"Phrasing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in touch, echoed the French verses which he loved best, but offered nothing very original. They show a tinge of Baudelaire's fantastic love of morbid phases of life and beauty, and also of Leconte de Lisle's exquisite phrasing. But Bourget lacks poetic ardor, and in metre is always a little artificial. Although he went on writing poetry for some years, he found few readers until he turned to prose. When the 'Essais de Psychologie Contemporaine' appeared in 1883, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... ready to describe to me the locality, the accessories—how shall I say it?—the mise en scene. Then, at my own time, at my own hour, under circumstances of my own choosing, I will go to them. I will present myself—I will appear before them!" said the Baroness, this time phrasing her idea with a ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... not, however, a subtle fallacy in the very phrasing of the indictment? The majority does not "rule": it elects representatives who guide. That is something entirely different. When the worst is said of them those representatives of the people are distinctly above the average ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs
... music, that distant, mellow phrasing of the call of love, the music had unstrung him. While he paced the bridge before her coming that music had been melting the ice of his natural reserve. But he did not pardon himself because he had acted ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... clearcut English sentence is out of the question. Further, and this is the most important point, the work of those in question almost never exhibits imagination expressed in intense, condensed, vivid, and suggestive phrase—such phrasing, for instance, as one will find in "The Eve of St. Agnes," which I am not alone in considering the most lavishly brilliant and successful brief effort in poetry in the language. To all of this might be ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... that any psychological observations of the fool's or of the rich man's mind are recorded here. If I sift those maxims more carefully, I cannot find more than two score which, stripped of their picturesque phrasing, could really enter into that world system of naive psychology. And yet even this figure is still too high. Of those forty, most are after all epigrams, generalizations of some chance cases, exaggerations of a bit of truth, or expressions of a mood of anger, of love, ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... not help listening to the talk at the next table, because the orchestra was quiet and the conversation unrestrained; then, too, a nautical phrasing caught my ear and aroused my attention. For I had been a lifelong student of nautical matters. A side glance showed me the speaker, a white-haired, sunburned old fellow in immaculate evening dress. With him at the ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... There was something almost akin to this in the vicar's courteously amiable, aquiline countenance when he rose to shake hands with the young man on his entrance. Mr. Penzance was indeed slightly disappointed that his greeting was not responded to by some characteristic phrasing. His American was that of Sam Slick and Artemus Ward, Punch and various English witticisms in anecdote. Life at the vicarage of Dunstan had not revealed to him that the model ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of this apocalyptic phrasing of hope has been traced too often to require long rehearsal here. If the Greeks were essentially philosophers and welcomed congenially ideas like endless cosmic cycles, the Hebrews were essentially practical and dramatic in their thinking and they welcomed a picture of God's victory capable of ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... that the two lay together in the breast pocket of my shirt; that though alike in tenor, they differed in phrasing; and that I had no means of telling ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... speech, which has beauty and capacity for creating delight and pleasure, like a flower, is frequent in our poet; his poetry is full of such examples. The kinds of phrasing have much novelty in Homer, as we shall go on to show, by giving a few examples from which ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... me, his thoughts were going back to the scene in the bath-room. He had no security that it wouldn't be repeated and with a far different conclusion. He had a passing impulse to ask Jannie to call off her subliminal thugs; the phrasing is my own. There was no doubt in his disordered mind that it was she who, at the instigation of the elder Meekers, was trying to remove him in the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Susan in his affections. This pained the gentle and humble-minded girl, who, without having tasted the world's pleasures, had meekly consecrated herself to the lowly duties which lay nearest to her. For Bathsheba's phrasing of life was in the monosyllables of a rigid faith. Her conceptions of the human soul were all simplicity and purity, but elementary. She could not conceive the vast license the creative energy allows itself in mingling the instincts which, after ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... characteristic of Huxley; but clearness alone does not make subject-matter literature. In addition to this quality, Huxley's writing wins the reader by the racy diction, the homely illustration, the plain, honest phrasing. All these and other qualities bring one into an intimate relationship with his subject. A man of vast technical learning, he is still so interested in the relation of his facts to the problems of men that he is always able to infuse life into the driest of subjects, in other words, to HUMANIZE ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... well as blacks and operate in behalf of corporations as well as individuals. In other words, Conkling was making the interesting contention that his committee had had a far wider and deeper purpose in mind in phrasing the Amendment than had been commonly understood and that the demand for the protection of the negro from harsh southern legislation had been utilized to answer the request of business for federal assistance. The safety of the negro was put to the fore; the purpose of the committee to strengthen ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... the grand opera as primo basso cantante. He was warmly received by the press, and had already won a name at the Opera Comique and at concerts. In this singer may be noted the firmness of accent and scholarly mode of phrasing, always in harmony with the prosody of the language, which are part of the tradition of the great school. He always bears himself well on the stage, and the sobriety of his gesture is a salutary example which some of his present colleagues ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... was strengthened by the lengthy account of the affair written by Miss Crayne, which Murdy obtained from her. The punctuation, the phrasing, the inaccurate use of auxiliary verbs, were identical with that ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... making certain that all performers sing or play the correct tones in the correct rhythm; insisting upon accurate pronunciation and skilful enunciation of the words in vocal music; indicating logical and musical phrasing; correcting mistakes in breathing or bowing; and, in general, stimulating orchestra or chorus to produce a tasteful rendition of the music as well as an absolutely perfect ensemble with all parts in correct ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... Egypt, except as the treatment of a phrase of chorale or canto fermo? Again, to return to the 16th century, what are the hymns of Palestrina but figured chorales? In what way, except in the lack of symmetry in the Gregorian phrasing, do they differ from the contemporary setting by Orlando di Lasso, also a Roman Catholic, of the German chorale Vater unser im Himmelreich? In modern times the use of German chorales, as in Mendelssohn's oratorios and organ-sonatas, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... Certainly the Abbe Peyreyve had neither the emotion nor the ardor of Lacordaire. He was too much a priest and too little a man. Yet, here and there in the rhetoric of his sermons, flashed interesting effects of large and solid phrasing or touches of nobility that were ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... book, and by no means a small one, to go into this matter of phrasing which I am now discussing. Even in such a book there would doubtless be many points which would be open to assaults for sticklers in psychological technology. I am not issuing a propaganda or writing a thesis for the purpose of having something to defend, but merely giving a few offhand facts ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... voices, but of that mingling in music of voice and skill and feeling which weave an enchanted spell. Those who have known the troubadour Riccardo have doubtless heard what are called greater voices, artists who hold for a triumphant moment the hazardous peak of the high C, whose roulades and phrasing are exquisite and admirable. But the singer whom they wish to hear, whose singing is a part of life, like the beauty of flowers and the dawn, is the singing of the troubadour Riccardo. It is so with Cecilia's playing, and it is ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... easily given of many more discourses, the metaphorical phrasing whereof, depending upon peculiar arts, customs, trades, and professions, makes them useful and intelligible only to such, who have been very well busied in such ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... popular brother of hers? The tune and its quaint harmonization is surely from some time in the joyous fifteenth century; if it had to deal with St. Wenceslaus it would have to grunt about in Gregorian phrasing. No doubt Anne's ladies who accompanied her from Bohemia would invoke the patron saint from time to time, and English people, hearing a strange and difficult name, and thinking it impossible that several well-known men had borne it, would be likely enough to get saintly prince and jovial monarch ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... feeling in it perhaps—even Vera, who read it with partial eyes, could not help noting the fact—but, after all, it was in a sense a matter of business; and so she was able to find consolation in its clear, incisive phrasing. She was glad when it was finished, more glad still when they had strolled down to the pillar box outside the gates, and dropped the envelope in it. Their relations were on a definite footing now, and she had little doubt that her father would be well pleased. Of ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... below, is a curving, dark-shaded, turquoise body of water called Lecco; to the right there lies the queen of lakes, the crown of Italy, a corn-flower sapphire known as Como. Over and about it—this terrace—poets have raved and tousled their neglected locks in vain to find the perfect phrasing; novelists have come and gone and have carried away peace and inspiration; and painters have painted it from a thousand points of view, and perhaps are painting it from another thousand this very minute. It is ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... never went deeply or exhaustively into any group of facts, but that, taking one broad simple hypothesis as his text, he hammered that over and over, saying the same thing again and again in different ways, but always with a wealth of imagery and picturesque phrasing. ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... sonnets prefixed to the "Amorous poem of Diego and Genevra," is more elaborate in colouring but somewhat less fresh and genuine; while Chloris, whose author was a friend of Spenser's, approaches to the pastoral in the plan and phrasing of ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... forms one of the finest episodes in the great Iliad of India, and, in fact, is hardly surpassed for profound thought, deep feeling, and exquisite phrasing, in the whole literature of India. Telang holds that the song is at least as old as the 4th century, and is inclined to regard it as an original part of the epic. According to most scholars, however, the "Divine ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... first-night. In the height of the Season it was not easy to get together a goodly selection of guests at short notice, and Francesca had gladly fallen in with Serena's suggestion of bringing with her Stephen Thorle, who was alleged, in loose feminine phrasing, to "know all about" tropical Africa. His travels and experiences in those regions probably did not cover much ground or stretch over any great length of time, but he was one of those individuals who can describe a continent ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... emphasis is phrasing. This is the grouping together of words, phrases, clauses, and other units so that their meaning and significance may be easily grasped by a listener. As has been already said, pauses serve as punctuation marks for the hearer. Short pauses correspond ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... hands and body, a perfect bearing—all these qualities combined, and many others which we forget, left the auditor free to enjoy the pleasure of listening without having his attention diverted by fatiguing gymnastics. Kalkbrenner's manner of phrasing was somewhat lacking in expression and communicative warmth, but the style was always noble, true, and of ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... as strong as the way you put it," said McTee; and he repeated his phrasing of the message ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... came north at my own expense without notifying Chief Mern that I was done with the agency; and strictly personal reasons, also, influenced me on that point." She was trying hard to keep her poise, not loosing her emotions, preserving her dignity with a man of affairs and phrasing her replies with rather stilted diction. "I have my good reasons for doing all I can in my poor power to help the Flagg ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... remembered she had left her book of studies on the top of the piano. Needless to say, her lesson that day was hardly a success. In the disturbed state of her mind she was quite incapable of concentrating her attention on music. Miss Catteral looked surprised at her wrong notes and imperfect phrasing. ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... reasonably certain she'd broken no laws so far, though the sections in the law library covering the use and abuse of psionic abilities were veiled in such intricate and downright obscuring phrasing—deliberately, Telzey suspected—that it was really difficult to say what they did mean. But even aside from that, there were a number of arguments in favor of ...
— Novice • James H. Schmitz
... be burdensome to others in any way; we must not be shocked or offended or disgusted, but tolerate, forgive, welcome, share. We must treat life in an eager, light-hearted way, not ruefully or drearily or solemnly. The old language in which the Gospel comes to us, the formality of the antique phrasing, the natural tendency to make it dignified and hieratic, disguise from us how utterly natural and simple it all is. I do not think that reverence and tradition and awe have done us any more grievous ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... defying such presumptuous interference, was not fortunate in phrasing his declaration that Morrison had no right ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... was. But what did the speaker mean? She asked the question like a student of the English language, yet her accent and phrasing were perfect. She laughed again noiselessly, and once more Steel ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... respect for Oscar's pecuniary position was great; but his respect for himself—especially at the present crisis—was, if possible, greater still. In deference to the first sentiment he was as polite, and in deference to the second he was as positive, in phrasing his remonstrance, as a man could be. "Permit me to remind you, dear Oscar, that my claim to interfere, as Lucilla's father, is at least equal to yours," proceeded the rector. "In the hour of my daughter's need, it is my parental duty ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... who sat in the third seat from the back found the phrasing strangely familiar. He seemed to know what was coming. Sure enough, it was almost word for word the arguments the women had used when they came before the House. The audience was in a pleasant mood, and laughed at every point. It really ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... so pleasantly and considerately—she scarce knew what to call it; but without prejudice to her consciousness, all the same, that women got out of predicaments better than men. The predicament of course wasn't definite or phraseable—and the way they let all phrasing pass was presently to recur to our young woman as a characteristic triumph of the civilised state; but she took it for granted, insistently, with a small private flare of passion, because the one thing she could think ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... becomes of me after they're fed," she thought, and derived an obscure satisfaction from her phrasing, ...
— Miss Lulu Bett • Zona Gale
... need to play forte nor use the pedals; a tone of medium power is sufficient. Suppose, for instance, you are studying the Chopin Etude Op. 10, No. 12, with the left hand arpeggio work. Every note and finger must be in place, every mark of phrasing obeyed; but during practise hours you need not give the piece all its dashing vigor and bravura at every repetition. Such a course would soon exhaust the player. Yet every effect you wish to make must be thoroughly studied, must ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... you're odd," he insisted, "but somehow you're such a slip of a boy—" His voice grew meditative and he recurred to his native trick of phrasing, as he always did when ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... one harmonious whole is a task requiring the evolutionary progress of time; for a nation, like a university, cannot be a matter of instantaneous creation. It must germinate and grow. The country that, previous to so comparatively a recent date as the year 1870, was, in the phrasing of Prince Metternich, "a geographical expression," can hardly be judged by present national standards after an existence of only thirty-seven years, although it need be said in no spirit of apology; for Italy is advancing in scientific ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... is nothing more intangible to most people than the term "phrasing." I have asked a great many students to give me the principles of phrasing, but as yet I have seen none who could do it, and yet all singers, from the youngest to the oldest must make some use of these principles every time they sing. Now a thing in such general use should be, and is, ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... public I believe that most readers will notice an especial flavor, that very quality of delight in mountain scenes, in mountain people and in child life generally, which is one of the chief merits of the German original. The phrasing has also been carefully adapted to the purpose of reading aloud—a thing that few translators think of. In conclusion, the author, realising the difference between the two languages, has endeavored to write the story afresh, as Johanna Spyri would have written ...
— Heidi - (Gift Edition) • Johanna Spyri
... The phrasing of the edict was ambiguous, as Madison indicated. Notably, while neutral vessels having on board merchandise neutral in property, but British in origin, were to be seized when voluntarily entering a French port, it was not clear whether they ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... peer for prompt and pithy and witty and humorous sayings. None has equalled him, certainly none has surpassed him, in the felicity of phrasing with which he clothed these children of his fancy. Aldrich was always brilliant, he couldn't help it, he is a fire-opal set round with rose diamonds; when he is not speaking, you know that his dainty ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... of Civilisation, p. 61. It would, of course, have been easy to give references from other authors; but there is an extraordinary family-likeness between the writers of this School, extending down to the very phrasing of their ideas. ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... earlier, recognized this phase of his character and developed it. Often these two, dining or walking together, discussed the books and history they had read, quoted from poems that gave them pleasure. Clemens sometimes recited with great power the "Burial of Moses," whose noble phrasing and majestic imagery seemed to move him deeply. With eyes half closed and chin lifted, a lighted cigar between his fingers, he would lose himself in the music ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... II?" Having every minute detail of the configuration of Seaton's brain engraved upon his own, Dunark spoke English in Seaton's own characteristic careless fashion. Only when thinking deeply or discussing abstruse matter did Seaton employ the carefully selected and precise phrasing, which he knew so well how to use. "Well, none of them was beyond repair and the juice was still on most of them. One was an object-compass bearing on the Earth. We simply fixed the bearings, put on some minor improvements, and ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... the works of Berlioz and the moderns the form is part of the sensuous quality of the band. When Rimsky-Korsakoff uttered the pronouncement that a composition for orchestra could not exist before the orchestration was completed, he was only phrasing a rule upon which Berlioz had acted all his life. For Berlioz set out to learn the language of the orchestra. Not only did he call for new instruments, instruments that have eventually become integral portions of the modern ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... heart pressed forward at the beat, in tender pity of the woman for whom a yielding to love was to sin; and unwomanly is the woman who does not love: men will say it. Aminta found herself phrasing. 'Why was she unable to love her husband?—he is not old.' She hurried in flight from the remark to confidences imparted by other ladies, showing strange veins in an earthy world; after which, her mind was bent to rebuke Mrs. Pagnell for ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... phrasing the proposition, the debater should so state the subject that the affirmative side, the side that opens the discussion, is the one to advocate a change in existing conditions or belief. This method obviously corresponds to the way in which business is conducted in practical affairs. ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... Phrasing. Where in literature will you find more beautiful phrases, more effective figures, than abound in this poem? Notice particularly the following, and try to determine why ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... glanced up at the clock of the Metropolitan tower. The bronze hand pointed to the stroke of six. As he looked, the first note of the quarter chimes rang out. The car swung the corner and headed down the street. McCarthy stepped forward. The sweet chimes ceased their fourfold phrasing, and the great bell began its spaced and ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... her mother's inexplicable alacrity to be gone that gave the opportunity. Her ladyship said good-bye to Mr. Torrens; was sorry she had to go, but the Earl was so fussy about anything the least like an appointment—some concession to conscience in the phrasing of this—in short, go she must! Having committed herself thus, to wait for her daughter would have been the merest self-stultification. She went out multiplying apologies, and Irene naturally accompanied her along the lobby, assisted and sanctioned by Achilles. Gwendolen ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... be no gross phrasing to Milly, in particular, of the probability that if she wasn't so proud she might be pitied with more comfort—more to the person pitying; there could be no spoken proof, no sharper demonstration than the consistently considerate attitude, that this marvellous mixture ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... had been living of long warm days, of open roads, of limitless unchecked hours, of infinite time to look about him, vanished like a thing enchanted. He was suddenly back in the hard old economic world, that exacts work, that limits range, that discourages phrasing and dispels laughter. He saw Wood Street and its fearful ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... mixture—all three together—may be developed to the highest art by the skill of the individual, often, indeed, only by a good ear for it. Whenever expression of the word's significance, beauty of the vocal material, and perfection of phrasing are found united in the highest degree, it is due either to knowledge or to a natural skill in the innumerable ways of fitting the sung word to the particular resonance—connections that are suitable ...
— How to Sing - [Meine Gesangskunst] • Lilli Lehmann
... of partiality and prejudice, we will at once state that we believe it possible for a man to be singular in his manner and quaint in his mode of phrasing, and yet to utter an opinion in some one direction which, if neither novel nor interesting, nor even tenable, shall yet have the one redeeming merit of representing a conceivable point of view. But when a man begins by stating ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... read, in the dim light of the Colonel's Bed, thanks to its crabbed orthography and its long formal phrasing, but gradually I made out its wording ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... the afternoon arrived a special delivery, mailed from some small New Jersey town, and the familiarity of the phrasing, the almost audible undertone of worry and discontent, were so familiar that they comforted her. Who knew? Perhaps army discipline would harden Anthony and accustom him to the idea of work. She had immutable faith that the war would be over before he was called upon to ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... laid down the letter, "there are one or two things about that communication to which I wish to draw your attention. First of all, it is the composition of a vulgar and illiterate, or, at any rate, semi-illiterate person. I don't think its phrasing and illiteracy are affected; I think it has been written in its present colloquial form without art or design, by whoever wrote it; it is written, phrased, expressed, precisely as a vulgar, coarse sort of person would speak. That is the first point. ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... modest phrase must express honest pride—"my reputation as a pianiste which I guard sedulously," or "defend zealously." No, this the exactness and simplicity of true art rejected. Then came the simple, perfect phrasing—"my reputation as a pianiste, of which I am somewhat jealous." Unquestionably, as with Keats's word "forever," the word "jealous" was perfectly familiar. It was not any one exceptional word which was necessary, but a weaving of simple words—if I may be permitted the expression. ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... betray a young unformed style. To analyze the art, however, would be to take the poem more seriously than Vergil intended it to be when he wrote currente calamo. Yet we may say that on the whole the modulation of the verse, the treatment of the caesural pauses[7] and the phrasing compare rather favorably with the Catullan hexameters which obviously served as its models, that in the best lines the poet shows himself sensitive to delicate effects, and that the pastoral scene—which Horace compliments a few years later—is, despite its imitative notes, written with enthusiasm, ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... reader, if Cellini had told that last story, would not its main facts have corresponded with those embodied in the following pages, though the tamer phrasing and more conventional attitude of the writer compared with the ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... forth were her own or somebody else's, I could see that she relished uttering them. Also, that she relished the euphony and felicity of her phrasing, which was certainly her own. Whether she spoke from conviction or not, one thing seemed indisputable: the atmosphere surrounding the books and authors she named had a genuine fascination for her. There was a naive sincerity in her rhetoric, and her delivery ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... latest editor, "grasped the fact that in prose no less than in poetry, the reader demanded to be led onward by a succession of half imperceptible shocks of pleasure in the beauty and vigour of diction, or in the ingenuity of phrasing, in sentence after sentence—pleasure inseparable from that caused by a perception of the nice adaptation of words to thought, pleasure quite other than that derivable from the acquisition of fresh knowledge[84]." The direct influence of the man who first ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... gilded wings"—are portraits one may almost call beautiful in their bitter phrasing. There is nothing make-believe here as there is in the virtue of the letters. This is Pope's confession, the image of his soul. Elsewhere in Pope the accomplishment is too often rhetorical, though ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... men with their vivid gestures, bright eyes, and perfect phrasing most delight in is personal heroism. And be it remembered that, though they do tell a funny story about German scouts who, in order to do their work, painted themselves the green of trees—and then, to complete the illusion, when they saw a Frenchman began ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... good deal of minor detail to look after itself, and not complaining if a few notes fell under the desks at the back of the orchestra. Lamoureux had laboriously rehearsed every inch of his repertory until it was note-perfect, and each of his men knew the precise bowing, phrasing, degree of piano or forte, and tempo of every minutest phrase. Now I do not mean by this that the orchestras on which Richter and Mottl performed played many wrong notes, while the Lamoureux orchestra played none; and still less do I mean that Lamoureux ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... lips and large, prominent, melancholy eyes that wickedly reminded Gregory of the eyes of a beetle. Beneath the black feather boa that was thrown round her neck, her thin shoulder-blades, while she talked to Mrs. Forrester and sketched with pouncing fingers the phrasing of certain passages, jerked and vibrated oddly. Mrs. Forrester nodded, smiled, acquiesced. She was rather fond of Eleanor. Their talk was for each other. Miss Woodruff, unheeded, but with nothing of the air of one consciously insignificant, ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... frank reference to her broken engagement, then laughed at the crude phrasing. But her heart warmed with the word of sympathy. Gradually she unburdened herself of all her troubles, and at the conclusion the kindly ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... the manner rasped the nerves of Mr. Calvin almost beyond endurance. He was accustomed to phrasing his views with elegance, and although in truth his ideas in the matter on hand were not widely different from those of Mr. Irons, the latter had stated the proposition with a boldness which made it impossible for him to agree ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... this fine phrasing, this copious draft from classical sources, was intended to quench the ardor of his curiosity. Diggle's explanation was very lame; the fury depicted on the pursuer's face could scarcely be due to a mere accidental jostling in the street. And ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... by the committee of detail, which early in August put into orderly and connected form the conclusions which the convention had reached. It was the committee on unfinished business which suggested the method finally adopted of electing the President. In its final form and phrasing the Constitution is the work of Gouverneur Morris, who prepared the report of the committee ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... loudly as he liked. The effect this composition was calculated to produce rested on a fundamental idea which was quite simple, yet startling in its development. Unfortunately I worked it out rather hurriedly. In not very carefully chosen phrasing the orchestra was to represent the ocean, and, as far as might be, the ship upon it. A forcible, pathetically yearning and aspiring theme was the only comprehensible idea amid the swirl of enveloping ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... sternness, Edith, loving him "next to father and mother," watched him, and wondered what he was thinking about? Sometimes he came out of his abstraction and teased her, and then she sparkled into gay impertinences; sometimes he asked her what she thought of this or that phrasing, "...though you are a barbarian, Skeezics, about music"; sometimes he would pull a book from the shelf over his desk and read a poem to her; and he was really interested in her opinion,—ardently appreciative if he liked the poem; if he didn't, it ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... excitement had been growing ever since she learned the visitor's name and, although her husband did not notice the peculiar phrasing of ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... learned not to exclude any of the picture he would never do big work. Her words had a tantalizing way of coming back to him, things she had tossed off in the long ago of their visit to New York together. He longed for her vivid phrasing, her quick dart at the heart of the things they talked of. It seemed incredible now that he had ever taken her as a matter of course. As for the enigma of her marrying him, he never ceased to ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... century, and her letters are the precious personal record of her inner as of her outer life. With all their transparent simplicity and mediaeval quaintness, with all the occasional plebeian crudity of their phrasing, they reveal a nature at once so many- sided and so exalted that the sensitive reader can but echo the judgment of her countrymen, who see in the dyer's daughter of Siena one of the most significant authors ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... me," was the matron's thin-lipped phrasing of it. "When one remembers that this wretched mountain girl has been Ardea's understudy from the very beginning—faugh! it is simply disgusting! I should think Ardea would never want to see or hear ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... eliciting words of admiration from the others at the conciseness and precision with which he presented his views. It was cause for wonder, too, that they should find themselves agreeing with him so often, and they admired, also, the felicity of phrasing with which he continued to present all these things as the views of a great public, thus giving the despatch the flavor of news rather than opinion. When it was finished—and it would fill two full columns of the Monitor—the line was ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... or not, is no part either of the general question of Socialism, or the specific question of Woman. Nevertheless, while respecting the author's private opinion in the matter, and leaving his sentence untouched, the following phrasing would seem preferable, as free from the taint of what may be called the "theologic method," and also more in keeping with the mental posture of positive knowledge: "Whether to be dead means to be ended or not, is a matter on which man awaits the ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... phrasing of the second line this poem is noteworthy because it is cast in the classic form. All the best Limericks are about a young man, or else an old one, who said some short sharp monosyllable in the first line. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... marks left by this Great Council of Chiefs—the last Great Indian Council that will ever be held on American soil. The story most faithfully records the idiom and phrasing and atmosphere of the Indian's speech as it came from Indian lips. The language of the landscape where the Indian made his home, where he fought his battles and lived his life, where this solemn council was held, is manifest in the accompanying photogravures. On ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... Verner want with a fine place like that? He'd have to keep five or six servants, if he went there. The most feasible surmise that could be arrived at was, that Jan was about to establish a mad-house—as Deerham was in the habit of phrasing a receptacle for insane patients—of the private, genteel order. Deerham felt very curious; and Jan, being a person whom they felt at ease to question without ceremony, was besieged upon the subject. Jan's answer (all they could get from ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... let her evade the risk; and her instinct for self-preservation dictated that she should reduce the risk to its minimum. So she wrote her acceptance—Miss Grierson attended to the phrasing of her note—but expressed her regret that she would be able to come only for the tea-hour. Drinking tea must be much the same, reasoned Maggie, whether it be drunk in a smart hotel or in ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... memory of that other night. He had saved his dime deliberately, going hungry rather than admit to himself that he was absolutely at the end of his resources. To-morrow he would not especially need that dime. He had a job. He would begin to draw pay. In his own phrasing he would "buy him a square meal and rent him a room somewhere." Upon these two prospects his brain fastened with a leech-like persistency. And yet above anything he had faced in his life he dreaded the job and the room. The inspiration ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... They have no preliminary measures, but at once voice the actuating emotion; that done, they come to a close. Although they are so short, they have form and in their structure follow in simple lines the rules of phrasing and motivization taught in our schools. These songs, speaking in general terms, partake more of the character of motifs than of musical compositions. They do not stand alone or apart from the ceremonials or pleasures of which they form ...
— Indian Games and Dances with Native Songs • Alice C. Fletcher
... vocal appeal for hire based on the incredible assumption that a man must live, which he proclaimed with a whip elevated to the sodden heavens, calling on a God, invisible in the fog, to bear witness that he hadn't turned a wheel that night. The phrasing of the appeal helped Colwyn to recall that it was the same cabman who had accosted Philip Heredith and himself on the night they had ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... Camilla and treated her with the utmost kindness. Every day Camilla must come to her room to practice and receive instructions in singing. Camilla's instrument was the violin. She could sing with more than ordinary skill and in perfecting her phrasing and in improving her style in vocal music Madam Sontag insensibly improved her violin music. All of Camilla's music was examined by the great singer and in those stray hours picked up between ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... plot, and sure comprehension of the value of dramatic problems, are not enough in themselves to make a perfect poem. They may go along with various degrees of imperfection in particular respects; faults of diction, either tenuity or extravagance of phrasing may accompany this central imaginative power. Strength of plot is partly independent of style; it bears translation, it can be explained, it is something that can be abstracted from the body of a poem and still make itself impressive. The dramatic value of the ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... reign of Queen Victoria. Before we appreciate Tennyson's real place in literature, we must frankly recognize the fact that his muse wore a crinoline. The great mass of his work bears its date stamped upon it as obviously almost as a copy of The Times. How topical, both in mood and phrasing, are such lines as those ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... its fall. Read Franklin's charming and wise letter to Madame Brillon about giving too much for the whistle. It is the perfection of well-bred humor: a humor very American, very Franklinian, although its theme and tone and phrasing might well have been envied ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... said Kent. "If it should ever be charged that he took money from Rumford, here is a plain business transaction to account for it. The deed, as recorded, has nothing to say of the enormous price paid. The phrasing is the common form used when the parties to the transfer do not wish to make the price public: 'For one dollar to me in hand paid, and other valuable considerations.' Luckily, we are able to establish conclusively what ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... feature is that the instruction card clerk always uses the same standard wording for the same instructions. Repetition of phrasing is a virtue, and the use of the same word for the same thing and the same meaning repeatedly is very desirable. The wording, phrasing and sentencing should ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... part of Hyllus, spoke his lines exceedingly well. Perhaps the chorus was a little too classical—that is to say, too stiff and lackadaisical; but the phrasing was always pretty and sometimes unexpected, ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... impulsive speech, made from the heart, and without thought of phrasing or that any meaning other than that intended could be read into it. A moment later, and without waiting for an answer, she ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... dignified and diplomatic translation of his master's protests. Where and when, by what instinct, he had assimilated and made his own the grotesque inversions and ponderous sentimentalities of Teutonic phrasing, Paul could not guess; but it was with breathless wonder that he presently became aware that, so perfect and convincing was the old man's style and deportment, not only the simple officials but even the bystanders were profoundly ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... Greene. Fortunately the discussion has become academic in the half-century that has passed since Southern cheers over the first conquests of the Merrimac faltered before the acclaim which greeted the Monitor's achievement of her task. One may disagree with the phrasing of various historians on both sides, one may find it difficult to accept the inscription upon the shaft of the Merrimac outside the "Confederate White House" in Richmond, but no American can cease to wonder at the fortitude and daring of those other ...
— The Monitor and the Merrimac - Both sides of the story • J. L. Worden et al.
... course, partly produced by the diction; but the diction, fine as it is, would be useless without the phrasing—that art by which the two forces of the metre and the sense are made at once to combat, to combine with, and to heighten each other. It is, however, impossible to do more than touch upon this side—the technical side—of Beddoes' genius. But ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... the spell of his magnetism could forgive, almost forget. Hans von Buelow (1830-1894) was the objective artist, whose scholarly attainments and musicianly discernment unraveled the most tangled web of phrasing and interpretation. His Beethoven recitals, when he was in America in 1875-6, were of especial value to piano students. As a piano virtuoso, a teacher, a conductor and an editor of musical works, he was a ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... from the prospectus of a Kentucky 'Female College.' Female college sounds well enough; but since the phrasing it in that unjustifiable way was done purely in the interest of brevity, it seems to me that she-college would have been still better—because shorter, and means the same thing: that is, if either phrase ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... tale, simple but deeply touching, and told with the beauty of phrasing and the deep and subtle sympathy ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... be translation. The translator signs himself simply "r." Whoever he was, he had poetic feeling and power of expression. No mere poetaster could have given lines so exquisite in their imagery, so full of music, and so happy in their phrasing. This fact in itself makes it a poor translation, for it is rather a paraphrase with a quality and excellence all its own. Not a line exactly renders the English. The paraphrase is never so good as the original but, considered by itself, it is good poetry. The disillusionment comes ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... Another way of phrasing this theory which I am arguing against is to bifurcate nature into two divisions, namely into the nature apprehended in awareness and the nature which is the cause of awareness. The nature which is the fact apprehended in awareness holds within it the greenness of the trees, the ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead
... the present day would not tolerate. He, as well as his great compeers, was brought up in the school of Wagner, the essence of which lies in correctness, in rendering the work as the composer intended it, with conscientious attention to every detail, not only of notes, but of rhythm, tempo, phrasing, dynamics, instead of the slovenly muddling which then passed for breadth of style, and the substitution of the conductor's own subjectivity for that of the composer. It has been well expressed in a few incisive words by one of the greatest of the school: "The privilege of an interesting subjectivity ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... fail to understand, will very certainly enjoy—enjoy the sometimes gay and sometimes biting humour, the deft delineation, the fine quality of colour, the delicately-flavoured phrasing." ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... and the best of it is that the auditor at the end of a large hall experiences this sense of satisfaction quite as fully as the persons sitting in the first row of seats. Without good attacks there can be no intellectual singing or speaking, no broad phrasing, and much more that all should aim at who come before the public, and which listeners have, indeed, a right to expect. But just because many persons feel this to be true, they make serious errors in attempting to attain the result; they substitute ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... of this description is quite masterly—worthy, I am inclined to say, of Flaubert. But unless you are familiar with the quiet, undemonstrative nature of the scenery described, you can hardly estimate the perfect justice of the sentiment and phrasing with which ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... the finest of this composer's gifts—his talent as a teacher of music. Everything has fitted M. d'Indy for this part. By his knowledge and his precise, orderly mind he must be a perfect teacher of composition. If I submit some question of harmony or melodic phrasing to his analysis, the result is the essence of clear, logical reasoning; and if the reasoning is a little dry and simplifies the thing almost too much, it is still very illuminating and from the hand of a ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... for she has always been very dear to me!' In the pause before she spoke again the beating of his own heart seemed to re-echo the quick sounds of Stephen's galloping horse. He was surprised at the method of her speech when it did come; for she forgot her Quaker idiom, and spoke in the phrasing of her youth: ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... and who beat themselves on the chests and boast: "I never think of it! Never, I assure you! I quit; and after a few days the thought of drinking never entered my mind." I have only one reply for these persons; and, phrasing it as politely as I can, I say to them that they are all liars. Moreover, they are the worst sort of liars, for they not only lie to others but commit the useless folly of lying to themselves. They may think they do not ...
— The Old Game - A Retrospect after Three and a Half Years on the Water-wagon • Samuel G. Blythe
... which endures long after the singer has lost the power to produce a pure tone or to contrive accurate phrasing and so makes it possible for artists to hold their places on the stage long after their voices have become partially defective or, indeed, have actually departed. It is knowledge of style that accounts for the long ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... cedar, never missing a note. It was purely a song of joy expressing exuberance of life and whole-souled enjoyment. He mimicked thirty different American birds, but their songs were hurried without the proper pauses and phrasing. It was what piano player music is to hand-played melodies, lacking the beauty and soul ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... zealously into the acquirement of the classical learning proffered him at Eton; but a fine scholarship, great possession though it be, was not the only gain of his Eton years. Here, says Murphy in his formal eighteenth-century phrasing, young Fielding had "the advantage of being early known to many of the first people in the kingdom, namely Lord Lyttelton, Mr Fox, Mr Pitt, Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, and the late ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... was the "treatment," icy rumors of which had spread throughout his particular world. For the second time since he had entered the room his self-confidence was jarred. Then he clung with a degree of hope to the phrasing of that ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... phrasing throughout: Health is first in every line of activity. A man who has it does not hold it with enough respect, and make ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... don't look for much of a voice in a comic song. You don't expect correct phrasing or vocalization. You don't mind if a man does find out, when in the middle of a note, that he is too high, and comes down with a jerk. You don't bother about time. You don't mind a man being two bars in front of the accompaniment, and ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome |
