"Spoken word" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with its efficient organization and intricate inventions, including electricity, had closed in on him. Electricity had surrounded him. The spoken word had located him in the wild canyons of Sonoma Mountain and fringed the mountain with posses of peace-officers and detachments of armed farmers. More terrible to them than any mountain lion was a man-killing man astray in their landscape. The telephone ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... search for the wireless. He grounded his wires and sent high currents into the earth, but improved his system and took another step toward the final achievement by adding a large induction coil to his sending equipment. He suggested that the spoken word might be sent as well as dots and dashes, and so sought the wireless telephone as well as the wireless telegraph. Like his predecessors, his experiments were successful ...
— Masters of Space - Morse, Thompson, Bell, Marconi, Carty • Walter Kellogg Towers
... to have preserved after all these years; but still it is interesting to me to recall that this was the beginning of the public speaking of the man who later addressed more audiences than any other orator of his time and made a deeper impression by his spoken word. ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... in such uninterrupted fellowship with the unseen God, that the exchange of worlds became too real for him to mourn for those who had made it, or to murmur at the infinite Love that numbers our days. It moved men more deeply than any spoken word of witness to see him manifestly borne up ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... say that——" The flash in her eyes, that was almost anger, startled and impressed him more than any spoken word. "No thought that ever came in your father's mind could be—like insult to me. Oh, my dear, have you not sense to know that for an old English family like his, with roots down deep in English soil and history, it is not ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... when Henderson found it necessary to repudiate as unauthorized anything that had been apparently said in his name. To be sure, this gave a general impression that Henderson was an inscrutable man to deal with, but at the same time it was confessed that his spoken word could be depended on. Anything written might, it is true, lead to litigation, and this gave rise to a saying in the Street that Henderson's word was ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... culture from the taint of bookishness. It gave substance to his humor. It humanized his wisdom and enabled him to express it in a familiar and dramatic form. It placed at his disposal, that is, the great classic vehicle of popular expression, which is the parable and the spoken word. ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... my spoken word 'is required or no," she said, "but if it will be any satisfaction to you to have it I ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... Shiloh, the ancient seat of the Tabernacle, meets the ambitious young officer in some solitary spot, with the message which answered to his secret thoughts and made his heart beat fast. The symbolic action preceding the spoken word, as usual, supplied the text, of which the word was the explanation and expansion. How pathetic is the newness of the garment! Unworn, strong, and fresh, it yet is rent in pieces. So the kingdom ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of her lips pierced through him like the point of the bitter sword, And he deemed that death were better than another spoken word: But he clencheth his hand on the war-blade, and setteth his face as the brass, And the voice of his brother Gunnar from out his lips doth pass: "When thou lookest on me, O Goddess, thou seest Gunnar ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... ride when he would have borne it, only to lose the thought of that. But Faith knew nothing of it all, except as she could feel once or twice a deep breath that was checked and hushed, and turned into some sweet low-spoken word to her; and her rest was very deep. So deep, that the stopping of the sleigh at ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... The spoken Word, the written Poem, is said to be an epitome of the man; how much more the done Work. Whatsoever of morality and of intelligence; what of patience, perseverance, faithfulness, of method, insight, ingenuity, ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... last year I have been increasingly conscious of the growing response to the spoken word on behalf of this cause of ours. Because of the unparalleled large audiences drawn to our standard everywhere, I have become convinced that my highest service to the suffrage movement can best be given ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... judicial contradictions, but he keeps his own convictions as to the case, while he does his best to gain the day. In a word, a man loses his head not so much by thinking as by uttering thoughts. The spoken word convinces the utterer; but a man can act against his own bad judgment without warping it, and contrive to win in a bad cause without maintaining that it is a good one, like the barrister. Perhaps for this very reason an old attorney is ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... seen, possesses five generic properties, pitch, force, quality, time, and abruptness; and, in every spoken word, it must assume some mode of each of these properties, manifesting them in co-existence. This conjoint mode, or vocal sign, as it is called, should be the appropriate expression of the thought and feeling of which the word, in its place in the sentence, is the graphical sign. ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... account of what occurred. I am not a whole-souled admirer of womankind, as you are aware, Watson, but my experience of life has taught me that there are few wives, having any regard for their husbands, who would let any man's spoken word stand between them and that husband's dead body. Should I ever marry, Watson, I should hope to inspire my wife with some feeling which would prevent her from being walked off by a housekeeper when ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... most important invention for the poet has been the invention of writing and reading; for this has added immensely to the scope of his mastery over words. No poet will ever take the written word as a substitute for the spoken word; he knows that it is on the spoken word, and the spoken word only, that his art is founded. But he trusts his reader to do as he himself does—to receive written words always as the code of spoken ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie
... I assert, did falsehood pass his lips, his mouth was equal to his seal and his spoken word to his written. Loyal as fine gold and whole as an egg." Chastellain repeats himself somewhat in the profusion of his eulogy, but such are the main points of his characterisation. Then ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... have to tell you of my race for you to understand. We call ourselves the Varn, in so far as it can be translated into a spoken word, and we are a very old race. In the beginning we did not live in caves but there came a long period of time, for thousands of years, when the climate on our world was so violent that we were forced to live in the caves. It was completely dark there but ...
— Cry from a Far Planet • Tom Godwin
... now," he shouted at the top of his lungs to make himself heard above the roar of the wind. And then it seemed to the girl they rode on and on for hours without a spoken word. She came to tell by the force of the wind whether they travelled along ridges, or wide low basins, or narrow coulees. Her lips dried and cracked, and the fine dust and sand particles were driven beneath her clothing until her skin smarted and chafed under their gritty torture. Suddenly the ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... the person in the case of the talisman, or, in the case of the charm, if a material object it could be placed entirely outside of one's care. The talisman and amulet must be a compound of some substance, the charm might be a gesture, a look, or a spoken word. Notice the example of ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... the Bible, we understand why it is that scripture is so rich in treasures of wisdom. We see that we can not exhaust the Bible because we can not exhaust God. The Bible wields an influence that can not be estimated. The spoken word is powerful, the printed word surpasses it. The one is temporal, the other is eternal; the one is circumscribed, the other is unlimited. The spoken sermon of today is forgotten tomorrow; the written word of thousands of years ago still ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... And if such defamatory words be uttered for the sake of some necessary good, and with attention to the due circumstances, it is not a sin and cannot be called backbiting. But if they be uttered out of lightness of heart or for some unnecessary motive, it is not a mortal sin, unless perchance the spoken word be of such a grave nature, as to cause a notable injury to a man's good name, especially in matters pertaining to his moral character, because from the very nature of the words this would be a mortal sin. And one is ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... And the spoken word seemed written On air and wave and sod, And the bending walls of sapphire Blazed with the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... men a straight line from infatuation to destruction. In what degree Fourier was responsible for the effusion of blood in Paris in the spring of 1871 it is not possible to determine; but the relation of Rousseau to the first French revolution is not more certain. Fate is the spoken word which cannot be recalled, and who can tell the good and evil consequences that lie hidden in it? The proper cure for socialism, in educated minds, would be a study of the law. There we discover what a wonderful mechanism is the present organization of society, and how ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... later, as she came out from under the anesthetic, she realized how very wretched she felt. The nurse leaned over to catch her first spoken word. ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... Miss Winch, for though she might wrap up her meaning somewhat obscurely in her telegraphic communications, when it came to the spoken word she was directness itself, "stop picking straws in your hair and listen ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... language is a better instrument than language by sign; therefore one is freer to express his thought and impress it upon the mind of another by speech than by gesture. The written word is a more potent instrument than the spoken word; therefore one is freer to act on the mind of his fellows when he knows how to picture the word to their eyes than when he simply knows how to speak it. The press is an instrument two or three hundred times more potent than the pen; therefore one is two or three hundred times freer ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... other, with so abject a reliance upon the spoken word that it brought a laugh from Christopher's lips. "How ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... essentially a dramatist. Her great power is the power of dialogue, and dialogue, of course, is as often employed in the service of the story as in the service of the play. Yet it is not difficult to understand how in Lady Gregory the dialogue and in Mr. Yeats the love of the spoken word led, when opportunity was made, to writing for the stage, and for success on the stage. But in the case of "A.E." it is as difficult to find a foreshadowing of the playwright in the mystical poet as it would be to see in all but all of the essays of ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... ever before her eyes! But for her there was no such possibility, and she felt it. She knew her own nature well. Her heart had spoken, and the word it said must roll on continually through the spaces of her mind. Who can recall the spoken word, and who can set a limit on its echoes? It is not so with most women, but here and there may be found a nature where it is so. Spirits like this poor girl's are too deep, and partake too much of a divine immutability, to shift and suit themselves ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... cannot fail to have—a tendency to breed in the mind a disregard for what is not of a strictly legal or actionable character. It is Utopian to dream of a state of society where no law will be needed but every man's written and spoken word will be a law to him; but it is not difficult to imagine a state of society in which there is such universal dependence on the law in all emergencies that the individual conscience will become weakened—pauperised—atrophied—and unable to ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... A carelessly spoken word dropped at hot noontide when the water in the canteens had given out; a sincere oath, uttered by the fire at supper-time; a long, drowsy conversation as they lay in their blankets with the tang of the night breeze ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... been spent over the question whether the Chinese hieroglyphs are ideograms or phonograms, whether the character , for instance, conveys to those using it primarily the idea of Heaven, or the spoken word T'ien. It is necessarily both, in a sense; it would not be written language otherwise. And it is equally true that the letter-combination Heaven is in a way as much to us a picture of the idea as of the sound; but the difference of procedure is radical. The glyph is related to the idea directly, ...
— Commentary Upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex - with a Concluding Note Upon the Linguistic Problem of the Maya Glyphs • William E. Gates
... strong; in the speech of the upper circles there was an over-fondness for German, French, and English words. Between them the two friends, by force of their great genius, cleared away the debris which made for sterility and erected in their stead a new structure out of living Russian words. The spoken word, born of the people, gave soul and wing to literature; only by coming to earth, the native earth, was it enabled to soar. Coming up from Little Russia, the Ukraine, with Cossack blood in his veins, Gogol injected his own healthy virus into ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... than any will uttered in His providences and the like. There is the Incarnate Word of God, who 'was from the beginning with God, and was God,' and is manifested in these last times unto us. I am keeping well within the analogy of Scripture teaching when I see the perfecting of revelation by the spoken Word as reached in the revelation by the personal word; and when, in addition to the exhortation, to hide the Scripture in your hearts, and to hide the uttered will of God, however uttered, in your hearts, I add, let us hide ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... are even more applicable to the training of men's souls to rational self-expression. Dr. Curry will some day be recognized to have been an educational philosopher for having championed principles no less true of the spoken word than of every form of creative self-expression."—Dean Shailer Mathews, ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry
... was about to be reached, some one, tempted by the devil, spoke, causing the wished-for riches to disappear. Such an explanation of his failures was by no means original with Smith, the serious results of an untimely spoken word having been long associated with divers magic performances. Joe even tried on his New York victims the Pennsylvania device of requiring the sacrifice of a black sheep to overcome the evil spirit that guarded the treasure. William Stafford ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... he went out to dine, returning at ten o'clock, or earlier, when the serious work of arranging next day's issue began. She had not sent a note to him, for she knew if she got a reply it would be merely a request for particulars as to the proposed interview, and she had a strong faith in the spoken word, as against that which is written. At five o'clock the editor would have read his letters, and would probably have seen most of those who were waiting for him, and Miss Baxter quite rightly conjectured ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... men hastened from other squad rooms. There was no flourish of bugles this time. At a quietly spoken word the sixty men fell in. Non-commissioned officers made a hasty inspection, while Captain Cortland and Lieutenant Prescott glanced up and down the ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... violence of partizanship which suggest pathological decay. What Greece does is generally subtle and shrewd; what she says is often madness. She has little sense of humour, and takes offence where other nations would laugh. Thus she wins by statecraft and loses by politics. In thought, and in the spoken word, Greece is outmatched for instance by the Slavs; but in silent action and in administrative policy Greece more often excels her neighbours. You will always hear odious comparisons made in the Near East between Greek and Turk, to the disadvantage of the former. But it seems ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... with no spoken word, we fell back, the half circle straightening into a line and leaving a clear pathway to the open gates. The wind had ceased to blow, I remember, and a sunny stillness lay upon the sand, and the rough-hewn wooden stakes, and a little patch of tender ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... had not yet spoken to her on the subject; the assassination at the deserted chateau far away beyond the heaving water and the long, long, dusty roads—the solid stone chateau which had itself become the mere mist of a dream—had been done a year, and he had never yet, by so much as a single spoken word, disclosed to her ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... Richardson," a work known to every Anglo-Orientalist as the old and trusty companion of his studies early and late; but even here I have made sundry deviations for reasons which will be explained in the Terminal Essay. As words are the embodiment of ideas and writing is of words, so the word is the spoken word; and we should write it as pronounced. Strictly speaking, the e-sound and the o-sound (viz. the Italian o-sound not the English which is peculiar to us and unknown to any other tongue) are not found in Arabic, except when the figure Imalah obliges: hence ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... commanded popular interest and applause. Daniel Webster's audiences at Plymouth in 1820 and at Bunker Hill in 1825 were not inferior to similar audiences of today in intelligence and in responsiveness. Perhaps they were superior. Appreciation of the spoken word was natural to men trained by generations of thoughtful listening to "painful" preaching and by participation in the discussions of town-meeting. Yet appreciation of secular literature was rare, and interest in the other ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... direct to the spectators, and while these see the evidence of the actors' states of soul in their bearing and movements, a third though more feeble confirmation of these states, translated into conscious will, quickly follows in the form of the spoken word. All these effects fulfil their purpose simultaneously, without disturbing one another in the least, and urge the spectator to a completely new understanding and sympathy, just as if his senses had suddenly grown more spiritual and his spirit more sensual, and as if everything ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... justified in saying that discursive thought can be realized in language only. One instance will make this clear. We hold that we cannot think without language. But can we not count without language? We certainly can. We can form the conception of three without any spoken word, by simply holding up three fingers. In the same manner, the hand might stand for five, both hands for ten, hands and feet for twenty.(25) This is how people who possessed no organs of speech would speak; this is how the deaf and dumb do speak. Three fingers are as good as three strokes, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... resolutely. There was nothing but myself between him and the dark ocean. I had a sense of responsibility. If I spoke, would that motionless and suffering youth leap into the obscurity—clutch at the straw? I found out how difficult it may be sometimes to make a sound. There is a weird power in a spoken word. And why the devil not? I was asking myself persistently while I drove on with my writing. All at once, on the blank page, under the very point of the pen, the two figures of Chester and his antique partner, very distinct and complete, would dodge into view with stride and gestures, as if ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... Johnson's orotund prose, of the declamatory Letters of Junius, and of the speeches of Burke, Fox, Sheridan, and the elder Pitt is perceptible in the debates of our early Congresses. The fame of a great orator, like that of a great actor, is largely traditionary. The spoken word transferred to the printed page loses the glow which resided in the man and the moment. A speech is good if it attains its aim, if it moves the hearers to the end which is sought. But the fact that this end is often temporary and occasional, rather than universal and ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... accomplish yourself, is the epistolary style alone, at once a means of communicating pleasure to your friends, and of conferring extensive and permanent benefits upon them. How useful has the kind, judicious, well-timed letter of a Christian friend often proved, even when the spoken word of the same friend might, during circumstances of excitement, have only increased ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... and wane See thee and hate thee in vain. In the clear laughter of all winds and waves, In the blown grass of graves, In the long sound of fluctuant boughs of trees, In the broad breath of seas, Bid the sound of thy flying folds be heard; And as a spoken word Full of that fair god and that merciless Who rends the Pythoness, So be the sound and so the fire that saith She feels her ancient breath And the old blood move in ...
— Two Nations • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... of Zollern watched him, and his fine smile was more of a commentary than many a spoken word. Graevenitz observing it broke into a laugh, which was echoed by ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... spectator's attention are various. There is the use of the eyes, as before shown. Then there is the spoken word, the performer telling the onlookers to observe some certain object or action, and the effect is to cause them to watch it, as they are told. They follow the line of least resistance. The combined effect upon the spectator of the ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... sender nor the person to whom it is sent can claim to interfere with a letter whilst it is in the Post Office. Only the warrant of a Secretary of State can stay its delivery." Once a letter is dropped into a letter-box it is like a spoken word, it cannot be recalled. ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 353, October 2, 1886. • Various
... conceive of a time when men had no means of communication at all. And at last, after long ages, men evolved in sound the names of the things they knew and the forms of speech; ages later, the alphabet and the art of writing; ages later still, those wonderful instruments of extension for the written and spoken word: the telegraph, the telephone, the modern printing press, the phonograph, the typewriter, and ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... has several obvious advantages. First, the spoken word, quoted verbatim, gives life to the story. The person interviewed seems to be talking to each reader individually. The description of him in his surroundings helps the reader to see him as he talks. Second, events, explanations, ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... of the spoken word still holds him," said Thorpe, evenly. "As I understand, he asked her to marry him and she consented. He was never released from his promise—did not even ask for it. He slunk away like a cur. In the sight of God he ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... /n./ [from {kilo-}] A kilobyte. Used both as a spoken word and a written suffix (like {meg} and {gig} for megabyte ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... was suffused with wrath at the pleasantry, and he regarded him with a fixed stare. On board the Conqueror there was a witchery in that glance more potent than the spoken word, but in his own parlour the new captain met ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... to the pace of the pony, seemed to reiterate in grotesque assertion his spoken word. Ramon's tired body tingled as Dex strode faster. The horse nickered, and an answering nicker came from the night. His own tired pony struck into a trot. Dex stopped. Ramon slid down, and, stumbling forward, he touched a black bulk that lay on ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... no echoing splash, as a hurtling body struck the water, nor tense spoken word of congratulation following—nothing. For ten seconds, which is long under the circumstances, not a word is spoken; only the metallic click of opened locks, as they spring home, breaks the steady ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... Smallbones "weighed out" amid a circle of smiles, which suddenly seemed to light up the entire bar-room. Nor had he a single spoken word of protest. But he yielded himself up to the demands of the masterful doctor only to save himself the ducking he was certain awaited ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... of His creatures. Whatever God makes, He makes in His own likeness, more or less so according to the degree of being which He imparts to the creature. And as whatever God does is like Him, and whatever God makes is like Him, so whatever God says is like Him: His spoken word answers to His inward word and thought. It holds of God as of every being who has a thought to think ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... he was possessed by a misery of vague apprehensions. He must know something of her thoughts, have a token from her of some feeling like his own; and, waiting, he stopped the Italian on the stairs. The latter knew his purpose immediately, without a spoken word; and he followed Howat's brusque gesture to his room. He hastily wrote a note; and the latter brought him back a reply, only partly satisfactory, with an air of relish. For the first time the affair had the hateful appearance of an intrigue, like a court adventure. It was the Italian ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... word" is a literal scientific fact. Through the operation of our thought forces we have creative power. The spoken word is nothing more nor less than the outward expression of the workings of these interior forces. The spoken word is then, in a sense, the means whereby the thought forces are focused and directed along any particular line; ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... at church,—whatever her place or occupation, her spirit passed from beneath her own control, and bowed itself to Maule. "Alice, laugh!"—the carpenter, beside his hearth, would say; or perhaps intensely will it, without a spoken word. And, even were it prayer-time, or at a funeral, Alice must break into wild laughter. "Alice, be sad!"—and, at the instant, down would come her tears, quenching all the mirth of those around her like sudden rain ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... his eyes still fastened on her own. A nod was better than the spoken word until his voice obeyed him ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Slightly by, the spoken word and the whistled innuendo followed her like a trail of bubbles in the wake of a flying-fish. A youth still wearing a fraternity pin pretended to lick his downy chops. The son of the president of the Mound City Oil Company emitted a long, amorous whistle. Willie Waxter—youngest ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... back was the gray-eyed, brown-haired girl with the pleasant voice. She was taking no active part in the game itself except to watch the wagers and the cases carefully. Now and then her father addressed a low-spoken word to her and she answered with a nod, a smile, or a shake of her head. She was quite at ease, quite at home; she was utterly oblivious to the close-packed ring of spectators encircling ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... the battered tramp, came gladly the men of power—the men whose spoken word in their polyglot domains was more feared and heeded than decrees of emperors or edicts of kings. And there, in the time-blackened cabin that had once been his cabin, these men talked and the girl listened while her eyes glowed with pride as they recounted the exploits of Tiger ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... their actions likewise, whenever they wish them to arouse pity or horror, or have a look of importance or probability. The only difference is that with the act the impression has to be made without explanation; whereas with the spoken word it has to be produced by the speaker, and result from his language. What, indeed, would be the good of the speaker, if things appeared in the required light even apart ...
— The Poetics • Aristotle
... Harvard did in his similar work for his University; but I never heard him speak a disloyal word of any of his colleagues. No man could have advocated Imperialism as he did without making political enemies, and many a vigorous attack was made on him by young Canadians; but I do not recall any spoken word or any printed sentence of his that dragged his advocacy of Imperialism into the realm of party politics or personal controversy. I know how true and generous he was to one of his friends who always found in him a congenial fellow-worker in the things ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... If the spoken word is impossible to recall, how much more irretrievable the word that is printed in millions of newspapers. The name of Dyckman was a household word. It resounded now in every household throughout the country, and across the ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... years the two were close friends and intimate associates, though it cannot be said that Swift ever made open love to her. To the outward eye they were no more than fellow workers. Yet love does not need the spoken word and the formal declaration to give it life and make it deep and strong. Esther Johnson, to whom Swift gave the pet name of "Stella," grew into the existence of this fiery, hold, and independent genius. All that he did she knew. She was his confidante. ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... syllable was more like a sigh than a spoken word, and it seemed to her as if in the utterance of that syllable the three thousand pounds had ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... through all these years gone by—a desire to preach. I think I can say, in no spirit of boasting, that from my earliest days I have had an intense interest in the problem of truth, and a passion to interpret and defend by the spoken word, the truth as I saw it, to other men. It is just this passion, I suppose, which makes the preacher, as distinguished from the poet or the scientist. So Phillip Brooks would seem to suggest in his famous dictum, that preaching is "Truth (conveyed) through Personality." ...
— A Statement: On the Future of This Church • John Haynes Holmes
... to all mankind. This value must be realized by the student, who must make the effort of Spartacus his own effort, throughout the entire selection. The value of the theme must be behind every spoken word, ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... now, when I was not by thee to stay thy hand, thou hast dug a pit for thine own feet to fall in. Is it not so? But what is done is done. Who can make the dead tree green, or gaze again upon last year's light? Who can recall the spoken word, or bring back the spirit of the fallen? That which Time swallows comes not up again. Let it ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... a spoken word, the thing became clear to Zaidos. All at once he knew how deeply and utterly his cousin hated him. He knew as well as if Velo had shouted it aloud that he meant to be the instrument of his death in ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... become charged with mystery for them. They had no doubt that the blessed St. Yvon, the patron saint of mariners, had himself uttered the warning through her, at the moment when the safety of the fishing fleet depended on a spoken word: and the miracle now occupied their attention almost to the exclusion of the false lights and the return of ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... written word, that which presides at its first formation, the end whereunto it is a mean, is by aid of symbols agreed on beforehand, to represent to the eye with as much accuracy as possible the spoken word. ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... Company had its birth, the blind Milton was dictating his message and the liberated Bunyan preached the spoken word, the iniquitous Cabal Ministry was forming in England, and Panama was sacked by Morgan the buccaneer. New York merchants of Manhattan met every Friday at noon on the bridge over the Broad Street Canal for barter, South Carolina was settled on the Ashley River, Virginia enacted that "all servants ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... spoken word of admonition from parents, teachers, and others honestly interested in our welfare we should reinforce our good resolves by reading good books and in framing for our own benefit a code of rules for our ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... from the utilitarian rather than from the scientific point of view; a maker of hats would single out the dimensions of the head from among other human characteristics; an orator would consider man from the point of view of his susceptibility to the spoken word. But selection is the fundamental necessity which enables us to realize things; to emerge from the vague into the practical, from aimless contemplation into the sphere ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... born to be a brother to the child; and while he was so little that he never yet had spoken word he stretched his tiny form out ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... of what she felt, and it was rather a pity that Hawtrey, who lacked imagination, usually contented himself with the most obvious meaning of the spoken word. Things might have gone differently had he ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... That's your talking, is it? If you don't stand to your spoken word, holy father, I'll make my own complaint to the mitred bishop in the face of all. PRIEST. You'd do that! SARAH. I would surely, holy father, if I walked to the city of Dublin with blood and blisters on my naked feet. PRIEST — uneasily scratching ...
— The Tinker's Wedding • J. M. Synge
... delightful, more elegant, and has more of the humanities than any other. You will say: "But I have here authors just as learned, whose works I can read." Granted, but you can always read an author, while you cannot always listen to him. Moreover, as the proverb goes, the spoken word is invariably much more impressive than the written one; for however lively what you read may be, it does not sink so deeply into the mind as what is pressed home by the accent, the expression, and the whole bearing and action of a speaker. This must be admitted unless we think the story ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... And Lucy, in the current now of her woman's need to be placated if not obeyed, pressed her small hand to his. How strange to what lengths a little submission to her feeling had carried her! Every spoken word, every movement, seemed to exact more from her. She did not ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... He pushed, pressed, groped about, but the glass apparently obeyed no one but Erik ... Perhaps actions were not enough with a glass of the kind? Perhaps he was expected to utter certain words? When he was a little boy, he had heard that there were things that obeyed the spoken word! ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... who have passed my life in judging, condemning, killing by the spoken word, killing by the guillotine those who had killed by the knife, I, I, if I should do as all the assassins have done whom I have smitten, I—I—who would ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... do and be exactly what Lydia Sessions seemed to want. Gray Stoddard's occasional spoken word, or the more lengthy written messages he had taken to putting in the books he sent her, seemed to demand of her nothing, but always inspired to much. For all his disposition to keep hands off the personal development of his friends, perhaps on account of it, Gray ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... elapsed since Jeanne Lacombie had burst into the room. Moments so tense—so laden with terrible portent—that, although every person in the room heard each spoken word, brains failed to grasp their significance; and Appleton, from his bench near the door, as he saw Bill Carmody turn from his fainting wife, for the first time ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... and the low-toned tete-a-tete was not resumed. Later, when they had a moment together in the dispersion from the breakfast-table, he tried to apologize for what he was pleased to call his "playing of the baby act." But she reassured him in a low-spoken word. ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... waste jars—are ten times more valuable than even the most attractively illustrated articles. It is well that the personality of the human being is an asset, and that there is a stimulus in hearing and seeing the person who has accomplished things. There is always a power in the spoken word. The government, with its public lectures, recognizes this as well as the private organization, and today ignorance is ...
— Euthenics, the science of controllable environment • Ellen H. Richards
... doubt of the Dewey's serious dilemma. No spoken word was necessary to impress upon the men the critical situation. Sleep was out of the question. Jack rambled into the wireless room, where he tried to calm his restless spirits by rattling away on the key at the code alphabet. Lately he had been ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... sentinel the woods, the wilds that know their worth; And so they scour the startled plains and mock at hurt and pain, And read their Crimson Manual, and find their duty plain. Knights of the lists of unrenown, born of the frontier's need, Disdainful of the spoken word, exultant in the deed; Unconscious heroes of the waste, proud players of the game, Props of the power behind the throne, upholders of the name: For thus the Great White Chief hath said, "In all my lands be peace", And to maintain his word he gave ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... "A spoken word, Sir Abraham, is often of more value than volumes of written advice. The truth is, I am ill-satisfied with this matter as it stands at present. I do see—I cannot help seeing, that the affairs ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... it into the flames before Greif's eyes. But if ever all those things should happen of which he had been thinking, what proof would remain that the baroness or her daughter had a right to what was theirs even now? If ever that time came, Greif would not believe a spoken word. Would it not have been best, after all, to give the writing to the men of the law, requesting their discretion? No, for all this might be spared, if only Greif married Hilda. Until he had realised what issues were ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... Not a spoken word of tenderness, but Davie leaned against his father in utter content, and little Norman clasped his arms round his knee. Jack eagerly helped to unsaddle the tired mare, not caring to speak, though as a general ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... moment. It was easy for him, in his first letter, to hark back to one of those idle questions of hers, and to make his reply to it an excuse for a letter. Such a communication would need no acknowledgment beyond a spoken word of thanks, which she would bestow upon him the next time they met. It should contain nothing warmer than the assurance of his anxiety to be of service to her, in anything she undertook, and a protestation of respectful ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... the brain to interpret the movements of speech as seen by the eye, as it would have been trained by the same procedure to interpret the sounds of speech had the organ of transmission not been injured. But the idea must be constantly in the mind of the mother that her boy needs to see the spoken word at the very moment when the idea that it represents is in his mind, AS OFTEN as he would hear it if ...
— What the Mother of a Deaf Child Ought to Know • John Dutton Wright
... sentinel, Courteous, kind, and practised well, So a song did sing and tell Of the peril that befell. "Maiden fair that lingerest here, Gentle maid of merry cheer, Hair of gold, and eyes as clear As the water in a mere, Thou, meseems, hast spoken word To thy lover and thy lord, That would die for thee, his dear; Now beware the ill accord, Of the cloaked men of the sword, These have sworn and keep their word, They will put thee to the ...
— Aucassin and Nicolete • Andrew Lang
... "on my departure to-night. The cause hangs upon it. A blight on my evil luck!" he cried. "Were Colonel Myddelton at home, I should not be fleeing from my own country empty-handed. I shall be writing to him most of this day, but a spoken word is worth a ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... winds that breathe or blow; A magic music out of memory stirred, A strain that charms my heart to overflow With such vast yearning that my eyes are blurred. Oh, song of dreams, that I no more shall know! Bewildering carol without spoken word! Faint as a stream's voice murmuring under snow, Sad as a love forevermore deferred, Song of the arrow from the Master's bow, Sung in ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... anxious not to see. He therefore turned his back and pretended to brush from his sleeve a speck of dust revealed to his searching eye in the strong afternoon light which streamed through the open door. Then Vjera's low-spoken word of thanks and her light tread made him aware that she had received her little gratuity; he stood politely aside while she passed out, and then went down the half-dozen steps with her. As they began to move up the street, he did not offer her ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... gamblers on the river bottom saw the raft while yet Torrance was wrapped in the evening picture, watching at first with the stupidity of their class, then with equally characteristic suspicion. From group to group the strange spectacle passed without spoken word; and some whose spotted lives had carried them through varied scenes realised the threat of the rapids. Here and there one, more sensitive to the struggle, rose to his feet in unconscious sympathy. ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... to be a brother to the child; and while he was so little that he never yet had spoken word, he stretched his tiny form out on ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... fellowship, but finds the limit reached in saying, at a distance of time and space, "I love him!" I have lowered my eyes before the emotion to be observed in the faces of some of his readers who were trying to reach him through a spoken word of eagerness. Very few have seen him, but how glad I am to cross their paths! Dr. Holmes's warmth of enthusiasm was so radiant that it could not be forgotten. It lit every word with the magic of the passion we feel for what is perfect, unique, and beyond ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... Alan. Then his countenance changed. Its habitual calm broke up as it was wont to do in moments of deep emotion. It became very evil, as though some demon of hate and jealousy were at work behind it. The thin lips quivered, the eyes glared, and without spoken word or warning, he lifted the rifle and fired straight at Alan. The bullet missed him, for the aim was high. Passing over Alan's head, it cut a neat groove through the hair of the taller Jeekie who was ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... departments. She still confined her actual selecting of goods to the infants' wear section, but she occupied, unofficially, the position of assistant to the General Merchandise Manager. They worked well together, she and Fenger, their minds often marching along without the necessity of a single spoken word. There was no doubt that Fenger's mind was a marvelous piece of mechanism. Under it the Haynes-Cooper plant functioned with the clockwork regularity of a gigantic automaton. System and Results—these were his twin gods. With his mind intent on them he failed to see that new gods, born of ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... important matters of feeling as of reason, of experience as of reflection, should be treated of only by word of mouth. The spoken word at once dies if it is not kept alive by some other word following on it and suited to the hearer. Observe what happens in social converse. If the word is not dead when it reaches the hearer, he murders it at once ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... it destroyed her coiffure. "Enough of this!" I cried to her. "Take your place by the boat, and do as you are told." And I saw Helena pass forward, also, as we all reached the deck, herself pale as a wraith, but with no outcry and no spoken word. So, at last, I ranged them all near the boat that ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... says Longinus, 'I have written as follows: "Sublimity is the echo of a great soul." Hence even a bare idea sometimes, by itself and without a spoken word will excite admiration, just because of the greatness of soul implied. Thus the silence of Ajax in the underworld is great and more sublime ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... This is the period between the time of birth and the age of 2, and takes the child up to the time of the first spoken word. This does not mean, of course, that no child speaks before the age of 2, for many children have made their first trials at speaking at as early an age as 15 months, and many begin to talk by the time they are a year and ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... written or spoken word in explanation of what we have come to feel about the thing offered, is after all ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... in Press and on platform to partly mould the thought of his time, swaying thousands of readers and hearers year after year. No weighter responsibility can any take, no more sacred charge. The written and the spoken word start forces none may measure, set working brain after brain, influence numbers unknown to the forthgiver of the word, work for good or for evil all down the stream of time. Feeling the greatness of ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... "'And yet, Ella, the spoken word, the thought of our hearts cannot be recalled, I must go, and go this night too, only promise one thing.' 'Dearest, what? you are always right!' 'Love, you must promise that if I come not again by to-morrow at moonrise, you will go to the red pike, ...
— The World of Romance - being Contributions to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856 • William Morris
... particularisms, and that these particularisms may return. The empire of the Germans may break up again. That I do not believe. The forces that unified Germany lie deeper than the Hohenzollern adventure; print, paper and the spoken word have bound Germany now into one people for all time. None the less those previous crowns and symbols that still show through the paint of the new design may help greatly, as that weakens under the coming stresses, to ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells |
