilenthe be golden he ith the heavietht weight of hith time."—Jackson gathered up his reins, nodded and rode off, the troops cheering as ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... There is no artificial, pompous display, but a strict parsimony of the poet's materials, like the rude simplicity of the age in which he lived. His poetry resembles the root just springing from the ground, rather than the full-blown flower. His muse is no "babbling gossip of the air," fluent and redundant; but, like a stammerer, or a dumb person, that has just found the use of speech, crowds many things together with eager haste, with anxious pauses, and fond repetitions to prevent mistake. His words ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... recommends her Russian Nursery Governess; speaks fluent French, German; will answer ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 13, 1917 • Various
... is a rare genius. And most happily it is so; for elevated taste and high-toned morality are not, by any means, the common heritage of man. Anacreon and Burns were genuine Poets. They uttered, in fine style, many truths; and were not merely fluent in their respective languages, but affluent. But, perhaps, like some other men of mighty parts and grand proportions, better for mankind they had never been born. A Cowper and a Byron, in their whole career of song, will exert a very different ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... progress, and economic development of the people which his class are studying. He is aware that the pupil should experience something more than a kaleidoscopic view of isolated facts. He recognizes the folly of requiring four years of high school English for the purpose of cultivating clear, fluent, and accurate expression, only to relax the effort when the student comes into the history class. He knows that the precision, logic, and habit of definite thinking exacted by the pursuit of the scientific ...
— The Teaching of History • Ernest C. Hartwell
... spools, specially after a couple of our doughboy squad, who'd worked pneumatic riveters back home, took hold of the drills. Others fished some hand sledges and crowbars out of a tool shed and helped the work along, while Mike encourages his gang with a fluent ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... both, of the ball of the Khedive," he continued in his English, which was, though amazingly fluent and ready, a literal sounding translation of the French, which was in reality his mother tongue. "My sister thinks she can arrange that invitation. You are sure that you will be ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... mind is fluent and uncertain there is no describing it. He thought he had come to a decision last week; he found that the decision was shattered as soon as made. He had talked to the priest; he had resisted Marjorie; and yet to neither of them had he put into formal words what it was that troubled ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... weather-beaten face and toughened hands was a fluent speaker, even though she paid little attention to the latest style in dress for women. She leaned against the shaft of the wagon and plied her questions to the tourists as freely as she had plied the hickory ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... military power had numbered and ticketed every village. But what did it mean to us? War was a thing unthinkable in those days. We bicycled everywhere, climbed, mountains, bathed in waterfalls, chatted fluent and unorthodox German with everyone we met, and played ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... field,—late hours, long stories, incessant smoking, and raw spirits. There were some restless minds about me, whose funds of anecdote and jest were apparently inexhaustible. I do not know that so many eccentric, adventurous, and fluent people are to be found among any other nationality of soldiers, not ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... longest retained his glory. I saw him only about a week in a watering place, and subsequently he was able to maintain his position of hero-friend by a correspondence in which he answered my fervent ingenuousness stammered in poor German with fluent plagiarism from the classics of his romantic fatherland. All went well, until after a few years I met him again and noticed that it was not even a puppet but a skeleton that I had arrayed in a hero's armor. I was furious at him as though he had purposely deceived ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... excitement—meaning an unreasonable excitement upon any subject whatever. There can be no doubt that Mr. Clapp honestly believed such a state of agitation far more conducive than quiet to his own interest; for he was quite a fluent speaker, and very ambitious of a seat in the State Assembly. He belonged to that school of republicanism, which so completely identifies the individual with the mass, that it cannot conceive of any independent opinions, tastes, or principles; ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... hidalgo—an old friend of the child's—most polite, most accomplished, fluent in Spanish, perfect in deportment. The Senor Horncastle surely could find nothing to object to. Father Pedro was charmed with him. A man of affairs, and yet a good Catholic, too. It was a Senor Van Loo—Don Paul the boy called him, and they talked of the boy's ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... sir, it would surely be most unusual for a man like you to go to war," he began, and for quite ten minutes he proceeded to set forth in fluent and excited speech a number of reasons why the idea of Barry's going to war was absurd and preposterous to him. It must be confessed that Barry was the only one of the men who appeared to give much heed to him. They seemed to be dazed by the stupendous fact that ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... Corcelle, is to me my duty, and I will sustain it in the best way in my power.... Ah! that ancient France, how one feels her grandeur here, and what a part she is known to have had in Christianity! It is that chord which I should like to have heard vibrate in a fluent writer like you, and not eternally those paradoxes, those sophisms. But what matters it to you who date from yesterday and who boast of it," he added, almost sadly, "that in the most insignificant ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... to Stukely, seeming not quite to comprehend what the white men required; and Dick noticed that after the ex-priest had spoken a little while with Phil, the latter became much more fluent and certain in his speech, so that, in the course of a further conversation of some ten minutes' duration, he contrived to make Vilcamapata clearly understand what he wanted; whereupon the old man, ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... looked up to her with regard: with the result that Mr. Lien himself has, in fact, had to take a back seat (lit. withdrew 35 li). In looks, she is also so extremely beautiful, in speech so extremely quick and fluent, in ingenuity so deep and astute, that even a man could, in no way, come up ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... talk hastily on other matters, an art in which he was an adept, for it was his gift to be fluent on anything or nothing. But although Archie had the grace or the timidity to suffer him to rattle on, he was by no means done with the subject. When he came home to dinner, he was greeted with a sly demand, how things were looking "Cauldstaneslap ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the whole race of the Greeks: I grant them literary genius, I grant them skill in various accomplishments, I do not deny them elegance in conversation, acuteness of intellect, fluent oratory; to any other high qualities they may claim I make no objection: but the sacred obligation that lies upon a witness to speak the truth is what that ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... manhood, huge and unaware, seemed to lie deep in them like a monster coiled up under the sea. When he looked at her he seemed to lose that heavy dumbness, that inarticulate stupidity which occasionally stirred and vexed even her good disposition; his mouth might still be shut, but his eyes were fluent—they told her not only of his manhood but of ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... Paradise Lost by heart, and thought it probable that he could rewrite Sir Charles Grandison from memory. In his books, in his speeches in the House of Commons, and in private conversation—for he was an eager and fluent talker, running on often for hours at a stretch—he was never at a loss to fortify and illustrate his positions by citation after citation of dates, names, facts of all kinds, and passages quoted verbatim from his multifarious ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... "one must daily say the eighteen prayers." R. Joshua said "a summary of the eighteen." R. Akivah said, "if his prayer be fluent in his mouth, he says the eighteen; if not, ...
— Hebrew Literature
... was a man who had seen many changes, And always changed as true as any needle; His polar star being one which rather ranges, And not the fix'd—he knew the way to wheedle: So vile he 'scaped the doom which oft avenges; And being fluent (save indeed when fee'd ill), He lied with such a fervour of intention— There was no doubt ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... career. Dr. Rice is still devoting His enfeebled voice and gesture To the Gospel proclamation; Furrowed brow and locks of silver Give the glory of religion, In a portrait true and tender, Speaking fluent words and holy, Telling still the "old, old story." Every prominent position, In the gift of flock or pastor, Has been his to grace and honor, In the ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... latter proposition, as we were in no travelling kelter, and had no taste for performances on the tight rope. Having officiated for Captain V—— on several former occasions, we had the run of his "grocery" and postal arrangements quite fluent enough to take charge of all the trade likely to turn up that day; so the captain and his friends started, promising ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... long speech at such a moment, an older woman would have thought, and not over original in choice of similes and epithets, but fluent enough and good enough to serve the purpose and to turn the current of Beatrice's girlish life. Yet not much of a love-speech. Ruggiero's had been better, as a little true steel is better than much iron at certain moments in life. It succeeded very well at the moment, ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... advantages can bring out in the best light all the qualities they do possess. The glow of a generous imagination, the grasp of a profound statesmanship, the enthusiasm of a noble nature,—these no practice could educe from the eloquence of Lumley Lord Vargrave, for he had them not; but bold wit, fluent and vigorous sentences, effective arrangement of parliamentary logic, readiness of retort, plausibility of manner, aided by a delivery peculiar for self-possession and ease, a clear and ringing voice (to the only fault of which, shrillness ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... there to say good-bye to Ida and put her into the carriage; but it proved a difficult good-bye to say, and for once the usually fluent old lawyer was bereft of the power of speech as he held Ida's small hand, and looked through tear-dimmed eyes at the white and sorrowful face. He had intended to say all sorts of kind and encouraging things, but he could only manage ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... between sleeping and waking, that I sometimes argue with myself that I know I cannot be awake, for, if I were, I should not be half so ready. The readiness is not imaginary, because I often recall long strings of the verses, and many turns of the fluent speech, after I am ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... the Spider is still at table. I take away her dish. Naught remains of the Locust but his skin, hardly altered in shape, but utterly drained and perforated in several places. The method, therefore, was changed during the night. To extract the non-fluent residue, the viscera and muscles, the stiff cuticle had to be tapped here, there and elsewhere, after which the tattered husk, placed bodily in the press of the mandibles, would have been chewed, re-chewed and finally reduced to a pill, which the sated ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... a moment's pause, only to find, too late, that all warmth and naturalness had left her with the effort. Fluent dream-practice is only too apt to make one uncomfortably crude and ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... social position. But the revolution swept all away. His father's property was confiscated, and young M'Gillivray took refuge with the Creeks, his heart filled with hatred of the republicans. He was brave, fluent in speech, popular with the leading men, and soon rose to the rank of head chief; and no doubt he stirred up his nation to assume an attitude ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... elocutionary defects. They have no speakers to compare with Wendell Phillips, George William Curtis, or Anna Dickinson, although John Bright is without peer among his countrymen, as is Mrs. Besant among the women. The women, as a general rule, are more fluent than the men. ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... of Florence were there, and great was the excitement when Countess Rosali entered the ball room with an exceedingly beautiful woman—a queenly blonde—the lady about whom all Florence was interested—an English heiress, clever as she was fair, speaking French with a courtly grace and Italian with fluent skill; and when the prince stood before her he recognized in one moment the original ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... prisoners,' Ken answered with a smile, and at his fluent Turkish the man's dark eyes opened in evident surprise. ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... joined the Salvation Army with her protegee (religion had all the attraction of the impliedly forbidden to the Madigans), and was discovered by Francis Madigan one evening on C Street, putting up a fluent prayer in a nasal tremolo—an excellent imitation of the semi-hysterical falsetto of the bonneted ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... feeling. They have been men of affairs first, with large practical ability, but with a deep strain of the man of letters which in this generation has outshone the other faculties; strong-headed and hard-working students, with powerful memories and fluent ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... think any more are needed. The best thing to do now is to get those we have together and summon our solicitors here. Then our friend Kenyon, who is a fluent speaker, can lay ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... metrist. Neither in his sonnets, nor in his various stanzas composed of heroics, nor in what may be called his doggerel metres—the fatally fluent Alexandrines, fourteeners, and admixtures of both, which dominated English poetry from his time to Spenser's, and were never quite rejected during the Elizabethan period—do we find evidence of the want of ear, or the want of command of ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... it developed, was a fluent and persuasive talker, a man of the broadest worldly experiences and wit. He was younger than Calvin, but older than Wilmer Deakon, and a little fat. He had a small mustache cut above his lip, and closely shaved ruddy cheeks ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... been too saved, I see, Too rescued; fear too dim to me That I could spell the prayer I knew so perfect yesterday, — That scalding one, "Sabachthani," Recited fluent here. ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... in a Billet-doux that should be understood at the Bank, than in gross Money; But as to stubborn People, who are so surly as to accept of neither Note or Cash, having formerly dabbled in Chymistry, I can only say that one part of Matter asks one thing, and another another, to make it fluent; but there is nothing but may be dissolved by a proper Mean: Thus the Virtue which is too obdurate for Gold or Paper, shall melt away very kindly in a Liquid. The Island of Barbadoes (a shrewd People) manage all their Appeals to Great-Britain, by a skilful ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... queenly and indifferent to him than ever, but never displayed pique or asperity. Yet, however badly she treated him, he quite deserved my title of a "tame cat:" he bore every reverse patiently, and indeed at times displayed an absolute heroism in the face of her indifference, going on in fluent recital of something he believed would interest her while she utterly ignored him and his subject. However, Thorpe was a good actor, and could play his part, and do it well, in spite of his audience. I sometimes fancied ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... good-for-nothing, and a thief, all of which opprobrious language he bore with the best temper (having no idea what it meant), and was in the most ignominious manner escorted to steam-boats and public carriages, to be got rid of, talking all the while, like a cheerful and fluent Briton as he was, with Mother ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... without a sound. His face had none of the immobility so frequent with very aged persons; on the contrary, waves of mood were always sparkling across his features, and leaving nothing stationary there except the narrow, high, and strangely receding forehead. His language, very fluent and easy, had an agreeable touch of the soil, an occasional rustic note in its elegant colloquialism, that seemed very pleasant and appropriate, as if it linked him naturally with the long line of sturdy ancestors of whom he was the final blossoming. In connection with his poetry, I think it would ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... about to tell me, my Sister," Saxham said, in his smooth, fluent French, "when you ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... make it. We determined that we would really know what we did feel and what we did not. We would not be lightly scared away from our friend, but neither would we any more allow our judgment to be talked down by that fluent tongue of his; he should have justice from us, he and his biographer, as far as it lay with us to discern justice and ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... can here alone be mentioned. A thorough naturalist, though saturated with the mannerism of the Umbrian school, Pinturicchio was not distracted either by scientific or ideal aims from the clear and fluent presentation of contemporary manners and costumes. He is a kind of Umbrian Gozzoli, who brings us here and there in close relation to the men of his own time, and has in consequence a special value for the student of Renaissance life. His wall-paintings in the library of the ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... endorsed Peggy's plan. The summer days were all very delightful, but the presentation of the little play promised that agreeable variety without which all pleasures pall. Indeed, Lucy's expression of gratitude, fervent if not fluent, rendered Priscilla ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith |
